Читать книгу When the Wilderness Calls – Bertrand W. Sinclair Collection - Bertrand William Sinclair - Страница 36

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Looking back I marvel at the ridiculous ease with which the thing was accomplished. Still more do I marvel at my own part in it. Brought up as I had been, shielded from the ill winds of existence, taught the perfunctory, conventional standards of behavior that suffice for those whose lives are lived according to a little-varying plan, I should have shrunk from further infraction of the law. Indeed it is no more than could have been expected had I refused absolutely to lend myself to Barreau’s desperate plan. Conscious that I had done no wrong I might have been moved to veto an enterprise that imperiled me, to protest against his drawing me further into his own troublous coil. But I did nothing of the sort. It did not occur to me. My point of view was no longer that of the son of a St. Louis gentleman. And the transition was so complete, so radical, and withal, so much the growth of the past three weeks, that I was unaware of the change.

I know of no clearer illustration of the power of environment. Indubitably I should have looked askance at a man who tacitly admitted himself more or less of a criminal, making no defense, no denial. The traditions of my class should have kept me aloof, conscious of my own clean hands. This, I repeat, was what might have been expected of me: Put to me as an abstract proposition, I would have been very positive of where I should stand.

But without being conscious of any deviation from my previous concepts of right and wrong, I found myself all agog to help Slowfoot George escape. For myself, there was no question of flight. That, we agreed upon, at the outset. I could gain nothing by putting myself at odds with Canadian law, for the law itself would free me in its meteing out of justice. But with him it was different; he admitted the fact. And even so I found myself making nothing of the admission. He conformed to none of my vague ideas of the criminal type. In aiding him to be free I seemed to be freeing myself by proxy, as it were; and how badly I desired to be quit of the strange tangle that enmeshed me, none but myself can quite appreciate.

After all, so far as my help was concerned it consisted largely of what Barreau dryly termed, “moral support.” I acquiesced in the necessity. I stood on the lookout for interruptions. He did the work.

While he cut with his knife a hole in the floor, so that the point of the little saw could enter, I stood by the window listening for the footsteps that would herald a guard’s approach. He worked rapidly, yet in no apparent haste. He had that faculty of straining every nerve at what he was about, without seeming to do so; there was no waste energy, no fluster. And the cutting and sawing speedily bore fruit. So noiselessly and deftly did he work that in less than half an hour he had sawn a hole in the floor large enough to admit his body; and the dank smell of earth long hidden from sunlight struck me when I bent down to look. Then with a caution that I should watch closely and tap on the floor with my heel if any of the guard came poking around the cells, he wriggled through the opening and disappeared.

I leaned against the wall, breathing a bit faster. The hole was cut in a corner, to the right of the cell door. From the outside it could scarcely be noticed. But I had wit enough to know that if a trooper glanced in and missed Barreau the hole would be discovered fast enough. Which would involve me in the attempt; and I was aware that jail-breakers fare ill if they are caught. But no one moved in the guardhouse, save now and then a prisoner shuffling about in his cell. Occasionally I could hear the low murmur of their voices—it was a small place and filled to its capacity—else Barreau and I would not have been penned together.

After an interminable period he came quietly out from under the floor, and carefully fitted in their places the planks he had cut. One had to look closely to see a mark, after he had brushed into the cracks some dust from the floor. Barreau’s eyes twinkled when he sat down on his bunk and rolled himself a cigarette.

“Everything just as it should be,” he told me. “Nothing to do but root away a little dirt from the bottom log of the outside wall. I could walk out, a free man, in five minutes. There will be a fine fuss and feathers to-night. They have never had a jail delivery here, you know. Lord, it’s easy though, when one has the tools.”

“There’ll be a hot chase,” I suggested. “Will you stand much chance.”

