Escape from Five Shadows - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 10

6

They counted the days by marking the wall with Pryde’s belt buckle, a mark for each day scratched in a row on the adobe wall. But even with this, after little more than a week had passed, they were not sure of the count and it seemed there should be more marks on the wall than there were. Twice a day the door opened and they were given bread and water. The guard who carried the bucket and dipper and a half loaf of bread was never armed. But another guard stood in the doorway with a shotgun. They were ordered not to talk to the prisoners and would not answer with even a sign when Bowen or Pryde asked the number of days they had been there.

In the morning, they would hear Renda or Brazil in front of the barracks lining up the convicts for the wagon trip to the construction site. Then, throughout the day, there was silence, long hours of dead silence only occasionally broken by the sound of a horse crossing the compound.

In the evening, after the convicts were in the barracks again, the faint murmur of voices, bits of conversation that were never completely clear, would drift into the darkness of the punishment cell. Bowen would sit with his back against the adobe not moving, listening for Manring’s voice. But thinking of Manring, wanting to be sure he would still be here at the end of twenty days, made the time pass even more slowly.

Why had Manring warned Renda that he was planning to escape?

Pryde said, because he’s paid for it. He had seen the same thing at Yuma. There were special privileges for the convict who kept the guards informed on what was going on inside the cell blocks. And, Pryde said, there was only one way to deal with that kind.

Maybe it was that simple. But Bowen went over in his mind everything he knew about Manring, trying to find a more personal reason.

They had met in a saloon of the Commercial House Hotel in Prescott just a little more than a year ago-Bowen with a trail drive behind him and for the time being nothing to do; Manring looking for a man to help him move a small herd down to San Carlos-the two of them standing at the bar. A few minutes after they started talking, they moved to a table.

“Ordinarily,” Manring had explained, “I work for a spread same as anybody else, but I heard about this cry for beef down at San Carlos and saw it was a chance to make something if you had a little capital.” And taking a bill of sale out of his pocket-“The reservation’s grown bigger than the government beef allowance, so now they got to buy more. But they’re buying monthly, just a hundred head or so at a time and it don’t pay the big owner to take a herd down there. That’s why somebody like you or me can make money out of it if you got stock to sell.” He pointed to the bill of sale. “Which I got.”

Bowen said it sounded all right to him. He was thinking about going down to Willcox to talk to a friend about a mining venture and if he could work his way down that was all the better.

The next morning they started driving the herd-forty head they had gathered themselves. Bowen noticed none of the steers had been vent-branded and he asked Manring about it.

“Why go to the trouble of registering a brand,” Manring answered, “then waste time putting it on when you’ll only have the stock about a week? A bill of sale’s good enough to prove ownership.”

When Bowen opened his eyes the next morning, a man he had never seen before was standing over him with a rifle. There were eight or ten others in the clearing and a moment later he saw Manring brought in. Manring was mounted and it was evident he had tried to run when the posse closed in.

They were taken back to Prescott and formally charged that afternoon, the complaint being signed by R. A. McLaughlin, the man from whom Manring claimed to have bought the cattle. Luckily (the sheriff said) a district judge would be in Prescott the next day-so there wouldn’t be a delay in the trial.

Bowen remembered that first night in a jail cell clearly-watching Manring lying on his bunk smoking and for a long time neither of them spoke. But there were some things Bowen wanted to say and finally-

“If you’d vented McLaughlin’s brand at the time of the sale we wouldn’t be in jail.” He was sorry as soon as he’d said it. That if-talking was like closing the barn after everything had run out. But Manring drew on his cigarette, not bothering to answer, and Bowen could feel his anger begin to rise.

“Why didn’t you vent his brand when you closed the deal?”

Manring’s head turned on the mattress. “I told you.”

“Earl…this McLaughlin said you worked for him once, about three years ago. Took you on for a Kansas drive.”

“I heard him.”

“You claimed that wasn’t so.”

Manring stubbed out the cigarette. “You going to do the hearing all over again?”

“Earl”-he remembered that his voice was calm and that he wasn’t yet really angry-“did you buy those cattle or did you steal them?”

Manring was on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

“Earl, they’re going to try me tomorrow for something I don’t know anything about!”

“Have a good cry,” Manring muttered.

Bowen rose. “I asked you a question. I want to know if you really bought that stock!”

“So does the judge,” Manring said. He started to roll over, turning his back to Bowen, but suddenly Bowen was dragging him up by the arm and as he came off the bunk Bowen hit him. He hit Manring four times before the sheriff’s deputy came in to separate them.

The trial began at ten o’clock the next morning. At noon they recessed for dinner and for the jury to reach a decision. Then at two o’clock that afternoon the judge passed sentence. Seven years in the Territorial Prison at Yuma. There had been no time wasted. It was McLaughlin’s word against Manring’s and as far as both the judge and the jury were concerned, this was not a two-sided question. In sentencing them, the judge admitted being lenient, since to his knowledge neither of the accused had a previous criminal record.

That night Bowen and Manring were placed in separate cells to await transportation to Yuma.

For the next nine months, on Prison Hill, Bowen saw Manring every day, but they seldom spoke. He made himself believe that Manring was also innocent. That made it easier to live with him. Still, they had little in common and there was no reason for a friendship to exist between them. Gradually, then, he ceased to even think about Manring and the trial and he began to consider him nothing more than another Yuma convict. Being in different cells-though both were in the main cell block-made it that much easier.

From the first day he entered Yuma, Bowen thought of escape. He had made up his mind that he was not going to pay with seven years for something he didn’t do. But thinking of escaping from Yuma you had to consider the Gatling gun over the main gate, the hundreds of miles of desert surrounding the prison, the Pima trackers who would bring you back for a bounty and, finally, the “Snake den” cell in the dungeon block where you would live for a month or more, chained to the stone floor, if the escape failed.

During the time they were at Yuma, construction of the cell block for incorrigibles was still in progress-a project planned to carve a dungeon of twelve cells out of solid granite. Bowen was assigned to the dynamite crew; and it was the experience gained in this work that was primarily responsible for his leaving Yuma some months later.

Their transfer came unexpectedly. Bowen, Manring and four other convicts-one of them Pryde-were taken from their cells one evening soon after supper. Nineteen days later, a wagon rolled through the barbed wire gate of the convict camp at Five Shadows as Frank Renda stood by to greet them.