West of Tombstone (6 page)

The next move the penitentiary powers made was more devious and savage than any outright beating. It was insidious and macabre.

Cameron had not seen the short, one-eyed guard with the fantastic broom of red beard before, but one morning the man spoke to Voorman, crossed the shop and found Cameron at his stitching machine. He place a meaty hand on Cameron's shoulder.

‘You'll be here awhile,' the man said, his one good eye cold and black and cloudy. ‘They want you to learn the whole job.'

‘What do you mean?' Cameron asked, wiping his hands on his shabby blue apron.

‘Every man assigned to boot shop takes a turn.' At Cameron's still-confused expression, the guard added, ‘It's about learning where the boots you work on come from.'

Voorman watched with his head down, unspeaking as the guard removed Cameron from the shop. They walked across the inner yard, a square of white earth enclosed on all sides by high walls. Then, with another sign to a guard posted high above them, the two men passed through a double oaken door twelve feet in height. Beyond these stood a heavy wagon with huge steel-tired wheels. The guard nudged Cameron toward the tailgate, poking his back with a baton. Already Cameron knew by the odor rising from the wagon what to expect. He tried to turn away, but there was no choice. Dead prisoners, stacked carelessly in the back three deep awaited him.

‘Get those boots off, Harte,' the guard ordered him. ‘Here's the gunny sacks to put them in.'

Cameron climbed into the bed of the wagon and, moving among the faceless dead, he got to work, untying their boots. Beyond him he could see a burial crew waiting patiently like gray-uniformed buzzards. Three ancient-looking men from the prison laundry also waited to retrieve the dead men's uniforms so that they could be repaired and washed for the next to arrive.

At first Cameron moved gingerly, out of sheer horror, keeping his eyes always averted from the faces of the dead. Later he moved with incautious fury, ripping the shabby boots from the feet of the prisoners, needing only to be finished with the repugnant task.

Broiling under the incessant heat of the monitoring sun he shoved and dug and worked madly among them, his fingers unlacing the toughest knots with savage strength. Finished, he leapt from the wagon, was momentarily sick and began at the guard's instructions to shove the boots into the burlap bags provided, as the body strippers from the laundry moved in like a horde of scavenger birds.

‘You'll get used to it,' the guard told Cameron. ‘Over time.'

Shouldering his grisly trophies, Cameron trudged back through the gate and walked blindly across the sand of the courtyard to the steel rear door of the boot shop, held open by a grim-faced Voorman.

They said he would get used to it, but he would not! It was a sickening, disgusting scene which he only got through by pretending he was someone else, far distant, performing an unimaginable task in some underworld nightmare. He thought he had suffered too much, that he was too tough now to be affected, but when he fell asleep it was only after lying awake for long hours sobbing. Elliot Hogan spoke to him only briefly, and Cameron was glad for that.

The next morning he walked to the boot shop like one of the dead himself. Voorman's pale eyes were on him as Cam shakily started his stitching machine and picked up the first pair of boots he had to repair. Voorman moved beside him, pretending to oil the spindle of the machine.

‘Is it tonight then?' the Dutchman asked.

‘What!' Cameron was thoroughly startled. ‘What do you mean, Voorman?'

The Dutchman nodded toward Cameron's ankles. ‘They've removed your chains.'

‘Yes, early this morning. So that I could clamber more easily in and out of the wagons, they said.'

‘Don't you believe that,' Voorman said, glancing around to see that there were no guards nearby. ‘You'll be making your break soon. Tonight is my guess.'

‘No.'

‘Yes, Cam. They're sure they've got you ready to make even a reckless attempt now and, mark my words, Hogan will have a plan to put before you.'

‘He already has,' Cam said in a low voice. ‘At least a part of it.'

‘And you'll agree to try it,' the Dutchman said.

‘I have to, Voorman! What choice do I have? Except to leave here without my own boots.'

‘None at all.' Voorman set down the oil can and pretended to be examining the leather drive belt on the machine. ‘But once they find out you don't know where the money is … what then?'

‘I don't know,' Cam said wearily.

‘Out on the desert alone. They'll plug you and leave you. You know that, don't you?'

‘I guess I have no choice. It might be a cleaner death than what they have in store for me here.'

