The Blaze of Noon

by Tim Champlin

  The newest or youngest men were forced to take the lowest bunks where the stench of the slop bucket was worst. And the junior convicts got the job of emptying the bucket each day, along with any other dirty job the others shunned.

  “How long you in for, Jack?”

  “Life.”

  When the big man had been put in their cell nine months earlier, he’d made no secret of his past. Only a good lawyer hired by his family had enabled him to escape the hangman for a double murder. As it turned out, his sentence was reduced to life without parole.

  “You’re a lifer . . . you don’t have anything to lose.” Mormon Bob Heenan was serving three years for polygamy. “I have only sixteen more months before I’m out.”

  “Will your wives be glad to see you, compadre, or have they moved on?” Vasquez asked, grinning. “I have a leetle puta in Sonora. Rita Gomez . . . ahh, just the thought of. . . .”

  “Dreamers! The whole damn’ bunch o’ you!” Three-Fingered Jack snorted. “You’ll all die in here, unless you do something about it.”

  Although talk of escaping was a daily topic, Hugh Deraux knew the endless plotting was more for keeping their hopes up and killing time, than for anything else. Since he still had nine long years for stage robbery stretching endlessly ahead of him, he was open to any feasible plan of escape.

  “What’s the work detail for today?” Deraux asked Ocano to defuse the tension and get them talking about something more immediate. He and Three-Fingered Jack Ocano were the only two of the five who were assigned to hard labor outside in the hot sun. The other three were presently detailed to the laundry, bakery, and the mattress shop.

  “Probably digging that chink’s grave,” Ocano said. “Don’t look forward to that. At least chipping the rock in that second cell we’re cuttin’ in the hillside is far enough along that we can work in the shade part of the day.”

  “Reckon I’ll be shaping those granite rocks to fit into the north wall,” Deraux said. “I like being outdoors. Wouldn’t be bad if it was winter.”

  “How do we get such plush details?” Ocano grimaced.

  “Big Bill Braxton,” Deraux reminded him shortly. The brutal guard made no secret of the fact that he was out to break the will of Ocano and Deraux, who he considered leaders and troublemakers.

  “When I make my break, I’ll put a stop to his career at the same time,” Ocano vowed. “He’s laid that ironwood club across my kidneys one too many times. That bentnosed bastard won’t know what hit him.”

  “You’re serious about this break, then?” Deraux said.

  “Yeah, it’s gotta be. . . .” He paused at the sound of a scuffing noise in the passageway outside the cell. Climbing down from the top bunk, Ocano pressed his face to the iron grate. “Gotta be careful. A couple o’ these damned screws have taken to wearing gum-soled shoes to sneak around and eavesdrop.”

  “Hell, they don’t care what we’re talking about,” Heenan said. “They know it’s only talk. There’s no escaping this place. There’s a Gatling gun on the big watchtower that can sweep the whole compound. And the guard posts on the walls are always manned with men carrying loaded Winchesters. Even if you somehow get over the walls and outside, where you going to go?”

  “The river’s barely a hundred yards away,” Gilliland said.

  “Not for me, compadre,” the handsome Vasquez demurred. “Makes me shiver to think of being sucked down in a whirlpool and suffocated in that brown water. How many of you even know how to swim?” he asked.

  There was a hesitation. “I could probably manage if it isn’t too swift,” Gilliland said.

  “I’ve seen it up close, and even bathed in the eddies. There’s a helluva current,” Deraux said. “Besides, the river’s the first place they’d look.”

  “We could go east of here, up along the Gila,” Gilliland said.

  “This time o’ year, the Gila would be as dry as your scaly scalp,” Heenan said. “Possibly a scummy pool here and yonder, but the main road follows the Gila. Not safe.”

  “North, then, along the Colorado.”

  “You’d have to stay out of sight. And there’s no water back from the river for fifty miles until you get to Deep Well in the Kofas, past Castle Dome Peak. That’s why they’re having a tough time trying to mine in that area,” Heenan said.

  “If we all go at once, at least some of us would get out,” Ocano reasoned.

