"Wait'll we get far enough to have the machine guns open up on us," said Phil Bray. "There sdn't any sense being afraid of things that we ain't reached yet."
He sat up and looked around him. The stars swarmed lower in the sky in shining clusters. Time went by rapidly. The stars drifted up in the east and drifted down in the west. The wheel of the constellations was turning. It seemed to be spinning with an increasing speed.
That was because in time the wheel would turn the sun up above the eastern horizon. When that happened, the men would come to the death house. They would see the warden lying on the floor, dead. They would see the empty cell.
No, long before that they would discover the break. The two guards would return at the end of one hour. And was not that hour almost ended now?
Bray sat up, his head tilted back at a sharp angle, a strangling angle. He had a magnificent face. He would have been more handsome than Joe Mantry, even, had it not been that his nose was too small. It by no means filled up the space that extended between mouth and brow. It gave one a sense of emptiness among the features. One sees that emptiness most often in the face of an ape.
"We gotta go back," Bray said.
"We gotta go where?" said Dave Lister. "Go back to the cell, you mean? You go back if you want to. I ain't such a fool. I'd rather go to hell."
"We gotta go back," said Bray.
"All right, baby," answered Joe Mantry. "You go back, and I'll stay here and be a rear guard."
"We gotta go back," said Bray.
"You go back then," said Dave Lister. "I'll stay here. When they find us, we dive off the edge of the roof. That's all right. Or else we just sit still and plug ourselves. We got the guns to do it. Out here we can pick and choose."
"Maybe we can pick and choose some of the guards when it gets light enough," remarked Joe Mantry. "I'd like to get me the big freckle-faced son that kicked me in the ribs that day. Maybe I'll get a chance at him before they turn the lights on the roof. Maybe he'll come out here to hunt for us. Would I laugh if I got a chance to imload a few slugs into him?"
"We gotta go back," said Phil Bray.
He crawled straight out from among the chimney pots. Dave Lister clung to his coat tails, whispering:
"Don't go, chief. They'll see you. They'll give you away. What are you doing to us?"
Bray struck the hand of Lister away and went on. Joe Mantry crawled out in pursuit.
"We gotta go with the chief," he whispered to Lister.
"Yeah, we gotta go—with him!" panted the penman, and took up his own way across the roof.
They got to the place where the blanket rope hung down from the drain pipe two stories up. Instantly they made a human ladder. Bray was the foundation of it. Lister climbed over him, and then helped Mantry up with a swing that took him well on his way, and in a moment Joe Mantry was sprawling out on the top of the roof above. The tall, thin-legged body of Dave Lister followed. Phil Bray himself had to run back and then sprint forward and leap high in his stockinged feet before he managed to catch the end of the blanket rope. But his grip was strong, and he handed himself up the length of the blankets until he was with his friends above.
There he stretched out, panting.
For Dave Lister had gasped: "The east guard has spotted us! Ratten out, boys!"
They pressed themselves out on the roof. The guard who walked the eastern wall had, in fact, halted in his pacing, and was looking directly toward them, as it seemed. The signal would be three rapid shots from his rifle. That signal would start the alarm bell clanging. Every guard in the prison would come to life with a jump.
The rifle shots were not fired. The guard continued to pace the wall. Phil Bray led the way back through the unlocked door at the end of the death house. As he crawled through and rose to his feet, he remained for a moment bent forward, as though he were dodging a blow.
"The warden!" he gasped. "Boys, the warden's body is gone!"
"Are dead men walking to-night?" breathed Dave Lister.
The three of them crowded around the spot where the warden had lain. There was a big pool of blood about the smudged outline which the head and shoulders of poor Bergman had left on the concrete floor. A good quart of blood seemed to have spilled out there in an irregular splotch such as a hurled egg would leave on a wall. Only at one point the red liquid had flowed away in a long stream.
"Who's been in here? Who's carried him out? Why ain't the alarm bell ringing?" demanded Phil Bray.
