Jailbreak

by Giles Tippette

  After we’d shook he sent one of his men running to bring me and Lew a glass. Then he poured them full for us with tequila and we saluted each other and took down the raw, fiery stuff. I tried not to choke, but it was a near thing. It’s not polite to cough over another man’s whiskey.

  I looked over at Lew; his eyes were watering. He said, “Damn! I’ve drunk plenty of tequila, but this stuff needs straining. Reckon this was what they were going to blow up the jail with?”

  Well, we all got on pretty good after that. After about three drinks I asked Jack what had taken him so long to translate my message. He looked embarrassed. Finally he said, “Hell, I couldn’t think of the Spanish word for lieutenant. I finally give up and made him a captain.”

  I just looked at him. We might have all been killed because of his Spanish. I said, “That’s wonderful, Jack.”

  He said, “Dammit, Justa, I told you my nerves wadn’t what they were.”

  I reckoned that matters ended up on about as good a foot as could be expected. We had about three or four more drinks with Benito and his compañeros and then I had Lew explain to them what we wanted. What I emphatically wanted was for them to stay out of town until the next day and not to call any attention to themselves. Then I wanted them to meet us at the livery stable behind our hotel at two o’clock on the morrow. I said to Lew, “Tell them it is most important that they come in to town in ones and twos, not in a whole bunch, and that they are to do nothing to give notice to the federales. Make damn sure they understand that. And I assume they’ve brought an extra horse for Señor Elizandro. Tell them I’ll explain what they are to do at the livery stable. And tell them it is very important that they follow my orders exactly as I say.”

  Lew told them all that and they seemed amiable enough about it. So we made our adióses and rode on back to town.

  Jack seemed to still be showing a little of the strain of the meeting between us and our compadres. I said, “Hell, Jack, buck up. They can’t do no more than get us kilt.”

  He said, “I thought you was about to do that back yonder in that cantina. Pushin’ a drunk Mex is one thang, but pushin’ five of ’em in a saloon in Mexico is another. Them boys don’t keep regular attendance at Sunday school, you know.”

  Lew laughed and I had to smile a little myself. Jack wasn’t exactly knowed for making jokes.

  But Lew said, “I hope you ain’t countin’ on them boys too heavily, Justa. I’m with Jack on they character. They may or may not be there and they may or may not do what you say. They just as likely to get drunk tonight and forget all about tomorrow as they are to try and blow up that jail tonight.”

  I said, in a kind of weak voice, “I know. You don’t got to remind me. But I got to play the cards I was dealt. Even if they all are jokers.”

  Truth be told, I was plenty worried about Elizandro’s men without any supporting opinions from anybody else. Just about our whole escape depended on them and how well they did their jobs. If they didn’t lay us down a good covering fire there was a damn good chance we were going to catch a few bullets ourselves whether them Mexican police could shoot or not. My main hope had been that Ben could direct the fire in such a way that the police outside the jail would scatter and go to ground so that it would take them some time to get up a chase party. But, more to the point, I was hoping the fire would scare them off so that we wouldn’t actually have to kill anybody. I figured the less dead policemen, the less hard they’d pursue us.

  But I doubted I was going to be able to get that fine point across to Benito and his boys.

  Well, it was about as confused a mess as I’d ever tried to organize and about all I could figure to do was roll the dice and hope for the best.

  That night I took a piece of the primer cord, measured off six inches and then lit it while I counted, “One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three . . .”

  It burned at about the rate of two seconds per inch.

  Hays was watching me intently. He shook his head slowly. “Boss, I don’t know ’bout this. Foolin’ ’round with dynamite cain’t lead to no good end.”

  “It ain’t dynamite,” I said. “How many times I got to tell you that? It’s black powder and kerosene. The black powder is cordite, like mining engineers use.”

  “ ’At’s what I mean. Gonna blow up, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah. I hope so.”

  “Wahl, ain’t that what dynamite does?”

