Yuma Prison Crashout, page 16
Fallon barely listened, but lay back in his bunk and tried to make a few guesses. Who was in on the plan with Quinn, other than Pinky, Preacher Lang, and Yaqui Mendoza?
Morgan Maynard and punk kid Percy Marshall? Probably. Seven men. That seemed a lot, unless, considering the spotlights and the Lowell battery gun, Quinn figured a few of the men wouldn’t make it as far as Mexico, and likely not even a thousand yards beyond Yuma’s walls.
The guard with the shepherd’s staff, Captain Allan. He had to be part of it, had to think he would collect whatever Quinn promised him or whatever he could get after he killed Quinn. The woman? Gloria Adler? Fallon couldn’t figure her out, but he knew the doctor, the “Killing Sawbones” named Jerome Fowler, was in on the deal.
In the hospital this morning, Fowler had called Fallon by his real name, not Hank Fulton.
Anyone else?
* * *
The guard named Gates came by and let Fallon and Pinky out early that afternoon and led them to the mess hall. It was late to be eating dinner, and most of the convicts had already cycled through in their shifts. Fallon fell into line behind Pinky, grabbed his plate, and had it filled with potatoes and something green. Roasted prickly pear cactus, Fallon figured. He poured brown gravy over both, took a tin cup of coffee, and moved to an empty table by himself. Pinky had been summoned over to talk to some other prisoners.
Fallon spooned in some potatoes. The food was tasteless. He made himself eat, and tried not to look around at the others in the facility, the guards, the servers, and the convicts. The coffee was bitter, but strong, and not bad at all. When he had finished his cup, he remembered the routine that had been drilled into his head.
If you want more coffee, you are to raise your left hand, fingers toward the ceiling, nothing in your hand.
He did that, and held the hand high until he heard the footsteps. Without turning around, he sat straight, elbows bent, waiting for the cup to be filled.
A slender arm held the once blue coffeepot, which had long ago been burned black. Steaming brown liquid poured out of the spout and filled the cup.
The voice of the holder said in a whisper, “Who are you?”
Fallon knew Gloria Adler stood behind him. The coffeepot disappeared, but Fallon felt its warmth at his shoulders. He wondered if she might dump the pot’s contents over his head. The hat he wore would offer no protection from scalding coffee.
“I call myself Hank Fulton,” he answered.
“Jerome says you are Harry Fallon.”
“I have called myself that too.”
“Drink your coffee. Then raise your hand to ask for more.
“What are you in for?” she asked as she refilled his cup.
“Destroying bourbon,” he said. “I was innocent.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“I tried to rob the wrong place in Tucson. You heard that before. You know all about me.”
“Before that you were a deputy marshal?”
“I’m not the first outlaw to pin on a badge, and not the first lawman to decide the other side pays better.”
“Does this pay better?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.” He picked up the cup and sipped.
“Hold up your right hand with your fork. No one drinks more than two cups of this swill.”
“No one eats more than one helping of this . . .” He left off the curse and sighed. Gloria Adler was walking away. He made himself finish the undercooked potatoes and the over-salted gravy. The prickly pear might have been tasty if it did not have the texture of boiled rubber.
A handful of potatoes bounced on his plate. At least they were small potatoes. The guards did not let anyone leave the mess hall who did not finish their plates. Fallon speared a potato and waited before he put it in his mouth.
“You’re not a bad man,” she said.
He was about to pull the spud off the fork with his teeth. He paused. “How would you know?”
“Your eyes.”
“All right. I’m not a bad man. I’ve done bad things.”
“Haven’t we all? Why are you here? Don’t answer. Raise your left hand with your fork.”
“Make sure the prickly pear you bring is small.”
She stifled a laugh. “The needles,” she said as she walked away, “will be big if I don’t like your answer.”
He had to think as he ate the potatoes, saving some of the coffee to wash down the prickly pear.