"The alarm will start in a minute," answered Joe Mantry. "And then the music will start. Well, there's enough food left up here to keep us going for two or three days— booze, too—and we've got enough bullets in here to keep them backed up. Why, boys, this is going to be a party!"
"We're going on from here," said Phil Bray. "Maybe we've still got a chance!"
He opened the door which commanded the head of the stairs. Those steps went down to a landing where a bright light was burning. There was another powerful lamp burning just above the door which Bray had opened. A funnel of brightness seemed to be pouring up into his face; the law was laying a ghostly hand on him, thrusting him back.
"Come here, Joe!" he commanded.
Joe Mantry approached, saying: "It's better this way.
We'll have a couple of days; that's better than a couple of, hours!"
"Shut up, you fool! They'd smoke us out in a few minutes," answered Phil Bray. "Climb up on my shoulder and jimmy that electric light, will you? Maybe the other stairway lights work on the same switch. Maybe we can blow the lot of 'em! And if "
Joe Mantry leaped at him with a grunt of eagerness. It was perfectly apparent that if the stairs could be buried in darkness, the three of them would be able to take at least a few long steps in the direction of freedom. Joe Mantry stood up, like the sure-footed athlete that he was, on the shoulders of his chief. He rose on tiptoes, reached the electric bulb, and turned it out. In another moment, with his Colt, he had "jimmied" the fixture. There was a faint snapping, hissing sound, and the flash of a spark; afterward there was thick darkness on the landing of the stairs below them.
"Now, boys!" said Phil Bray, and Mantry dropped down again.
Their unshod feet made rapid whispering, thumping sounds as they fled down the stairs. Suddenly some one began to shout far before them, demanding light, cursing.
They turned around the comer of the stairs, and heard the voice immediately in front of them. They ran it down. The butt of Bray's gun struck down the clamorer. The man fell with long groan, and tumbled down half a dozen steps.
Other voices began to shout. Light glimmered over the stairs at the next landing. They stole into the field of it like three guilty shadows. People were speaking excitedly. One man was shouting:
"Listen, chief! Tell us what happened! Who did it? Did you fall down? What happened?"
"He's dying! He's been brained!" shouted another. "Speak to us, chief!"
Off that landing place, double doors opened upon a corridor of a cell room, and there the three criminals saw the warden standing with blood running down his hideous face, and wide-open, staring eyes that saw nothing, while two of his assistants gripped his arms, supporting his staggering body and trying to get speech out of him.
The warden, as the three forms slipped out of darkness, across the landing, and down the next flight of the stairs, slowly raised his hand and pointed after them. Dave Lister, last of the three, distinctly saw the gesture!
VII—THE ALARM
Down the stairs went the three—another flight, and another—and in the lower hall they heard voices exclaiming loudly.
"The warden'll have his wits back in a minute—and he saw us all go by—if he can talk to 'em!" breathed Dave Lister. "Quick, Joe! Oh, quick!"
Joe Mantry already had found the lock of the door in the darkness. He had selected, with his sure, slim fingers, the largest of the keys. Now he slid it home in the lock and turned.
Some one was saying: "Here—there's the lantern at la
st!"
Suddenly waves of lantern light washed through the hall, all down the length of it. Dave Lister, as usual, was the one of the three who looked back. He made out three or four dark forms halfway down the hall. He saw a man coming at a run, a lantern swinging crazily in his hand.
Then Joe Mantry opened the door, and they leaped outside and closed the door behind them.
The prison yard—the outer yard—was empty. Not a soul stirred in it. And the guard on the southern wall, looking gigantic against the stars, was walking away from them. His rifle wavered with a dim gleam as he carried it on his shoulder.
They turned the comer of the prison building, following after Phil Bray, and since they were now in front of the main structure, the gate to the guard wall was straight ahead of them. Toward that went Phil Bray, with his^ stocking-footed companions closing up beside him.
