Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Do you understand what that means, Alexander?”

  “Yes, sir.” Fallon’s head bobbed and he felt his heart racing. He knew exactly what this meant. He was going to a camp. The only question was, which one?

  “You meet the requirements, thanks to the recent commutation of your sentence to a mere ten years.”

  A mere ten years? Fallon had been in The Walls less than two months, and it had taken him every bit of luck, every muscle in his body, every instinct, and everything he had learned as a lawman in the Indian Nations and as an inmate in Illinois, Arizona, Missouri, and now Texas to have survived for that long.

  “Dr. Crouch has pronounced you fit for physical labor, our board has given its unanimous consent, and as superintendent, I am in agreement that—perhaps because of how you handled yourself at the recent incident at our cemetery—that you should be given a chance to apply your skills outside of The Walls.”

  Would that be the skills he had worked on for weeks in Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida? Or the skills he had worked on in brawls in the prison yard and a bloody shootout at the cemetery?

  “Do not let the thought of escape enter your head, Alexander. One mistake, one fight, one bad word, one wrong look, and you will be shackled and returned immediately here, and after a weeklong stay in solitary, you will be worked like you’ve never been worked before.”

  Fallon waited. Where the hell are you sending me? he wanted to say.

  “The sergeants and the guards will assume all management, guarding, and discipline while you are outside in your job. Do not try anything, or you will feel as though every brick in this prison has dropped onto your body.”

  Where? Damn you. Where ?

  “Your clothes and bedding will be washed once a week. You will not be required to work when it is raining or on Sundays, unless the foreman believes it is absolutely necessary.”

  Just tell me where I’m going.

  “You may not be subletted out to another operation without my consent, and if such consent is granted, you must be returned to your original place of hire before dark.

  “You will work full-time, but not before dawn and not after dark.

  “You will not work with any convicts serving time on the county level. You will work only with inmates from The Walls or our unit in Rusk.”

  WHERE?

  “Your uniform will be the same as it is inside The Walls.”

  Fallon clenched fists in both hands.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  He relaxed, shook his head, tried to look patient and natural.

  “Don’t think this is some sort of vacation, Mr. Alexander. You’re going from the hell of The Walls to what everyone calls Hell on the Brazos.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “When do I get out of here?” Fallon asked.

  “Now.”

  Luckily for Fallon, the warden looked down and rang a bell, therefore he didn’t see the reaction on Fallon’s face. By the time Wilkinson had lifted his stare, he saw a convict beaming with pleasure that he would be walking out of this dung heap—instead of the shock, and maybe even a hint of fear, that Fallon had registered immediately. Yeah, Fallon agreed, he would never make it as an undercover private detective or some thespian treading the boards.

  Two guards had entered upon hearing the superintendent’s summons.

  “Take him to . . . well . . .” Wilkinson looked at Fallon, turned up his nose, and said, “See that he gets a bath, shave, and a clean set of clothes. The usual gear for an inmate being hired out to a plantation.”

  “Does he need anything out of his cell?” one of the guards asked.

  “No,” the warden answered instantly, but then considered Fallon. “Do you?”

  Fallon’s head shook. The guards would likely search Fallon’s cell for anything that might give away his true identity. All they would find would be the weapon hidden in the post of his bunk, but, hell, if they looked hard enough, they would find that in every cell in The Walls . . . and the unit at Rusk . . . and any hard-time prison in these United States of America.

  “Very good.” The warden opened a drawer. “I’ll have the papers at the front gate. Two guards will be waiting there to escort him to the train and deliver him to his new employer.”

  Fallon stood, nodded his thanks at Walter Wilkinson, and let the two guards take him away.

  This was happening too fast. He would have no time to get word to MacGregor or the attorney general. His one hope would be to find Aaron Holderman, but the brute wasn’t anywhere to be found. Fallon wet his lips, trying to think of something. Then he found himself standing face-to-face with John Wesley Hardin.

  “Hell on the Brazos, eh?” the man-killer said with a grin.

