McCain was the man in front of Lassiter. They had to cross the inside yard to reach the bathhouse. “Stay close,” the Irishman said. Lassiter didn’t feel he owed McCain anything for taking Burgess off his neck. Not that he wasn’t glad to duck a beating with that cane. Only now he was linked, in Burgess’s mind, with the god-blasted Irishman. He knew he was going to break out of that jail, one way or another. It sure as hell was going to be a lot harder with a mean guard like Burgess down on him. But now the damage was done, and he might as well listen to what McCain had to say.
Once they got into the bathhouse, the new guard climbed up on a tall stool, studied his fingernails, and yawned. The new guard was Lassiter’s kind of jail keeper—careless.
The bathhouse, with a row of huge metal boilers heating over wood fires, felt good after the chill of the yard. “All right there, no shoving,” the guard called out. The men kept shoving to get closer to the fires, and the guard repeated what he’d said. The prisoners kept shoving and the guard yawned.
For tubs the convicts used the half barrels used to wash clothes in. McCain motioned to Lassiter to help him lift one of the big boilers off the fire. There were rags wrapped around the handles so they wouldn’t burn their hands.
“The two tubs at the end,” McCain said. Two other prisoners were lugging a boiler down that way. The Irishman spoke to them. There was some resentment about being told to find other tubs. It vanished when McCain gave them the same smile he’d given Burgess earlier in the day.
“Good boys,” McCain said.
Tipping the boiler, they spilled half the hot water into one tub, the rest into the other. There were other boilers, full of cold water, beside each tub. A row of hooks ran down one wall and each prisoner was allowed a small bar of yellow soap. The soap smelled as if it had enough lye in it to take the skin off.
Lassiter saw the old scars and long-healed bullet wounds when the Irishman climbed into the tub. There were even more old scars than he had himself. Whatever he was, the Irishman had been in a lot of fights.
Steam rose up filling the bathhouse and the stink of cold sweat and hopelessness gave way to the violent smell of strong soap being rubbed on heated bodies. In the tub the hot water came up to Lassiter’s middle and he wished he could fill it up all the way, to soak out the tiredness and the now dulled pain.
McCain, in the next tub, ducked his head down and splashed water on it, soaping his stringy ginger-gray hair. The Irishman made vast sounds of enjoyment before he started to curse.
Lassiter was getting tired of McCain. “You wanted to talk?” he said.
“In a minute, man,” the Irishman said. “Can t you wait till I get the soap out of my bloody eyes?”
Lassiter had hung his rough gray towel over the side of the tub. The Irishman hadn’t. Lassiter threw his towel at McCain.
Wiping his eyes, McCain said, “I guess I can trust you, Yank. A man’s been shot and stabbed as many times as you have can’t be an informer. Informers don’t usually get themselves shot more than once. That’s in the back of the head.”
“Don’t threaten me, Mac,” Lassiter said.
“Well, I will if I like,” McCain informed him mildly. “But we don’t have to go into that this minute. Just listen a minute and let me talk. The thing is, I know more about you than you know about me— I’ve been in this bloody jail six months now, so I should. Colonel Cameron, God rot his yellow liver, thinks you’re here to join the rebellion. You look like you might be, but we’ll let that pass, too. Unless you want to tell me about it, that is.”
“The Colonel sent you, did he?”
McCain gave the old convict’s silent laugh, a noiseless shaking of the chest, nothing more.
“Only a bloody Yank would say that to Pierce McCain,” he said. “Say a thing like that in Ireland or Australia and most of Canada except maybe the French part—and they’d laugh at you.”
Lassiter didn’t bite.
McCain said impatiently, “Why, Yank, I’ve seen the inside of more jails than Queen Victoria’s got chins. Wherever there’s fighting to be done there you’ll find Pierce McCain. Twice I nearly got hanged and once shot by a firing squad. Seeing as how I couldn’t free Ireland I took my talents elsewhere. And here I am.”
“Here you are,” Lassiter agreed, not pleasantly.
“But not for long,” McCain said easily. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You want to get out of this rat hole, do you?”
Lassiter didn’t have to answer.
The Irishman said, “Sure you do.”
