XV
Thirty days in jail had not made the Wolfe clan into better men. Contrary to the expectations of Sheriff Starnes, not one whit of the pepper had been taken out of them. They were as grim, as silent, and as bitter on the thirtieth day of their imprisonment as they had been on the first. They had stolidly refused to help in the building of good roads for the county until a diet of plain bread and water forced them to it; and then they had worked slowly and sullenly, shirking at each and every opportunity. Not a man of them but watched by day and night for some avenue of escape. For escape, to the twenty mountaineers, was the one and only alternative of rotting in jail.
Several times Sheriff Starnes had calledOld Buck to him and said in the kindliest possible fashion. "If you'll give me your word that you won't allow your son or the lumber business out there to be harmed, I'll sure raise a peace-bond for you and the others, and let you go home. Promise?"
The stubborn old hillman had not once stooped to give the officer a verbal answer to the question. He had not even shaken his shaggy head. He had said once that he would never make such a promise, and once was enough to say anything.
The jail gang had come in from work on the evening of the day that had seen the starting-up of the big sawmill out in Wolfe's Basin. Much to his surprise, Old Buck found himself alone and unguarded in the little room that served as a lavatory. He peered down the long, narrow corridor that led to the jail's main entrance. There was no person in sight. He had but to make a determined dash for liberty, and liberty would be his. The dusk was thick outside now.
But he didn't make the dash! It was not according to his code of honor to go free himself and leave the other men of his name behind bars. Where one Wolfe went, all the Wolfes must go; when one Wolfe suffered, all the Wolfes must suffer; it was part of the clan's religion. The big hillman threw away his opportunity to escape without the slightest regret.
He drew himself up almost ludicrously straight, walked to the main entrance, and shouted for Alvin Starnes. The sheriff and John Bird, the night jailer, appeared before him.
"What're you doin' out here?" Starnes asked puzzledly.
"Lookin' fo' somebody to lock me up, that's what," growled the mountaineer. With intense scorn, he went on, "You two is a purty pair o' rose-geraniums, hain't ye? Yau ain't fitten to gyard geese, let alone a real man-size man like me. Now smoke that in yore pipe, you tin-can sheriff! Put down yore guns, and I'll thrash ye both."
"I reckon not," smiled the sheriff.
"I reckon not," parroted the jailer.
"Cowards!" retorted Wolfe. "Well," impatiently, "are ye a-goin' to keep me a-standin' here all night? Ef ye hain't a-goin' to tangle up wi' me, stop a-standin' thar a-gawpin' at one another like a pair o' sick hound pups, and le' me into my res'dence!"
Shortly afterward a door of iron bars was closed and locked behind him.
Old Buck ate his supper greedily, wiped his bearded mouth with a blue bandana, and stretched himself out on his hard and narrow bed. Everything was quiet now, save for the ceaseless chirping of a cricket somewhere under the jail floor. The rays of the little electric in the corridor lighted the cell but dimly, and threw the shadows of the door's bars in weird, snaky, black lines against the outer stone wall. Old Buck looked slyly across to where his cellmates, his son Oliver and Cat-Eye Mayfield, sat on a pair of soap boxes. He glanced toward the door, rose and tiptoed over to them.
"I reckon we'll try it tonight, boys," he whispered. "Tonight'll do as well as any other time, I reckon. Ef it fails, it'll jest haf to fail. Better go to bed, both o' ye. But don' take off nothin' but yore boots. Watch me; and when ye see me give the signal, take yore place whar we've done agreed. Now rickollect, boys, the feller 'at makes the least bobble gits the thrashin' of his life from me!"
The two nodded and began to remove their footwear. The old clan chief went back to his bed, pulled off his boots and threw them noisily to the floor as was his wont, and hid his huge figure under the gray blankets.
All through the hour that followed, Old Buck watched the corridor covertly. Then he saw just what he expected to see and had been waiting for: John Bird brought a small table, a chair and a newspaper, and proceeded to make himself comfortable a few feet from the iron-latticed door.
Now this night jailer never failed to become drowsy at about the time when most people are going to bed, and nobody knew it better than the men he guarded. Soon he began to nod in spite of himself, and Old Buck Wolfe rose without a betraying sound; he took from his bed ten feet of strong wire, which he had cunningly smuggled into his cell a few days before, and very deftly made a slip-noose at one end of it. This done, he threw outa hand toward Mayfield and his son Oliver; they rose noiselessly, and stole to a point beside the iron door.
The high light of the scheme crept forward cautiously. He thrust the slip-noose out, dropped it over the shoulders of the nodding jailer, and with a violent backward surge, jerked him from his chair and pinned him hard against the door's bars. Oliver Wolfe quickly put an arm through and caught Bird around the neck; with the other hand he shut off the outcry Bird strove so desperately to make. Cat-Eye Mayfield snatched a big revolver and a ring of heavy keys from the jailers figure, and within another moment he had shot back the bolt that had held him a prisoner!
"Bring them 'ar three new wash towels from the washin' room, Cat-Eye," whispered Old Buck. "We're shorely a-goin' to do this here thing up right and tight whilst we're about it."
One of the new towels was knotted hard and fast over John Bird's mouth, making it impossible for him to call out; the other two were used to bind Bird's hands and feet. The three mountaineers then pulled on their boots, found their hats, put the night jailer into the cell they had so recently occupied and locked the door upon him, and hastened to liberate the rest of the Wolves.
"Now," grinned the leader, after they had gained the cover of the outside darkness, "now fo' the basin and a big kag o' yaller cawn-juice edzactly seventeer year old come next berry-pickin' time. I was a-savin' it, Cat-Eye, fo' my friends to drink at my fun'ral."
Twenty minutes later, they climbed aboard an eastbound C. C. & O. coal train, which had stopped at Johnsville to take on water for the locomotive. There would be no difficulty whatever in getting off at the sharp grade just beyond Wolfe's Creek.
John Bird did not succeed in ridding his mouth of the towel, though he struggled until he was faint. He resigned himself to the inevitable, and there was a deathlike silence in the jail—save for the ceaseless chirping of a cricket somewhere under the floor.