McAllister 2

by Matt Chisholm

  “You’d love this one, Jack. She has everythin’ a lady should ought to have plus a few bonuses no lady has a right to. It would not do you any good a-tall to see this one, Jack. You’d get jail-fever right off. I can scarce bear lookin’ at her under these circumstances.”

  “You’ve been here a day less’n me, Rem. I am an object of pity.”

  “That you are.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “Sure ”

  “Who is she?”

  “She is Fortuna, the wife of Judge Martin Tynsdale.”

  “Her!”

  Fortuna was saying in that clear, definite voice of hers: “But, Mark, I must hold you to your word. You promised me solemnly that I could see this famously wicked man before you shot him or hanged him or whatever you do to famously bad men.”

  The sheriff’s voice rumbled in reply.

  The judge’s wife said: “You really are the sweetest man, sheriff. I just can’t wait.” She turned towards the cells and, though a deputy made a move to bar her way, she was through the doorway before him. Mark Southern appeared, looking a little anxious.

  “Really, Fortuna, I do not think—”

  “It’s frightfully smelly, Mark,” she was saying. “I don’t know how you could keep an animal in this kind of a place.”

  “Fortuna—”

  “You say he has the cell to the left. Jack Clegg, famous outlaw and …” she reached the doorway of a cell and stood on tiptoe to see through the peep-hole.

  The sheriff said: “No, not that one. The one to the left, I said.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him: “What? Oh, what a fool I am. Then what woman knows her left from her right. I thought that one was too handsome for the infamous Jack Clegg.”

  She switched her attention from the right to the left peep-hole, but she had no sooner raised herself up to peer through the hole than she drew away with a gasp. She turned a horror-stricken face to Southern—“Mark, that beastly man. You can have no idea—”

  “I can have plenty of ideas, ma’am. I told you … now you just be satisfied and come away.”

  Sounds of ribald laughter came from Jack Clegg’s cell. McAllister stood in his own, wondering what Jack had been inspired to do for the woman swaying her delicious way back to the office. She was saying just how sweet that was of the sheriff to allow her a glimpse of the seamy side of life. It sure did a lady good to know how the other half lived.

  McAllister watched her go out on to the street. The sheriff went out for a moment to speak with her and then he came inside again. He walked into the little cell block and started pounding on Jack Clegg’s door.

  “Clegg, you bastard,” he said through his teeth, “I’ll even with you. I’m busy right this minute, but before the day’s through I’m goin’ to have you out of here and I’m going to knock seven different kinds of shit out of you.”

  He stopped pounding to ram his eye against the spy-hole and look into the cell. Almost at once he gave a scream of fury and pain. McAllister guessed that Clegg had simply poked a finger in his eye.

  The sheriff went back into the office, holding his eye and shouting that he would even the score. Jack Clegg wouldn’t be walking or breathing too well by the time he was through with him.

  Clegg laughed. McAllister laughed and said: “You damn fool, Jack. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Aw, what the hell,” said Clegg, “a feller like me always gets to be fried, any road, so I may as well get my fun when I can. There’s somethin’ about that Southern’s smooth face that natcherly makes me want to throw up.”

  McAllister said in a lower voice: “Jack, you listenin’?”

  “Sure.”

  “Get all the sleep you can before nightfall. You’re goin’ to need it.”

  There was an impressed silence from the other side of the wooden wall. Then Clegg said: “You got somethin’ all worked out, Rem?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Clegg’s voice gained a hopeful note. He said: “God bless you an’ keep you, sir.” But there was not much sleep to be had that morning. The lawyer whom McAllister had been promised but whom he had never seen at last appeared. He would not enter the noisome cell to interview his client. If he did he would have to take a bath and he was not overly fond of water, he said. When McAllister was let out of the cell and took a good look at him, he could believe it.

  He had never seen Harkless the lawyer before. He didn’t have much enthusiasm about seeing him again. One look at the shapeless face and washed out eyes, the lack-luster gaze and air of general hopelessness was enough.

