Ambush Valley

by Johnstone, William W.

  And with a harsh clang, the inner gate slammed shut behind them.

  It was at that moment that the knowledge of his situa tion fmally, completely sunk in on Frank Morgan.

  He was in prison. And no one inside these walls-not the guards, and not the convicts-none of the men with whom he would be spending his days had the slightest idea that he didn’t truly belong here.

  The walls of the eight-by-ten cell were bare rock, as was the floor. A man could chisel away at those rocks for twenty years, provided that he had something to chisel with, and still not get very far. The ceiling was made of beams that were a foot thick. The iron bars along the front of the cell were set in holes drilled into the rock itself. Nothing short of dynamite would budge them, and Frank wasn’t sure if even that would do the job. The only way in or out of the cell was the barred door, and it was not only locked, but chains were wrapped around it also and secured with as heavy a padlock as Frank had ever seen.

  So he and McCoy wouldn’t be escaping from their cells, Frank decided. When they made their break, it would have to be while they were outside. Surely the con victs were taken out for work, or at least for some exer cise and fresh air. Frank would have to-bide his time.

  In fact, there was no limit on how long this job could last, but as a practical matter, Frank didn’t want to spend any more time behind bars than he had to. He had been a drifter for most of his life, hence the nickname that fol lowed him. Being locked up rankled his fiddle-footed nature.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the hard bunk in the cell when he heard footsteps coming along the passageway. An hour or so, Frank guessed, but that might be wrong. He was already beginning to realize that time passed differently inside these stone walls.

  His cell was at the very end of one of the prison’s wings, so there was no cell to his right. The chamber across the corridor was empty at the moment. He won dered if that was by design.

  He could tell by the footsteps that several men were headed his way. When they came into view, he saw Warden Eli Townsend, accompanied by a couple of guards. Frank didn’t move. He continued sitting on the bunk, staring stonily ahead.

  “When the warden comes to see you, you get on your feet, damn it!” one of the guards lashed out. “Show some respect or you’ll regret it, mister.”

  “What are you going to do?” Frank asked, tight lipped. “Put me in jail?”

  “You’ll get a taste of the Dark Cell if you keep that up,” the guard raged. Frank guessed that the Dark Cell was Yuma’s version of what was called in some prisons The Hole. A cramped, lightless chamber, possibly even underground, where convicts were placed as punishment for their infractions of the prison rules. “A taste? Hell, you’ll live in it!”

  Townsend raised a hand to silence the guard. “You two can go back to your stations and leave me to have a word with Morton,” he said.

  “You sure about that, Warden?” the other guard asked worriedly.

  “Of course. He can’t get out, and I don’t intend to stand close enough to the bars so that he can reach me.”

  Frank frowned. He wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Townsend didn’t need to treat him any differently than any other prisoner. That could just lead to suspicion. And even though the cell across the way was empty, the ones to the left weren’t, and the men in them would be able to hear anything Townsend said. The warden couldn’t be foolish enough to give away the plan already, could he?

  Although reluctant to do it, the guards left Townsend there. Their steps receded down the corridor. Townsend put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. It was dim and shadowy in the passageway, since the only light came from the door at the far end of the cell block. Frank couldn’t read the ex pression on Townsend’s face.

  But the icy scorn in the warden’s voice was easy to hear. “Listen to me, Morton,” he said, and his use of the phony name told Frank that Townsend was still playing a part. Frank was grateful for that, at least.

  Townsend went on. “I know you probably think you’re a dangerous man because you killed that sheriff and his deputies. But you should know that things are different now. You’re in our power. We hold the reins. And I’m making it my personal responsibility to see to it that your stay here is as miserable as possible. Do you understand me, Morton?”

  Frank didn’t say anything. He just sneered and main tained the pose of his own.

  Townsend roared, “I said, do you understand me, damn your murdering soul! If you want to go to the Dark Cell right now, I’ll send you there! It’s already justified, considering what you did to Conner Jessup on the way up here.”

