West of Tombstone

by Paul Lederer

  That and the clear flavor of free air. Life!

  He hadn’t forgotten Stony Harte. The man had betrayed his friendship, had tried to murder him, had left Cam to rot in this prison. No, Cameron Black had not forgotten.

  On the morning of his twelfth day in prison, before the sun had truly risen and the cell’s interior was cold enough to freeze a man to the bone, his door was kicked open and Sheriff Barney Yount, accompanied by two blue-uniformed guards, was admitted. Cameron sat up sharply on his rough plank bunk.

  ‘Hello, Stony,’ Yount said.

  ‘Sheriff,’ Cam answered warily.

  ‘They tell me you’re better now.’

  ‘Some,’ Cameron replied.

  ‘That’s fine,’ the big sheriff responded. ‘Well enough to stand up to the beating I promised you?’

  ‘Listen, that’s—’

  As usual, Cameron was unable to get past his first few words with the sadistic lawman. Yount bulked large in the pre-dawn gray; the two guards turned their backs as the sheriff waded in with both fists clenched, his small mouth tight with glee. Cameron couldn’t have fought off the giant lawman before, now with his weight down, his muscles thinning, he had no chance at all. He was as a child before the brutish lawman’s onslaught.

  There is no need to describe the brutality of the beating. Cameron himself could hardly remember enough after the first blow to tell it. He was like a schoolboy being pummeled by a heavyweight fighter, fist after fist landing on any exposed portion of his body. His mouth filled with hot scarlet blood behind loosened teeth. He heard the grunting of the sheriff accompanying every blow as he savaged Cameron’s body with asking the same questions with each pile-driver strike.

  ‘Where is it? Do I have to kill you, Harte?’

  It was only over when Cameron lost consciousness and couldn’t even attempt an answer. He woke sometime around midnight, by rough reckoning, and dragged himself toward his bunk. Conceding that his bunk was no softer than the stone floor of the prison, unable to drag himself upright on battered limbs, he sagged back to the floor, not sleeping but mewling the night away in despair.

  They did not come to roust him out to his work in the boot shop the next morning. The door opened only once as he lay curled against the floor and a bowl of the thin gruel was placed near him by one of the guards. Cameron thought he saw a faint flicker of sympathy in the man’s eyes, but that was little consolation.

  My life has ended, he thought as he clawed nearer the gruel. They’ll never let me out of here unless I tell them, but I can’t tell them what I don’t know! The spoon in his hand seemed too heavy and slippery to lift and he fell down, rolling over onto his back to stare at the colorless stone ceiling, cursing the soul of the treacherous Stony Harte.

  It was daylight again when the door opened next and Cameron cowered in a corner like a beaten hound, his arms across his face. But no hand was placed upon him. The heavy door opened and then clanged shut again. He heard shuffling steps in the cell and finally opened an eye to watch the lean, long-jawed, mustached man in prison gray lowering the other bunk on its chains. The new prisoner sat on it, testing the chains with his weight and studied Cameron.

  ‘They giving you a rough time of it?’ the new prisoner asked.

  ‘That’s not the half of it,’ Cam answered past battered ribs and bruised lips.

  ‘It’s a rough hole we’re in, brother,’ the mustached man said. He didn’t move, but continued to watch Cameron Black. The newcomer stretched his arms once and then clasped his hands together between his knees. ‘Want some help up?’

  Ashamed, Cameron nodded heavily and the stranger got to his feet, hooking his hands under Cameron’s armpits, lifting him to wobbly legs and guiding him toward his bunk where Cameron settled with a moan. He sat there, his head hanging as if weighted by an anvil.

  ‘What’d you do to get them so mad at you?’ the new prisoner asked.

  ‘Trusted the wrong man,’ Cam answered. True to the prisoner’s code, the new man did not ask him what his crime had been, but only nodded.

  ‘They just brought me up from Phoenix. I’ve got another trial coming Monday,’ Cameron’s cell mate said despondently. ‘I’m pretty sure they’re going to hang me. Me, I trusted the wrong woman, and now, brother, I am going to pay for that.’

  Cameron remained in a seated position, his back against the wall behind his plank bunk. He was afraid that if he lay down he might never get up again. He could not sleep, nor did he want to. It would take more than a few more hours of unconsciousness to revive his battered body.