  The two deputies stood around with shotguns in their hands when they got McAllister from the cell. The sheriff blocked the office doorway with a loaded revolver in his hand. They were not taking any chances. The lawyer and McAllister were given wooden chairs to sit on. They sat. The lawyer looked as if he was ready to fall off his. He was sorry he had not looked in before, he said, but he had been somewhat indisposed. McAllister thought that was most likely a little more than somewhat. Harkless looked like a man who had just nearly surfaced from a long drunk, but had not quite made it. He wanted fresh air and another drink.

  “I am here to represent you, Mr. McAllister,” he said, then he held his head and reached out to see if the wall really was moving.

  “That’s mighty civil of you, sir.”

  “Yeah, we-ell, I ... I understand you are accused of rape on one Winifred Holtz of this town.”

  “Sure,” said McAllister. “But I don’t reckon I need a lawyer.”

  For a moment Harkless looked unutterably relieved; but he recovered himself and said with shaky sternness: “I have been appointed by the court to represent you. The court would be most displeased if you—”

  “I plead guilty.”

  Four voices, in which that of the lawyer was included, said: “What?”

  “I plead guilty. The girl was too damn lovely to resist. The sight of her luscious beauty was too much for the animal in me. I am guilty. To think that I deflowered that fragrant morsel of clean American womanhood. I am stricken with remorse.”

  This was more than Southern could stand. Gun still in hand, he thrust his way past his deputies and the lawyer and shouted in McAllister’s face: “What the hell’re you playing at, McAllister?”

  McAllister spread his hands and looked amazed. “I’m pleading guilty, is all. Ain’t that what you want, sheriff? Ain’t that the whole idea? To fix me, but good?”

  The lawyer put out a shaking hand. “Gentlemen, I beg of you. Lower your voices. This is more than I can—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, get your drunken ass out of here, Harkless,” the sheriff yelled, pushing his face at the lawyer. “You heard the man. He says he’s guilty.”

  Harkless shrank away from him and said in a piteous voice: “Sheriff, I implore you …”

  A deputy nudged him with the butt of his shotgun and said: “Out.”

  The wretched man turned for the office, halted and regained a little of his dignity.

  He said: “In my opinion, the sheriff’s office has gotten above itself. Rest assured that I shall not fail to mention this incident to Judge Tynsdale.” He turned away again, cannoned lightly off the jamb of the door and went on his way through the office.

  The sheriff said: “I just naturally can’t abide a man who drowns his talent in drink. I heard that slob was a bright young lawyer with a future once.” He turned to McAllister with a bright smile. “But you don’t have any future worth telling of. Get back in your cage.”

  “Yessir,” said McAllister and stepped back into his cell.

  Southern enquired: “Why the sudden change of plea, Rem? You up to one of your tricks?”

  “No trick,” McAllister told him. “Just I can see clear as clear you intend to put me away, Mark. I’ve been here before. If you don’t put me away for rape, you’ll find something else.”

  Southern laughed good-naturedly. “That’s being a real
ist. I like it. You ain’t such a bad son-of-a-bitch when it conies down to it, Rem.”

  “That does me a lot of good,” said McAllister.

  Lancaster slammed the heavy door and turned the key in the lock. The three of them turned and walked out into the office. As they went, Harold Tully said: “What d’you know, he pleaded guilty. Of all the crazy things? Don’t that strike you as bein’ crazy as hell, sheriff?”

  The sheriff slammed the door between the office and the cells. He looked like a man being stalked by trouble, but who did not know where it was or what form it took. He found a stogie in his top pocket, stuck it in his mouth and fired it. He filled his lungs with smoke and breathed out hard so that he looked like a rather sophisticated dragon.

  “That bastard McAllister is up to something,” he said. “I’d give a month’s pay to know what. Why should he suddenly change his plea to guilty? Can you tell me that?”

  Neither of his deputies could tell him that. Neither had he thought for a moment that they would.

  Lancaster said, trying to look more intelligent than nature had intended him: “Nobody ain’t been near him. He has been, as we say in the business, incommunicado.”

  “Is that what we say, Billy?” said Tully.

