by L. D. Henry
It was torture to have his arm throttled so, and every cringing muscle in his aching shoulder and neck longed to relieve the pressure of his tense body. When the shock of his initial fright had worn off, he knew that he must take a chance and move his arm while he still had some control over it.
Straining his ears for sound, he heard nothing. Maybe the snakes had crawled far enough away so that he could move his arm, maybe ease the numbing cramp in his neck. Teeth clamped against his lower lip, he gingerly lowered his head to the floor, feeling relief from the dull neck pain at once.
So far, so good, he thought, his mind still wrestling with the frightful paralysis of fear. He tensed his muscles, then slowly arched his back upward a scant distance before he tried to slide his arm from under his body, but the strength had fled when his arm had turned numb. Gradually he inched his left hand across his stomach until it touched his numbed hand, a hand that felt cold and lifeless. Sweat, exuded by fear, hung heavy on his face as he began to pull the numbed arm free from the weight of his body.
And then Three-fingered Jake Laustina’s luck ran out—for a chain link clinked at his ankle, and sounding deafeningly loud in the tense silence, he spasmodically jerked his foot. Lightning fast, an aroused snake struck, sinking fangs deep into his exposed shinbone. Pained he cried out hoarsely in surprise, kicking with both feet, and the whirring of the rattles droned around him when he tried to sit up. He screamed in pain and horror when a second snake nailed his outflung hand, but he managed to grab the reptile’s head with his other hand and he hurled it against the far wall. Just then another bite forked his leg and he called out in defiance before jumping to his feet as his wild frenzy turned to unholy anger, and he began to rattle his tether chain back and forth.
“Come and get it, you slimy bastards!” he cried. “Let’s see you bite me now!”
He reached down and grasped a snake that was wrapping itself around his leg, and when it punctured his hand, his obsessive rage swept over him and he gripped its head and ripped it from the squirming body with his other hand. Then using the headless snake like a whip, he lashed out right and left at the floor.
“Crawl, damn you, crawl!” he shrieked, running in a wide circle, flailing with the snake as he ran, the chain twisting while he moved. “Where are you now, damn you!”
Then with a surge of inhuman strength fueled by insane fury, he jerked at the twisted chain—it cut deeply into his leg before it broke, and he stumbled heavily against the far wall before he regained his balance. When his benumbed mind realized that he was free, he ran around in the black of the cell using the chain now as a flail.
“I’ll kill you apple eatin’ sonovabitches!” he shrieked as he ran, swinging the broken chain, sparks chipping from the concrete floor. “Haaa-eee! You slimy bitches, I’m comin’ after you now!” he cried, gasping for breath. “Where are you, I don’t hear you rattlin’ none. Now who’s afraid!”
His madness left him with a spurt of muscular contraction for a moment, then sweating profusely, with his huge chest heaving in throaty Tales, spittle drooling from his peeled lips, he looked upward at the black of the high ceiling sensing that someone was up there.
Gasping for air like a spent horse, he raged in the darkness: “You shit-eatin’ bastard up there, if you got any guts, come down an’ face me, you hear!”
Sobbing, frustration clamped the set of his jaws and he turned numbly before his brain failed—his lungs were a huge bellows gasping for air against the tightened bands of his chest. And when his great heart gave out, Jake Laustina crashed headlong into the sheet-iron door in a swollen heap.
There was no further sound heard through the ventilator hole from the dark cell below, and Honas Good folded up his canvas sack into a small roll and tucked it into his belt. Then he took the short stick that had been tied to the sack for safety while carrying the snakes, and with a looping sweep of his arm, heaved it toward the southwest guard tower.
Waiting until he heard the stick clatter off the wall, he rose to a crouch and ran swiftly and quietly down the caliche hill from whence he came. Behind him he heard the guard shouting an alarm, knowing that soon many men with lanterns would be swarming the prison yard.
He trotted westward along Prison Lane toward Yuma, his footsteps soundless in the ankle-deep dust. Then he angled toward First Street, moving quickly to avoid the lights from the Colorado Hotel until he reached Rincon Alley. Minutes later, he pushed open the door to French Frankie Coneaut’s back room, and entered the murky interior.
