Hard Luck Money

by J. A. Johnstone

  They went into one of the ugly buildings and along a corridor to a room empty except for a bench along one wall.

  “You’ll take your clothes off here,” the guard said.

  As much as the chain connecting his wrists to his ankles would allow him, The Kid lifted his hands to display the iron fetters. “That’s gonna be kind of hard.”

  The guard gave him an unpleasant smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll get ’em off you.”

  The guards closed in and cut The Kid’s clothes off. Of course, the garments weren’t actually his. They were rough work clothes the Rangers had provided for the masquerade.

  The Kid protested anyway, thinking that was something Waco Keene would do, but it didn’t do any good. He was left standing naked except for the chains, and despite the warmth of the day outside, something dank about the stone-walled room made him shiver.

  One of the guards knocked on a door on the other side of the room, and a moment later it opened to admit a slender man in a white coat.

  As soon as The Kid saw the man’s hollow eyes and pale skin, he knew something was wrong with him. He had seen opium addicts before, and had a hunch he was looking at one now.

  The man stopped in front of The Kid. “I’m Dr. Simon Kendrick. I’m going to examine you now, Mr. Keene.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” The Kid said. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me.”

  Kendrick smiled. “I’m afraid it’s standard procedure. This won’t take long.”

  The doctor was right about that. The examination was cursory at best. But it was still humiliating, and The Kid was glad when it was over.

  He recalled that Quint Lupo had been taken to the infirmary after a fight in the yard. Someone in the pay of the gang could have started that fight in order to get Lupo removed from the other convicts. Did that mean Kendrick was part of the gang, or at least being paid off by them?

  A man addicted to opium would certainly be vulnerable to something like that, The Kid thought. He would have to keep an eye on the doctor.

  The only other name he knew was Bert Hagen, who had testified that Lupo murdered a guard during the prison break. For all The Kid knew, Hagen could have been one of the blue-uniformed men who had brought him into the building.

  After the doctor was gone, one of the guards said to Culhane, “All right, take the chains off him.”

  Culhane handed his shotgun to one of the other Rangers. He wasn’t wearing a handgun. He went over to The Kid, took a key from his vest pocket, and unlocked the leg irons and manacles.

  When that was done, Culhane backed off, letting the restraints dangle from his hand. The other Rangers and the three guards had kept The Kid covered the whole time Culhane was turning him loose.

  “You fellas must think I’m loco,” The Kid muttered. “An hombre would have to be crazy to try anything with that many guns pointin’ at him.”

  “You just keep reminding yourself of that, Keene,” said the guard who had done the talking so far. “You do that and you’ll be all right.”

  A small, ferret-faced convict in a gray uniform brought in a bundle of clothes, including a pair of boots and some socks. The man was one of the trusties. He set the clothes on the bench and left.

  “That’s what I’m supposed to wear?” The Kid asked as he gestured toward the bench.

  “That’s right,” the guard said. “They suit you?”

  “I reckon they’ll do.” The Kid got dressed. The gray uniform was rough and ill-fitting—a far cry from the luxurious clothing Conrad Browning had purchased from the finest tailors in Boston and New York. If some of the men who had sat in boardrooms with him could see him now ... of course, some of those men were probably as crooked as many of the prisoners already locked up, he reminded himself.

  “All right, the warden ought to be ready for you now,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”

  They weaved through corridors until The Kid figured he would have a hard time retracing their steps if he’d needed to. They went outside, crossed a short area covered with gravel, and entered another building. It was a little nicer, and The Kid wasn’t surprised to see that it housed the prison offices.

  The guard stopped and knocked on a polished wooden door. Gilt letters reading PRESTON JENNINGS were painted on it, with the title WARDEN underneath the name.

  “Come in,” a man said from inside.

  The guard opened the door and went in first, turning so he could cover The Kid. Culhane and the other two prison guards followed, leaving the other Rangers in the hall.

  The warden’s office was simply but comfortably furnished with a rug on the floor, several leather chairs, and a large desk. The window behind the desk didn’t command much of a view. A high stone wall rose only a few feet from it.

  The man standing behind the desk wore a brown tweed suit. He had thinning gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Spectacles had slid down his nose and were perched on the end.

  “This is the new man?” he asked, and The Kid was a little surprised to hear his voice contained a hint of an English accent.

  “That’s right, sir,” the guard said. “Waco Keene.”

  “Waco, eh?” Warden Jennings smiled at The Kid. “Is that what your mother named you, Mr. Keene?”

  “It’ll do as good as any,” The Kid replied in a surly voice.

  “Suit yourself. My name is Preston Jennings. I’m the warden here. I want you to know we allow no troublemaking, but if you comply with our rules, you’ll be treated fairly.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything, but he thought, You don’t allow any troublemaking ... just breakouts.

  He hoped Captain Hughes was right about Jennings being trustworthy. If he wasn’t, The Kid’s life wasn’t going to be worth a plugged nickel.

  “Do you understand what I just told you, Mr. Keene?” Jennings asked with a trace of impatience.

  “Yeah, sure,” The Kid said, keeping his voice and expression surly.