  “Sure,” said his partner, looking a little self-conscious.

  The sheriff slew them with a look shared between them. “Will you two stop crapping around? Christ, we got an emergency on our hands. I don’t want either of you to take your eyes off him while we have him here. You got that in your fool heads?”

  They nodded. The sheriff hitched his gun-belt and walked to the door. He said: “I have to report to the judge. Hold the fort till I get back. Neither of you leave this building till I say. No matter what.” He walked out on to the street and mounted his white horse. He hated to walk and liked to ride. He was not a good rider, but he felt good pacing the streets of his town on that white charger. It made him feel like a modern-day knight. He knew the local ladies admired him as he passed. He had no idea that the local men regarded that great white horse as a puddin’-footed joke.

  The two deputies pulled the sheriff’s desk across the office until it stood before the door to the cell block. They also pulled up a couple of chairs so that they could pass the weary hours at cards. A fellow could go loco just sitting around watching two cell doors.

  The sheriff returned two hours later. They could smell that he had been drinking. His temper was a little shorter than usual and they guessed that he had probably had a hard time with the judge. Losing McAllister was still on his mind. It inspired him to drop the following pearl of wisdom to his men: “Nobody in his right mind breaks out of jail in broad daylight. His plea of guilty is just to make us careless and put us off our guard. So he plans to make a break after dark. And we’ll be ready for him. Don’t take any chances, men. Shoot to kill.”

  The brutal directness of his instruction, was something that the two men could understand. It was also an order which they were capable of carrying out efficiently. They were both good shots.

  Six

  One side of the cell wall, McAllister had his mouth to the crack. On the other side was Jack Clegg’s ear.

  “Nobody in his right mind,” McAllister was saying, “makes a break from jail in broad daylight. It stands to reason. On the other hand, like my old man always said, when you’re in a corner the only thing that can save your bacon is the totally unexpected. So we go out of here in daylight.”

  He then placed his ear at the crack for Clegg’s rejoinder.

  Clegg said: “Your old man was a nervy old bastard if he went by his own teachin’, but I’m game. I’ll get my plough cleaned pretty good if I stay around here much longer. But how do we get out?”

  McAllister said: “I have a key which is said to fit both cells.”

  Muffled sounds of jubilation came from the next cell. “Hell’s bells, how the blazes did you manage that, man?”

  “It’s no never mind, but don’t go off half-cock, old-timer. There ain’t a keyhole this side of the door.”

  Muffled sounds of dismay came from the next cell.

  “So,” said McAllister, when Clegg’s disappointment had died down, “You have to do some actin’, Jack. An’ you’d best be more convincin’ than you ever were before in all your life or we’re both dead men.”

  “A man has to do what a man has to do,” said Jack. “So tell me what I have to do.”

  McAllister said: “Now you listen good. You have to get it right first time.”

  Clegg said: “Go ahead.”

  McAllister talked for five minutes. Then he said: “You got all that?”

  “Sure,” said Clegg. “How do you get the key to me?”

  “Simple as kiss your ass,” said McAllister and told him.

  Clegg thought about it for a while, then he said: “You call that simple? I could get a couple of forty-four slugs in my guts before I touch that key.”

  “You’re being modest, Jack,” said McAllister.

  Five minutes later, Billy Lancaster left the office to fetch the midday meal for peace officers and prisoners from the cafe on the other side of Main and along a block. The two prisoners agreed that it was now or never.

  Clegg summed up their feelings by saying fervently: “I ain’t said a prayer in twenty years, but, by God, I’m prayin’ my head off now.”

  For the next five minutes, McAllister stood in his tiny cell and heard Clegg pacing his equally limited floor on the other side of the wall, working himself up to give the performance of his life. This time gave McAllister the opportunity to think about the action they had agreed upon. The more he thought about it, the less likely its chances of success seemed. How many times before in the history of incarcerated men had prisoners attempted to escape by pretending to suffer a fit? The more he thought about it, the crazier the attempt seemed. He was about to call the whole thing off when the most horrible sound started to come from Clegg’s cell. In spite of his being prepared for such an outburst, McAllister was startled almost out of his wits.