  So that was what Townsend was doing, Frank thought helping to spread the word that the new inmate Fred Morton was a very dangerous man. That might be over doing it a bit, but Frank supposed it wouldn’t hurt anything.

  “I understand you,” he answered in a clipped, hostile tone. He might have to spend some time in the Dark Cell before he got out of here, just to make things look real, but he wanted to postpone that until he grew more accus tomed to prison life. Just being locked up in a regular cell was hard enough right now.

  “Good. You’ll lose all that arrogance sooner or later, Morton, or else it will kill you. Because I intend to make an example of you, you murderer. Remember that.”

  Townsend turned away, but as he did so, a flick of his wrist sent a small, folded piece of paper sailing between the bars and into Frank’s cell. It landed silently on the stone floor. Because Townsend had shielded the move with his body, it would not have been visible to any of the other convicts in adjacent cells.

  Frank waited until the warden had stalked away before he reached down and picked up the paper. The door at the far end of the cell block clanged shut behind Townsend as Frank unfolded the note. He stood up and moved closer to the bars, angling the paper to catch what little light there was so he could read it. The penciled words on it were printed in a precise hand.

  You will be placed on work detail after a week. McCoy will be on the same detail.

  That was all the note said, but at least Frank knew where things stood now. He had to wait a week before he would have the chance to make Cicero McCoy’s ac quaintance. He supposed that was all right, since it would make things look less suspicious.

  But as he looked around the bare, stark cell that was going to be his home for the time being, Frank Morgan thought that this was going to be a long week. Yes, sir, one hell of a long week.

  Chapter 11

  Frank was right about that. The days passed with agonizing slowness, and the nights were worse. When the utter darkness closed in, unrelieved even by the faintest glow of starlight, the temptation to madness crept in with it. Frank spent hours pacing back and forth in his cell until it seemed that he should have worn a path in the stone floor. In his mind he was riding the high country, with the big Appaloosa Stormy underneath him and Dog trotting alongside, surrounded by snowcapped peaks with a vast blue cathedral of sky arching overhead, the air crisp and cool and clean m his lungs.

  That was just a fantasy, of course. The reality was that he was locked up in a cramped stone cell, behind iron bars and the air was hot and foul with the stench of human waste and sweat that permeated this place.

  But the darkness faded each morning and the days dragged by, and the time passed as time will, impervious to mankind’s efforts to slow it down or speed it up. Frank had no mirror in which to look at himself, but he figured that he was pretty haggard and hollow-eyed when the guards finally came to get him one morning. They were armed with sawed-off shotguns, terrible weapons that could literally blow a man into bloody, quivering pieces at close range. That was the only way sawed-offs were any good; they were grossly inaccurate at any distance over a few feet.

  “Come on, Morton,” one of the guards said. “Time for you to start earnin’ your keep around here.”

  So far Frank’s “keep” had consisted of a hunk of stale bread, beans, and occasionally
some boiled beef twice a day. He didn’t figure he’d have to work very hard to earn that. But he didn’t say anything, just trudged sul lenly ahead of the guards, shuffling his feet because of the leg irons they put on him as soon as he stepped out of the cell.

  “If you try to make a run for it, you’ll get a ball and chain for your trouble,” another guard warned.

  “And he ain’t talkin’ about a wife!” the first guard added with a chuckle. “Fact is, you’ll be doin’ good to ever see a woman again, Morton, let alone touch one. Think about that for a while, why don’t you?”

  Frank didn’t have to think about it. But his mind went back involuntarily to the women he had known … Mercy, Vivian, Dixie, Roanne … A couple of them he had married, and those two were dead now, as if being wed to Frank Morgan carried a curse with it. Sometimes, during particularly dark nights of the soul, he had found himself wondering if that could be true. Unlike many gunfighters, he wasn’t really a superstitious man by nature ….