Palma raised his glass of brandy in salute when Honas nodded in answer to the unspoken question on his face.
Coneaut poured a glass of liquor and handed it to the young Quechan. A look of interest was on Coneaut’s face. “Palma tells me you have returned tonight from bringing in the bodies of the men who rob the big mine payroll,” he said.
“Yes,” Honas acknowledged, his face inscrutable. A half smile tugged at his taut lips when a thought struck him. “And you will no doubt remember to tell the sheriff, if he should ask, that we have been here with you all night.”
“Ho, ho,” Coneaut cried, a devilish gleam in his obsidian eyes. “By God, now these are times for shrewdness an’ stealth, my friends.”
He poured another round of drinks, then raised his glass in salute. “Of course you were both here all night, an’ we have empty bottles to prove it, no?” he chortled, waving at the bottles littering the table.
“That is kind of you, French Frankie,” Honas said after emptying his glass in a gulp for he was several drinks behind his companions.
“Me kind? Ho, ho,” Coneaut chuckled. “Remember I am half-breed my friend, so I owe nothing to the white man who looks down on me as he does on your kind.”
He refilled their glasses before he sat down. “To the white man, we half-breeds an’ Quechans are like witches, but by God, they are all sonovabitches!” he said, sticking out his long tongue and wagging it back an forth like an overheated mastiff.
Honas merely grinned, but something about Coneaut’s actions struck the usually grave Palma as being funny and he broke out into laughing at the swarthy Frenchman’s antics.
Coneaut cocked his head, looking in surprise at Palma’s outburst of laughter, then he, too, began to laugh raucously. Palma’s reserve totally cracked and he began to screech in a high-pitched voice, laughing uncontrollably.
Tears of mirth were running down Coneaut’s cheeks and he thumped his hands on his knees like a drum while he laughed. Then Honas broke into laughter at their antics, and it was good—for too long he had held in his sorrow until it was a poisonous thing. And for the time, a weight seemed to slide from his shoulders and the sounds of his mirth rose to match that of his friends.
Deep-throated, Coneaut’s rauccus laugh overshadowed Palma’s high-pealed cackle, and Honas roared at his drunken companion’s merriment. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Coneaut straightened, then he got up and fetched a fresh bottle of brandy. He filled their glasses before he spoke: “An’ now what does our leader plan to do?”
Honas shook his head. “I am not the leader. I dream now only of being a brave person.”
“A brave man you already are, my son,” Palma told him. “You are avenging our enemies like a true War leader.”
“Thank you, my father, but the path is still long and perilous,” he said.
“Sacre Dieu! I think I know now of what you speak!” Coneaut cried. “Five men have murdered you wife an’ her mother, an’ now two have already die!”
His dark eyes danced back and forth between Palma and the younger Quechan. “The condemned man, he smoked a last cigar, n’ est-ce pas? An’ the other man, he stretched my wire,” he said matter-of-factly. “An’ now you ’ave come to my store when the night she has fallen. By God, tomorrow I betcha, Doctor Botts will be called to the prison for there will be another dead man, no?”
Honas’s lips held a tight smile. “Frankie dreams like a Quechan,” he told Palma, nodding his head
at Coneaut. Then his eyes set coldly and hate was a bitter glint on the hard lines of his face.
Desire for complete revenge was again pounding at him, a spur to driving him fiercely on but there was no satisfaction left in him. “You say there will be another dead man reported at the prison tomorrow—perhaps this will be so for their way is starless and steep, and the frailities of this life are many.”
He took a swallow of the brandy Coneaut had poured before he continued: “A Quechan believes that the possession of life by the body is dependent only on the retention of the metrao.”
“Metrao? What is that?” Coneaut asked.
“It is the principle soul,” Honas explained. “You see, we believe that each person has many souls, but that death only occurs when the main soul leaves the body to go to our heaven, our place of the dead.”