  Clegg was throwing himself wholeheartedly into the part he was playing. With blood-curdling screams, he hurled himself first against the walls and then against the door. He fell to the floor, kicked and yelled, bellowed, roared and shrieked. To all this, McAllister at once added his own shouts for help. Clegg was having a fit. Come quick. He pounded on his door with his fists, his eye tight against his spy-hole.

  He saw Harold Tully leap up from the desk as if he had been stung. He charged to the open doorway and then stood irresolute, only to be pushed aside by the sheriff who appeared club in hand and shouting: “I’ll quieten the bastard down.”

  The great key ring and keys held in his left hand rattled as he ran down the short distance to the cell doors. McAllister continued to yell that Clegg was having a fit. The sheriff caught McAllister’s door a wack with the club and he shouted for the prisoner to shut his noise or he would shut it for him. He sounded confused, as well he might with that deafening row going on.

  McAllister heard him thrust the key into the lock of Clegg’s cell. As the door swung open, Clegg gave a piercing scream and fell on the floor, kicking furiously. Southern must have taken a kick. He started hitting Clegg with the club. Clegg gave a couple more screams, dropped his voice to a low and pitiful moan and continued with a quieter version of the fit. Southern gripped him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him out of the cell. All the time, Southern was yelling at him to shut up. It seemed that he could not think of anything else to say. Neither could his deputy who joined him, shouting the same request for Clegg to shut up and, not having a club, reinforced his words with a number of hearty kicks. Clegg rolled back against the door, still moaning impressively. McAllister thrust the key under the door. It was at once taken from his grasp.

  Clegg faded his noise to silence.

  Now his performance faltered a little, or so McAllister thought. He allowed himself to come to a semblance of consciousness.

 
“What happened?” he enquired in a daze of innocence.

  The two lawmen stood looking down at him. Southern told him: “You had a fit. I cured you by cracking you over the head with this club.”

  Clegg allowed himself a small whine.

  Tully kicked him and said: “On your feet.”

  Another little whine and Clegg rose to his feet, pushing his back against McAllister’s door to help himself to his feet. He hid the sound of the key going into the lock by a monstrous coughing and spitting. McAllister heard the key turn in the lock.

  Now, Clegg risked his all, as they say.

  He said: “Southern, you hurt me with that club. The judge is going to hear about this, you cowardly son-of-a-bitch.”

  “And I’ll hit you again if I want,” declared Southern, translating his words into fact and hitting him with the club again. The blow knocked Clegg sideways away from the cell door. The eyes of the two men were on him. He staggered to the far wall and leaned back against it for support. Now he laid his tongue to both lawmen, calling them yellow bastards and other things which cannot be put down on the printed page. The reactions of the lawmen were instantaneous. The implications against their legitimacy had to be wiped out at once. Southern started in with the club and Tully with his feet.

  McAllister opened his cell door and blinked in the daylight. He caught the nearest man by the hair, wrenched him backwards, hit him in the throat and rammed his head against the wall behind him. This was Southern who for the moment was clean out of the fight.

  Clegg now paid his debt to Tully who was caught quite off-balance when the prisoner caught his kicking foot in both hands. He turned the unfortunate deputy ass-over-tit and stamped on his belly as soon as he hit the floor. The fight went out of him with the sound of dying bellows.

  Clegg said: “I’ve a good mind to kill them both.”

  “Be more useful than that,” said McAllister, “tie them both up and put ’em in the cells.” He took both the men’s guns and tossed one to Clegg who caught it deftly and tucked it away under his belt. McAllister ran into the office and dropped the bar on the door to the street. Hanging on a wall peg he found a rawhide riata. He threw this down the hall to Clegg and searched around for a knife. He found a clasp knife in a desk drawer and rejoined Clegg. He cut the rope and they both worked at hogtying the two men who were now starting to come round. The sheriff made an attempt to shout for help but Clegg cut the noise off with a violent blow. They gagged the two men with their own bandannas, dragged them into the cells and locked the doors.