  In spite of himself, Deraux was beginning to catch escape fever. But they had to have a plan. “If we break for the river and get a log or small boat to float us south, across the border, one or two might make it.”

  “The law pays fifty dollars a head for every returned prisoner,” Gilliland said. “The Yumas and Mojaves are good trackers. They’d have the riverbanks covered, even south of the border. The rurales are always on the look-out for smugglers, and the Cocopahs are very good at capturing escaped prisoners. Then there’s the steamboat traffic to look out for.”

  “Going west, across the river, if you slip past the soldiers at Fort Yuma, you’ve got miles of the desert to contend with,” Heenan said. “I know this country roundabout. I was with a group of Mormons who scouted the whole area for possible settlements.”

  “Strike southeast, then, away from Yuma and the river,” Ocano said.

  Heenan shook his head. “There’s nothing out there but miles of the hottest damn’ desert you can imagine. Probably thirty, forty miles to the first mountains. You might be able to hike across in winter if you had plenty of water and something to eat. But there’s no water until you get to Maricopa Wells, more than ninety miles from here. This time of year, you’d be shriveled like a prune before you got a fourth of that distance.”

  “What about the tanks in the Tinajas Altas Mountains?” Deraux asked.

  “Good chance they’re dry this time of year.”

  “I stopped at those tanks once in January,” Deraux said. “There was plenty of water, then. But what impressed me was how big some of those hollows in the granite are. It’d take a lot of hot, dry weather to evaporate all the water they held.” He recalled the scum-covered, stagnant pools. But at least it was water.

  “We’ve had a long, dry spell,” Heenan countered. “You really want to chance it? They say death by thirst is one of the worst tortures that can happen to a man.” He gestured at the cramped cell. “This place is no picnic, but at least we have enough to eat, plenty of clean well water to drink, and a cot to sleep on.”

  “What about along the border?”

  Vasquez laughed dryly. “El Camino del Diablo. The Devil’s Highway. The old padres named it right.”

  Deraux nodded. The Spaniards had a knack for such descriptive names. One hundred miles of burning desert where one had to depend for a drink on pozitos dug in sand washes, or tinajas, eroded in granite mountains.

  “You’ve already made up your mind to stay and serve your time, amigo,” Vasquez said. “I’ll never live long enough to see the end of my term. I’m for any plan that has a chance of success.”

  “If the heat doesn’t get you, there are always the Papagos, or maybe wandering Apaches who claim that region, or maybe their Sonoran cousins, the Yaquis,” Heenan said encouragingly, playing devil’s advocate.

  Vasquez spat accurately into the overflowing slop bucket. “¡Madre de Dios! Even the Indians avoid that desert this time of year.”

  “Can you draw us a map of the surrounding area, showing the river and the desert mountains, especially the location of any water?” Deraux asked.

  Heenan thought for a moment. “Sure. Get me a pencil and paper.”

  “I’ll steal some paper out of the library,” Vasquez said.

  Morning light filtered into the stinking cells. Whistles blew. Boots thudded in the passageways. Ratcheting levers loaded Winchester chambers as the guards went to their posts, working in pairs—one to open the cell doors and unchain the inmates from the huge ring set deep into the rock floor, the other to stand watch with ready rifle. A guard at eac
h door opened a heavy padlock with a key. At a signal, the metal bar was thrown that actuated both the inner and outer cell doors. Metallic clanging echoed down the passageways and off the stone walls as all the cells were opened at once. The prisoners were unchained and filed out under the guards’ watchful eyes. The men shuffled down the passageway toward the mess hall, yawning, scratching, coughing. Talking was forbidden.