"We'll put a gun on the gatekeeper. We'll make him open up for us," said Phil Bray softly. "No crazy work, now. You, Dave—you keep hold of yourself!"
"Like steel!" whispered Dave Lister. "Like steel!"
He kept saying that over and over, his voice hissing against his teeth:
"Like steel! Like steel!"
Dave was the weak link in the chain of three. If he held, all might go well.
The gatehouse was a little sentry box beside the huge double door that came together to close the entrance to the prison. In the face of that box there was a little oval window with a light behind it, and when Bray glanced inside he saw the gatekeeper sitting with his visored, official cap pushed halfway back on his head. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons; his stomach puffed out against the serge in a great double fold.
Bray pushed open the narrow door at the side and slid his revolver under the nose of the gatekeeper. There was blood on the gun and blood on the hand of Bray.
"All right, brother," he said. "Open up for us!"
The gatekeeper kept on looking at the gun. All the color about his mouth disappeared. His lips were the color of gray stone, and, like stone, they seemed incapable of uttering speech. His mouth feU open and left his chin resting on his breast.
Joe Mantry glided in beside him, jerked a revolver out of the holster at the guard's hip, and tapped him lightly over the head with the barrel of it. The cap fell off and exposed silver-gray hair, with the pink sheen of the scalp through the thinness of it.
"Start moving, grandpa!" said Mantry.
The gatekeeper got up, using more the force of his arms than the strength of his legs.
"The three of them!" he muttered. "The three of them!"
He pulled out a drawer of the little desk before him, and took out three keys for the three great locks of the gate. Then he walked outside with the three behind him, shouldering him with their closeness.
"Keep the guns out of sight. Don't let 'em shine!" whispered Bray.
They kept the guns out of sight, but they kept them pointing at the gatekeeper. There was a weapon for each of them now. The thin fingers of Dave Lister kept pipping and relaxing on the handle of his newly acquired Colt.
"Hey, Joe!" called a voice from the wall above. "Hey, Joe, all right?"
Out of the little guard tower above, to the side of the gate, a man was leaning, peering down.
"Answer!" said Bray, giving the gatekeeper his knee.
"Hi!" exclaimed the gatekeeper in a vague, bawling voice.
"What's that?" called the guard above them.
"It's all right!" whispered Bray. "Say that, or else "
"It's all right!" shouted Joe, the gatekeeper.
He thrust the big keys one by one into the locks. He turned them. And as the second bolt slid back with a dim, clicking sound, the alarm bell suddenly started crashing out of the central sky, pouring brazen ruin about the ears of the fugitives.
"They've got you! Give it up!" snarled the gatekeeper.
The quick hand of Joe Mantry went past him, turned the third key, and the gate gave way, yawning open slowly.
Tall Dave Lister was the first through the opening. The noise of the alarm bell had maddened him. He was no longer saying to himself that he must be as cool and strong as steel. He went through that open gate with a bound like a deer and sprinted up the slope straight ahead of him. It made no difference to the madness of Dave Lister that the guard tower on the hill was directly in his path. He was blind. He simply wanted distance between him and the dreadful, irregular pulsation of that bell.
Phil Bray might have killed, Joe, the gatekeeper, to make sure that one less enemy was left behind him, but Bray hated blood when he could avoid the shedding of it. He simply gave the man the weight of the butt of his gun under the ear as he went through the gate, and Joe sat down with a sudden thud on the threshold.
"Let Lister go—the fool is ruining us by runningP' growled Mantry at the ear of Bray.
"Where one goes, we all go," answered Bray through his teeth. "Come on! We don't welch!"
He charged right up the hill behind Lister. It was gallant; it was true and faithful companionship; but it was also throwing themselves away, perhaps. For an instant Joe Mantry wavered. But he was accustomed to following Bray. And now the force of a superior resolution drew him after his leader once more. He sprinted swiftly on Bray's heels. The long legs of Lister were bounding over the ground well in the lead.