“That depends on how much of a start I get,” he said grimly. “I think I can fool them. If not—well——”

He relapsed into silence. Someone clanked into the guard-room, and Barreau snuffed out his cigarette with one swift movement. In a second or two the trooper went out again. We could see him by flattening our faces against the bars, and when he was gone Blackie sat alone, his feet cocked up on a chair.

“That reminds me,” Barreau spoke so that his words were audible to me alone. “Blackie’s a good fellow, and I must keep his skirts clear. He will be on guard till about eight this evening. Eight—nine—ten o’clock. At ten it should be as dark as it will get. I’ll drift then. Some other fellow will be on guard when you give the alarm.”

It was then mid-afternoon. At half-past five two prisoners were set to arranging a long table by the palings that separated the cells from the guard-room proper. With a trooper at their heels they lugged from the Police kitchen two great pots, one of weak soup, the other containing a liquid that passed for tea. A platter of sliced bread and another of meat scraps completed the meal. Then the rest of us were turned out to eat; sixteen men who had fallen afoul of the law munching and drinking, with furtive glances at each other.

And while we ate a trooper made the round of the cells, giving each tumbled heap of quilts a tentative shake, peering into the half-dark corners. That also was part of the routine, perfunctory, as a general thing, but occasionally developing into keen-eyed search. It was the rule to confiscate tobacco or any small articles a prisoner might manage to smuggle in, if he failed of its concealment.

But the faint traces of Barreau’s floor-cutting escaped his eye, and the tobacco was in our pockets. The knife and saw Barreau had slipped within his boot-leg. Personal search was the one thing we had to fear. And it passed us by. The guards—four of them during the meal hour—contented themselves with routine inspection, and when the table was swept clean of food we were herded back to our cells. For once I was glad to be locked up; knowing that though dark would bring a trooper past our cell every half hour, to peer in on us through the barred opening, there was little chance of his unlocking the door.

We lay on our bunks, silent, smoking a cigarette when the guard was safe in front. The smell of tobacco smoke could not betray our possession of it, for the guardhouse reeked with the troopers’ pipes. We had only to conceal the actual material.

Thus eight o’clock came, and brought with it a change of guard. Blackie no longer sat in front with his feet cocked up on a chair, or taking turns with his fellows at peering through cell doors. Nine passed—by the guardhouse clock—and ten dragged by at last. On the stroke of the hour a guard tramped past our cell, on to the others, and back to his seat in front. When he was settled Barreau slid lightly from his bunk. The short pieces of flooring he pried from the hole in the floor. Then he reached a hand to me and shook mine in a grip that almost bruised.

“Good-bye, Bob,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you in St. Louis next year, unless my star sets. And I will have a pretty story for your ears, then. Give me an hour, if you can. So-long.”

His feet were in the opening as he spoke, and a second later the black square of it was yawning emptily. I put the planks over the hole, and got me back to my bunk. I was glad to see him go, and yet, knowing that he would come back no more save in irons, I missed him. I felt utterly alone and forsaken, lying there simulating sleep—with every nerve in my body on tip-toe.

It was a rule of the guardhouse that a prisoner must lie with his feet to the door, so that his head could be seen by the passing guard. Just opposite our door a lamp was bracketed on the wall. What light it gave shone through the bars directly on our faces while we slept. Rules or no rules, a man would shade his face with his arm or a corner of the quilt, when the lamp-glare struck in his eyes. And Barreau, perhaps with that very emergency in mind, had slept with his hat pulled over his face. None of the guards had voiced objection. They could see him easily enough. Now, this very practice made it possible for him to fool them with a trick that is as old as prison-breaking itself. Skillfully he had arranged the covers to give the outline of a body, and his hat he left tilted over the place where his head had rested. The simplicity of the thing, I dare say, is what made it a success. At least it fulfilled its purpose that night.

Here a prisoner snored, and there another turned on his bunk with faint scrapings against the wall. Out in front the Policemen conversed in lowered tones. I could hear every sound in the building, it seemed; the movements of sleeping men, the scurrying of a rat, the crackle of a match when one of the guards lit his pipe. But I did not hear that for which my ears were strained, and I was thankful.