  “Very well.” Jennings looked over at Culhane. “I understand you wanted to turn this prisoner over to me personally, Sergeant Culhane.”

  “That’s right,” the Ranger said. “My cap’n told me not to take my eyes off him until I was sure he wouldn’t be able to get away. Keene’s a tricky one. If he hadn’t had some bad luck, I ain’t sure we ever would’ve caught him.”

  Don’t lay it on too thick, Asa, The Kid thought.

  “Well, you can see for yourself he’s not going anywhere, Sergeant,” Jennings said. “You can tell your captain we’ll take good care of him.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.” Culhane turned to The Kid. “So long, Waco. Don’t reckon I’ll be seein’ you again. But if I do, you can bet I’ll be shootin’ to kill.”

  “Maybe,” The Kid said. “Unless I see you first, Ranger.”

  “That’s quite enough of that,” Jennings snapped. “Lawrence, take the prisoner to his cell.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said.

  The Kid and Culhane traded hard looks for a second, then the guards closed in around The Kid and marched him out of the warden’s office. He was taken out through a side door and escorted to a heavy wooden gate in the wall. Again, there was a fence beyond the wall, and the gate in it wasn’t opened until the other one was closed.

  A couple guards were waiting inside the fence. They were armed with clubs instead of guns. Lawrence handed his shotgun to one of the men who’d come with him before he went through the gate in the fence with The Kid. That gate was closed and locked behind them. No guns were allowed beyond that point, The Kid guessed.

  But guard towers with sharpshooters posted in them loomed above the walls. The Kid could feel the eyes of those marksmen on him as he walked across the yard with the guards. He might as well have had a bull’s-eye painted on his back.

  He ought to get used to the feeling, he told himself. It was probably going to be there for a while.

  Chapter 13

  The guards escorted The Kid into one of the big buildings. There was an o
pen area in the middle with three levels of cells on either side. He was surprised to see most of the cells were empty until he realized that because it was the middle of the day, most of the prisoners were out working, either in the fields or in one of the shops located at the prison. Probably the few men who were in their cells were either sick or had been excused from work for some other reason.

  A few of them called out jeers at the guards, who ignored them for the most part. One convict hung on the bars of his cell and spewed filthy comments.

  In the lead, Lawrence didn’t look over, but slammed his club against the bars only a couple inches below where the prisoner gripped them, causing the man to jump back in alarm. If the club had hit his fingers, it probably would have broken them.

  Other than that quick strike, Lawrence gave no sign he had even heard the invective.

  About two-thirds of the way along the block, on the first level, Lawrence came to a stop in front of an open cell. He motioned with the club for The Kid to go in. “You’ll be issued an extra uniform later. One of the trusties will bring it by later, along with a blanket for your bunk. Since it’s past the middle of the day, you’re excused from work, but only for today.”

  “What job are you going to have me doing?” The Kid asked.

  “New men work the laundry. That’s where they can do the least damage if they decide to act up. Once you’ve shown you’re not going to make any trouble, maybe you can move on to something else.”

  The Kid nodded. He didn’t really care what task he was assigned. Hughes had told him it was all right for him to act surly and not eager to cooperate, but to not cause any real trouble. That might delay the gang making their move.

  “Who’s my cellmate?”

  Lawrence smiled. “I’ll let the two of you introduce yourselves when he gets back.”

  The Kid had a feeling the guard’s comment might not bode well. If he didn’t get along with his cellmate, the time he spent in there would get even more challenging.

  He sat down on the bare mattress. There was nothing else to do.

  Lawrence slammed the cell door. The crash of metal against metal had a terrible finality to it, and for a second The Kid was tempted to call the whole thing off. Then he steeled his resolve. He had agreed to help, and he wanted to keep his word.

  But if the gang he was after was going to strike again, with him as the target, he hoped they didn’t take too long to get around to it.

  The same ferret-like trusty showed up a while later with The Kid’s extra uniform and blanket.

  As he handed the items through the small opening in the cell door designed for such things, he introduced himself. “I’m Ike Calvert, Keene. You need anything around here, you let me know. If I can’t put my hands on it, chances are I’ll know somebody who can.”

  “It’s like that, is it?” The Kid said.

  Calvert snickered. “Well, yeah. Within reason, I mean. Don’t go askin’ me for no Gatlin’ gun or anything like that!” He laughed again.

  The Kid smiled. “All right, no Gatling gun.” He asked the expected question, the one convicts always asked of each other. “What are you in for, Calvert?”

  The trusty’s grin disappeared. He looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet uneasily. “I don’t like to talk about that. I done some bad things, really bad things. Just as soon forget about ’em.”

  Calvert looked relatively harmless, but The Kid knew how looks could be deceptive, especially in a place such as this. “That’s fine with me.”

  “I know why you’re here, though.” Calvert glanced up again. “I heard you robbed trains all the way from one end of Texas to the other!”

  The Kid shrugged. It was possible Calvert had some connection to the gang, but even if he didn’t, The Kid wanted to play up the reputation the Rangers had manufactured for him.

  One way to do that was to not boast about it. Patently false modesty would reinforce the image he wanted to create. “I held up a few trains in my time, yeah.”