  “Listen—”

  “An’ me an’ you in there in that there jail! Gawda’mighty, boss, ain’t they another way?”

  “Oh, shut up, Hays,” I said. “You sound like somebody’s grandmother. Now go downstairs and get me a candle.”

  Later that evening we carefully uncapped a dozen bottles of beer, poured the beer out in a bucket then washed each bottle out with kerosene. After we’d done that Lew and I carefully poured each bottle about half full of the black powder. Then, using a funnel I’d made out of a rolled-up newspaper, we filled out each bottle with kerosene. I held one of the finished products up to the light. It looked pretty good. The bottles were of dark glass and the Mexican beer was dark. Stuck down in the ice in the bucket that we intended on taking them into the jail in, they’d look just like ordinary bottles of beer.

  Lew said, “Do you really have any idea of how big a explosion this stuff is gonna make?”

  I was supposedly an artillery officer in the Texas militia, but I’d never had a great deal of experience even though we still used black powder. I finally admitted that I wasn’t real sure what my little bombs were going to do. I said, “Best I’m hoping for is they’ll make a hell of a bang and spread some confusion. Only thing I don’t know is if the glass will break. The cap is the weak point and it might just blow the cap off and fizzle out.”

  Lew said, “That ain’t gonna do a hell of a lot of good.”

  Ben said, “They’ll break when you throw them, won’t they?”

  I said, “I ain’t gonna throw them so they’ll break. I want the explosion to bust the glass so that kerosene will throw fire all over the place.”

  “Why don’t you just use dynamite?” Lew said. “Like we done before with that herd of cattle with tick fever?”

  I looked at him. Normally Lew is a pretty solid thinker. I said, “In that jail? In those close quarters? I don’t reckon I will. I’m trying to rescue my brother, not blow him up.”

  We spent the next hour putting the caps back on the bottles, crimping them carefully with a pair of pliers. After that Ben took his pocketknife and bored a hole in the middle of each cap just big enough to take the primer cord. But I wasn’t putting it in just then. And wouldn’t be until we actually entered the jail. Instead we plugged each hole up with candle wax and then rubbed the wax with tobacco ash so the hole wouldn’t be noticeable.

  After that we put the bottles in the galvanized bucket we regularly took to the jail.

  We sat back and had a drink. I said, “Now what have I forgot?”

  Jack said, “You arranged fer grub an’ water?”

  I slapped my thigh. “No. I nearly forgot that. We’ll do it in the morning. But we’ll get canned goods out of the mercantile. I don’t want none of this junk outen this hotel café. Maybe bread. Pan they call it.”

  Hays said, “Boss, how many days you figure to the Texas border?”

  I said, “Can’t be many. I’m due at a wedding.”

  Hays gave a kind of groan. “I sure hope I’m there to do a little dancin’. An’ in condition fer it.”

  I went over the plan once again and what part each would play. Hays would be responsible for the grub and plenty of water, Ben the horses. Jack would take Lew out to Davilla’s ranchero and show him where it was. Then we’d all gather back up at the hotel around noon and go over the show for the afternoon performance.

  Lew said, “You still ain’t got me no uniform.”

  I said, “Yeah I do.”

  “Where is it? Damned if I see one.”

&nbs
p; I said, “Well, I was thinking about sending Ben and Hays over to that alley next to the saloon to knock the first drunk policeman over the head that staggered in there to take a piss. Say about midnight.”

  Hays sucked in his breath.

  I said, “But then I suddenly realized wasn’t no need for that. Got a uniform all ready for you and it ought to just about fit from what I hear.”

  “You going to tell me where it is?”

  I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my back. I said, “Well, if he’s a tidy man, or if his wife is tidy, I figure it’ll be hanging in his closet. Or whatever they call where they keep their clothes down here.”

  Lew said, with what I took for just a trace of sarcasm, “Yeah, ain’t no use complicating the matter. I’ll just saunter up and ask the good capitán to give me the loan of one of his uniforms. Then I reckon I’ll mention I’m taking him prisoner right after he gets me outfitted. That about the size of it?”

