Down at the stock was the big bull-dog face of the ghost-man, leering at him triumphantly.
The peculiar, erratic impulses of the psychological moment are ever puzzling and insoluble. Lem gazed calmly, almost unconcernedly, down upon Peter Burton. Indeed, at this instant, there was no more evidence of excitement in Lem's face and mien, than had the revenuer been a venturesome fox squirrel gamboling about.
Lem almost grinned pleasantly, as he turned and reaching up, placed the young hawk safely on a low branch.
The little creature threw out his wings. Lem steadied it with careful deliberation, then leaped down from the boulder. The instant his feet struck the ground it seemed to shock his very blood into icy currents that congealed and left him befuddled and shivering.
As he stared into the revenuer's insolent face, the earth looked like a pinwheel.
Suddenly the film lifted from his brain and he was conscious for the first time that the revenuer had taken his rifle. The man's thick lips were moving. He was talking to him. Lem's poise came back. Fully aroused, his face went livid with rage. The revenuer perceived this and thrust the rifle muzzle closer.
"You don't doubt that I'll shoot, do you?" he inquired, with his eyes fixed savagely upon Lem.
"Naw, houn'-dog," returned the boy in low, quavering tones. "Yo'd kill a female baby."
The revenuer laughed.
"Don't you know when I first saw you on that rock training that hawk to sit up, you kind of scared me?" He expelled a volume of tobacco juice. "You scared me some, Mr. Lutts. I thought you was fixing to ring a church bell on me."
He let loose of Lem's rifle and it fell behind him. He held his own, pistol-fashion, under his arm, with his finger in the guard, as he stepped nearer and shook a huge menacing fist in the boy's pallid face.
"You'll have a swell chance ringing anything on me again unless you've got a church bell in your pocket. You pulled a swell trick on me that night, didn't ye? You thought the bunch that galloped down to your dog-house would get me that night, didn't ye? Young man, I'm going to bust this gang of thieves up here, or I'll drink Hellsfork dry! And you—you—you're not only carrying on your daddy's business——"
A blinding, reckless fury that fired Lem with the strength and savagery of a tiger propelled his body through the air like a catapult. He landed on the revenuer's neck and with his naked hands he tried to kill him.
He learned speedily why Burton had not fired, for a second man who had been concealed behind the boulders, together with Jutt Orlick, sprang out and upon him. These two heavyweights soon overpowered and handcuffed the boy, while Orlick lay with gloating eyes, peering out at the scene.
Burton rolled Lem over on his back, and left him to exhaust the maledictions he was heaping upon their heads.
As Lem scrambled to his feet, Burton launched forth as he deftly cut the leather thong and relieved Lem of his cow-horn.
"Lutts—your family owes the government a million dollars and then some. And you're going to pay in some shape or form—you're in the hands of the law now. You ain't monkeyin' with these county people. You're on your way to Frankfort now—and I think I'll be able to send you to Atlanta for a while. Eh, Tom?"
Burton turned to his perspiring companion.
"Sure—they say the punk tastes like cake down there, too."
"Now, Lutts," resumed the revenuer with his bullying insolence, "you've got one chance, and if you could see what's ahead of you, you'd take it quick! You lead us to that layout of yours and you're free. Otherwise, you're going to jail for a year anyway. I got the evidence all right. What you going to do about it?"
Lem's brain was busy.
If he had been sure that there were only the two of them he would have been only too eager to comply with Burton's proposition—because he knew that these two men would never again report for duty. But how was he to know how many men Burton had hiding to trail them.
Upon second thought Lem declined to put his own people in jeopardy.
"Well," growled Burton, "don't be afraid to talk. Are you going to lead me to that liquor hole?"
"Yo' kin blow my brains out first," replied Lem scornfully and emphatically.
"Well, fool, you're on your way. Tom, let's get busy. Bring his gun."
The revenuer produced a length of strap and, tying one end to the short chain connecting the iron cuffs, he motioned Tom ahead.
The iron cut into Lem's flesh at the slightest pressure, and acted like a bull-ring. In their desire to get the prisoner away with as much secrecy as possible they avoided the trails, traveling cautiously under cover.
A few minutes after the revenuer and their captive had departed, Orlick crept out from the rocks like a reptile, and warily dodged along in their wake.
At high-noon the next day Lem Lutts was landed at Frankfort, a United States prisoner. This dismal trip represented the first ride Lem had ever made on a railroad. The terrible chagrin and consternation that obsessed him, and the bullying presence of his furiously hated arch enemy made it one that lingered long in his memory.
In the early hours of the trip the revenue officer and his deputy had plied the boy with a torrent of questions in their vain attempt to break him down. This cross-fire finally wearied Burton, as Lem acted like a man deaf, dumb, and blind; and the surly officer desisted with a series of dire predictions, mingled with some exquisite punctuations of choice profanity.
A pall of far-stretching clouds obscured the sky and a film of drizzling rain veiled the atmosphere. Through this thin downpour Burton walked his shackled prisoner to the Federal Building.
After a wait of almost an hour—which added nervous agony to Lem's grim speculations—he was led into the austere presence of the commissioner.
A row of ornate heavy chairs was lined up against the east wall of the high-ceilinged room. Across the room on the west side, the commissioner sat at a long claw-footed table, hemmed about with various other pieces of massive office furniture, while to the left of him a pale, icy blonde woman hammered a typewriter.
On the walls were the portraits of five men, presumably former commissioners.
The whole atmosphere of the chamber was charged with a chill that went to the heart of the prisoner. When they first entered the room the two officers escorted Lem to one of the chairs against the wall. While the deputy remained seated here with Lem, Burton swaggered his damp hulk across the room and halted before the commissioner, his big shoulders slumping awkwardly. Here he stood mopping his sweaty, heavy features.
Lem's eyes were fastened upon his blunt profile. When the commissioner threw his pen down and looked up, Burton met his gaze with a leering grin, the while wetting his thick lips with his tongue and jerking his thumb toward Lem and the deputy with some words that were inaudible.
As Burton grinned now, Lem had seen his own dog grin, and, at this tense moment, the analogy almost coaxed a smile to Lem's tight lips. Lem had seen his own hound lay a limp, dead rabbit at his feet and look up, and lick his lips with his tongue, and grin just as Burton grinned now.
A subdued and lengthy conversation followed between the commissioner and Burton. From their expressions and gestures it was apparent that Burton was describing the killing of old Cap Lutts. Finally Burton beckoned the deputy, who led Lem across the great room and stood him before the commissioner.