  ‘My name’s Elliott Hogan,’ the new man said, reaching out a hand toward Cameron. Cam took it weakly and nodded a bare inch in acknowledgement.

  ‘Cameron Black.’

  ‘Glad to meet you. Sorry it had to be in here,’ Hogan said.

  ‘Is there any place left but here?’ Cameron murmured through his puffed lips.

  ‘Feel like talking? It seems you probably don’t.’

  ‘It makes no difference,’ Cam answered, with a one-shouldered shrug.

  ‘It can all be told another time,’ Hogan said indifferently. ‘You know how it is – a wronged man feels like talking about his troubles, and brother that’s what I am: a wronged man. I’ve got the feeling that maybe you are too.’ He leaned nearer out of the heated darkness of the prison shadows. ‘You listen to me and think over what I say, Black.’ His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘Because I think that I can find a way for the two of us to break our shackles and free ourselves from this hellhole. If you’re willing to throw in with me.’

  A faint hope flickered within Cameron’s heart. He stared at Elliot Hogan, doubting that he could have heard what he thought he did.

  ‘Are you kidding me, Hogan?’

  ‘Not at all, pal. Listen to what I have to say. It takes two men to work my plan. Throw in with me and we have a chance, Cameron. In here,’ he said, looking around the cell before returning to Cameron Black’s battered face, ‘neither of us has a chance in hell of getting out alive.’

  FOUR

  ‘The man’s as dumb as dirt,’ Elliot Hogan said, tilting back in the wooden chair in Warden Traylor’s office. He was contentedly smoking a cigar the warden had given him after he had been escorted there by two tough-looking guards. Sheriff Yount stood near the open window of the warden’s office, staring out across the white expanse of endless desert. The Wells Fargo agent, Morton, sat in a chair identical to Hogan’s, holding his hat loosely between his legs.

  ‘I doubt that,’ Morton said, without lifting his eyes to the mustached guard in prison garb, which Hogan actually was. ‘A man who’s pulled off as many successful robberies and escaped as frequently as Stony Harte can hardly be considered stupid.’

  ‘He swallowed my whole story, the whole plan,’ Elliot Hogan insisted. He had been tilted back on his chair. Now he let the front legs drop to the granite floor with a bang. It was a challenging gesture.

  ‘Or so he is letting you believe!’ Morton said quietly, but with emphasis, rubbing at the bald spot on the crown of his head.

  ‘What are you getting at, Morton?’ Sheriff Yount asked without turning from the window.

  ‘I’m just saying that in my estimation it’s a mistake to let a man as dangerous as Stony Harte pass out of the prison walls.’

  Warden Traylor asked softly, ‘Have you a better idea on how we can recover the money – find the rest of this murderous gang?’ He went on, ‘God knows we’ve tried everything, beating him half to death.…’ He cast a quick, sharp glance at the sheriff’s bearish back. ‘It’s your company, after all that’s going to pay the price if the money from the hold-up isn’t found, Morton.’

  ‘And you who will lose out on the reward – a third of the loot.’

  ‘Would Wells Fargo rather have two-thirds of the money back and the gang hanged, or nothing!’ Warden Traylor said with a sharpness that was uncharacteristic. ‘And the army, sir! This represents a large loss to the army. They would be
understandably reluctant to ship future payrolls with Wells Fargo. They would be more likely to return to the old method—’

  ‘A much more expensive method,’ Morton interrupted.

  ‘More expensive but surer method of transporting it protected by their own armed troops.’

  Morton made no answer. He stared at the floor of the warden’s office. Slowly the sun was lifting above the eastern horizon. Scarlet tendrils streaked the grayness. It would soon be as hot as Hades again.

  ‘Tell me again how the plan is to work,’ Morton said, with a heavy sigh. He liked none of this, but if the payroll was not recovered, nor the Harte gang caught, he might as well resign and return to his father’s farm in Indiana. He would never be trusted in such a responsible position again. Wells Fargo did not like to lose money. More, they would not accept losing face at the hands of a gang of outlaws. Ever.