‘You're right,' Voorman said, straightening up. ‘There's no choice. This is all rigged, Cam. You guessed it; I
know
it. I've seen it before.' His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I can offer you some insurance.'

‘What do you mean?' Cam asked, his eyes intent on his sewing, the waxed thread spinning on the revolving spindle, as a slow-walking guard patrolled the perimeter of the boot shop.

‘Take me with you,' Voorman pleaded. His grip was tight on Cam's arm. ‘I can watch your back; I can be of help.'

‘Hogan won't let you go with us.'

‘Damn Hogan! He'll have no choice. Don't you see! You'll just tell him that so long as you were making a break for it, you asked me along, too.' Voorman's eyes were frantic now. ‘He won't dare complain. Would a
real
convict turn his back on one of his brothers?'

‘It won't work.'

‘It will,' Voorman insisted. His voice grew uglier. ‘I got to get out, Cam, don't you see? If you don't take me I'll scream loud and long so that the warden won't dare let you break out. And then,' he promised darkly, ‘when I have you back inside, in my shop, I'll make your life sheer living hell for as long as you are locked up. Which, I don't have to remind you, will be for life.'

Cameron couldn't tell if it was viciousness or desperation that caused the man he thought to be his only friend in the prison to talk this way, but Voorman's motive didn't matter. Only the plan mattered. And Hogan's plan was bound to succeed because, as both men knew full well by now, the breakout was a set-up. Cameron nodded very slowly.

‘I'll talk to Hogan—'

‘Don't! Just find out how he's planned it out. I don't want the warden learning anything – we both know Hogan is an informer. Just give me a crack at an open door, Cameron.' Voorman looked briefly ashamed. ‘If I bullied you, I'm sorry. I do not wish to die here, no more than you do. A man gets to be like a caged animal the longer he's caged. I'll go with you and I'll be your right hand as long as you need me.'

It was hard not to believe Voorman; it was difficult not to trust his word. Cameron knew the man's background. He was formerly a butcher in Phoenix. His wife and her lover had had the misfortune of being caught in an unfortunate situation when Voorman had arrived home early from work after a shipment of hogs had been delayed. Younger then, hot-blooded, Voorman had addressed the two with a cleaver.

Voorman was awaiting execution, but he had never worn leg irons and was given cornbread and slivers of salt pork, even an occasional piece of fruit among other things beyond the usual prison fare because he was classified as a ‘special circumstance' prisoner – the circumstance being that his brother was a member of the Territorial Assembly. The brother's term was nearly up; the next election was much in doubt. The Dutchman's fate hung on the scales of politics. The prison commission was not corrupt enough to grant a murderer outright release, but it had been willing to bide its time regarding the execution of an assemblyman's brother. After all Voorman was not going anywhere anyway.

But Voorman was one more of the walking dead inhabiting the prison. A stroke of the warden's pen could send any one of them to the scaffold at sunrise. ‘Stony Harte' included.

Any possibility of escape was preferable to living beneath the shadow of the hangman's noose.

FIVE

It was not on that night nor the one after that the escape was attempted, but on the third night.

Without Elliot Hogan's knowledge, Cameron had laid it open to Voorman. The Dutchman listened thoughtfully and then commented, ‘Well, it is a set-up then. That's certain.'

‘What makes you so sure?' Cam asked.

‘Tell me again the short of it,' Voorman prompted.

‘According to Hogan there's only a single window in the entire prison that has no bars on the window: the window in the warden's office. I've never seen it myself.'

‘I have,' Voorman said. ‘That's true enough. But that office is beyond a steel door.'

‘Hogan is the janitor in that wing, as you know. He says he has found a way to wedge the door. A lock will seem to secure the door, but it will be just slightly ajar.'

‘He says that, does he?' Voorman said doubtfully.

‘He says that. Maybe he's wrong. But we all know there's risk involved. We could get trapped in the corridor and caught again. For myself, it's worth any risk. What can they do to me that they haven't already done or threatened?'

‘True enough.' Voorman again grew meditative. ‘I can manage to slip up into the corridor. It's easy enough. But once we're out the warden's window, what then?'