The latter leaned backward and slightly to one side, while with curiously wrinkled brow he started at Lem's boots and glanced slowly and critically up Lem's corduroy trousers, past his heavy belt, across his gray flannel shirt front, and finally rested his keen eyes upon Lem's face.
He did not see a hang-dog criminal.
He saw before him a young mountaineer, in height a good six feet; spare of flesh, but with back-flung shoulders that promised to develop at maturity into the frame of a mighty man. He saw a candid, open countenance, though now a trifle pale, little short of handsome, and absolutely free from any indications of dissipation.
He noted a well-shaped, firm mouth above a square chin; a thin, hawklike nose leading to a wide vertical forehead.
Throughout this acute examination Lem's steady gray eyes never wandered from the commissioner's face. He focused his own gaze upon the commissioner's eye as intently as he would have watched a groundhog hole in the hills. Then the commissioner leaned forward and, taking up his pen, spoke softly:
"So you are old Lutts's boy?"
"He's a dangerous man, Cap'n," interposed Burton. "He ain't no boozer. He makes the stuff, but he don't drink it himself so you can notice it; and that makes him more dangerous. I can hook seventeen rummy-shiners before I can get half-way to a sober one. Then again, he's got the nerve of the old man, and that helps some, I reckon. He's the old man over and over—he's fixin' to lead us a dog's life, Captain."
The commissioner studied Lem again.
"I knew your father, Lutts," he said. "In fact, I have a small piece of lead inside me yet that your father put there." He paused again and, oddly enough, the severe frown with which he had raked the prisoner at first now vanished. He continued evenly:
"Do you see those portraits along the wall? They are men who worked themselves up in the service during the thirty-five years that I can remember. They all looked for your father; they all found him. But none of them ever brought him in."
The commissioner shifted his eyes to Burton.
"So it was left to you, eh? Well—well, of course, I rather expected—that is, I hoped to get old Lutts alive, but——"
He broke off abruptly and added his signature to the blue printed blank he had filled in, then handed the slip to Burton with:
"I'll continue the hearing for further evidence—take him over to the jail, Burton."
He now looked at Lem.
"Have you anything to say for yourself?"
Throughout all this the boy had stood straight and unflinching. His features were pale but his jaws were hard set. Friendless and moneyless, he knew his chances were small. He knew that he stood on the perilous brink of some dire happening. He understood the import of the commissioner's order to hold him for additional evidence, and while he was not wholly unafraid, he stood tense and determined, boding no retreat, like a brave horse taking a deep, wide ditch in the dark, with yawning depths beneath him, and the gush of waters in his ears.
"I said, have you got anything to say?" repeated the impatient commissioner.
"I hain't got nothin' t' say—only—only——" he began, in a voice that split and ruptured in crowding past the lump that choked him. He turned his gray eyes and fixed them upon the bloated, triumphant visage of Burton.
"Only," he struggled on, quaveringly, as he lifted his two cuffed hands and leveled them at the revenuer, "he kilt my Maw—he ded—an' he kilt my pap, he ded—an'—an'——"
Burton grabbed one shoulder with a snort, the deputy the other, and they led him out.
As the door closed, the blonde typist resumed her machine, and her chilly eyes were moist. She glanced covertly at the commissioner. His downward drawn mouth was ajar, and he was gazing blankly at a familiar ink spot on his desk.
Once again Lem found himself marching through the rain between his captors, and all the unknown strange noises of a city consolidated and merged into a tumult that harried his very soul. His next distinct impression came when he realized that Burton was unlocking his handcuffs.
He was now inside of a jail. He stood before a desk and a man in uniform was putting various questions to him in a curt and gruff voice, concerning his age and residence, to which Lem answered in an apathetic, dazed way. The man made a record of these responses in a book. While he was thus occupied, Lem was eyeing his awesome surroundings.
Now for the first time, he was conscious that Burton and his deputy had disappeared, and another man in uniform stood at his side. The desk-man presently handed this officer a pink slip, and he in turn told Lem to follow, leading the way across a big rotunda of concrete to a huge iron-barred gate which he unlocked. He ushered the prisoner into a long corridor, and transferred him to the care of a second uniformed guard, who proceeded to search Lem's clothes with a skill and deftness that would have inspired envy in the bosom of a professional pickpocket.
The guard seated Lem on a bench which was already occupied by two men in blue cotton shirts, and the perversely striped trousers of convict garb.
"Blinky," said the guard, "where's Last Time?" addressing a huge convict with red hair, a mop and a bucket.
"He's over at the bath house."
"Send him front when he comes back. And you," turning to Lem, "sit there till you're wanted."
Whereupon, with the pink slip in his hand, he walked to a small desk at the farther side of the corridor and sat in an arm-chair with his back toward the three now on the wooden bench, waiting for Lem knew not what.
In the meantime, Lem's eyes roved about making a grim inventory of this great merciless cage that had engulfed his body. He was inside a mammoth arcade-like structure that stretched its repellent length out a thousand feet and more to a blind, sinister end. Along its sides, equi-distant, appeared high arched double windows, bolted and barred with a lattice-work of iron. Wherever Lem perceived a spot of God's light, a cold, forbidding hand lay across it like a blasphemy, spreading out its unyielding, black, skeleton fingers to enmesh a human soul.
Moreover, this stupendous, invulnerable shell incased and jealously protected a second structure equally strong and grisly, for as Lem looked, he noted this other structure occupying the center of the arcade. It was a tomb within a tomb, and the boy's already heavy heart sickened as his eyes slid down the seemingly interminable vista of small iron-barred doors, some four feet apart, that diminished in perspective toward the distant end until they shrank to the size of a newspaper.
The doors in this cunning edifice were accessible by means of a steel skeleton-work forming lengthwise porches five stories high, where even a sluggish imagination could visualize convenient gibbets stationed just outside these black, mysterious doors, awaiting the condemned necks of the inmates.
While Lem made further notations in undisguised wonderment, convicts were constantly passing to and fro. They were "short time" men who had their allotted duties, working about the tiers and corridors.
Presently, Lem became suddenly conscious that the two men at the other end of the bench were eyeing him curiously. Their interchange of looks and low words to each other made it obvious that Lem was a subject of comment. Now that Lem was looking straight at them, the man nearest slid along the bench, smiled good-humoredly, then whispered:
"What did ye draw, bo?" The man watched Lem's mute lips for response.
"What did they give ye, pal?" he repeated, while the second man slid over and craned his neck for the answer. Lem still looked puzzled, but finally answered.
"Nothin'."
The other started a laugh which was squelched with an elbow punch in the ribs from his companion.
"I mean, pal," pursued Lem's inquisitor, "did ye git a sentence in this jail, er did they bind ye over?"