  I said, “If it was me I’d put on my sheriff’s badge—you are a sheriff, you’ll remember—and go up to his door as one lawman to another. Ought not to be no trouble gaining access to the house. After that I figure you know what to do.”

  Lew smiled faintly. “Justa, if you wasn’t so damn smart somebody—not talkin’ about me, you understand—might take you for a smart aleck.”

  Ben said, loud enough to rouse the whole hotel, “I would!”

  They were nervous and I didn’t blame them. Hell, I was nervous too. What we were about to attempt was getting on toward being dangerous. It wasn’t just the job of actually getting Norris out of the jail and getting us all out of town safe and sound, there was still that little matter of a hundred miles overland to the border. That was going to be a hard three-day ride at best, and that on good horses. God only knew what kind of stock Ben had been able to pick up for Norris and Lew and the packhorse. I turned around to where he was sitting on the edge of one of the beds and asked after his luck. He just kind of shrugged. He said, “It’s fair. We wouldn’t have it on the ranch, but I figure it’ll make the trip.”

  “How bad will it slow us up?”

  “Against our horses? Some.”

  I thought for a moment. Then I said to Lew, “Listen, I understand that this Davilla fellow mainly raises horses. While you are getting him ready for his little trip, run your eye over his stock and see if he might not have a couple of extras that look like they might be worth taking along.”

  Lew raised his eyebrows. He said, “To all them other things you askin’ me to do you now want me to add horse stealin’? Is that right?”

  I said, “As I recollect . . .”

  I’d said it because it had been his first brush with the law when he’d been up in the Oklahoma Territory. He hadn’t been guilty, having fallen in with bad company as a lad, but he’d had a pretty warm time of it extracting himself from trouble without getting hung or going to jail. I’d said it partly as a joke, but partly because I was worried about the poor quality of the stock Ben had just described. You didn’t fool Ben about horseflesh. If he said the ones he’d been able to buy weren’t up to the quality of the animals we’d brought from the ranch, that meant we’d be slowed up to the speed of the poorest of the horses.

  I said to Ben, “How much did you pay for those three?”

  “Hunnert apiece.”

  Well, that was just some more added to the price of that worthless five thousand acres Norris had come down to save. Hell, if we didn’t get out pretty soon we were going to have to run those nesters off and take up residence on the place ourselves because we’d have to sell off the Half-Moon just to pay off what this jailbreak was costing.

  But I said, “A hundred dollars each for genuine Mexican plugs?”

  Ben shrugged. “They was the best I could find, and you didn’t give me a whole hell of a lot of time.”

  Which was true.

  He said, “I just took the best the local corral had to offer. They’re stabled with our horses. Another hunnert for two saddles, a pack saddle, and the other gear.”

  I took a drink. Boy, I was starting to boil, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good so I just said, “Reckon we ought to start thinking about going to bed. Might get a little busy tomorrow.”

  I lay awake long after I heard Lew snoring, running everything through my mind, mostly about what could go wrong. The more I pursued it, the more it seemed there was a heap more that could go wrong than could go right. I was at one slight disadvantage in the whole business. I knew about cattle and I knew about horses and I knew about fights, but the one thing, outside of women, that I didn’t have much experience at was jailbreaks. I finally figured out I’d just have to make it up as I went along.

  Then, just about the time I was starting to relax and get ready to go to sleep, another thought came across my mind. I played around with it for a time, dismissed it as trying to bite off more when I’d already bitten off too much, and settled down to go to sleep.

  But the thought wouldn’t go away. Finally I sat bolt upright in bed, lit a cigarillo and stared out the casement window at the Mexican night. It was another risk, albeit not a very bodacious one, especially in light of the ones we were already taking, but it was just adding more to the load. But, I thought, what the hell? We were already in over our heads in deep water so what difference did one more foot make? It was, however, not something I was going to tell the others about. They might not understand. In fact I was pretty sure they wouldn’t understand. But Howard had always told me, “Son, if you’re going to build a fence to hold cattle, make sure you get all four sides up before you drive the cattle in.”

