Yuma Prison Crashout, page 20
“I can’t either,” Pinky said.
“You won’t have to,” Monk Quinn said, and put his arm around Pinky. “But you sit by me, Pinky. If you fall in, I’ll save you.”
They moved to the river, Pinky and Percy Marshall climbing onto the makeshift raft first. Fallon and the others kept going deeper, to their knees. That’s when Gloria Adler, Doc Fowler, and Preacher Lang got in.
The boat, or whatever you wanted to call it, did appear to be floating, even with the weight of the passengers and anchor. At least they did not have to worry about luggage—unless you counted Monk Quinn’s haversack and the doc’s grip. And the two torches.
Quinn climbed aboard, and put his arm around Pinky. Allan and Mendoza came in next. That left Maynard and Fallon. They were up to their waists. Fallon nodded at the gunman, and both climbed up from opposite sides. Their legs kicked and they pulled themselves up. No one offered to help. Gloria might have, but she was busy holding Doc Fowler close. He seemed to be trembling, from the rotgut in his body or maybe fear.
The boat rocked, but soon stabilized. The current took them downstream.
“This reminds me of Huckleberry Finn,” Moses Quinn said. “We’re bound for adventure. I always wanted to be a pirate.”
Fallon studied the killer. He never would have guessed that a man like Monk Quinn had read anything, least of all The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. None of the others reacted to the comment. Quinn also knew about the U.S.S. Constitution, and could name the verse from a part of the Scripture that Fallon never recalled hearing—and Judge Parker quoted a lot of Bible verses during his sentencing. That meant Monk Quinn was a smart man. At least, Fallon figured, he was smarter than the men he had picked to accompany him. And that likely included Harry Fallon.
“Let’s see,” Quinn said. “Maynard, you take the oar and work that side.” His head tilted. “Fallon. You work there. Port or starboard. I never knew which one was left and which one meant right. And there’s no reason to learn now because we’ll only be on this vessel for five miles.” He gestured toward the rear. “But keep on the back of the boat. That’s stern. Isn’t it?” He laughed. “Steady as she goes. Don’t rock us too much.”
The boat tipped a bit, but never precariously.
“Captain Allan,” Monk Quinn said, “I must admit that I thought earlier that I never should have trusted you. But the steamboat did not stop, and you did a fine job of picking a raft.”
“I know what I’m doin’,” Allan said.
Fallon found his oar. He gripped it with both hands, spread out his legs to keep his balance, and began pushing, silently, steering the flat barge down the river.
“Which side?” Maynard asked.
“How’s that?” Quinn asked.
“Which side will the horses be on?”
“Captain Allan?” Quinn asked.
“East. Left-hand side,” Allan said.
“We ought to push this hodgepodge of wood closer to that bank,” Maynard said.
“Keep her in the center of the river,” Quinn said.
“Can we light that torch you have?” Percy Marshall asked.
“Not yet,” Quinn said. “Let’s get a little farther away from Yuma.”
They kept floating downstream.
* * *
The torches had been lit and posted at the front of the boat. They needed the light now, because the middle of the Colorado River was dotted with islands. Most of these were more sandbars than actual islands, barren of any type of growth, but now it was, as Monk Quinn ordered, “All hands on deck and poles in hands.”
Allan took over what passed for a rudder on the barge, while Fallon and Maynard continued with the oars. The others found long sticks that they sometimes had to use to push the bow of the boat away from an island.
They moved on, carefully, around one large chunk of earth in the middle of the Colorado, then up past where the land jutted out at a harsh angle, and the river turned sharply, through a narrow passage between Arizona Territory and the State of California. Eventually, the islands disappeared, and the river bent sharply south.
“We should be clear from here on out,” Allan told Quinn, and the guard relaxed, letting out a breath of relief.
Despite the wind and the ripples of waves, the Colorado looked peaceful. Fallon worked the oars, and studied both sides of the banks as well as the river. He looked for any sign of snags or a sandbar.
“Monk,” Allan called out. “I told you the anchor was a bad idea. It weighs fifty pounds. Pounds we don’t need.”
Quinn pitched a cigar he had been smoking into the river. “But what is a ship without an anchor? Be that as it may, First Mate, Mr. Mendoza. Would you be so kind as to weigh anchor?”
The big Mexican slid across the raft on his buttocks, causing the barge to tip a bit. Pinky grabbed hold tightly to the edge. Quinn reached over and took the old man’s left hand. “Fear not, Pinky. Monk Quinn has you.” With his other hand, he reached inside the haversack that hung over his shoulder.
It happened so fast Fallon did not realize what was going on until it was all over. Quinn brought out a pair of handcuffs. One bracelet was snapped tightly onto Pinky’s wrist. The other locked onto the anchor as Yaqui Mendoza heaved.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“What . . . ?”