Her footsteps sounded. He wanted to look at her but that would bring guards pounding him with their sticks and hauling him to the Snake Den—and he had an appointment tomorrow afternoon near the sally port. He sat erect, waiting, and saw a giant piece of prickly pear land on the remnants of potatoes and gravy.
“I am here,” he said, “because I made mistakes.”
“Monk Quinn is a mistake,” she said.
“Louis Roach told me that when he died. I think I knew that before.”
“Yet you are here. And alive.”
“I plan to stay alive.”
“That’s hard to do when you partner with Monk Quinn.”
“Maybe you should tell that to the Killing Sawbones.”
He could feel her stiffen. “His name,” she said, “is Jerome.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“You fell in love with the wrong man.”
She started to walk away, but stopped. “Finish your cactus. Then raise your hand for more coffee.”
“But nobody ever drinks three cups of this swill.”
“Everybody should have a full stomach when he dies.”
She was gone. He thought about her, then looked at the massive but thin strip of cactus. He used the fork—prisoners were not allowed knives—to spear it, and tore off a mouthful with his teeth. He chewed, and chewed, and chewed, and swallowed. Pinky was already walking out the door when Fallon managed to choke down his last bite of green cactus. His hand went up and he waited, eagerly, because he needed that third cup of coffee to push down the rest of the cactus and potatoes that felt as though they were in a logjam halfway to his belly.
She was back then, filling the cup.
“Do you know what an adler is?”
His head shook.
“It’s a very poisonous snake in parts of the Orient and much of Europe. And an Adler is standing right behind you.”
He gripped his cup, sipped the coffee, and grinned. “That snake is called an adder. Not an adler.”
He felt her stiffen. “You know a lot.”
Fallon shook his head. “Not enough.”
“Well here’s something you should learn. From me. You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
He spilled coffee and sucked in a deep breath. She was starting to walk away, and he turned toward her, ignoring the rules of the mess hall and said, “I know that lesson already, Gloria Adler.”
She turned back to him. Their eyes locked.
She was beautiful. Somehow, Gloria Adler reminded Fallon of Renee. She looked nothing like his dead wife, but there was an honesty to her, about her, and she carried herself as Renee had, with pride but not arrogance, with a toughness that might have been a façade. It was for Renee. Had been for Renee. He found himself hoping that Gloria Adler was not as hard as she made herself out to be. He hoped that she was smart enough not to make that mistake and become part of Monk Quinn’s scheme to crash out of Yuma.
“I wish,” he said and almost choked on the words, “that she never fell in love with me.”
Gloria Adler hurried away. Fallon drained his coffee, brought the plate and empty cup to the guard at the washbasin for inspection. The guard nodded, and Fallon dropped the dishes into the tub.
“Get enough to eat, boy?” the guard said, and snorted.
Fallon shrugged, and walked out of the mess hall with a bloated belly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The monsoon shower that afternoon cooled the desert off considerably. The thunderstorm had lasted only five or ten minutes, dumping water onto the sand that almost immediately was sucked below. Yet with the brief moisture, the desert seemed to turn alive, and prisoners caught outside in the storm looked up and let the cold, hard rain pound their faces. It felt cleansing and refreshing, and the fragrances of the cactus plants and the trees made Harry Fallon think that there was more to this country than just heat, sand, scorpions, and rattlesnakes.
Now he sat on a bench where he had a good view of the sally port. This time of day, too early for supper but with most of the work details over, was free time for the prisoners. Some tossed baseballs over toward the south wall. Most just dragged their tired, bedraggled bodies to their cells to wait until the bells began to sound for dinner.
Fallon kept his head bent and every few minutes turned a page of the book he held in his lap. The prison library, for the time being, consisted of a corner table in the mess hall. Ladies from Yuma’s few churches donated copies of books for prisoners. Fallon held a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The front cover had been torn off, and pages two hundred and eleven to two hundred and fifty-six were missing, but he had always enjoyed Dumas, had never read this particular novel, and, in prison, The Count of Monte Cristo seemed like the best novel a convict could read. Too bad this version was in French. Fallon could not read French, but he wasn’t interested in reading. He watched what was going on near the prison’s main gate.