"I air continued," replied the boy gloomily, "wherever thet takes me."
"Oh, yes—is this your first pinch?"
Lem risked a nod, with only a vague notion of what "pinch" meant.
Presently the man spoke again.
"Say, pal, you ain't never been in jail before, have ye?"
"Naw," responded Lem without hesitation, "an' I 'low I want out o' heah, too."
He delivered this earnest sentiment with such guileless sincerity that both men snickered.
"Don't you care. You'll feel dopy for a day er two—then ye won't mind it. It'll git your nanny the first time. This is my fifth time in this joint," he volunteered. "I got eight spots ahead of me. Say, pal, sneak me th' makin's, will ye?"
Lem did not answer.
"Have ye got any tobacco on ye?"
"Ef I had, yo'd be welcome to hit—I never use hit."
The man looked disappointed.
"Say—when the bull frisked ye—did he git all your matches—ain't ye got no matches either?"
"I haint got nary a match."
Here a big, husky fellow in stripes, who walked as if he had springs for shoe-soles, passed by. Then he stopped, and turning back, looked keenly into Lem's face. Lem met his gaze and noted that he wore a livid scar from the right cheek-bone down to the chin. He did not appear to see the other two men on the bench, but stood looking with open interest at Lem.
"Hello, Last Time," greeted the man next to Lem. Wherefore, the newcomer shifted his gaze searchingly, then grinned. With a furtive backward glance toward the guard's desk, he thrust his hand out.
"What did you draw, Rox?" he probed.
"Eight."
"A mere speck—I could stand on my head that long. I may see you to-night." He hurried on with his elastic tread toward the guard's desk.
"I'm dead sure we'll git some tobacco now," predicted the man beside Lem. "That's 'Last Time'—he's a time-lock expert—believe me, gents—he's some cracker, too. I met him in Joliet, and I met him agin in San Quinten. Say, Monk, do ye remember readin' about that back-track stunt Last Time pulled off five years ago? No? Well, that was a funny caper. You see, Last Time touched a big joint in Cincy and got four thousand bucks. Then he beat it west. Two days later he got stewed in Chi—then he boarded a train with a bottle of booze, thinkin' he was bound fer Omaha; but he woke up that night and walked smack into the arms of the fly cops in Cincy. What do ye think of that? They didn't prove it on him very strong, but he drawed two spots at Columbus on general principles. I wonder what he turned this time. I met him last winter in St. Louis and I was up aginst it good and strong, too, but Last Time slipped me fifty as easy as dirt. He's got a heart as big as a cow's. Don't you worry—we'll git tobacco now. I wonder how much longer they'll keep us here," he faced about and addressed Lem. "I'm waiting to git my top-knot clipped—I reckon ye wouldn't want to lose your hair, would ye, pal?" he observed, regarding Lem's flowing locks.
"I reckon he will lose 'em, though," projected a raspy voice.
The three looked up. Blinky was standing over them with a pair of clippers in his hand.
"What are you, anyhow," chided Blinky, sneeringly. "Are you a cowboy or a preacher?"
Lem felt a warm sting rise to his cheeks, as he fixed his eyes inquiringly upon Blinky's insolent face.
"What else could he be," interposed a new arrival, "but a preacher? He ain't no convict—the Captain jest sent fer him. He's goin' to live here amongst us and reform a lot of you bad guys."
At this juncture, still another convict came up, bearing a blue cotton shirt and a pair of prison trousers over his arm.
"Is this the new duck?" he queried.
"Duck—duck," echoed Blinky. "Ain't ye got no manners? I'm ashamed of ye—ain't ye got no respect for a preacher? This is Brother Silsand—he got a call—here."
"Oh, excuse me. Well, Brother Silsand, you'll carry these elegant pants and this fancy shirt on your arm when Last Time comes to escort you to the beach. When you come back, you'll feel like a gentleman sure enough."
Other men were attracted, and now a little group clustered around the bench, all eyes turned upon Lem, as though he were some strange animal. And all in turn contributed their jest calculated to furnish fun for the others.
"Here comes Brizz now," announced Blinky. "Ha, there, Brizz—I brought your clippers down. Pipe this guy's hair—you'll never git that reaped twixt this and sun-down. Say, Shorty, you been bellerin' for a mattress ever since I knowed ye—now's yer chance—rake this pretty hair up as fast as Brizz mows it, and feed it to that hungry tick of yourn. I'll bet my plug Saturday to three matches that the bell won't wake ye up."
At this moment, Brizz, a heavy man with a ponderous paunch, crowded in and took the clippers out of Blinky's hand. Brizz was the official reception room barber.
"It do look uncommon extensive, don't it?" said Brizz.
All this while, Lem had grown more and more uneasy, and his first resentment was rapidly amounting to real anger under these unkind criticisms, and the jeering faces that now encircled the bench.
"I'll swear it do," reiterated Brizz. "Still, I'm a regular old rip when it comes to mowin'—come here young feller," he urged with a business-like flourish of the clippers. "Let's start early so's we'll get done for supper."
He laid a hand on Lem's shoulder. Whereupon, Lem rose up, his jaws set, his muscles tense, while a steady light shot his gray eyes.
"Ef yo'-all tech me with them things," he said, low and steady, "I'll take em away from yo' an,'—an' hit yo' with 'em."
The men were so enthralled with these festive proceedings that they failed to notice Last Time sneak up from behind, where he was taking it all in. When Lem stood up and showed fight, a chorus of low derisive laughter rippled around the circle which was instantly disrupted as Last Time burst ruthlessly into their midst, throwing one of the convicts completely off his feet.
"What you fixin' to do, Brizz?" he growled.
"Who—me?—I'm here to cut this man's hair," wherefore, the barber applied the clippers so unexpectedly and so roughly to the head of the man who had been seated next to Lem, that the unlucky fellow protested loudly. Last Time turned upon Blinky. He scowled at him for a second, his lips curled away fiercely, emphasizing an under-shot jaw.
"You old clothes thief," he hissed, "you rod-ridin', cheap, ugly leather-snatcher—you forgot the hammerin' I handed you last month, eh?" Last Time shot a quick look across the corridor at the guard's back. Then he reached out and took a clutching handful of Blinky's shirt-front, and thrust his right fist close to Blinky's nose. Blinky, who was a head taller, now hung away, white and dumb.
"You let this new man alone—do you get me? You let him alone. The next time I get at you I'll take your jaw off—I'll send you across the lot for many a day—get away—get," he snarled, with a violent, contemptuous push.
