by E. R. Slade
Jeremy’s eyes popped open and he bounded up off the plank, went two paces across the cell, then turned and looked at the star-filled sky outside the little window.
For quite a while he stood there thinking of all the hundreds or thousands of nights he’d spent out under the stars free to come and go as he wanted. He’d never thought about it before, but he sure noticed now how much he missed that freedom, not having it.
Finally, he went back to the board and lay down, looking off at the window. But he still couldn’t sleep.
Morning came without him ever getting sleepy. He saw the first graying of the tiny patch of starry sky, the fading of the stars, the first real light of dawn, and then the sky turning blue. He could hear the wind, and imagined it swirling dust and swaying tree branches, ruffling creeks, whistling over the crags up on the mountainsides, blowing free all over the big land out there. And here he was cooped up in this place.
But one thing morning brought was an end to the terror he’d felt through most of the night. Being hanged didn’t seem as likely in daylight. It could happen, but after all, you did have to have some evidence, and you had to convince a jury with it, before you could hang a man, unless you were going to lynch him. Watson didn’t have any good reason to do any lynching, did he?
Watson brought breakfast: cold fried eggs and ham, and bad coffee.
Jeremy asked him, “What makes you so sure you got the right man?”
Watson didn’t say a word, just left the food and went out. Jeremy couldn’t figure Watson somehow—he didn’t seem to add up right.
Morning dragged along almost into next week before lunch finally arrived by a woman from the boardinghouse. She wouldn’t say a word to him, and came and went expressionless as a cow chip.
Jeremy settled in for the afternoon, alternating pacing the cell and sitting on the board with his chin in his hands. He began to hope that somebody would get into trouble in town tonight and be jailed, so that he wouldn’t have to spend the night alone in here. The thought of another night like the last one discouraged him as much as anything else about the fix he was in.
Some years later—about midafternoon—Watson and Sarah appeared. Sarah was carrying a large worn Bible in both arms, and she tried to smile at him. He tried to smile back, and after a moment it came easily, because there was something about her that made everything else fade off into the background.
“I brought you your Bible,” she said.
“So I see,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t be coming again until tonight.”
“I didn’t plan to, but ... well, I realized you wouldn’t have any light to read it by then, and so I thought I would bring it this afternoon.”
“That’s right thoughtful of you, Miss Hooper.”
As he opened the cell door, Watson smirked a little—to the extent that granite face of his would let him.
Sarah came in, and Jeremy took the Bible from her. In doing so he brushed her bare arm with his hand, and flinched.
He noticed that she flinched, too.
“Can you stay a minute?” he asked her.
“I guess I could for a little while,” she said, looking around at Watson.
“Not in there, you can’t,” Watson said. “No telling what a cold-blooded murderer will do. And I ain’t got time the stay around here watching him.”
“Oh,” she said, looking frightened. She went out of the cell and Watson clanged the door shut.
“You staying or not?” Watson asked her.
She clasped her hands in front of her long blue dress and turned around twice as though confused and undecided about what to do.
She looked at Jeremy, and he felt like a dangerous animal in a cage.
“I guess I will,” she said. “For a little while.”
“Don’t listen to anything he says,” Watson said. “A man with the noose swinging in front of his face will tell most any kind of tale to try to get out of what he’s got comin’ to him. Don’t get within reach of the bars.”
“Thank you,” she said to Watson, sounding badly frightened now. She looked at Jeremy with wide eyes.
Jeremy gritted his teeth. There was no call for that kind of talk.
Watson left. Sarah stood several feet from the bars looking at him, still very upset and frightened.
“You ain’t from these parts, are you?” Jeremy asked her.
“No,” she said softly, so softly he could only just hear her.
“Where are you from?”
“Boston,” she said. She made an effort and spoke louder: “We’ve only been here for a few months.”
“I reckon you ain’t used to brash ways,” he said.
“It’s very different out here.” Her fingers were trying to get apart again, but not managing it.
“I reckon you saw them fellows hung up to dry t’other day.”
She nodded, and shivered. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” she said.
“I reckon you’re terrified to think you’re standing here in the same room with another man who’s going to hang.”
“Mr. Waite, I had better go.” She started to turn toward the door. The color had all drained from her face.
“Hold on, Miss Hooper. Please.”
She looked around at him again, uncertain.
“I don’t plan to die, Miss Hooper. I’m innocent. I really am. I can’t figure out what makes Watson think I’m the one plugged those two in the back ...”
She jolted when he said, “plugged those two,” and he saw he’d better watch his talk. The girl didn’t seem to have much grit. But then again, maybe she did, if she was all that scared and bothered, and still standing there listening to him when she hadn’t any call to.
“If you want to help me, Miss Hooper, you could try to find out what Watson thinks he has against me. If I knew that, I might be able to prove myself innocent. Otherwise I can’t. Meanwhile I’m stuck here until the judge comes and there’s a trial. That could be a while, maybe. And that’s something else you can tell me—is the judge still in town, or did he leave after the trial of those men that were hanged?”