"Who's there? Who's there?" yelled the voice of the guard from above the gate. His words sounded vaguely and largely in the air, half lost in the frightful outcry of the alarm bell. The circling searchlight of the tower on the hill just before them cut across their path, picking them brightly out of the dark of the night.
The guard on the wall started firing.
At the second report of the rifle, Lister leaped into the air with a yell of pain, but landed, running faster than ever.
However, that guard was shooting too straight for comfort. And in another moment the searchlights might light up his target for him.
Phil Bray halted, turned, and took time for one breath to steady himself. Then he fired. He was fifty yards away, and it was a snap shot, but he got the guard right through the hips. The poor fellow folded up, and Bray ran on.
He turned into a greater peril than that from the guards on the prison wall.
The searchlight had snapped across them. Now it returned, letting its big white hand waver over the ground here and there, until it found them once more. It settled on them with a shudder, and then with a steady streaming of illumination. Instinctively the three fanned out to either side to try to get out of that deadly brightness.
Bullets would hail instantly down the path of the searchlight, of course. Even if they succeeded in running past the place, each of these guard towers had fast horses constantly under the saddle, ready to take up a pursuit.
"Shoot for the light!" yelled Bray, setting the example as he ran.
But the gun kept jumping falsely in his hand. Bullets began to whine through the air about him, while the madman, Dave Lister, still ran right on into the white light to ruin.
He was not even using his gun, however blindly.
But Joe Mantry was shooting, firing just as his left foot parted from the ground each time. With his second shot he smashed the fragile mechanism of the searchlight. There was a crunching and then a tinkling fall of broken glass.
Tall Dave Lister, well in the lead of the other two, rounded the side of the little guard tower.
His two companions could see what happened. The horses were there, tied to a rack, looking hkc angels of promise to those panting runners. As Lister sprang for the rack, the rear door of the guard tower opened.
Lister fired twice. The door slammed shut, and there was a wild howling of pain from inside the little building.
Joe Mantry and his chief hit the saddle leather not a second behind Lister.
Out of the rear window of the guard tower a rifle began to fire. They angled the horses off to the side, along the slope, digging frantic heels into the flanks of the mustangs. And when was the mu
stang blood known to fail to respond to excitement? Every one of the three horses stretched out to full speed.
Two searchlights from the sides of the prison fingered the darkness, found the fugitives, and followed them. They slid in three beautifully clear silhouettes across the hillside.
Then a machine gun got to work. Its chatter ripped the night apart like the tearing of sailcloth. And the bullets kissed the air in closely grouped showers about the riders.
A half dozen bullets tore up the dust in front of Bray's horse. Another group hummed mournfully in his ears. The next burst would probably split the difference between the two ranges and blast the lift out of his body.
But just then the horse dipped down into a guUy. The searchlight, for a moment, was cut off by a meager wall of shadow. Into that shadow the machine guns still poured^ their fire. But the three riders were now following the twists of the gully that led them up over the crest of the first hill. From the top they looked back. Two searchlights, as though inspired, at the same instant struck them. But they had remained long enough to see a column of horsemen rushing out from the main gate of the prison. Another squad of horse was spurring from the southern, another from the northern guardhouse.
Still the alarm beU kept up its roar. It no longer had such a brazen sound. It was more of a howling note, at that distance, that went wavering across the hills.
VIII—DILLON'S PLACE
Dillon's place stood half a mile from the edge of the town of Rusty Gulch, and fifty miles out of earshot of the clangor of the alarm bell of the Atwater prison. The three riders dropped the pursuit in the middle of the next day. They "borrowed" two changes of horses on the way, and finally left the armed hunters wandering through the mazes of a labyrinth of canyons north of Iron Mountain. Then they turned and drove with all their might for Rusty Gulch and Dillon's place.
Because that was the home of Jimmy Lovell, who had betrayed them; Jimmy Lovell, who had got away from the pursuit through the self-sacrifice of the other three on that day of days.
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