  But considering everything that had happened, it wasn’t hard for him to reach a decision that he would never marry again. Any woman who got involved with him would just have to live with that, because he wouldn’t lie about it.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, old hoss, he thought with an inward smile. Like the guard said, he wouldn’t even see a woman here in Yuma, let alone court one.

  The little procession emerged from the cell block into sunlight that was blinding after all the time Frank had spent in darkness and near-darkness. To tell the truth, that desert sun likely would have been blinding anyway, no matter where he’d spent the past week.

  They joined a group of convicts and guards that was forming up near one of the side walls of the prison com pound. Most of the prisoners wore gray trousers and shirts of some coarsely woven material. A few, including Frank, still wore the clothes they’d had on when they were brought to Yuma. One of the guards had some of the gray uniforms with him. He tossed the clothes to the men who still wore their civilian duds and growled, “Put those on.”

  One of the prisoners asked, “How are we supposed to do that with these shackles and leg irons on?”

  “They’ll be taken off one wrist and one leg at a time,” the guard explained: “Try anything funny and you’ll be sorry, especially when you wake up and find yourself in the Dark Cell for three days.”

  Nobody tried anything, funny or otherwise. While Frank was waiting for his turn to change into the prison uniform, he tried to study the faces of the other convicts without appearing to do so. The note from Warden Townsend-which Frank had torn into tiny strips and dropped into his slops bucket-had said that Cicero McCoy would be in the same work detail as Frank. Al though Frank had never seen a picture of the bank robber, Conrad had given him a very detailed description of McCoy. Now Frank had little trouble picking out the man from the other convicts. Many of the prisoners were rangy and rawboned, and several had lantern jaws. But only Cicero McCoy had that shock of prematurely white hair. The outlaw paid no attention to Frank or any of the other new prisoners.

  The prison uniform was scratchy and didn’t fit too well, but Frank figured that was the least of his worries at the moment. When he had the garb on and his shack les and leg irons were fastened back in place, a shovel was thrust into his hands and he was pointed toward a long trench that was being dug near the wall. He shuffied over to it, contriving to place himself near McCoy’s po sition. He couldn’t get right next to the bank robber, not without shouldering another man aside, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by doing that. He watched what the other convicts were doing, and soon fell into the rhythm of the work.

  Some of the men had shovels, others had picks. The ground was too hard and rocky to dig in normally. The men with picks had to break it up first, and then the ones wielding shovels moved in and scooped up the chunks out of the ditch, tossing them onto the area between the ditch and the wall.

  Frank spoke under his breath to the man beside him. “What’re we digging here? An escape tunnel?”

  The man laughed. “Don’t I wish, mister. No, this is a new shit ditch, I reckon you’d call it. The trusties who gather up the buckets from the cells dump ‘em here, or they will when we’re done with it, anyway. We have to dig a new one when the old one fills up, and they fill up pretty fast. You put a few hundred convicts in a place like this, one thing you’re gonna have is a bunch o’ shit.”

  Frank couldn’t help but smile a little. The guards didn’t seem to mind if the prisoners talked while they worked, as long as it didn’t slow them down. Low-voiced conversations were going on all along the ditch. So he said, “My name’s Fred Morton.”

  “Oh, I know who you are, Morton,” the man said. “I reckon everybody in here knows who you are. You’re the fella who pert’ near tore an ear off that bruiser Jessup. You can call me Gideon.”

  “I’d say that I’m pleased to meet you, Gideon, but I’m not pleased about any of this.”

  Gideon laughed softly. “I know what you mean.” After a moment, he went on. “Did you really kill five lawmen? You don’t have to answer. The rule in here is, don’t ask anything you’re not ready to have thrown right back at you.”

  “I don’t mind answering. Yeah, I killed that damn sheriff and his deputies. They caught me with a fire, a run ning iron, and some cows that didn’t belong to me. What would you have done?”

  “Well, I damned sure wouldn’t have tried to shoot it out with five men. I ain’t no gunman. But even if I lived through a fight like that, I’d have five murder charges hangin’ over my head.”

