The Land of Frozen Suns Part 6

"I grant you that," she replied quickly. "But it is a shock, when one conceives a man to be something of a _gentleman_; to have some remnant of the code honorable-then, pah! to find his name a by-word on the frontier. A murderer! Even descended to common theft and dealings in contraband whisky. You have a savory record in these parts, I find. How nicely this chamber fits you, Mr.-ah-what is the euphonious t.i.tle?

Slowfoot George. Ah, yes. Why the Slowfoot? By the tale of your successful elusion of the law I should imagine you exceeding fleet of foot."

It seemed to me unwomanly and uncalled for, that bitter, scornful speech; even granting the truth of it, which had not been established in my mind. But it had a tonic effect on Barreau. The hurt look faded from his face. His lips parted in the odd, half-scornful, half-amused smile that was always lurking about his mouth. He did not at once reply. When he did it was only a crisp sentence or two.

"Let us be done with this," he said. "There is neither pleasure nor profit in exchanging insults."

"Indeed," she thrust back, "there can be no exchange of insults between us. Could aught _you_ say insult any honest man or woman? But so be it.

I came merely to convince my eyes that my ears heard truly. It may tickle your depraved vanity to know that MacLeod is buzzing with your exploits and capture."

"That concerns me little," Barreau returned indifferently.

"Ditto," she averred, "except that I am right glad to find you stripped of your sheep's clothing, little as I expected such a revelation concerning one who pa.s.sed for a gentleman. And to think that I might never have found you out, if my father had permitted me to return from Benton."

"Permitted?" Barreau laid inquiring inflection on the word.

"What is it to--" she cut in sharply.

"Your father," he interrupted deliberately, "is a despicable scoundrel; a liar and a cheat of the first water."

"Oh-oh!" she gasped. "This-from _you_."

"I said, 'let us be done with this,' a moment ago," he reminded her.

She drew back as if he had struck at her, flus.h.i.+ng, her under lip quivering-more from anger than any other emotion, I think. Almost at once she leaned forward again, glaring straight at Barreau.

"It would be of a piece with your past deeds," she cried, "if you should break this flimsy jail and butcher my father and myself while we slept.

Oh, one could expect anything from such as you!" And then she was gone, the guard striding heavy-footed after her. A puzzled expression crept over Barreau's face, blotting out the ironic smile.

"It was a dirty trick of me to speak so," he muttered, after a little.

"But my G.o.d, a man can't always play the Stoic under the lash. However-I daresay--" He went off into a profound study, resting his chin in the palms of his hands. I kept my peace, making aimless marks with my pen.

It was an odd turn of affairs.

"Bob, what did I say about Destiny awhile ago?" he raised his head and addressed me suddenly. "I will take it back. I am going to take Destiny by the nape of the neck. Being grilled on the seat of the scornful is little to my liking. It was a bit of ill-luck that you fell in with me.

I seem to be in a bad boat."

"Ill-luck for which of us?" I asked. It was the first time he had sounded the personal note-aside from the evening we were landed in MacLeod, when he comforted me with the a.s.surance that at the worst I would spend no more than a few days in the guardhouse.

"For you, of course," he replied seriously. "My sins are upon my own head. But it was unfortunate that I should have led you to Sanders'

place the very night picked for a raid. They can have nothing against you, though; and they'll let you out fast enough when it comes to a hearing. Nor, for that matter, are they likely to hang me, notwithstanding the ugly things folk say. However, I have work to do which I cannot do lying here. Hence I perceive that I must get out of here. And I may need your help."

"How are you going to manage that?" I inquired, gazing with some astonishment at this man who spoke so coolly and confidently of getting out of prison. "These walls seem pretty solid, and you can hardly dig through them with a lone pen-nib. That's the only implement I see at hand. And I expect the guard will be after that before I get my letter done."

"I don't know how the thing will be done," he declared, "but I am surely going to get out of here pretty _p.r.o.nto_, as the cowmen have it."

He settled back and took to staring at the ceiling. I, presently, became immersed in my letter to Bolton. When it was done I thrust a hand through the bars of my cell and wig-wagged the Policeman-they were good-natured souls for the most part, tolerant of their prisoners, and it broke the grinding monotony to exchange a few words with one under almost any pretext. Barreau was chary of speech, and the Sanders brothers were penned beyond my sight. Sheer monotonous silence, I imagine, would drive even peace-loving men to revolt and commit desperate deeds when they are cooped within four walls with nothing but their thoughts for company.

When he came I observed that the guard had been changed since Miss Montell's visit. The new man was a lean, sour-faced trooper. To my surprise he took my letter and then stood peeping in past me to where Barreau lay on his bunk. After a few seconds he walked away, smiling queerly. In a minute or so he was back again, taking another squint.

This time Barreau turned over facing the door, and when the trooper continued his promenade past our cell he got up and stood before the barred window, completely shutting off my outlook. I could not see, but I could hear. And by the sound of his booted feet the guard pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed several times.

After a little he tired of this, it seemed, for I heard him stalking away to the front of the guardhouse, and immediately thereafter the creak of a chair as he sat down. Then Barreau sat down on his bunk again.

"Try this, kid," he said, and tossed a package of tobacco and cigarette papers to me. I fell upon the forbidden luxury like a starving man upon food. He rolled himself one out of material in his hand, and in the midst of my puffing changed to my side of the cell-it was but a scant three feet to move-and sat down between me and the door.

"Fate smiles at last," he whispered. "Blackie pa.s.sed me in a little tobacco. And-see, here in my hand."

I glanced down at what he was snuggling down out of sight between us, a heavy-bladed knife, a tiny saw, not more than six inches in length, and a piece of notepaper marked with what my reason told me must be a ground plan of the very place we were in.