  Fallon gave a slight nod. “No different than The Walls, I expect.”

  “But you get to breathe free air.”

  “It’s not really free.”

  Hardin rolled himself a cigarette. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll miss having you appear in my court, Alexander. You made a fine lawyer.”

  The killer held out his hand. Fallon shook, and then Hardin was walking away, putting a cigarette in his lips and striking a match on his trousers to light the smoke.

  “How did that snake know you was going to pick cotton or whatever the hell they’ll have you doing?”

  The exact question was going through my mind, too, Fallon thought, though he just shrugged off the guard’s question and walked toward the bathhouse.

  He gave himself a good scrubbing, though gently around the bullet scratch, the knot on his head, the other assorted cuts, scrapes, and sore spots, and let the prison barber trim his short hair and scrape away the beginnings of beard stubble. Then, after being outfitted with a new black-and-white-striped uniform and given a bag of necessaries and a blanket, he strolled toward the double doors that separated the prison from the outside.

  Sergeant Barney Drexel met Fallon and his guards outside the iron door. A frail trusty, who looked old enough to be Methuselah’s father, stood by the thick door and held the key.

  “Try to escape, you’ll be cut down,” was all Drexel said, and he started to walk away.

  “Come on,” said the trusty.

  Fallon stepped away from the guards but stopped when Drexel told him to. Fallon waited, head down, obedient, acting like every other convict inside The Walls.

  “Look at me,” Drexel said.

  Fallon lifted his head.

  The big cuss tilted his head one way, then the other, and his eyes narrowed.

  “I swear I’ve seen you before,” Drexel rasped after a moment.

  Fallon shrugged. “I’d remember you.”

  The sergeant turned his head to spit tobacco juice, wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, and moved back a bit, as though distance would give him a better look.

  “Ever been to Nacogdoches?” Drexel asked.

  “No, boss.”

  “Fort Smith?”

  “Time or two. Stayed out of that part of the state as long as I could, boss.”

  “Mexico?”

  “No, boss.”

  “Natchez-Under-The-Hill?”

  “No, boss.”

  “Your face brings someone to mind.”

  “Might be my pa. I got told I favored him, and he got around a lot more than I did. Rode with Quantrill.”

  Fallon’s father had been a Unionist to the core.

  “Quantrill was trash,” Drexel said, and spit again. “Get him the hell out of my sight.”

  As Drexel walked away, Fallon stepped toward the trusty, thanked the guards, and hoped he wasn’t sweating after the quick interrogation by the ex-lawman from Judge Parker’s court.

  “Don’t you forget what Sergeant Barney told you,” the old man whispered as his keys ground against the tumbler and turned the bolt. The door opened. The trusty nodded, and Fallon stepped inside, leaving the guards, Sergeant Barney Drexel, John Wesley Hardin, and a lot of Fallon’s own blood inside The Walls. The door closed, leavi
ng Fallon and the trusty in mostly darkness. The sound of the door being locked became amplified in the small room, and then Fallon felt more than saw the ancient man shuffling across the floor to the next door.

  “The sentry box is just outside,” the trusty said as the keys rattled on his chain while he found the right one for the next door. “Round building, just a few steps away.”

  “I remember,” Fallon said.

  “Yeah.” The key began to grate. “Reckon you do. You got out for burial duty. And ain’t been here long nohow.”

  “Feels long,” Fallon said.

  “Boy,” the trusty said, “you don’t know what long is. I got locked up in ’53.”

  Fallon held his breath. The door pushed open.

  The trusty pulled some papers from his trousers pocket and said, “Here’s your bona fides, suh. Good luck.”

  Fallon thanked him and moved toward the opening, drawing in a deep breath of free air as he stepped out of the dark prison entranceway.

  “Y’all come back now, y’hear,” the old-timer said in a mocking voice, and closed the door, locking it behind him, after Fallon had stepped out.