He paused, the bar of yellow soap in his hand. He started to work up a lather on his skinny arms. For such a supposedly dangerous man he sure as shooting had skinny arms. Lassiter had seen bigger arms on a woman. But all it took was any kind of finger to pull a trigger.
“We break out tonight,” McCain said.
Lassiter waited. The tension started to build.
“That’s right,” McCain said. “Don’t ask any questions because you won’t get any answers. If you want to go—you go. If you don’t—say so. It’s the best chance you’re likely to get. You’ll know when it happens. What do you say, Yank?”
Lassiter nodded, grinning at the Irishman in spite of himself. “Just one thing,” he put in.
“Say it.”
“Don’t call me Yank.”
Chapter Three
Supper was an hour later on bath day. It was the same salt fish, scales and everything. Lassiter ate every bit of it and enjoyed it. He still didn’t know what to think about McCain, and he hadn’t made up his mind by the time he fell asleep. One good thing about the prison break—if it happened and they pulled it off—he wouldn’t have to eat any more of that fish.
That was Lassiter s last waking thought.
The noise that woke him up was a gun barrel cracking the night guard on the back of the skull. He didn’t know what it was when it woke him up. He knew what it was later. At the time, it sounded like a thud—something hard hitting something softer. There were more thuds after the first one.
Lassiter eased his weight off the bed frame, moving cautiously to keep the rusty mesh from squeaking. There was no need to be so careful, with all the snoring in the cell block. He did it from habit.
Back from the barred door of his cell, in the darkness, he watched the old Scotch trusty come into the cell block, a canvas sack in his hand. The old man had a .45 Colt in the other hand, and, even in the dull light of the night lamp, there was a wild glitter in his eyes. Looped over his thin wrist was the ring of keys belonging to the guard.
Lassiter knew where the Irishman was locked up. He watched while the old man put the key in the lock and turned it. The Irishman stepped out and slapped the old Scotchman on the shoulder. The old man’s head was bald and shining in the light. McCain pointed at something and the old trusty turned his head. McCain had taken one of the .45s out of the sack. He didn’t do it quickly enough, and the old man was looking at him again. McCain clapped him again on the shoulder and pointed.
The barrel of the heavy .45 split the old man’s skull as he turned to look. The Irishman hit him again, harder this time, and there was the sound of splintering bones. McCain reached out and grabbed the old man before he fell. Two more blows of the .45 caved in his skull and, almost tenderly, McCain lowered the old trusty’s dead body to the floor.
Nice feller, Lassiter thought.
McCain unlocked the cell beside his. A huge man who looked half-breed, half-Indian, half-French, with the Indian half stronger than the French, came out blinking. McCain dug into the sack and handed the big man a gun.
The big half-breed said something and pointed to the dead man. The Irishman said something and the half-breed shrugged.
Another nice feller, Lassiter decided. It seemed like he had mixed up with a gang of real nice fellers.
The next door McCain unlocked brought out a medium-sized man who looked shorter than he was because of the long powerful arms that hung down from his spaced-apart
shoulders. This man had long, yellow hair and eyes so blue they were more like a kind of yellow. A foreigner, it looked like.
McCain gave the thick-set man a gun and moved on to the next cell, three cells down. Lassiter watched while other dim faces appeared at the barred windows. He watched while McCain spoke to them, telling them to keep quiet, that he’d get them out. One man said hoarsely that he didn’t want to get out. McCain pointed the .45 at his head and told him to keep it quiet. The man seemed to believe what the Irishman said.
After McCain got the third man out he gave the ring of keys to the big half-breed and pointed toward Lassiter’s cell. The third man was a tall, thin-faced prisoner with cowhand written all over him. He had the kind of prairie brown on his face that fades somewhat indoors but never altogether. This man’s eyes were placed too wide apart, not level with each other, and looked as mean as little eyes set together too close at the top of a long mean nose.
Keys rattled, and Lassiter came out. The half-breed didn’t want to give him a gun. The Irishman didn’t know that until he turned around. The half-breed complained in French, or something like it, that Lassiter oughtn’t get a gun. Lassiter understood two or three of the words. The Irishman wasn’t smiling now.
Lassiter was. He looked at the half-breed, then shrugged at McCain.
McCain spoke to the half-breed in French. When he pointed the .45 in his hand it was at the half-breed, not at Lassiter.