The gate was closed. Fallon could make out the wiry man in the building just outside the gate, the man with the Winchester .44-40 who made sure everyone who came in or left was supposed to be entering or leaving. Every now and then, he would lift his head, stretch his arms, yawn, and study the guard towers nearest him: the ones on the north corners, and the big one housed over the walled water reservoir outside the wall. Behind him, he knew that the Lowell battery gun was on the southeastern wall, but that seemed to be primed for prisoners racing across Prison Hill toward Yuma, or the Southern Pacific tracks. The sally port led to the barracks for the guards, the superintendent’s residence, and the Colorado River.
The gate opened, and Fallon returned to his lesson in French.
Into this den of thieves walked Superintendent Gruber. He carried no weapon, not even a nightstick or staff. The gate closed behind him, and Gruber began walking to the mess hall. He held a notebook in his hand, and stopped every once in a while to jot down something with a pencil in the pad, or speak for a few minutes to one of the inmates. Gruber did not stop to ask Fallon anything. He did not even glance at the book Fallon was pretending to read. Gruber ignored Fallon and soon disappeared around the corner.
Fallon waited and read words he could not pronounce or translate into English. Monk Quinn was nowhere around. But Captain Allan was on duty in the nearest guard tower. He held the Sharps rifle with the telescopic sight in his arms, causing Fallon to wonder: Is this just a setup to get me killed?
He saw none of the women prisoners. Where was Gloria Adler? he wondered. Preacher Lang? Morgan Maynard? Percy Marshall? They were nowhere to be found. A few minutes earlier, he had seen Yaqui Mendoza walking around, speaking to a few of the many Mexican prisoners housed in Yuma, but Mendoza had moved south. Even Pinky, who was practically everywhere at once, had disappeared from Fallon’s view.
This time of day, he thought, is siesta time south of the border—maybe even just a few hundred yards south of the walls. The time during the heat of the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, when men and women left their jobs or their chores or whatever they were supposed to be doing to take a nap. Sleep. Refresh their bodies for the rest of the day. Maybe, he decided, that siesta time had passed, and now people were waking from their naps, heading back to finish a good day’s work.
How the hell would Fallon know? He had never been to Mexico, had barely spent time in Texas. What was he doing in Yuma, trying to find a way to finagle himself into Monk Quinn’s acceptance and good graces? To help a carpetbagging scoundrel like Sean MacGregor, and his equally unlikable son, climb a few notches toward the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Suddenly, he found himself thinking again of Gloria Adler. He made himself stop dreaming in the afternoon about the raven-haired, deeply tanned woman. He thought of Burton Wren and a few minutes outside of the dungeon in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
* * *
“Who’d you bring to the gallows, Marshal Hank?” Burton Wren asked casually as the gates to the dungeon closed and Fallon breathed fresh Arkansas air again.
“Unless the judge gets a little ornery, I don’t think anyone,” Fallon said. He extended his right hand as he smiled and felt the big Negro guard’s firm grip. They shook, quickly, released their grips, and Burton offered Fallon some of his plug tobacco.
Fallon accepted, tore off a mouthful with his teeth, and began working on softening the chewing tobacco.
“Cured with apples, Marshal,” Burton said.
“I can taste them,” Fallon said.
“No one to test the hangman’s skill?”
Fallon grinned. “Three whiskey runners, one horse thief. Not a good one either. The piebald he wandered off with is blind in both eyes. An agent riding with the KATY railroad who tried to get across the Red River with three thousand dollars and change. And Slim Fenady.”
“Slim? He beat up somebody again?”
“Deputy Marshal Barney Drexel.”
The guard spit. “Likely, Mister Barney deserved it and he got it.”
“I only wish I could have seen it myself.”
The big-boned, silver-haired black man grinned, spit, and wiped his lips.
“You home for a while?” Burton Wren asked.