A wide-toothed grin spread over Coneaut’s swarthy face. “An’ you are helping these men find their, how you say—way to heaven?” he chuckled.
“I merely light the way for their main souls,” Honas said, “For they have long ago lost their other souls.”
Although it was hot in the windowless, murky room, the door was closed. Odors of fish and drying pelts cloyed the gloomy room while the three men sat in silence listening to the wild noises mingling with cantina music, as the sounds of Rincon Alley were reaching their zenith for the evening.
A rap on the door caused them to exchange glances before Coneaut arose unsteadily to his feet and walked to the door.
“By God, Sheriff,” he cried, opening the door wider to reveal the Yuma lawman. “Welcome into my humble shop.”
Waringer strode into the room, blinking his eyes in the dim light, his nose well aware of the coal-oil smell and the dim room’s other odors.
“I thought I’d find you two here,” he said, nodding at the Quechans seated at the table. “I came to tell you both what a fine job you did. Come by my office in the morning and I’ll have some money for you. The Clip Mine people are going to ante up another hundred dollars for the recovery of the payroll.”
“Sit down, Sheriff,” Coneaut said, waving a hand toward the table. “By God, it is not everyday that I have such an august visitor. Weel you ’ave some brandy?”
Waringer nodded. He dropped his hat on the floor, then drew a chair to the table. He nodded his thanks when the Frenchman had filled a glass for him, then he held up the drink in a salute. The others joined him with a long pull at their glasses.
Waringer wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He sat back in his chair while he studied the three faces seated across from him, his eyes touching each man in turn. “Been in here long?” he asked Honas.
“Ho, ho.” Coneaut waggled a finger at the empty bottles setting on the table. “They have been here since the sun go down, Sheriff,” he averred. “An’ by god, since I have received a new case of brandy, we will be here till morning. You will join us, no?”
He indicated the half-empty bottle in his hand. “Will you have some more?”
Waringer held up his hand in refusal, his eyes noting the amount of brandy still in the bottle. “No thanks,” he said. Picking up his hat from the floor, he got to his feet stiffly, weariness clutching his bones. “It’s after midnight, and I’ve been on the go since sunup.”
He walked to the door, then stopped, a friendly smile creasing his grizzled features. “Better you pass out first, Frankie, it’s against the law to get Indians drunk.”
Chapter Eleven
“I didn’t want to disturb you last night, sir,” Chief Guard Ben Harplee said while standing on the front porch of the superintendent’s residence. Someone was up on the south wall last night. Guard Wilkins called out at exactly ten minutes after eleven. When I got there with lanterns, I found a stick about three feet long laying on the gravel. From the marks on the west wall, it looked like someone hurled it from over by the snake pit.”
Tarbow’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the solitary-confinement cell. “Did Wilkins see or hear anything before that?”
“He claims that he just heard the clatter when the stick bounced off the wall,” Harplee said. “Naturally, I covered every inch of the rock hill but I didn’t find any tracks.”
“Was there anything unusual at the ventilator hole over the solitary-confinement cell?” the warden asked, apprehension beginning to build in his mind.
“No, sir.” Harplee’s head tilted inquiringly. “You mean like someone trying to tamper with it?”
The smell of breakfast bacon wafted from the kitchen behind him where his wife was starting to cook, but Joshua Tarbow was suddenly not hungry; an uneasy feeling pushed into his mind. He closed the door behind him and moved toward the steps as the ominous feeling grew.
“You hear any sounds out of Laustina while you were up on the hill examining the ventilator hole?” he asked hesistantly.
“Not really.” A wry grin twisted the edge of Harplee’s mouth. “You know how mad Jake gets, how he rants, but we didn’t hear him yelling none. Anyway, I never paid any mind because I was trying to figure out who threw that stick.”
Then the gut feeling hit Tarbow hard, and he cried out in trepidation as he started to run toward the prison gate. “Call out the guards! Get to the solitary-confinement cell!”
Tarbow stood shaking his head in resignation while Allison and Frettly dragged the heavyset Laustina from the cell and laid his swollen body on the gravel. Harplee eased himself from the cell opening, carring his rifle by the barrel.