  Well, we’d come down to do a job and it was my job to protect the interests of the Williams family. I figured I’d try for the whole hog.

  After that I lay down and went to sleep.

  6

  In the morning, right after breakfast, I made my way over to the jail. The others of our party were bent on their chores, but I was on a more delicate errand. I had no trouble getting back to Norris. Lord, I’d spread enough grease around that jail I could have slid back to his cell on my boot heels. But just to keep everyone sweet on me I laid a few more twenty-peso notes around. It was “Gracias” this and “Gracias” that and Lord knows what else. Going into the jail I took note that even though it was as late as eight in the morning nearly everyone looked asleep. It made me wonder if we were setting the hour for the jailbreak at the right time. But it was too late to reconsider. Plans were afoot.

  As I made my way down the hall of cells the caballero, Elizandro, noticed me first and came to the front of his cell. I just tipped him a wink and kept on walking. Behind me were the two jailers, both yawning, both having just come on duty. They’d given me no more than the perfunctory shakedown I’d had on my last couple of visits.

  When I got down to Norris’s cell he was laying on his back staring up at the ceiling. After a moment he rised up and gave me a look and sort of grunted. He was continuing to look better. On his little table I could see a basin of fresh water, the steam still rising from it, and he was shaven and dressed except for his tie. His clothes appeared clean but wrinkled. I just stood there looking at him, waiting for him to quit feeling sorry for himself and get up and face me.

  Finally he stood up. I said, “Norris, if it wouldn’t trouble you too much, how about you coming over here and us talking?”

  He walked slowly toward the bars. He said, almost defiantly, “Well, have you made any progress in your way?”

  I said, “That ain’t the point of why I’m here.”

  He put his chin up. “Then what is?”

  I said, “Have you got the metes and boundaries of that property?”

  “What property?”

  Hell, if he’d of been close enough I’d of reached through the bars and punched him. But I said, as calmly as I could, “Why, that property across the river in Laredo. What else? Do you have those metes and bounds?”

  He said, looking like I didn’t know wh
at I was talking about, “You mean the survey?”

  “Yes, dammit!” I was getting a little impatient.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “I have them here. I have the title.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, in my valise.” His chin went up again. “Rightful property that was returned to me, no doubt, because of your bribe money.”

  I was getting tired of it. I said, “Goddammit, Norris, if you have the title just give it to me.”

  He give me a long look and then finally turned back to that sagging bunk of his. Reaching under he pulled out the scarred remains of what had once been a fine piece of pigskin luggage. He opened it, sitting on his bunk, and rummaged around for a moment. Finally he come out with a piece of paper and handed it to me through the bars. Without unfolding it I could see it was a title of some kind. I said, “This the whole thing? This do it?”

  He got that look on his face again. He said, “Yes, if you know what to do about it.”

  I just gave him a long gaze and started to turn away. He said, “What about me? What are you doing about me?”

  I said, “Well, Norris, what do you want me to do?”

  He said, “Get me some qualified representation. Some legal counsel. Somebody who can make these courts work!”

  He was gripping the bars with both hands so hard the white was showing in his knuckles. I said, “We have sent to Washington, D.C., for the best legal counsel we can gent.”

  And then, for maybe one of the first times, I heard my brother swear. He said, “Goddammit, you better get me out of here!”

  I looked at him. I said, “I am. Be ready.”

  His face got molten. He said, “Not that way! Not that way! No bribes!”

  I turned and walked away.

  As I passed down the line of cells, the jailers still in tow, keys jangling, Señor Elizandro was still at the front of his cage. I stopped and took out a cigarillo and offered it to him. I struck a match and lit it for him. As he got it drawing I made little shooing motions to the jailers. They withdrew toward the main door. I said to Elizandro, “I bring you greetings from Benito.”