‘Hogan's bribed a man from the stable to bring two horses up outside the western wall.'

‘Bribed with what?' Voorman asked skeptically.

‘I'm not sure. Hogan said it wasn't important for me to know.'

‘It's a set-up for sure,' Voorman repeated. ‘And there's nothing wrong with that. You see, Cam, there's no risk involved at all. The warden's plotted it. He and Hogan. They want you to lead them to the loot from the robbery. They're making it all quite simple. Hogan just has to keep telling you that it is really dangerous to convince you that you must go along. To continue to place it in your mind that you're willing to risk all for freedom.'

‘And I am,' Cam admitted. ‘Plot or not, I'm going.'

The way Voorman put it, Cameron could understand that he might be about to be taken for a ride. No matter, that was the chance he had to take. He couldn't do another month in Yuma prison, let alone years, a lifetime. This could be his only chance at escape – ever.

Voorman said, ‘Just be sure not to breathe a word about me. I'm going along, Cam. And I'm on your side.'

Was
that
even true, Cameron wondered as he returned to his work? Maybe it was Voorman who was the informer and Cam had been duped into telling him the plan. Maybe it was Voorman who was reporting to the warden and taking a hand in the break for his own reasons. What reasons? Maybe his brother still had influence with the warden. Maybe his politically connected brother had manipulated Warden Traylor, bribed him to let the big-shouldered Dutchman escape.

In the night these thoughts spun and collided with each other in Cameron's mind which he had to admit was even now not as clear as it should be after the bullet that had grooved his scalp, the beatings he had endured, the starvation and barbaric treatment he had endured.

None of his suspicions mattered; now all that he cared about was escaping this rotting, oppressive prison. He would rather take his chances on the open desert with two convicted criminals than spend another night on that rough plank bunk with the rats scuttling from hole to hole, with his stomach knotting with hunger. A man should at least die free if he must die.

Cameron vowed to trust neither of them – as he had once trusted Stony Harte to his sorrow. It was Yuma prison or the long sand desert. Both savage wastes in their own way, but he had made his choice. He was going to make the escape no matter what was to come.

Cameron Black had been asleep for no more than an hour when he felt the presence of Elliot Hogan next to him and heard him whisper from the darkness.

‘Up now. Quiet and cautious, son. We're going over the wall.'

Rubbing roughly at his eyes, Cameron sat up on his bunk. ‘How …?' he mumbled.

‘Shut up and do as I say,' Elliot Hogan hissed. ‘This is our only chance.'

Cameron listened to the instructions whispered into his ear. Incredulous, but desperate – they had indeed managed to make him the most desperate of men – he agreed.

‘The guard won't fall for it,' he had to object.

‘For you he will. The warden can't let Stony Harte die until they have the money. Everybody knows what kind of shape you're in! Just do it!'

The plan was a simple one, of the kind they worked out in dime novels. He lay back on his bunk, moaning as loudly and pitiably as he could. Elliot went to the door and began calling for the night guard who approached on heavy feet.

‘What is it, Hogan?'

‘What do you think, you fool? Harte's dying. That sheriff broke him up real good. He won't last in here. You've got to get him to the doc's.'

The guard hesitated only a minute then drew the set of keys from his belt to open the heavy door. Elliot Hogan stood behind the door as it opened and, as the guard entered the room to stride toward ‘Stony Harte', Hogan stepped up behind him and slammed his joined fists into the base of the prison guard's skull. The man dropped to the floor.

The fix is in
, Cameron thought, as Hogan urged him to his feet.

If he had had any doubts before, Cameron had none now. No trained guard would enter the cell alone. He would have summoned help. Hogan had hit the man hard, but that hard? No. The man had fallen softly, not like a felled tree. The fix is in, and somehow that raised Cameron's morale. They wanted him to escape the prison. He wanted nothing more himself. Let the future take care of itself.

‘Come on,' Hogan whispered fiercely. Cameron stepped around the fallen guard's body and followed Hogan into the corridor. No other guard was in sight. Cameron smiled again. It was a game they were playing and he was beginning to like it very much. He tried to act stupid and concerned, moving tentatively as Hogan swiftly followed the corridor toward the stairs leading down to the warden's office.