"The tools of my deliverance," said Barreau in an undertone. "I am for the blue sky and the sun and the clean, wide prairies once more."

CHAPTER VIII-BY WAYS THAT WERE DARK

Looking back I marvel at the ridiculous ease with which the thing was accomplished. Still more do I marvel at my own part in it. Brought up as I had been, s.h.i.+elded from the ill winds of existence, taught the perfunctory, conventional standards of behavior that suffice for those whose lives are lived according to a little-varying plan, I should have shrunk from further infraction of the law. Indeed it is no more than could have been expected had I refused absolutely to lend myself to Barreau's desperate plan. Conscious that I had done no wrong I might have been moved to veto an enterprise that imperiled me, to protest against his drawing me further into his own troublous coil. But I did nothing of the sort. It did not occur to me. My point of view was no longer that of the son of a St. Louis gentleman. And the transition was so complete, so radical, and withal, so much the growth of the past three weeks, that I was unaware of the change.

I know of no clearer ill.u.s.tration of the power of environment.

Indubitably I should have looked askance at a man who tacitly admitted himself more or less of a criminal, making no defense, no denial. The traditions of my cla.s.s should have kept me aloof, conscious of my own clean hands. This, I repeat, was what might have been expected of me: Put to me as an abstract proposition, I would have been very positive of where I should stand.

But without being conscious of any deviation from my previous concepts of right and wrong, I found myself all agog to help Slowfoot George escape. For myself, there was no question of flight. That, we agreed upon, at the outset. I could gain nothing by putting myself at odds with Canadian law, for the law itself would free me in its meteing out of justice. But with him it was different; he admitted the fact. And even so I found myself making nothing of the admission. He conformed to none of my vague ideas of the criminal type. In aiding him to be free I seemed to be freeing myself by proxy, as it were; and how badly I desired to be quit of the strange tangle that enmeshed me, none but myself can quite appreciate.

After all, so far as my help was concerned it consisted largely of what Barreau dryly termed, "moral support." I acquiesced in the necessity. I stood on the lookout for interruptions. He did the work.

While he cut with his knife a hole in the floor, so that the point of the little saw could enter, I stood by the window listening for the footsteps that would herald a guard's approach. He worked rapidly, yet in no apparent haste. He had that faculty of straining every nerve at what he was about, without seeming to do so; there was no waste energy, no fl.u.s.ter. And the cutting and sawing speedily bore fruit. So noiselessly and deftly did he work that in less than half an hour he had sawn a hole in the floor large enough to admit his body; and the dank smell of earth long hidden from sunlight struck me when I bent down to look. Then with a caution that I should watch closely and tap on the floor with my heel if any of the guard came poking around the cells, he wriggled through the opening and disappeared.

I leaned against the wall, breathing a bit faster. The hole was cut in a corner, to the right of the cell door. From the outside it could scarcely be noticed. But I had wit enough to know that if a trooper glanced in and missed Barreau the hole would be discovered fast enough.

Which would involve me in the attempt; and I was aware that jail-breakers fare ill if they are caught. But no one moved in the guardhouse, save now and then a prisoner shuffling about in his cell.

Occasionally I could hear the low murmur of their voices-it was a small place and filled to its capacity-else Barreau and I would not have been penned together.

After an interminable period he came quietly out from under the floor, and carefully fitted in their places the planks he had cut. One had to look closely to see a mark, after he had brushed into the cracks some dust from the floor. Barreau's eyes twinkled when he sat down on his bunk and rolled himself a cigarette.

"Everything just as it should be," he told me. "Nothing to do but root away a little dirt from the bottom log of the outside wall. I could walk out, a free man, in five minutes. There will be a fine fuss and feathers to-night. They have never had a jail delivery here, you know. Lord, it's easy though, when one has the tools."

"There'll be a hot chase," I suggested. "Will you stand much chance."

"That depends on how much of a start I get," he said grimly. "I think I can fool them. If not-well--"

He relapsed into silence. Someone clanked into the guard-room, and Barreau snuffed out his cigarette with one swift movement. In a second or two the trooper went out again. We could see him by flattening our faces against the bars, and when he was gone Blackie sat alone, his feet c.o.c.ked up on a chair.

"That reminds me," Barreau spoke so that his words were audible to me alone. "Blackie's a good fellow, and I must keep his skirts clear. He will be on guard till about eight this evening. Eight-nine-ten o'clock.

At ten it should be as dark as it will get. I'll drift then. Some other fellow will be on guard when you give the alarm."

It was then mid-afternoon. At half-past five two prisoners were set to arranging a long table by the palings that separated the cells from the guard-room proper. With a trooper at their heels they lugged from the Police kitchen two great pots, one of weak soup, the other containing a liquid that pa.s.sed for tea. A platter of sliced bread and another of meat sc.r.a.ps completed the meal. Then the rest of us were turned out to eat; sixteen men who had fallen afoul of the law munching and drinking, with furtive glances at each other.

And while we ate a trooper made the round of the cells, giving each tumbled heap of quilts a tentative shake, peering into the half-dark corners. That also was part of the routine, perfunctory, as a general thing, but occasionally developing into keen-eyed search. It was the rule to confiscate tobacco or any small articles a prisoner might manage to smuggle in, if he failed of its concealment.

But the faint traces of Barreau's floor-cutting escaped his eye, and the tobacco was in our pockets. The knife and saw Barreau had slipped within his boot-leg. Personal search was the one thing we had to fear. And it pa.s.sed us by. The guards-four of them during the meal hour-contented themselves with routine inspection, and when the table was swept clean of food we were herded back to our cells. For once I was glad to be locked up; knowing that though dark would bring a trooper past our cell every half hour, to peer in on us through the barred opening, there was little chance of his unlocking the door.