  The guard waited in the small, round sentry box, holding a repeating rifle in his hands and a perpetual scowl on his iron-hard face. He said nothing, barely moved, barely breathed.

  Two other guards approached from the long road that led maybe a half mile to the street. Fallon waited for them, aware after about a minute that neither one of them was Aaron Holderman.

  “Hell,” he whispered to himself.

  He handed the first guard the papers, who glanced at them, shoved them into the back pocket of his britches, and said, “Let’s go.”

  Fallon resigned himself that he was about to be alone, on his own, but he had grown used to that. There had been no one to trust in Yuma. He felt pretty much alone in Missouri. Those years in Joliet had toughened him enough to make do on his own, because there was no one in prison that he could trust, or would trust, especially with his life.

  They made it to the street, and one of the guards said, “The omnibus.”

  Fallon saw it and began walking to it. He saw the buggy across the street, saw the woman in the back, wearing a dress of yellow with purple stripes, and heard her call out, “Darling!”

  Fallon stopped, took a step back toward the guards. He drew in a deep breath.

  “Harry, dear!” Christina Whitney ran toward him, lifting the hems of her dress as her shoes clattered on the paved street.

  “What the hell?” said the younger guard.

  The other guard raised his rifle, a sawed-off Marlin.

  “It’s my wife,” Fallon said.

  The two guards, young, green, uncertain of what this unexpected reunion called for, took tentative steps back, and Fallon let the operative leap into his arms and kiss him full on the lips.

  He heard the rifle cock, and Fallon immediately pushed Christina Whitney away. He turned to the guards and said, “It’s all right. She’s just . . . excited.”

  The guard refused to lower the rifle.

  “I’ve been trying and trying to get inside, but that mean ol’ warden, he just won’t let me see you again,” Christina said, sounding like a petulant teenager.

  “I told you—”

  She cut him off. “I am too young to be a divorcée, Harry Alexander. I shall not hear of it. No. No, sir!” She pouted.

  “Ma’ am,” the guard without the rifle said. “We have a train to catch.”

  “A train. My goodness. Where on earth are you taking my husband?”

  Both guards whispered curses.

  “Honey,” Fallon said, “let me state this for once and all.”

  “No.” Christina sobbed. “No. No. No. No. I can’t stand being away.”

  “Ma’am,” the kid with the Marlin said, “you need to step aside. Right now.”

  She sighed.

  Fallon said, “Do as they say, girl. They’re letting me go out on a release program. Don’t ruin this for me. You heard me, didn’t you?”

  “I heard you, Harry Alexander!” She stepped onto the street, put her hands on her hips. “I was just going to pay that mean old warden a visit when you happened to come out. I heard you, though. You’re stating your case. I hear you plain and clear, Mr. Convict. Remember, I was the one who got your sentence reduced to ten years. And this is the thanks I get!” She wiped her eyes, looked at the two guards, and snapped, “You may have him, sirs.”

  Turning on her heels, she hurried back to the buggy, climbed in, said something to the Mexican driver, and the buggy carried her down the street.

  “That’s some pistol you got there, mister,” the younger guard said.

  “You married?” Fallon asked the boy.

  “Nope.”

  “Good. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

  Both guards, even the one with the sawed-off rifle, chuckled, and they resumed their way to the omnibus.

  Fallon breathed in deeply, and exhaled. Christina had gotten the message. He wondered how long she had been sitting in that buggy with the Mexican driver. He wondered if the driver had been hired by Christina or was also on the American Detective Agency’s payroll.

  But that didn’t matter. She had gotten his message. State had been the key word. State meant that he was being sent to Texas. Hell on the Brazos. He’d be working on one of Colonel Justice’s cotton plantations. They had gone over that for about a week until Fallon had gotten everything drilled inside his head.

  State. Texas. Hell on the Brazos.