  They sat on benches at long tables, eating lumpy mush out of tin bowls with wooden spoons. The prison authorities were careful not to give them anything they could fashion into a weapon. But, at the moment, weapons were not on Deraux’s mind. A method of escape was. He softened the Civil War surplus hardtack in the strong black coffee and pondered his next move. Should he go it alone, or combine his escape attempt with the others? He worked better solo. But, here, a single man’s efforts would be doomed. On the other hand, could he depend upon the three other men in his cell who were eager to try? Fearless and desperate, Three-Fingered Jack Ocano would be an asset—if he didn’t get sidetracked taking revenge on the brutal guard, Big Bill Braxton. Deraux looked across the table at the youthful Gil Gilliland. The Irishman with the black, curly hair was something of a mystery. He was quiet, but had been sentenced for killing a man with his fists over a woman during a drunken brawl. He was careful about his food, drink, exercise, and rest—a man who’d been a laborer and an athlete. But Gilliland, chaffing terribly under confinement, was like a spring under tension who’d explode with energy once the break started. For Vasquez, it was all or nothing. He would escape or die in the attempt. Heenan, a prisoner for the non-violent crime of polygamy, making it clear he would remain and serve out his sentence, had promised not to hinder them.

  Ignoring what he ate, Deraux spooned up the last of the tasteless mush, and swallowed the last of the bitter coffee as one would stoke a furnace. He considered the meal as nothing more than fuel for his body.

  Breakfast finished, the prisoners marched to their duties for the day. Ocano and Deraux drew their tools and were escorted to the cemetery on a slope overlooking the junction of the Colorado and the Gila Rivers.

  “Need four graves,” the guard said, pointing with his stubby shotgun. “Start a new row right over here.”

  “Four? Who died?”

  “Don’t ask questions. Just dig.”

  “The chink, for one. Who else?” Ocano persisted boldly.

  “Maybe you, if you’re out in this sun long enough.” The guard sauntered off a few yards and sat down on the big rocks of a mounded grave.

  Ocano grunted something under his breath, then swung his pick overhead and brought it down with all the force of his massive body. The point of the pick barely chipped the caliche. Ocano looked at Deraux from under his straw hat. “Shit!” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Looks like a long job,” Deraux whispered back, glancing at the guard who was perched on a grave, cradling his weapon and smoking a cigarette.

  The sun cleared the horizon and its oblique rays began stoking up the heat, beginning another day of baking the bare soil rock hard. No rain for months, and none expected until at least October. Less than four inches of rain a year would do nothing to soften the soil in any case. By mutual agreement, the bigger man broke the hard top layer while Deraux shoveled out the detritus. Once they got down a foot or more, Deraux took over wielding the pick.

  Deraux looked across the compound at four other prisoners who were chiseling a dark cell into the side of a hill to be used for solitary confinement. From a distance, the prisoners in their uniforms of horizontal black and yellow stripes resembled bumblebees.

  It was one of the worst days Deraux could remember. Even though they were given all the water they wanted, mid-afternoon found his head aching and his knees rubbery. He climbed out of the knee-deep hole, wiping his hands on his pants, feeling the blisters between the calluses. He took a deep breath of the heated air and looked across the river to California. Dust devils formed and spun, dissipating into the shimmering heat that rose from the desert floor.

  The guards were changed, but he and Ocano were not relieved. Big Bill Braxton sauntered into the graveyard, ironwood club swinging from his belt. Ocano glared his hatred at the stocky guard with the crooked nose.

  “Ole Sol ain’t got you yet?” Braxton taunted. “He will.” He chuckled. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  Ocano opened his mouth to retort, but Deraux stepped quickly between them. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “He’s trying to goad you into cussing him so he can beat you.”

  Ocano drew a deep breath and returned to work, transferring his rage to an extra hard pick stroke in the rocky soil.

  One of the prisoners at work on the dark cell dropped from sunstroke, and was dragged into the shade to lie until he recovered. At two o’clock another, working on the road leading up from Yuma to the prison, was carried off.

  Deraux and Ocano, by rationing their strength, managed to last until supper. But Deraux knew he didn’t have many more days like that left in him. The break would have to be soon, or he’d be leaving his bones under the caliche.

  For four more days, Deraux worked in the graveyard. Only his hate kept him going when other men fell. Ocano was a machine. When he wasn’t cursing, his pick or shovel rose and fell with monotonous regularity. He was either impervious to heat, Deraux decided, or his hate was even stronger and drove him on. Despite eating and drinking as much as they could lay hands on, both men lost weight.