  Frank shrugged. “Where I come from, they’ll hang you for rustling just about as fast as they will for shoot ing somebody, even a lawman. I didn’t figure I had a whole hell of a lot to lose.”

  “Been in trouble with the law before?”

  “No. Never got caught like that before.” Frank gave a low, bitter laugh. “Hell of a way to get started, wouldn’t you say?”

  One of the guards came along and barked, “Stop flap pin’ your gums and get busy, you two.”

  Frank and Gideon went to work with their shovels. McCoy was only a few paces away, leaning on the handle of his pick for the moment while the men with shovels cleaned out the section of ditch where he’d been breaking up the ground. He’d been close enough to hear everything Frank and Gideon had said, but didn’t appear to be paying any attention to them.

  Frank thought that was a pose. Most men in this situ ation would be interested in what was going on around them. And they’d be especially interested in newcomers, given the crushing boredom and loneliness of prison life. Frank figured that McCoy had taken note of every word.

  Time passed faster out here, but not any more pleas antly. The sun scorched down on the convicts, baking them. Sweat soaked the gray uniforms, turning them black. And then, even worse, the men stopped sweating. When that happened, they were ordered to drop their picks and shovels and were marched over into the shade of one of the cell block buildings. They sat down and leaned against the stone wall, which seemed blessedly cool after being out in the sun all morning.

  Trusties with water jugs passed among the work detail, giving drinks to the men and cautioning them not to guzzle down too much water. Some of the newcomers were too overwhelmed by thirst to pay heed to those warnings, and soon they were vomiting the water they had swallowed back up onto the dry, rocky ground.

  Frank knew better. He took it easy, using a sip to mois ten his lips and wash the dust out of his mouth before he spit it out. Then he swallowed a couple of sips and passed the jug along to Gideon, who sat beside him. McCoy was on the other side of the tall, lanky Gideon.

  The break wasn’t a long one. The men weren’t given any food, just the water. Then they were put to work again.

  When Frank trudged toward the ditch to pick up his shovel, this time he was able to hang back a little and then move forward so that he was between Gideon and McCoy. Neither of the other convicts seemed to think that there was any
thing unusual about his actions. McCoy didn’t even glance in Frank’s direction as he started swinging his pick again, driving the sharp head into the earth, leaning on the handle to break up the ground, then pulling the pick free to start all over again.

  The prisoners were too tired to talk now. They labored in sullen silence. Frank let a couple of hours go by before he grunted and said in McCoy’s direction, “Is it this bad every day in here?”

  For a moment he thought that McCoy wasn’t going to reply or even acknowledge the comment, but then the bank robber said with a touch of sardonic humor, “This isn’t as bad as usual.”

  “No?” Frank found that hard to believe. “Why not?”

  “At least it’s cloudy today.”

  Frank glanced up toward the sun, thinking that the heat must have made McCoy lose his mind. That was worrisome, because if McCoy was a lunatic, he might not be able to find that hidden loot again.

  But to Frank’s surprise, he saw that a thin, almost transparent puff of cloud had appeared in the sky. Even though it had floated in front of the sun, it didn’t seem to be blocking many, if any, of the murderous rays. Frank realized then that McCoy was making a joke. He grinned and nodded to show that he understood.

  It was a small thing, but it was a connection between him and McCoy.

  It was a start.

  The shit ditch, as Gideon called it, was finished in a couple of days. Frank worked with Gideon and McCoy both days, conversing with them until they both seemed comfortable with him. McCoy didn’t talk much, but the garrulous Gideon made up for that.

  Several times while they were working, Frank saw other groups of convicts being taken out of the prison through the sally port. “Where are they going?” he asked on one of those occasions.

  “Outside work detail,” Gideon explained. “Those boys maintain the stagecoach roads runnin’ through these parts. Keep the ruts from gettin’ too deep and rebuild the roads when they wash out.”