  Look would have meant he was going to Louisiana. Look, honey, you have to listen to me . . . or something along those lines. All right was to be the trigger to let Christina, Dan MacGregor, or Aaron Holderman understand that he was bound for Alabama. For Christ’s sake or For the love of God, something like that, would tell everyone he’d be in Florida. And if Justice had some operation, a secret one, in another state, or country, well . . . the detectives did not think that was a likely scenario.

  At least Fallon could breathe a tad easier. Christina Whitney had his location. The omnibus reached the train station, and two men with muscles bulging against their muslin shirts stepped toward the guards. Both men wore twin holsters, butt forward, flaps snapped, but from the size of the duo, Fallon figured they rarely needed to draw iron. The lead guard from The Walls passed the papers to the bigger of the brutes, who signed a receipt, and the guards gave Fallon a curt nod, turned around, and left Fallon with the thugs.

  “Get on the train,” Fallon heard one man say in a menacing whisper. “And don’t say a word to anybody. You’re deef and dumb. Savvy?”

  Fallon nodded.

  The smaller of the giants laughed. “He’s got more of a brain than most of ’em.”

  “Uh-huh. Usually they answer, and I get to slap ’em hard and teach ’em what deef and dumb mean.”

  Fallon shrugged.

  “Move.”

  This, Fallon thought with tired sarcasm, should be a most enjoyable trip.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was a short, painless, fairly relaxing train ride for the first leg. Huntsville had a prison, a normal college, the grave of Texas legend Sam Houston, sawmills, and plenty of businesses, four stagecoach lines, but its only railroad was a short spur, all of eight miles, that connected the city with the Houston and Great Northern Railroad in Phelps.

  Fallon stepped off the train, felt the iron claw of one of the guards grab him by the shoulder and shove him toward the ticket counter. Fallon remained mute. It wasn’t a long train ride to Houston, he figured, but a man could get beaten senseless by the time the train pulled into the station.

  At the counter, the smaller of the men stepped forward and showed his railroad pass.

  “Three tickets,” he said, “to Marshall.”

  Fallon tensed. Marshall lay north. Houston was south. Houston was the jumping-off spot to Josiah Justice’s Hell on the Brazos empire.

  The guard went on, “Then we’ll take
the train to Shreveport.”

  Shreveport. Louisiana.

  Well, Hank, Fallon thought, now you’ve got yourself into a real pickle. Welcome to hell.

  * * *

  On the train ride north to Marshall he read a Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper that someone had left on his seat. He sipped coffee and watched the woods pass by on the ride east to Shreveport, which felt so hot and sticky from the Red River that it made Huntsville feel more like Montana. There the guards showed another pass, and they waited a couple of hours before boarding a southbound Texas Pacific train that took them to Cypress, and from there, a smaller spur line rocked them gently through the swampy country into Natchitoches.

  All totaled, it had taken them roughly twenty-nine hours, including time spent in the depot and a couple of delays, before Fallon found himself standing at the depot at Natchitoches. They waited some more outside the depot.

  Fallon remained deaf, dumb, and tired.

  Thirty minutes later, a farm wagon arrived, driven by a big-boned black man with two white men riding beside him. Fallon recognized the uniforms as that of the Huntsville guards. Alas, or maybe thankfully, neither of the guards was Aaron Holderman.

  Face it, he told himself, you’re all alone now.

  “Give y’ all any trouble?” said a mustached man with a patch over his right eye and an ugly scar over his left.

  “Nope. Didn’t raise no stink. Didn’t say no word.”

  The other one added: “Lessen we asked him somethin’.”

  The man with the scar and patch came up to Fallon and leaned forward until his nose was almost touching Fallon’s face.

  “That’s good.” His breath could stop a herd of stampeding buffalo. “You keep right on doin’ that . . . What’s his name?”

  The guard had to pull out the paper. “Alexander. Harry Alexander. He’s from Arkansas.”

  “The only good thing ever to come out of Arkansas,” the man with the patch said, “was a whore I met in Vicksburg who called herself Alice. Said she hailed from Baring Cross.” He grinned. “But it weren’t no cross that that tramp bared.”