The minute the other onlookers had noted Last Time's attitude toward Lem, they faded noiselessly away like so many rats. All except Shorty. He stood meekly, holding the shirt and the trousers across his arm.
"That's the bully of the jail," said the convict, following Blinky with a belligerent look. "He's got 'em all bluffed—but one," he added with a scornful laugh.
"What you waitin' on?" he demanded of Shorty.
"Here's his clothes," replied Shorty, indicating Lem with a jerk of his head. Last Time scathed him with a withering look.
"Say, I had a trained cockroach once that could learn things quicker than you—you get dumber and dumber day by day. This man is on the court side—he keeps his own clothes. Take them things back to the dud-cubboard, and put 'em back where you got 'em from. Let's see—you're Lutts, ain't you?" he broke off, producing from his pocket the pink slip Lem had seen the guard have when he was first brought into the cell house.
"Yes—I air ole Cap Lutts' boy o' Moon mountain."
The convict shot a curious look at Lem.
"Sure—that's right," he assented. "Well, Lutts, come with me now. You have to take a bath—everybody that comes in here has to take a bath, the first dash out the box. You ain't never been in a place like this before, have you? A blind man can see that," he conjectured, gnawing a chew off a very black prison plug. "Have a chew?"
"I never hankered fo' t'baccy," declined Lem, smilingly, with a gesture which he meant for a polite curtsy in lieu of thanks.
As they proceeded across the graveled prison yard, toward the bath house, Lem's keen inherent sense of penetration had analyzed the man beside him as accurately as Last Time had read the artless, simple soul of the big mountain boy, and notwithstanding that Lem knew instinctively that this bull-necked, scar-faced fellow was a bad and desperate character, he at the same time felt a warm feeling springing up within him toward this man. He felt that he had a friend in Last Time, who was the first and only one to give him a kind look or word since his arrest, and a sympathetic look or a cheering word coming from any quarter was indeed a welcome offering to a person in Lem's unfortunate and distressing position.
As they walked, the convict talked along in a friendly way, and noting Lem's roving eyes, he proceeded to tell the boy about the various buildings scattered about the great lot.
"That's the Chapel over there," he said. "That's where you will go to church on Sunday, if you want to. If you don't, you'll stay locked in your cell. There's the dining-hall back there by the left wing of the cell-house. That long shed over there open on all sides is where the shop men stop to wash up. There's three hundred men over there now at work. They make brushes and wire fences and shoes and a lot of other things, but you won't work there—cause you're held for Court—but I'd a damn sight rather work than stay locked up all day—night's bad enough.
"I hope you don't come back here after your trial. Any man with as much intellect as an oyster can see that you don't belong here. And there's a few more like you here, that don't deserve bein' in a place like this—a waller for the scum of the earth. Don't look at me, Lutts—that don't include me—I got off damn light. I was due for five spots in the pen. You see that little brick coop over there, Lutts—without any windows, and a solid iron door? That's Calcutta—the dungeon—they call it the 'hole.' That's where they put the bad actors. Inside, there's a solid sheet-iron cell, with an iron cot, and an iron bucket in it—that's all—not a crack of light. They chain 'em to the bed an' leave 'em—once a day they give 'em fresh water and toss in a piece of punk. When the men march in at night, you'll notice the Captain standing at the cell-house door making the count, and you'll see a bull standing by him, pullin' men out of line. When you see a guy pulled out, it's Calcutta for him."
"I've been here nine months, and I've been in that 'hole' five times, 'cause I can't stand these fresh stiffs around here. The last time was for makin' hamburger out of Blinky. See them little wooden houses away 'cross there up on the wall? Them's for the lookouts. See, there goes one now, walking on the wall with his cannon in his hand.
"Here's where you get your bath, Lutts. Upstairs over here is the Hospital. That's where I sent Blinky and a couple more of his cowards."
Last Time's laugh predicated a deep, pleasurable reminiscence, as they entered the bath house. There was no one in the bath house at this time save the convict attendant. He handed Lem a towel which in dimensions resembled a large table napkin, and a piece of yellow soap which in size looked like a chewing-gum wafer. Here, Last Time reached out and took the mite of soap and the meagre towel out of Lem's hands.
"Hoggie, I'll look after him. You stay up at the door and watch the big-top. If you see the bull come out and pike over uneasy, you squeak. Wait, Lutts—I'll get you a decent piece of soap."
With this he climbed up on a box, and reaching up behind a series of steam pipes, he produced a half-bar of white soap and a towel of coarse fabric, but clean and ample. Lem then busied himself with the bath, which was sunken into the concrete floor. As this new-made friend talked along, trying to acquaint Lem with the rules of the prison, he noticed that the boy fumbled, and hesitated, and was plainly abashed when it came to divesting himself of his clothes. Last Time thoughtfully left the mountaineer to himself, saying:
"I'll help Hoggie watch for old Caladadac—you can wash your hair if you want to—that soap is O. K."
Some fifteen minutes later, when Lem had concluded his hasty bath and joined his conductor at the door of the bath house, a high-keyed bell suddenly pealed out. It was the first familiar sound Lem had heard since he left the mountains.
"That's the recall," said Last Time. "Stay back in the door a minute and you'll see the file come out—they've stopped work now—it's four o'clock."
The celerity with which these convicts got out of the shops was remarkable. Hardly had the tower bell ceased when five long rows of stripes stood ready to march. The guards each blew a mouth-whistle in turn, and the columns moved across the plaza toward the wash-shed like a great dragon with hundreds of legs. Then out of the wash-shed the columns crawled, bent around the dungeon-house, and marched into the big dining hall, with the scraping rise and fall of the lock-step—a peculiar, sinister sound.
Lem had peeped out at the bath-house door upon this spectacle with awesome eyes. He stood in open-mouthed wonder, and was aroused only when Last Time spoke and touched his arm.
"The night bull 'll come on now, and he'll be hollerin' for me—we better git along," he said. "You won't eat with them men. You'll git yours in the dining hall inside."
Upon reaching the cell-house, Last Time conducted Lem to the tables at the front end of the basement corridor where the Court prisoners were already at supper, and then left him. A soup-bowl, filled with a substance that at least resembled coffee; a plate of beans, and a thick piece of bread were placed in front of Lem by a convict waiter.
Lem felt at the moment that he never again would want to eat anything. Not only was his appetite wholly gone, but the mere sight of this food was nauseating, although he had not tasted anything since he had eaten breakfast at home the day before.
While he sat looking about him with lugubrious eyes, the man next to him—an uncouth individual indeed—whispered surreptitiously:
"Ain't ye goin' to eat your punk?"
Lem shook his head.
"Kin I have it?"