Twice a trooper made the round, seeing nothing amiss—although I imagined the thump of my heart echoed into the corridor when he looked in on me and let his glance travel over the place where Slowfoot George should have been—but was not.

It was nearing the time for his return, and I sat up, nerving myself to give the alarm. For to clear me of complicity and the penalty thereof, Barreau had instructed me to apprise them after an hour. I was to tell them that he was armed, and so compelled me to keep silent while he worked. And I was to say that he had but gone. There would be nothing but his foot-prints, and by those they could not reckon the time of his flight.

As I sat there waiting for the guard and steeling myself to lie boldly, shamelessly, for Barreau’s sake and my own, my gaze rested speculatively on the pieces of flooring I had laid over the hole. I intended to kick them aside as I rushed to the window and gabbled my tale to the guard. But I did not rush to the window nor did I gabble to the guard, for I saw the pieces of plank slide softly apart and a hand came through the opening thus made—a hand that waved imperative warning for me to lie down. The guard passed as I drew the cover over me. He barely glanced in. Before the squeak of his chair out in front told of his settling down, I was up on elbow, staring.

Again the planks slid apart, this time clear of the hole. In the same moment something took shape in the black square, something that rose quickly till I could see that it was the head and shoulders of a man. I sat mute, startled, filled with wonder and some dismay. The dull light touching his features showed me Barreau, dirt-stained, sweatdrops on his forehead, beckoning to me. I leaned to catch his whisper.

“I came back for you, kid,” he breathed. “You’re slated for trouble. The cabin of the Moon’s purser was robbed the night you left, and it’s laid to you. There’s a deputy from Benton here after you. You’ll get a hard deal. Better chance it with me.”

“Robbery,” I muttered. “Good God, what next?”

“Extradition—and a hard fight to clear yourself. Weeks, maybe months, in the calaboose. Come on with me. You’ll get home sooner, I’ll promise you that.”

“I’ve a mind to go you,” I declared bitterly. “I seem doomed to be an Ishmael.”

“Hurry, then,” he admonished, “or we’ll be nabbed in the act. Slip in here quietly and crawl after me. Just as you are. Bring your shoes in your hand.”

Thus, willy-nilly, I found myself in the black, dank space between the floor and the ground. The blackness and musty smell endured no more than a few seconds. The passage to the outer wall was shorter than I had thought. Presently I followed Barreau through a tight hole, and stood erect in the gloom of a cloudy night—a night well fitted for desperate deeds.

“Give me your hand,” said Barreau, when I had put on my brogans.

The dark might have been made to order for our purpose. I could barely see Barreau at my elbow. His hand was a needed aid. Together we moved softly away from the guardhouse, and, once clear of it, ran like hunted things. Looking back over my shoulder once, I saw the guardhouse lights, pale yellow squares set in solid ebony. The rest of the post lay unlighted, hidden away in the dark.

I do not know whither Barreau led me, but at length, almost winded from the long run, he brought up against some sort of deserted building. A vague blur resolved into two horses, when we laid hands upon it. Barreau jerked loose the fastening ropes. And as my fingers closed on the reins of one, a carbine popped away in our rear, then another, and a third. Hard on that came the shrilling of a bugle.

“Up with you,” Barreau commanded. “They’ve found our hole. Stick close to me. If they do run us down, we must take our medicine; we cannot fight the men in red with such odds against us. But I think they’ll look long and sorrowfully ere they come upon us, a night like this,” he finished with a short laugh.

Side by side, two dim figures in the murk, we loped away. Barreau kept a steady unhurried gait. We passed a building or two, dipped into a hollow, splashed through what may have been a river or a pond, for all I could tell, and presently came out upon level plain. Behind us MacLeod’s few lights twinkled like the scattered embers of a campfire. Soon these also dwindled to nothing, and the shadowless gloom of the prairies surrounded us. Keenly as I listened, I caught no sound of following hoofs. And Barreau seemed to think himself tolerably safe, for he began to talk in his natural tone as we galloped into the night.