“He left,” she said. “My brother mentioned it at supper last night. Mr. Waite, please read the Bible. I wish there were a minister, but there isn’t any in this town.”
“Will you try to find out what Watson thinks he has?”
“I ... don’t know if I should do that ...”
“Why not?”
“Well, if it was right for you to know, wouldn’t Sheriff Watson have told you?”
“Miss Hooper, you are really very innocent, you know that? Watson does what he wants to do. It’s his town. This way, it’s neater and easier. Makes the trial shorter and cleaner all around if I can’t really defend myself. Watson, he’s got it in his head I’m guilty, and so he figures that whatever makes it all get over quickest and easiest is the best way to do it. Gives him more time to go drinking at the saloon, shooting the, er, breeze with the boys. Maybe he gets paid so much for every arrest he makes, and if he’s spending a lot of time chasing around trying to prove that I’m guilty of these murders, he can’t be arresting drunks at two dollars apiece, or whatever it is he makes. Miss Hooper, I need help. You’re the only one I know in this town who is honest and that I can believe.”
“But what about Mr. Pryne?” she asked.
“He don’t have any reason to care about me. I’m just a guy walked in off the street and asked for a job.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Waite. I really don’t see what I could do. And I don’t think I should.”
She turned away, forlorn, way out of her depth.
Then she looked him straight in the eye, drawing herself up. “Mr. Waite,” she said. “All I can advise you to do is pray that God grant you life if you are innocent, and mercy if you are guilty.”
With that, she went out.
Jeremy sat down heavily next to the Bible and looked dejectedly at the remains of the gilt lettering on its cover.
Chapt
er Eleven
Sarah Hooper brought him steak and potatoes for supper. She was in much better control of herself this time. But it was worse for Jeremy, since she acted like he was a corpse and she was a distant relative come to lay flowers on the coffin. She was just that kind of quiet and serious.
“This is good,” he said.
“I’m glad that you enjoy it,” she said politely.
“It’s nice to have you come. You’re a breath of fresh air.” Even though this time for the first time she wasn’t quite that.
“Have you been reading the Bible?”
“As a matter of fact, I have, some.”
This seemed to please her genuinely. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Mr. Waite,” she said.
“I don’t suppose you found out anything?” he asked her, in spite of the fact that Watson was standing right there holding the lantern.
“Mr. Waite, you mustn’t expect me to interfere in the affairs of the law.”
“Oh, I see,” he said.
“Can I bring you anything else?”
“I already told you what I need.”
She left without further conversation. But Jeremy was furious now, and as soon as she had gone out into the street, he hollered, “Hey, Watson, come here a minute.”
Watson came in stony faced.
“Watson, I got two things to say to you. First thing is, you lay off that girl. She ain’t too much used to your kind of rough ways. You scared her this afternoon, and I ain’t standing by and see you do it no more. You hear me? T’other thing is, I figure you got nothing on me, can’t have. You got two bodies, but that’s it. It won’t wash, Watson, and you know it. The judge’ll let me go. He’ll have to. Meanwhile, the fellow that done it is still loose. And won’t you look foolish if somebody catches him for somethin’ else and he confesses to what he done here? When folks get the idea that you don’t know what you’re doing, and just arrest who you feel like at the moment, you’re going to get yourself tossed out on your butt. Think about that, Watson, before you go on with this thing and make an ass out of yourself.”
Watson’s lips tightened. Without a word he left the jail, and Jeremy heard him go out the street door, closing it after him without any particular extra force.
That was one sociable man, had all the warmth of a coffin lid.
Time went by. Jeremy sat looking at the swath of light stretching across the stone floor from the office door, beyond which a lamp burned, his attention occasionally distracted by what sounded like either rats or squirrels scratching around outside the rear wall.
He was tired but couldn’t bring himself to lie down, let alone sleep. Gloom about the future was setting in again. He was imagining how he would sit right here in this cell and hear men sawing and pounding nails, building the scaffold, and how later he would hear them testing it with a weighted sack to see if it would work right when the drop was let out from under him.
A few minutes of thoughts like these, and he was at the bars of the cell door, looking desperately into the office. But all there was to see was the dresser with the two drawers that were never closed and couldn’t be because of the pile of old junk in them.
The front door banged, and in came the sheriff, another man with him. They came straight on into the jail bringing the lantern, Watson holding it up so it lit the man’s face. Jeremy thought he remembered the man from somewhere, but wasn’t sure.
“Seen him before?” Watson said.
“Can’t say I recall it,” Jeremy said.
“Tell him your name,” Watson said to the man, a fat fellow, quite short, with a thick mustache and a puzzled expression.
“Bart Abbot,” the man said. “What’s this all about, Sheriff?”
“Official business. You recognize this man, Mr. Abbot?”
“Yes. He’s the fellow all right, like I told you before when you first rode in with him and those bodies. They smashed up the room pretty good. Cost me twenty-five dollars to have it all put right again. I’d sure like to get it back out o’ this guy.”
“After the trial I reckon you’ll have first claim on his saddle and horse, not that his horse is much,” Watson said. “Tell him the name of the hotel you own.”