“Merci,” Lassiter told the half-breed when the big man handed him the last gun in the canvas sack. Saying “Merci” used up a good part of his French, Louisiana Cajun or otherwise, and the half-breed growled at him like a bear, because when you said, “Merci” like that to a Canuck half-breed it was like saying “Booker T.” to a bad nigger.
The other prisoners were getting impatient and one of them stuck his hands through the bars of his cell and told McCain he’d start yelling if they didn’t take him along.
“Let him out,” McCain told the half-breed.
The prisoner didn’t want to come out, the way McCain said it.
“I changed my mind,” he said, whoever he was.
Time was a-wasting, but the Irishman said, “Sure you have, Petey.”
The half-breed dragged Petey out and McCain broke his skull open with his .45. “Be sensible, lads,” the Irishman advised the rest of the prisoners. “Do your time and be glad you’re still alive to do it. Any questions now, are there, lads?”
There wasn’t a sound from the rest of the cell block. Killing the two men, opening the doors hadn’t taken more than five minutes. Lassiter moved toward the open door of the cell block, the half-breed, the foreigner with the yellow hair, and the cowboy in front of him. McCain stayed behind, not because he was afraid, Lassiter knew—because that was the way he worked.
“We go out through the warden s office,” McCain told Lassiter from behind.
Lassiter was being told, so he didn’t have to answer. He didn’t understand why they started up the circular stairs to the warden’s office so openly until they came to the second dead guard propped against the railing.
“Good man, Scotty,” McCain whispered to himself.
There was no guard on the third floor, on the narrow landing in front of the warden s door. There would be a guard inside the door, and that’s what they had to think about.
McCain had stripped the tunic and cap from the first dead turnkey’s body, and though both were smeared with blood the Irishman didn’t seem to mind. The snoring and night sounds from the cell blocks smothered the creaking of their boots on the circular stairs as they climbed up to the warden’s office. In the thick, yellow light from the hanging oil lamp McCain looked like any other guard, from the waist up.
Lassiter and the three other men crouched down near the top of the stairs while McCain stepped up onto the narrow landing and rapped on the outer door with the ring of keys. A face looked out through the bars and the Irishman mumbled something.
The guard’s mouth opened to yell, but before he could do it McCain’s .45 hit him between the eyes. McCain was quick as a snake, and the barrel of the heavy weapon broke the guard’s nose, then his jaw.
“Evening warden,” McCain remarked pleasantly, letting the injured guard fall to the floor. The pen the warden was writing with dropped from his hand, and he put both hands flat on the desk. The key was still in the lock, and the half-breed locked the door behind them.
Looking at McCain, the warden knew he was going to die. Lassiter knew it, too. He didn’t see that it was necessary, no more than it had been necessary to kill the old Scotchman and the other men, but this was McCain’s show, and he wasn’t about to interfere on the warden’s behalf. Especially on the warden’s behalf.
“You’re making a mistake,” the warden said automatically, saying the same thing all wardens said to escaping prisoners.
The Irishman’s pale eyes glittered with fierce pleasure, as if he couldn’t decide how he was going to kill the warden and regretted that he couldn’t kill him more than once. The warden tried to pull back as McCain swung the .45 and broke the bones in the little jail keeper’s right hand. There was a scream that choked off abruptly when McCain thumbed back the hammer and leveled the gun at the warden’s forehead.
“The keys,” McCain said.
The half-breed opened the safe and grunted when he saw Lassiter’s rifle and gun rig. He found a cash box filled with folded bills and coins. McCain turned the cash box over on the desk and stuffed the bills into his pocket.
“The rifle and gun belt are mine,” Lassiter said to the Irishman. The half-breed was fumbling at the gun belt with his big hands, trying to buckle it on.
It took some more hard words to make the half-breed give Lassiter his guns. The half-breed was an evil looking bastard, and Lassiter hoped there would be an opportunity to discuss things later. He’d make the opportunity if the half-breed pushed it too hard.
Buckling on his gun belt, Lassiter asked McCain what about clothes. The Irishman said there wasn’t time to worry about that. They would have a change of clothes waiting when they got out. McCain looked at the gray-faced little warden, then at the half-breed, and made a clicking sound with his tongue.