“If the Police overhaul us now,” he asserted confidently, “it will be only because of a lucky guess at the direction we have taken. They are more than likely to think we have gone south. And if they don’t beat us to the Red Flats we can snap our fingers at them for many a moon. Are you itching with curiosity, Bob?”

“Not altogether itching,” I replied truthfully enough. “I’m too glad to be out of that iron-barred box, to be worrying much over the why of things. Just so the program doesn’t call for another spell in some guardhouse, I’ll be satisfied. I’m putting a good deal of faith in what you said about eventually getting to St. Louis.”

“Cultivating the philosophical attitude already, eh?” he returned. “You’re progressing. To be perfectly frank, there is little chance of our seeing either the inside or outside of a guardhouse again. The redcoats fight shy of the country we are bound for.”

“Where is that?” I asked quickly.

“I knew you were wondering,” he laughed. “Unconsciously you are bristling with question marks. Natural enough, too. But all in good time, Bob. To-night we have food and clothing, another horse or two and arms to get. If previous calculations haven’t been upset, these things will be forthcoming and we shall go on our way—if not rejoicing, at least well-provided against the wilderness. And then if you still choose to paddle in my canoe, I’ll go into details.”

“That’s fair enough,” I answered. “There’s just one thing—that Moon robbery business. How came you to know a deputy sheriff was after me?”

“Simply enough,” he returned. “When I got out I had to sneak around and find a man from whom I could get a horse—I have a friend or two there, luckily. And he told me. The Circle men gave you away when they were told you had stolen money from the boat. The deputy had just ridden in. He was a mouthy brute, and noised his business about.”

“It beats the devil,” I declared. “Ever since those two thugs tackled me on the St. Louis water front I seem to have been going from bad to worse; stepping from one hot stone to another still hotter.”

“I’ve done it myself,” he said laconically. “But they will have to catch their hare before they can cook it; and it takes more than accusation to make a man a thief.”

With this he relapsed into silence. There was a sort of finality in his way of speaking that headed me off from asking more questions. I busied myself digesting what he had told me. Occasionally, as we rode, he drawled a remark; a few words about the country we traversed, or our mounts, or a bull-train he hoped to overtake. Between whiles I speculated on what mysterious link connected him with the girl who had come to the guardhouse in MacLeod. The rancor of her speech had fixed itself irrevocably on my memory. What lay behind their bitter stabbing at each other I could not say. Nor was it anything that should have concerned me. I had my own besetments. I knew not whither I was going, nor why—except to escape trial for a crime I had not committed. There were many points upon which I desired light, things that puzzled me. All in all, as I put aside the disturbing influences of flight I did, as Barreau had said, fairly bristle with interrogations.

Once in the night we halted on a small creek for the best part of an hour, letting our horses graze. Only then did I become aware that Barreau rode without a saddle.

“No man ever quitted a Mounted Police guardhouse without help from the outside,” he replied, when I spoke of this. “And the man who took a chance on letting me have two horses had only one saddle to spare. I can ride easier on a blanket than you. It is only for another hour or two at most. See—we are just come to the trail.”

I could distinguish no trail at first. He followed it easily, and after a time I began to get glimpses of deep-worn ruts. Barreau struck a faster pace. Two hours of silent riding brought us into the bed of a fair-sized creek, and when he had turned a bend or two of its course, a light blinked ahead. In another minute we brought up against a group of wagons. Barreau rode straight to the tent, through the canvas walls of which glowed the light. There he dismounted and tied his horse, whispering to me to follow suit. Then I followed him into the tent.

A man lay stretched on a camp-cot at one end, the blankets drawn over his head. Him Barreau shook rudely out of his slumber, and when he sat up with a growl of protest I found myself face to face with Montell, the portly fur merchant who had come up-river on the Moon.