“He knows it well enough. The Grand Palace.”
“Tell him what you saw after all the noise.”
“I saw them leaving.”
“Who?”
“Why, I already told you. This guy here—name’s Jeremy Waite, he said—and those two hunks of dead meat you hauled back to town. I don’t know their names—well, I do now, Tyler and Hart, but I didn’t then. They all left together, and I thought this guy Waite looked kind of beat up.”
“That’s all, Bart, you can go now.”
“Sure,” Abbot said, still looking puzzled. He left.
Watson said, “I guess you see how it is, Waite.”
Jeremy saw. He stood at the bars of the cell, wondering why his luck always seemed to run out when he needed it most.
Watson left, this time not only taking the lantern, but shutting the door, leaving him in the dark.
Jeremy felt around for the edge of the board and sat down heavily.
This was not good. Watson stood a real chance of getting him convicted on that. There had been the fight in the hotel, leaving a splintered mess, and him noticed leaving with Tyler and Hart. Then the two found dead and him claiming never to have seen them before. Maybe, if he’d told the whole truth of what had happened to him, instead of lying, he wouldn’t have been arrested at all. The worst it would have looked like was self-defense. After all, there were two of them, and he’d been the one beaten up—Abbot had said so himself.
But as it was, he could be in bad trouble.
There came the noise again from the back wall. After listening a while, Jeremy thought it sounded kind of odd for rats or squirrels. More like somebody digging or scraping. Must be some drunk, he thought.
Jeremy sat on the edge of the bed for hours, or maybe it wasn’t that long, but only seemed like it, and then there were stirrings in the sheriff’s office. The door opened, and in came the blinding light of the lantern.
After his eyes recovered, Jeremy could see Watson pulling up a chair outside the cell, the lantern sitting on the stone floor at his feet. The light illuminating the sheriff’s face from the underside threw odd shadows, and made Watson’s eyes dark hollows with just a glimmer at the bottom of them, like knife points.
“Well, Watson, what’s eating you?” Jeremy felt cold, spooked, and tired, and his fate weighed heavy on his mind, but he didn’t plan to let the sheriff know it.
Jeremy noticed that the scraping sounds had stopped, which was curious.
The sheriff just sat there for a while, and Jeremy began to wonder about Watson’s sanity.
“Trouble sleeping?” Watson asked. “Beginning to feel a little tight around the throat?”
“The only trouble I got is a stupid sheriff.”
“Waite, whenever you want to talk, I’m listening,” Watson said.
“About what?”
“Why, I reckon you know.”
“If you’re so sure you got me nailed why do you stay up late at night to try to scare a confession out of me?”
“You ought to know better than that. I got you nailed all right. I don’t need a confession.”
“So what the devil’re you doing here?”
“Okay, Waite, if you’re that thick, I’ll spell it out for you. I want you to tell me everything you know about Tyler and Hart, and about Leanda Dupree and that old varmint Ham Cork, and about Blue Yanuk.”
“I don’t know nothing about any of them,” Jeremy said promptly.
“I think you do. But it don’t matter, if you can tell me where to find that wagonload of gold.”
The heat rose in Jeremy’s neck. He was in here going through hell because a goddamned crooked sheriff wanted to get rich?
“I don’t know nothing about no wagonload of gold,” Jeremy said, looking Watson straight in th
e eye.
Watson sat silent as boot hill on a still, black night.
Then he stood and picked up the chair and the lantern.
“The judge’ll be back in town in about a week,” he said soberly. “You don’t start talking by then, I’ll hang you.” Watson hefted the lantern thoughtfully. “It don’t make much difference to me. I’ll find that gold somehow. And I sure do get a satisfaction out of pulling the lever on the trap. A hangin’ puts me in good with folks, too. People like a good show. Like to see twitching after, and bet on how long it goes on.”
Watson went out shutting the door after him.
As the dark closed around him, Jeremy had a vivid sensation of a rope taking up tight around his neck. He had a powerful urge to throw himself at the bars of the cell, hollering. Watson, it was plain, wanted to make a deal, and the smart thing to do was cooperate, tell him the whole story and then ride clear and away and never look back. Sitting there in the dark, feeling a rising of blood to his face and a tightness in his throat, it was hard to think of doing anything else.
But even so he kept quiet. Something had snapped in him at the moment he found out Watson’s real motives, something that locked out the possibility of ever making any sort of deal with the man. Nobody was going to play him that way and get away with it.
He was still sitting there full of complicated thoughts, when the scraping at the back wall started up again. Jeremy went over and listened carefully. Doggoned if it didn’t sound like somebody digging under the wall, into his cell!
Jeremy squatted down and listened even more closely. There was the puffing of breath, the definite scraping of metal against rock and earth.
“Jiggered,” Jeremy muttered, and scratched his head.
The rock he was squatting on shifted slightly. Jeremy got quickly off it and stood at one side. He thought of somebody digging in to lynch him, and looked around for a weapon, picked up the warped board off the two iron brackets that held it.