The warden was still in his high-backed leather chair. He tried to get out of it. The half-breed closed in fast and grabbed the little man by the neck. Legs kicking, his mouth gaping like a landed fish, the jail keeper was lifted out of the chair Lassiter didn’t bother to watch. Checking his handgun, spinning the chamber, he heard the wardens skinny neck snap. No more hash money for the warden. No more nothing.
Not more than four minutes had gone by since they had come into the office. The warden’s office was in one of the four stone towers that topped the corners of the prison. The other steel door in the far wall of the office opened onto an outside stairs. They unlocked the door, locked it behind them, and went down silently to the landscaped grounds behind the prison.
Powerful naphtha lights set high in the walls of the jail washed everything in a white glare. Even the flower beds and lawns looked white. The bottom of the stairs was in shadow. A row of small, neat houses lined up on the other side of the grounds The married guards and their families lived there, McCain whispered. Past the houses there was a railroad line that led down to a short bridge spanning a creek. Horses and fresh clothes would be waiting under the bridge. There was a Maxim gun in the other tower, the Irishman explained with a mad smile.
“What’s the plan?” asked Lassiter.
“No plan. We just run like hell. If we go fast enough we may get half way across before the men on the rapid-fire gun spot us. But spot us they will. And for Christ’s sake, don’t all bunch up. The guards in those houses keep their rifles at home. Kill anything that moves once we get across. Now, boys, get set.”
Like an outsized jackrabbit, his long legs pumping, McCain sprang from the shadows into the blaze of light and started to run, the others behind him. The cowboy caught up with McCain and passed him. Lassiter, sp
aced out, stayed level. Loaded down with too much muscle, the yellow-haired foreigner and the half-breed weren’t doing so well.
There was a yell from the tower and the Maxim gun began to chatter. The gunners stitched a line of bullets behind the running cowboy, plowing up clumps of dirt and grass. The cowboy kept going, but the line of bullets ran after him, knocked the legs from under him. The rapid-fire gunners didn’t have to keep shooting him. The Irishman started to zigzag like an Apache. The steam whistle blew in short blasts. Up in the tower the gunners swung the Maxim, and bullets flew all around Lassiter. A bullet tore the heel off his boot and he went down, rolling away from the line of bullets that chased him. The gun stopped and started again. Running, he heard the sound of bullets thudding into flesh and the stocky foreigner cried out in some language. Even with bullets in him he kept running and the gunners up in the tower held the Maxim steady and poured a weight of lead into his back. Finally, staggering forward for another fifteen feet, his legs folded and when his face hit the ground his arms were stiff by his sides.
The gunners weren’t good with the Maxim, but they did all right when they got the range. Another ten yards and Lassiter and McCain would be out of the lighted area. The gunners went after the half-breed still lumbering across the barbered prison lawn. The Maxim chattered and stopped. The gun was jammed or they had stopped to load another belt of cartridges. Instead of running like hell while he had the chance, the half-breed, cursing like a maniac, turned and started to bang away at the tower with the six-shooter.
“Run, you silly bastard!” McCain yelled without breaking his own run. Out of the light at last, Lassiter and McCain ran toward the row of guards’ houses. A guard ran out of the .nearest house, a rifle in his hand, and McCain put two bullets in him. A woman screamed in the doorway and ducked out of sight. Lassiter shot the next guard who came running and scared another man back into his house. The woman who had screamed ran out of the house and picked up her dead husband’s rifle. She knew how to shoot it, but her aim was bad. Lassiter knocked her down with a bullet through the shoulder, to keep her out of the Irishman’s way. McCain shot at her anyway and missed because she was falling when he did it. The half-breed’s mother must have been praying for him somewhere, because at the rate he was going, after the dumb play with the six-shooter, he should have been dead a dozen times before he made it out of the light. The crazy bastard stopped and fired his last two bullets at the tower, giving the gunners something to shoot back at. The gunners fired too high and instead of chewing up the half-breed the bullets exploded an oil lamp inside one of the houses. There was a flash of light and the house started to burn. McCain, waving the .45, yelled at the half-breed to keep moving. The half-breed did what he was told. Two little boys ran out of the burning house. One was about ten, the other was a few years older than that. McCain raised the six-shooter and Lassiter roared at him. Lassiter surprised himself by yelling, “Let it go, Mac. So help me ...”
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