  Heenan drew them a map of the surrounding country, marking roads, rivers, desert mountains, and possible water holes. “It’s all from memory, but I think it’s fairly accurate,” Heenan said. He and Deraux then used a tablet filched from the library to make four more copies.

  By evening of the fourth day on their grave-digging detail, word of the break had somehow spread to the cells on either side of them and one diagonally across the hall. At least twelve other cons were eager to join.

  “The break’s gotta come tomorrow,” Ocano said after their leg chains were fastened and the doors had clanged shut for the night. “Or else word’s gonna leak out to the screws that something’s about to happen.”

  Deraux nodded. “Yeah. One more day with a shovel in that sun could be the end o’ me.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday and the number of guards will be reduced. Our punishment detail will go on anyway, so we’ll be outside,” Ocano said.

  “We’ll try it just before dark,” Deraux said. “There will be a partial moon, but it’ll rise late.”

  The two men fell to discussing details, with Vasquez adding a comment now and then. Gilliland mostly just listened. There was no way successfully to scale the walls. Adobe-plastered stone ten feet thick at the base, tapering to four feet wide at the top, and fifteen feet high, the walls were surmounted with guard towers in the corners. To have a chance, they’d have to get hold of the keys to the doors. When the particulars had been worked out, the plan was whispered to the men in the other cells. It’d take place as the men finished supper and before they were herded back to their cells for the night. When the whistle sounded for the end of the evening meal, the cons would overwhelm the guards, and disarm them. With weapons and keys, the convicts would then open the door leading to the graveyard outside the main compound, and make a break for the brush along the river, shooting anyone who got in their way. If they moved fast enough and with the element of surprise, perhaps some of them would avoid bullets from the Gatling gun and the Winchesters.

  The next morning at sunup, Deraux and Ocano were set to work in the graveyard while the other work gangs were given free time to read or to work on handcrafted items that were sold to the public on Sundays. Although heat and nerves had stolen his appetite, Deraux forced himself to eat as much as he could hold at breakfast and lunch, knowing if he got outside, it might be a long time until the next meal. The two of them were the only laborers working in the graveyard, and only one guard was set over them. That man was Big Bill Braxton who’d given his men
Saturday off. He seemed to enjoy watching the two prisoners toil and sweat in the sun while he lounged, smoking a cigarette. He eschewed a shotgun for guard duty, and carried only his holstered Colt. His favorite weapon, the ironwood club, was on his belt.

  The sun was sapping Deraux’s energy. He pretended to work, but was actually dogging it, saving his strength for later. As the day wore on, the wind picked up, blowing grit off the loaded shovels and into their eyes and mouths. Braxton, who sat downwind of them, finally stood up and moved. The wind grew steadily, rattling gravel against the tool shed and the wooden headboards in the cemetery, raking the adobe walls. Gusts off the surrounding desert swept up layers of powdery particles, whirling them high into the air until the billowing, yellowish dust obscured everything for more than fifty yards. The air smelled of dust, and the men were coated with a fine layer of it, yet it didn’t stick to the skin like paste because their perspiration instantly evaporated.

  The six o’clock whistle sounded for supper, but Braxton made no move to dismiss the men for the evening meal.

  “Ain’t we gonna eat, Braxton?” Ocano yelled above the driving wind, leaning on his shovel.

  “You got all day tomorrow to lollygag around,” the guard said. “Finish that grave before you knock off.” Braxton pulled a piece of jerky from his uniform pocket and began gnawing on it.

  “Hell, that’ll take two more hours!” Ocano said.

  “Perfect. It’ll be dark, and you’ll be done.”

  “Shit!” Ocano turned his back on the guard and pretended to slam the point of his shovel into the foot-deep hole, but grinned at Deraux as he did so. It was working just as they’d planned. Neither man wanted to go inside.

  Another hour dragged by. Braxton took a long drink from the canteen he had slung from his shoulder. The wind continued to fill the air with dust, wrapping Prison Hill in premature twilight. Through the haze, Deraux could barely see the big sheltered guard tower with its Gatling gun.