Lem pushed the whole fare over to him gladly. Presently a gong rasped out two harsh, reverberating notes. At this the men, some forty in number, rose, fell into line and straggled up the basement steps to the main corridor. At the head of the steps Lem met Last Time, who was apparently waiting for him.
"I'll show you your cell now. You're 420—right next to me on the first tier."
Here a great commotion of hurrying feet sounded below and overhead on the tiers above, mingled with the metallic ring of keys and the cold clanking of steel doors and the rattle of iron. And from far up the dim corridor Lem heard a sound that, somehow, filled him with a strange dread. It was the rising and falling of a scraping, tide-like rhythm—the muffled rhapsody of a hundred-legged lock-step. The last column of convicts was marching into the cell-house from the dining hall on the plaza.
It was the on-coming of a grisly, striped, argus-eyed multiped, with fifty heads. This ugly sound reverberated soft and stealthful at first; like the padded feet of some fabulous, carnivorous monster sneaking into this cavernous mortuary to gloat over the dead souls it had cached here. Then again, beneath the nearer tumult, this natant, ill rhythm died down to a measured, sinister moan, echoing through the stone corridors in soughing jabs, like sounds marking the visitation of some maimed Hydra.
The denotation of this eery evil tread of ruined lives grated terribly on Lem's highly tensioned nerves. And oddly enough, he did not seek to shut it out—this revolting, dreadful scrape, that nothing can ever imitate. On the contrary, he strained his ears for it, impelled by the same indefinable, weird influence that charms one to turn again and look back upon a horror that has fascinated the eyes. Thus was Lem fascinated by this hateful noise. Enthralled in this that had dominated his senses, for the moment, he had unconsciously ascended the skeleton iron stairs.
When he aroused himself, Last Time was pointing into the cell allotted him, and looking at him pityingly. Lem shot one swift look into this dark hole, then withdrew his startled eyes and fastened them upon the convict's scarred visage. The boy's eyes were freighted with the igneous luster of some unnamable terror that seemed to stultify his senses, leaving his manly instincts in the grip of some perverted agency that he did not know was there.
If Lem Lutts had possessed a pistol, he would have killed himself in that instant. Quaking perceptibly, he hung back from the cell door. His hand trembled as he held to the railing of the iron porch. His lips moved, and he tried to tell the convict something. The world seemed to be falling about his ears, carrying his soul down into the fumes of hades. Of all the subtle, dormant influences that awake, and invade the scheme of human life to sway the impulses of men, there is none so bewildering as this phase of psychological prompting which holds its profound mystery intact, and baffles solution.
Where is the abode, and what is the origin of this plenipotent conjurer? Certainly Lem Lutts trembled at the threshold of this stone cell. Last Time could see that. What sweeping, pillaging power was this that assaulted Lem's will, causing him to quake thus like an aspen. Surely it was an abstruse form of fear.
Verily, it could not have been the stigma of cowardice. Lem Lutts had never known fear. From the very cradle his life had been enveloped in danger. Deeds stood out boldly to refute this suspicion of weakness. Scores of times in Lem Lutts' life he had looked into the grim teeth of on-coming death unflinchingly and unafraid, with a self-forgetfulness that spells sublime courage. But here he stood now, on the brink of a moment that was in some strange, exaggerated way, awful to him. He stood, pale and shaken, in front of this black jail-cell, undeniably fear-stricken.
Perhaps this was the same quality of fear that caused Napoleon to dismount, cursing his horse, pale, sick, and unsteady for an hour, because his steed had crushed a camp cat with its hoofs. Possibly it was the same subtle thing that inspired the late C. K. Hamilton, the most daring of all aviators, to rush in panic from a dental chair. It may have been the same brand of unknown dread that impelled one of the greatest war conquerors in American history to shun a graveyard after nightfall. Some time or other this strange power lays hold of the bravest hearts. It had Lem Lutts now, and he was backing away and trying to get down the stairs. Last Time spoke to him gently, as he took his arm and urged him slowly into 420.
"Hurry up, Lutts—don't you hear 'em? They're lockin' up now, and I've got to run the tier for the bull—there now—I know just how you feel—I've forgot all the other times, but I've never forgot the first—and God knows I never will. You can't tell me—but you'll be all right—I'll come and talk to you after a while. They don't lock me up until eleven o'clock."
Lem had stepped inside gingerly, as if he expected the floor to collapse and engulf him. There was a dull rolling, a click, and the iron-barred door was closed upon him.
"Stand up at your door until the bull makes the count," imparted Last Time, as he hurried along the tier looking into each cell. Then he came back, and pulling a great lever at the end of the tier, locked all the doors automatically. Now he started back, again calling into the cells as he passed.
"Stand up—stand up—stand up!"
A big guard followed close behind the convict, with a gliding tread that did not give forth the slightest sound. He dashed a cold, penetrating stare in at the faces that hovered at the bars. When the guards had made the count for the night, a babble of conversation began between the prisoners all over the place. They called to each other by the cell numbers, or nicknames; and the talk waxed to an incoherent, mixed medley that tangled itself into nothing intelligible. Though strange to record, this did not seem to bother or confuse those talking.
The door of Lem's cell seemed to be as sensitive to every sound as a telephone receiver. A voice at the farthest end of the corridor trailed into Lem's cell as distinctly as a voice two cells away. Thus, a sound two cells away might be interpreted as emanating from the remotest cell in the place. Lem, sad, dejected, and with a weight of gloom at his heart that submerged his spirit and held him in a lethargy, still stood at the door with his fingers twined around the chill bars. His eyes, starry with the emotions that swept over him, were fixed upon the only thing he could see—the blank stone wall opposite, laced with a series of steam pipes, and the high windows blotted with a skein of iron.
He was in jail now—he, Lem Lutts,—old Cap Lutts' boy—was gunless to-night; hanging on to the bars of a jail door. His father, seventy-six when he fell in the Church of Hellsfork, had never been in a jail. Crowding up amidst other lamentations, and superseding them for the moment, Lem felt keenly the stigma and sting of this scandal. It was a disgrace on the whole Lutts faction that he, their leader, now should stand behind the iron bars of a jail door. The irony of it was deeply excruciating—that he, their chieftain, should succumb to a revenuer.
Moreover, was it not unspeakably shameful that this revenuer who took him was the man who had invaded his home and killed his mother? He had waited a little and killed his father. Then he tore him away from his domain and his people; and caged him where he stood to-night—gunless, in an iron and concrete hole, with the cold, unyielding bars between him and his free, wide, high Cumberland Kingdom.