“I killed two rattlesnakes in there, sir. Small ones they were, but deadly,” he said matter-of-factly. “And we found two more larger rattlers in there, but they were already dead. Guess Jake killed them after they bit him.”
Tarbow nodded numbly. He looked down at the bloated body of the three-fingered outlaw before he started to walk trancelike across the yard toward his office, knowing that he must act quickly before this got out of hand.
“Men.” Superintendent Tarbow glared at the semicircle of guards seated in front of his desk. “I’ve called this meeting to inform you that we now have a Lowell Battery. The Gatling gun will stay in the east tower while the new Lowell will temporarily be assigned to the main tower.”
A tenseness showed around Tarbow’s mouth while he continued: “These unexplained deaths have got to cease! Starting tonight, and until further notice, I want lanterns on the walls at hundred-foot intervals, and I want a guard walking the top of each wall every night. From now on there will be no civilians allowed inside the compound without my personal approval, and that goes for those Indian trackers, as well.”
He nodded at Botts seated in the corner of the room. “I’ll account for the good doctor myself so he will not be your responsibility.”
The guards exchanged glances, knowing full well that the superintendent was angry because of his concern for his job. Their eyes followed his pacing as he walked with head tipped forward, apparently absorbed in thought. The lines of his shoulders sagged dejectedly before he stopped.
“Harplee, arrange the men’s schedules to include the walls, and have a copy on my desk for approval before suppertime,” he directed the chief guard. “And have that new Lowell assembled at once. I want it loaded and manned up in the main tower before sunset, you hear? Dismissed!”
Surprised at the warden’s suddenly tough stance, the guards filed silently from the office. Tarbow wiped a hand across his damp brow, then he tossed a quick look to where Botts sat complacently watching him, sensing that the doctor was wondering with tempered amusement how long it would be until his apprehensive orders resulted in unwarranted gunfire. Yet, when he reviewed past events, he was certain that he had chosen the proper course.
Botts had been summoned to the prison shortly after lunch and when he had arrived, he was promptly escorted to the solitary-confinement cell where Superintendent Tarbow and three guards stood at the open doorway of the cell, looking down at the body of Jake Laustina.
“That snake pit sure lived up to its
name today,” Frank Allison had quipped. “We found two dead rattlers, and then killed two more in there.”
“Silence!” Tarbow roared, his agitated face was flushed darkly. “I want no more of that kind of talk!” His shoulders moved impatiently before he flicked tired eyes at the doctor. “Examine him, please,” he said. “You stay here, Harplee, but the rest of you go take a break elsewhere.”
Botts looked down at the bulky figure of Laustina stretched grotesquely on the ground, mouth frozen open in horror. He knelt, then carefully examined each bruised and swollen puncture mark on the lifeless outlaw. One of the huge hands still clutched a snake’s head.
Botts stood up. “Looks like the snakes sent him into a frenzy of anger,” he told them. “The man’s strength was superhuman in his rage. From the looks of it, he tore the chain loose from that iron ring, then apparently, he used it like a whip to lash at the other snakes.”
Tarbow nodded. “You’re undoubtedly right, Doctor. If you’re finished here, let’s return to my office.”
Botts shrugged. “There’s no doubt that the death was brought about by the snakes.”
“Did he die of snake bites?” Tarbow wanted to know, an uneasy feeling deep in his stomach.
Botts shrugged again. “In layman’s terms—yes. Although with all his apparent exertion, it probably was due to cardiac arrest caused by the toxin’s constriction of blood vessels to the heart.”
Tarbow looked puzzled, so Botts added: “You see, there are two types of toxin in snakebites—neurotoxin and hemotoxin. These toxin vary from snake to snake. From the prisoner’s general appearance, I’d say he was bitten a number of times where neurotoxins were predominant. Clinical effects include muscular pain, vomiting, and eventual respiratory and cardiac failure.” He spread his fingers with finality. “You know how it is—when the old heart stops, that’s it. I’ll put the clinical effects on the Circumstances of Death Certificate for you.”