  Morton was under no illusions as to the kind of men he was dealing with here. They wanted the reward – a third of the $50,000 dollars which they would split among themselves. A tidy amount. Who else was there to turn to on this fringe of the frontier? No one at all.

  ‘All right,’ Morton said finally. ‘Tell me again about the plan.’

  ‘I’m going to grease him for a few more days, maybe a week,’ Hogan said eagerly. ‘I mean, this is all happening pretty fast for Harte. Maybe he won’t bite at first if he thinks it’s a set-up. He could be thinking that, after all. I’ll keep feeding him my story, a little at a time.

  ‘Meanwhile he needs to be given more reason to grow desperate. Until he’s wild with the need to break free. You see what I mean?’ Hogan said with a wink. ‘So that’s he’s willing to chance anything rather than stay here.’

  ‘Beatings?’ Morton asked with distaste.

  ‘Oh, hell no,’ Hogan replied. ‘We’ve to let him get healthier so he’ll feel he’s up to a break and a dash across the desert. Right now he couldn’t whip a kitten, and he knows it. No,’ Hogan said, in a low, brutal voice, ‘we’ve got to find a way to let his body grow stronger while we gut him of his soul.’

  Warden John Traylor nodded. He knew exactly what his confederate had in mind. They had already discussed it in private. There had been no need to let this two-bit animal of a sheriff or the Wells Fargo agent in on it. It was the warden’s play to make. He had all the cards. He had Stony Harte under his legal detention and control.

  Besides, this was hardly the first time he and Officer Hogan had played this sort of game. Over the years they had made no small amount of money doing just what they planned now. Help a prisoner escape. Send him into the desert with a ‘trusted’ friend and then pull a gun on him. Sometimes it worked and the escaped prisoner would be willing – eager – to trade his freedom for his hidden ill-gotten gains.

  Sometimes it did not work so smoothly. There were bodies scattered beneath the wild desert sands that no man would ever find. Just more victims of Yuma prison.

  ‘We have to give it a try,’ Morton said. ‘Let’s just hope that Harte is as beaten down as you believe – and as stupid as Hogan seems to think.’

  Cameron Black was hardly as stupid as Hogan seemed to believe. He had, since the moment the scoundrel had been placed in the cell with him, considered the possibility that the man was an informer, a prisoner placed with him to prod, pry and wait for secrets to be divulged. Cameron had never been in prison before, but native intelligence warned him. Then, too, Voorman in the bootshop had whispered over the clatter of stitching machines, ‘They’ve tried beating you, Harte. Watch out next for the devious touch.’

  Voorman had taken Cameron under his wing since he had returned battered and stiff, swollen and disfigured, to the shop. The old, wiser Dutchman had seen all the tricks the prison had to offer before this.

  ‘I’ll be careful, thanks, Voorman,’ Cameron Black told him. One thought, occurring to him as he spent a cramped, exhausted night on his bunk with the glow of the half moon sketching a barred rectangle on the floor of his cell, was that it in no way helped his chances of escaping to continue to deny being Stony Harte. It was Harte, after all, that they wanted to escape to lead them to his stash of loot – or so Cameron now believed.

  In what he pretended was a secret midnight conversation with his cell mate, he told Elliot Hogan, ‘Sure I told them my name was Cameron Black. I made that up out of thin air. I thought that they might believe they had the wrong man. It didn’t work. They knew all along who I was.’

  ‘Harte?’ Hogan asked drowsily from his bunk. His back was to Cameron, but his eyes were bright with the glow of success.

  ‘Sure,’ Cam said. ‘But it didn’t help any. I’m doomed, Hogan. They’ll hang me sure unless you really have a way to escape.’

  ‘Trust me,’ was all Hogan said, and the traitor went to sleep easily.

  Cameron did not sleep, could not. The pain still lay upon him heavily. Even if escape were possible, what then? Would he find himself riding the wasteland with a thug like Elliot Hogan who would learn the truth soon enough, that Cam had no idea where the stolen money might be hidden? If Hogan did not shoot him dead, what then? Was Cameron to attempt to find the real Stony Harte in all that desert vastness and face down the feared gunfighter and his entire gang? There was no way out of this tangled hell, no road to freedom.

  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.

&nb
sp; 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?’