Lem probed his conscience for the hundredth time in quest of the crime he had committed to bring him to this hell. And when a small voice answered back from out its castle of inherent chauvinism, and told him that he sinned against no man—then it was that the smouldering, dormant hate, sleeping in his heart, stirred and welled up into a mighty tide, effacing all other kindred emotions that had traversed his being upon being jailed. This new force aroused him to action, and somehow he felt better.
How strange are the workings of that mystically mated pair—the human heart and brain! How appallingly strange that a phase of hate should assuage the pain in any heart. But this was a truism that for the time inspired Lem to action and forgetfulness of his environments, for now his previously dull eyes were afire, as he turned back into his cell for the first time. He felt his way to the limits of the wall. The distance was a mere three steps for him. Then he turned and took the three steps back to the door. Then back again he went. And thus he took up this three-step march, the while the ugly visage of the revenuer projected itself against the gloom, and he saw Burton's dog-grin. He saw him smear the sweat off his leering face, and fancied he heard his vaunting words of triumph to the commissioner, gloating over the killing of Lem's father, and the taking of himself.
And here, while Lem paced to and fro, he forgot all else save his thirst for revenge. And through these walls he heard dim voices from two graves in the hills urging him onward, and he invoked God to give him strength to endure. He vowed that he would be patient and endure, even to the crack of doom, that he might stand face to face with this man-brute, when he, Lem Lutts, would hold the upper hand, in that great day, over this wanton blood-lover who had done these things.
Lem's life was linked to this Nemesis by an inexorable blood-debt. He was bonded to the revenuer, with the rigid, unmalleable nexus of hate that naught but annihilation of one or the other could sever. Thus, with these hurtful thoughts whirling through his brain, Lem forgot in a measure, which mitigated the dejection and chagrin imposed by his terrible predicament.
Wherefore, he continued to follow these stormy thoughts as from door to wall he paced—three steps backward, then three strides to the bars, walking, turning, walking and turning again—until presently he stopped, transfixed, startled, and blinking. A flood of brilliant light, had dashed into his cell. The boy had heard of this wonderful invention, but he had never before seen an electric globe. This magic effulgence that rushed in and drove the darkness from his cell was a most welcome visitation, but it added to his strange, uncanny surroundings, and perplexed him deeply. He stood rigid for a long minute gazing intently at the incandescent globe that stuck put from the wall, irradiating its brightness in so mystifying a manner. He approached this bottle-like device, and examined the wall around it minutely. He raised one hand cautiously and with a forefinger touched the globe gingerly, as if he feared it might burn him. While he was thus engaged pondering upon the necromancy of this light which smacked so strongly of witchcraft, and upon the avenue that conveyed it hither and the puzzling power that sustained it, he heard a slight sound at the door. Whereupon, he wheeled quickly and met Last Time's scarred face grinning through the bars at him pleasantly, and obviously amused. Knowing that the fellow had been watching his antics around the electric globe, and acutely conscious of his own crudeness, Lem stepped to the door with an abashed smile.
"How are you now?" inquired the convict.
"I ain't powerful happy," returned Lem lugubriously. "This air the all-fired'st cave I ever been into. I 'low I'll never git used t' hit—leastways I air glad thet yo'-all come round t' talk. I ain't much on th' talk myse'f—I never could talk much, someways,—th' folks up my ways air all putty much thet-away—they don't any of 'em spill over with talkin'—'pears like they got so much to think about thet hit keeps their tongues stalled all th' time, most—but ef I can't say much—I air glad yo'-all come round, 'cause I like to heer yo' talk. Gawd'll Moughty! hit's powerful lonesome-like in heah."
"Sure," sympathized the convict. "It's lonesome'ern hell; but it ain't that altogether thet hurts a first-timer, Lutts—it's the gang of old-timers he's bound to meet inside every jail."
Lem smiled wearily, in a mirthless way, and delivered his short, eloquent gesture, implying acquiescence and approval, as he watched the convict's face with interest. Silently, Last Time produced a small tin box containing a bit of woolen rag and a tiny piece of flint, together with a button through which two cords passed through separate holes. Standing, he lifted his knee, placed the box thereon, and with dextrous skill started the button like an improvised buzz-saw against the flint. The spark flew and ignited the woolen rag. He then lighted his cigarette, replacing the box, and leaning his big shoulder against the bars, forced the smoke through his nostrils reflectively.
"I don't know what brought you here, Lutts—I ain't askin' you—it's none of my business—but I hope you don't come back here after your trial—it's the old-timers, like me, that the cul meets in jail that makes the criminals of this country. Just listen to that talk now—that ain't up-liftin', is it?—Sure not. Just hark to that swearing and them rabby songs—sure, that's all aginst the rules of the prison, but what can they do to stop it? Nothin'. They'd have to keep a bull at each door. The men are allowed to talk a little while to each other from their cells before the lights go out. They can't speak during the day—they got to let them talk some time or other in a place like this—if they didn't, they'd all go crazy—then where would the politicians and the prison contractors be?
"Then when these guys start in to talk, what do you hear? But there ain't much of that stuff comin' from the first-timers, Lutts—they're too thoughtful to-night—they ain't hard enough yet—but wait till they come back—very soon. If they do, they won't get any jobs when they get out, believe me—it's me that knows. What happens when a guard starts out to catch some of these cursers? A bull's got to be almost in front of his cell to be sure. And you take three hundred convicts with two-thirds of them cussin' all at the same time, and the echoes all jumbled up—he might as well try to take the ocean up in his arms—they get them—sometimes. When a bull slips up and starts along the tier, he don't no more than get started, when the guys that he's already passed gives out the signal and you won't hear a peep until the bull's gone down again—then they'll all give him the merry ha-ha, and cuss him for sneaking up. It's the people you meet here that makes the criminals, Lutts. I hope you don't come back here. If you do, you're gone—not that you want to be gone, but the world 'll sizzle you to a frazzle—they will want none of you—it's me that knows."
Lem was profoundly attentive. He pressed against the door and listened to the convict's words with growing interest. Last Time rolled another cigarette, manipulated the tinder-box, lighted up, and continued:
"It makes my gizzard ache," he said, "every time I see a first-timer. Their stories are all the same. If you'll listen, Lutts, I'll tear off nine rods of my own life, right at the spot, where I first got in jail."
"Once I had one of them good mothers—like everybody has or had. My daddy was killed in a mine, and my mother died three months later. They sent my little sister to an orphan asylum, and I went to work for a dairy-man for my board and clothes. I sure did sling the work—from four in the mornin' to eight at night, sometimes later. He fed me good enough, but the old stiff wouldn't give me a cent to spend—only two jits on Sunday to toss to the preacher. Course he didn't agree to give me any money, but if he had just a slipped me two bits on Saturday he could have squared my feelin'. I didn't kick out loud, and wouldn't a felt so bad at that if he had let me see my little sister once in a while. I begged him every month, but he turned me down cold."