Fallon shrugged. “Hope so.”
“Seen that little baby of yourn?”
“That’s where I’m off to now.”
Burton Wren nodded and stuck out his big right hand. “Well, don’t let me keep you no longer, Marshal. You’s a daddy now. And daddy’s got lots of responsibilities. More important than any lawman’s duties, even one that rides for the federal court with jurisdiction over this part of the country.”
The black guard had an intense grip. Somehow, the bones in Fallon’s hand survived the ordeal. He said with a smile, “Even Judge Parker’s court, Burton?”
“Even his.” They were about to separate, Burton Wren to start making his rounds, and Harry Fallon to find his horse at the hitching rail a few blocks away and ride to his home and see Renee and Rachel.
“But there’s one question I been meanin’ to axe you, Marshal Harry.”
“What’s that?” Fallon asked.
The birds appeared to stop singing at that moment, and the wind stopped blowing. Fallon felt he could hear everything from the Arkansas River to the Carden Bottoms over in Yell County around Dardanelle.
“Man alive and Lord have mercy,” the old guard said in an urgent whisper. “It ain’t never a good sign when all goes quiet like this.”
The quiet ended with an explosion.
Burton Wren was already running toward the iron gates by the time Fallon knew what was happening. He saw the gate flying open, the smoke pouring out of the hole, and guards rushing from their stations to the gate. A primal scream erupted out of the throats of several prisoners.
Fallon drew his revolver and stepped toward the dungeon.
He saw little. He remembered even less. A giant white man picked up one jailer and slammed him repeatedly against the wall. Another hurled the heavy ball that he had somehow gotten off the chain secured around his ankle into the chest of a charging guard. One of the filthy prisoners picked up the guard’s rifle while the one with the chain worked desperately to pull the Remington from the man’s holster.
Gunfire erupted. Men screamed. Fallon smelled the acrid odor of burned powder and his eyes stung. His right hand felt warmth, and he later understood that the heat came from the .45 he kept shooting.
And just as quickly as the violence had erupted it was over. Army soldiers stormed onto the scene and formed a cordon around the blown-apart gate. Federal deputy marshals like Harry Fallon and city policemen surrounded the area. Prisoners fell to their knees. Many covered their heads. More sent their hands reaching for the heaven. Men groaned. A few cried out, “Don’t kill me, lawdog. Don’t kill me!”
One boy groaned and wailed and pleaded, “For the love of my mother, kill me. Kill me. I’m dying, dear God, and don’t let my mother see me suffer. Kill me. Have mercy on a sinner.”
Fallon holstered his revolver. Hours later, he would realize the weapon was empty. He knelt by a prisoner lying facedown in the grass, and gently rolled the body over. Blood oozed out of a half-dozen bullet holes in the man’s chest. Fallon looked into the gray eyes that saw nothing on this earth, and he recognized the face.
Billy Parker, twenty-two years old, arrested for grand larceny, his first offense, and had a lawyer that Judge Parker held in good graces. Most likely, at least according to the word going around the district court, the youngster would be given a reduced sentence. Six months, reduced to four with good behavior and time served. And here lay Billy Parker, shot to death, twenty yards from the gate of the dungeon.
A few yards later, Fallon found Burton Wren. The top of his head had been cleaved off with an ax that giant of a man Fallon had spotted through the smoke had found. Fallon felt his chest tighten. He knelt beside the guard and saw the giant being pinned down by two army corporals and a city policeman named Blocker. The giant found Fallon and laughed.
He would hang six months later, but Fallon never felt satisfied. He just remembered Burton Wren lying dead with his brains and blood soaking into the grass, and for years he would wonder:
Burton, poor Burton, what the hell did you want to ask me that morning?
* * *
He slammed the battered copy of Alexandre Dumas’s novel shut and set it at his side. Fallon’s body tensed. He was aware of the sudden stillness in the afternoon. He felt the chill, the numbing silence, and he waited for the death that he knew would follow.