  “More than a few, I heard. And you blowed up more than one express car, too.”

  “Well, you have to get the door off the safe somehow, don’t you?” The Kid asked with a grin.

  Calvert snickered again. “You’re gonna do just fine in here, Keene. Better keep your eyes open, though. Not everybody in here is like me. Some of ’em you can’t trust.”

  “I’ll remember that.” The Kid tossed the extra clothes and the blanket on the bunk. “Thanks for bringing those things.”

  “Just doin’ my job.” Calvert lifted a hand in farewell and scuttled away, reminding The Kid more of a rat than a ferret.

  The Kid returned to the bunk to sit and wait some more. He thought about the likelihood Calvert was working with the gang on the outside and had to admit it was possible. Even if Calvert had no connection with the outlaws, he struck The Kid as the sort who would gossip and help spread the word about the notorious new convict, Waco Keene. The more of that that went on, the better.

  Time dragged by, but eventually the afternoon waned and the guards began bringing the prisoners back in from their day’s labors. The Kid stayed where he was on the bunk when a guard paused outside the door of his cell and unlocked it. The guard stepped aside to let a middle-aged convict walk past him into the cell.

  The door clanged shut as the prisoner stopped just inside the cell and looked at The Kid.

  He was at least fifty, probably older. His gray hair had quite a bit of white in it, as did his mustache. His face was weathered to a permanent tan, which told The Kid that he worked outside quite a bit. The man didn’t have the pallor people usually associated with convicts. He reminded The Kid of old cowboys he had seen, men who had punched cows their entire life until they were too stove up to do it anymore.

  After a few seconds, the man said, “Nobody told me I was getting a new cellmate today, but I’m glad to meet you anyway, son.” He held out his hand. “I’m John Schofield.”

  The Kid stood up and gripped Schofield’s hand. “Waco Keene,” he introduced himself.

  Schofield’s rather bushy gray eyebrows rose. “The train robber I’ve been hearing all the talk about?”

  The Kid put a cocky grin on his face. “Word got around the place that I was coming, eh?”

  “You could say that,” Schofield replied with a nod.

  His voice held a note of education and culture The Kid hadn’t expected. He revised his opinion of Schofield. Instead of a cowpuncher, he wondered if the convict had been a businessman or a professor of some sort.

  The Kid also wondered if Jennings had assigned him to that cell so he wouldn’t be in with someone who might prove to be a threat. The whole plan hatched by the Rangers would fall apart if The Kid was killed or even badly injured by a brutal cellmate.

  “I’ve heard that you’re quite a train robber,” Schofield went on.

  The Kid took the same tack he had earlier. He shrugged. “The railroads and the express companies have plenty of good reasons not to like me.”

  Schofield chuckled. “I can imagine. I also imagine you’re curious about me.”

  “I don’t believe in pryin’ into a man’s personal business,” The Kid said.

  “Oh, it’s perfectly all right, and understandable as well. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. Of course you’d like to know what sort of man I am. I used to be a Baptist minister.”

  The Kid was a little surprised by that information. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, but I had a crisis of faith. I suppose you could say the Lord and I had a falling-out.” Schofield cleared his throat. “It was prompted by a woman, of course, as such things all too often are. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak, so weak.”

  “I didn’t know they put preachers in jail for backsliding,” The Kid said.

  “They don’t. They do, however, put preachers in jail who burn down their own churches ... with the congregation still inside.”

  “Good Lord!” The Kid couldn’t stop t
he startled exclamation that came from him. He caught himself and went on. “Sorry, Reverend, I didn’t mean—” He stopped short when he realized he was apologizing for maybe offending a man who’d just admitted to carrying out mass murder.

  “It’s all right, Waco,” Schofield said. “Can I call you Waco? I understand how people feel about what I did. It’s shocking, especially when you consider I never committed any other act of violence before or since that day. But I was tormented, you see, absolutely tormented, and I thought I might be able to cleanse my soul with fire. I fully intended to die right along with the others. I locked all the doors, set the fire in a back room, and climbed to the pulpit to confess my sins before the end.”

  Schofield shook his head sadly as he paused.

  “When the congregation smelled the smoke and realized what I had done,” he resumed a moment later, “some sidewinder in the choir shot me. I didn’t know he was carrying a gun under that robe. The men were able to break out some windows and most of the congregation escaped. Only ten people died. I’m sorry to say they dragged me outside instead of leaving me there to die, as I would have preferred. But I suppose the Lord still has plans for me ... or at least I would assume He did, if I still believed in Him.”

  Schofield talked like a preacher, all right, the words just flowing out of him like a river. He wore a serene expression the whole time he was talking about the horrible thing he’d done, and The Kid could come to only one conclusion.

  His cellmate was loco. Pure loco.

  But that didn’t really matter as long as Schofield didn’t interfere with the plan. The Kid nodded. “Thank you for tellin’ me about that, John. Must have been rough on you, all right.”

  “I’ve made my peace with it,” Schofield said. “I may not have burned in the church that day, but I know I’ll burn in hell when my time comes.”

  “Wait a minute,” The Kid said with a slight frown. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in God.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then how can you believe in hell? You can’t have one without the other, can you?”