"Well, I got to wantin' to see my sister so damn bad after a year that I swiped a set of single harness from the old guy. I kept them hid for two weeks, then I dug them up, sold them, and skated. I left a note tellin' ole Storman that I had gone West to make my fortune, like they say in books. Well, I see now that I hadn't ought to a stole the harness—I hadn't ought to a throwed that trick. Anyhow, them two months was the happiest I've seen since.
"When I left I meant to work for some one near the asylum who would pay me till I got money enough to pay for the harness and go back, as the old man had promised to pay me wages when I was eighteen, but I struck such luck that I forgot to go back; but I paid him for the harness—like a dub—and what did I get for it?
"I was a husky lad and knew the dairy business. I got a job near the asylum—saw my sister every day—and got twenty-five bucks a month. The harness was my first bad break, and it worried me. The second month, I sent old Storman a postal order for twenty dollars and told him I took the harness and was sorry. He cashed the order and had me pinched the next day. They tried me and slammed me into the booby-hatch for six months; so I was on my way.
"Lutts, I'll never forget that first night—not me. When I got out I went back to my last job and got the throw-down. He said it was good for me to confess and pay for the harness, but that every one knew I had been in jail, and he couldn't have me around. Then I went back to my own town like a fool—everybody gave me the go-by—even the church that I had carried money to every Sunday wouldn't have me. I saw then I was a dead one. I hiked out then. Every time I'd get a good grip on a job, long would come that convict-hunch, and I'd have to make my by-by. I ain't tellin' you how hard I tried for a year, Lutts—but I'm tellin' you now that I ain't tryin' any more, and don't mean to. I quit tryin' and hunted up a guy I met in jail, and when I found him in St. Louis I was hungry and ragged and ugly as a wet dog.
"He was the whitest guy I ever met. He staked me and I stuck to him, and worked with him until he got shot dead the night I got this scar you see. Believe me, Kid, Morgan was the smoothest blower that ever lifted the front off a safe—and I want to tell you, Lutts, when I'm outside I ain't ragged and hungry any more—not me—and I don't mix with tin-horn trash like Blinky and this gang in here. I live right, Lutts, when I'm out. I got twenty-three hundred bucks planted right this minute, where no one will get it but me—at that, Lutts, I'd go back and work for five dollars a week if I could, but I know I can't—there's no turning back for an old-timer—he's gone.
"I know as well as I know I'm talkin' now, that in the end they'll plant me in the potter's field, and the chances are that I won't die natural—they wouldn't even let a guy like me into a decent graveyard—the life has big draw-backs—and when you get out, Lutts, you remember the advice from a party that knows—you side-step anything that looks crooked—even if you do see ready money—you blow it—it's a boomerang—I'd rather die a beggar than a rich thief—blow it, Lutts—it ain't too late for you—if you don't come back. Say, Lutts, you must be hungry—I know you didn't eat anything downstairs—wait a minute——"
Last Time broke off abruptly, and slipped into his cell. He returned with a paper sack which he thrust through the bars to Lem.
"Here's some crackers and cream cheese—the bull gave it to me—you eat it all—I got all I want. Hello—there goes the quarter—the lights 'll go out in fifteen minutes. 'Creepin' Jesus' 'll wake up now. I got to bring the night bull's lunch from the kitchen and take the towels over to the Hospital, and turn the hot water off at the bath house, and a string of other old-woman stunts before they lock me up—so-long."
Lem ate the cheese and crackers thrust upon him by the generous convict, more to assuage the acute pangs of hunger that now assailed him than to indulge his palate, the while he pondered over the convict's story.
Suddenly the electric lights went out and left his cell in darkness save a glimmer across the corridor. The scores of obstreperous, profane tongues that had scathed the fetid atmosphere now subsided, and Lem sank on the side of his cot and gazed with empty eyes between the bars at the dim light across the stone hall, and the full force of his unlucky predicament rushed upon him again.
This gas jet, which burned all night, was some fifteen feet from the corridor floor, bringing it up to a level with the tier porch. The jet flung a faint, orange-hued ray obliquely toward Lem's cell door. Although he was mentally worn out and weary of body, still he could not bring himself to lie down. Finally, he took the straw pillow from his cot, placed it on the cement floor close to the door, and sat down with his mind astray and his unseeing eyes fixed blankly upon the gas light.
At this instant, he was suddenly blinded, as "Creeping Jesus" flashed his lamp in his face, turned a cold stare on him, and glided on like a ghost. Lem clutched the bars and tried to look after the apparition that seemed to be borne along on air. While he was pressing against the door, a sudden medley of noises disrupted the quiet. As it came nearer, it gathered volume, and the somber stillness was quickened with the discord of voices, and the shuffling of padded feet, accompanied by the baser scrape of a heavier tread. Seemingly, this confusion stopped and centralized directly over his cell, but what tier it was on he could form no conjecture.
In a momentary lull came the rasping of a key; then the subtle roll of a cell door, followed instantly by a frightened voice that rang through the dead corridors with a jumble of protesting, begging utterances that rended the solemnity of the place.
"Oh, no, no! Not in there! Not there! I—I——"
"Shut up—you'll wake every dog in the place—get in."
"I won't go in there! I won't! I can't go in there!"
"Will you get in there? You get in there—you damn fool!"
"Don't put me in there—don't—don't! I won't run away—how can I? I'll stay right here—but please don't put me in there."
"Take hold of him, Sam—throw him in—get hold of his leg."
"Wait—wait—wait—please listen just a minute—I'm not a criminal—don't put me in—my parents don't know where I am—let me stay out here—my father is rich—he will send for me—he will pay you—he will come for me—please don't put me in that place—I——"
"Say, Kid—you're the limit! For the last time—are you goin' to get in there? If you don't—we'll throw you in."
"I won't!—I can't!—I'll smother in there. I'll die there and my mother will never know—oh—oh—you're choking me—stop—you're chok—cho—ch——"
For a scant minute there came the panting hiss of labored breaths, heaved through clinched teeth; a combat of footsteps, mingled with the sound of ripping garments. Then came a dull thud overhead, a slight rumble, the click of a cell door, followed by an agonizing groan, ending with the pang of a sob that impinged cruelly upon the awesome, dead solitude.
While these hateful sounds still lingered hurtfully in Lem's ears, two feet and a pair of striped legs confronted him. He looked up from his position on the floor. It was Last Time.
"Ain't you asleep yet, Lutts?" he whispered, then went on, "Did you hear them slam that first-timer in? He's right over you in 520. God, but he hated to go in there—but he went in. He's no mongrel—he's a swell looker—only a kid—the poor devil. It's eleven o'clock—there's the bull lookin' now—night."
The convict stepped into his cell and slammed his door noisily as a signal to notify the guard, who stood waiting at the end of the tier, that he had closed the door tight. Then the big lever ground back into position, and Lem sat motionless with a horde of curious thoughts trailing across his benumbed brain. It seemed like an age that he sat there, throughout the pitiless hours like a distorted image; the deserted habitat of a soul with its tenant gone. He was only aroused momentarily when hour after hour "Creeping Jesus" hung at his door for an instant, like a great nocturnal humming-bird, then darted away like a winged phantom.
The boy had the comforting, though fatuous notion, that the nearer to the door he managed to get, the nearer to freedom was he. Under an apathetic spell his thoughts fled back to the hills. With quick, wistful breaths, each a cry from a stifling soul, and his hot forehead pressed against the iron, he crouched there on the floor by the cell door. His body was imprisoned between these grim, impassable walls; but his soul was yet uncaged. For in spirit he was once again back amidst the beauteous wild hills of the Cumberland with the feel of his rifle, hunting and hunted in turn, but with the pungent aroma of odoriferous blossoms in his nostrils; the purl of crystal waters in his ears; and the illimitable arch of opalescent sky over him, and the free fraternal rocks beneath his feet.
And in his vision, framed in blissful hours, his retrospection conjured a seraphic face—a luring, misty vision, with a bowed red spot for a mouth, and great black-fringed eyes—eyes tinted like robins' eggs—eyes that held an unworldly baby look; and curls—a riotous billow of satiny curls. Ah, even as he crouched here, he could see the little pale scar that crossed the part in her curls—his scar—his scar to kiss,—that little scarab-like mark that fascinated his lips.
The longer he stared at the rufus halo that encircled the gas light, the wider it expanded; and as it grew, its burning gamut embraced a multiplicity of changing scenes representing hours of his life. Like cinematographic pictures, it held a stirring pantomime boldly up to his intent gaze.
As he looked again, a beautiful nascent wraith slowly developed and occupied the nimbus of the buff light. Her meaning lips were slightly parted, her eyes saw him, and there was a specific message therein. He knew that if some sorceristic agency could put her down by him now in this black midnight hour, that she would put her hands in to him and would give her lips between these unbreakable iron bars. The price of her kiss to-night would be one look at his haggard, haunted face.
In fancy, he took her in his arms and fled, galloping across the clouds to the Cumberlands, racing with the shadows that traversed the valleys like eagle wings. Once again his eyes were gladdened with the vast colored panorama that crowded in one limitless circle around Eagle Crown. Now the cascade in Hellsfork was beating in his ears, the soothing rhyme of its endless monotone, a cadence he loved so well. And now the sun had followed a shower, and he was sitting with Belle-Ann under the big magnolia tree on the spot that was ever dry, and they were holding out their hands and catching the crystal raindrops that rolled off the leaves overhead.
Half consciously, he now thrust his hand out toward this scene his own imagery held before him. And even now the warm drops came down from overhead—dripping, dripping, dripping. He could feel them splash and burst now on the back of his outstretched hand, just as they did in the joysome days agone when the drops tickled their palms, and he could hear the music of the girl's dulcet laughter. Again he caught more of these drops.
Suddenly and rudely, Lem was jerked out of this beatific reverie by the fearful howls of some convict, night-mare ridden. These hideous screeches aroused Lem's senses, and he blinked and rubbed his hands. His hands were wet. Instinctively he looked up and discerned the crack in the tier porch overhead from whence these warm drops trickled down and splashed in front of his cell. Wherefore, a shock of suspicion jerked him out of his rambling thoughts. He leaned close and stared at the back of his hand, getting to his feet at the same time. It was smeared with red. Even in the semi-darkness, Lem knew that the stain on the back of his hand was blood.
In an under-tone he called repeatedly to Last Time in the adjoining cell, but the convict slept on and did not respond. Lem searched for something with which to knock on the wall to wake him. Failing in this, he backed up against the wall and hammered with the heel of his heavy boot. Presently, Last Time's voice awoke sleepily and from afar.
"What's the matter—is that you, '20?"
"Yes," returned Lem in a whisper. "Yo'-all come t' th' door."
"What's the matter, Lutts?"
"They's blood a comin' down overhaid."
"Blood!"
"Yes—hit's a drippin' down heah."
"You sure it's blood?"
"Yes," reassured Lem. "Hit's sho' blood—'cause I got some on my han'."
"Wait a minute."
Lem heard him rummaging around in his cell. The convict made a long, rigid roll out of a newspaper and thrusting this out and around at arm's length he said:
"Here, Lutts, get the end of this—stick it in the blood and hand it back."
Lem manipulated the paper. Reaching as far out as he could, he rubbed one end in the dark pool in front of his cell, and handed it back to the convict. Lem heard Last Time exclaim:
"The hell—I thought that guy'd do something."
The next minute the convict was scraping a tin cup across the bars of his door, a performance that sent metallic echoes from end to end of the corridor. A guard responded with surprising alacrity.
"What's the rumpus here, Last Time?" he demanded.
"That cul up in 520's croaked himself—pipe the blood in front of next door."
The guard turned his reflector upon the pool, then hastily unlocked Last Time's cell.
"Come along," he ordered.
He then ran to the end of the tier, and pulled the lever to allow Last Time to open his door and follow. After that, Lem heard nothing overhead save subdued whispers, cautious steps, and guarded movements. He did not hear Last Time return to his cell.
When the first gray light of dawn filtered through the high arched windows of the cell-house, and drove the gas light pallid, it found Lem still awake. Without, the English sparrows set up their garrulous chirpings, and like a draught of some blessed elixir, a faint breath of early morning, dew-damp air was wafted through the outer bars into the sodden cells. The bell on the prison tower rang, and there was a great stirring of convicts, mingled with a multitude of harsh jail noises.
While the keys were grating on the tiers above, Last Time hustled up to Lem's cell with a bucket of water and a mop, and in silence washed every vestige of the blood-stain away. As he took up the bucket to go, he turned to Lem.
"He's over in the dead-room now. Ain't it hell, though?—and him only a kid at that. He had a fine face, too,—he cut his throat with a broken pocket mirror. There comes the bull for the count—so-long."
As the cracksman went, Lem saw a film of moisture glisten in his eyes.