That was all Pinky had time to say, because the anchor splashed over the edge, jerking Pinky underneath. Fallon dropped the oar when he saw the handcuffs, but he had no time to prevent the murder. And as soon as the anchor left the boat, the raft tipped and turned violently, sending Fallon off balance and to his knees. Out of the corner of his eye, Fallon saw Maynard being hurled into the water.
Water splashed onto what served as decking on the raft. Fallon slipped. He heard screams. Another splash. The boat rocked and heaved, and above all of this, Monk Quinn laughed.
A wave of cold water slapped Fallon’s face. The raft had become a seesaw, and Fallon rolled this way, then that way, but gradually the rocking stopped. He came to his knees to find the torches still glowing, Monk Quinn still laughing, and Gloria Adler missing.
Maynard had grabbed the ribbing that ran along the side of the boat. He spit out water and tried to climb back aboard. No one bothered to help him. Monk Quinn was too busy laughing. The others were coming to their knees, except the petrified Percy Marshall, whose fingers seemed to be digging into the wood to keep himself from being thrown into the dark water. Doc Fowler had been catapulted into the Colorado, as well, but he was pulling himself aboard on the opposite end of Morgan Maynard—which had to help the raft’s balance.
Finally, after countless seconds, Fallon saw Gloria Adler about twenty yards behind the floating contraption. He dived into the cold waters, and heard the raft rocking again, causing men to curse or splash, and Monk Quinn to laugh even harder.
He came up, saw the woman convict closer. She could swim. She stopped, treaded water, and shook her head. “I’m all right. I can swim.” She spit out some water. “Find Pinky. I have to help Jerome.”
Fallon paused, letting the girl swim past him toward the boat. He tried to get his bearings in the dark. The ship was now thirty yards from him. He swam a few more yards toward the middle of the river, closer to where he figured they must have been when Monk Quinn did his dirty work for the night. He grabbed a lungful of air and went under.
He came up, filled his lungs, looked back toward the raft. It appeared to be turning around. He wasted no more time, and submerged again. His eyes opened. He saw nothing but the blackness of water. He had not touched bottom. Something swam past him. He went deeper, and still found no bottom. His lungs began tightening. He reached down, felt only coldness, and had to come back up.
Wrong place? Likely. His first dives had been only wild guesses. He saw the torches from the raft, and knew Quinn had managed to get his ship turned upstream. The lights from the torches hardly reached him, but he swam toward them, for about ten yards, and dived in again.
Nothing again. Still, he tried. Still, he found no sign of the anchor, no sign of Pinky, no sign of anything but water that went on forever, and a darkness that stretched toward eternity.
He came up, gasping, tiring, and bitterly angry.
The voice called from the raft: “Give it up, my friend.” It was Monk Quinn.
“No.”
He went down again. Came up. He couldn’t hold his breath as long now. His legs and arms ached. His chest heaved. The raft had made little progress toward him.
“Now, will you come back to my ship?” Quinn yelled out in the night.
He tried, and failed, again.
As soon as he broke the Colorado River’s surface, Quinn called to him: “Do you think that old geezer could have held his breath for one minute? Not even fifteen seconds. He is gone. Even if you found him, what could you do? Without this?”
He heard a splash, faint, and he knew Monk Quinn had tossed the key to the handcuffs over the side of the raft.
“You waste precious time, my friend. Come to the raft. Come home, my brother.”
When Fallon hesitated, he saw the orange flame, heard the shot, and felt the bullet splash in the darkness a few yards to his right.
“That is Captain Allan’s warning shot,” Monk Quinn said. “He sees very good in the dark, you know. And the captain only gives one warning shot. Swim toward us. It is too tiring to try to row against the current. Swim toward us. Or you will join your old friend at the bottom of this river.”
He heard the metallic sound of a Winchester’s lever being cocked. Fallon looked around, sighed, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Pinky.” He began swimming downstream toward the raft and the crew of killers.
Gloria Adler and Doc Fowler pulled him aboard. Fallon caught his breath. Someone tossed him a blanket, or maybe it was just a shirt. Either way, he dried off his face. He still shivered.
“Is that why you wanted an anchor?” He looked directly into Monk Quinn’s eyes.
The killer shrugged. “I did not want his body to be found. That would tell Gruber’s derelicts which way we are heading. So I thought, hearing the steamboat whistles when they docked down below our prison, I thought that if we were to journey downstream, an anchor. An anchor would do the job I needed. So I asked the fine and talented Captain Allan to find one for our journey. He thought I was crazy. He was not the first. But you see”—Quinn tapped his temple with a forefinger—“Monk Quinn has a brain. He thinks ahead. No one will find Pinky’s body at the bottom of the Colorado River. And he would have no time to scream out a warning that might be heard, for, I think we have heard this enough: sound carries far in the desert night.”
“You could have brought Pinky with us.” That, to Fallon’s surprise, came from Doc Fowler.
“That old man? He barely made it down Prison Hill to the river. He would not have lasted two days in the desert. I did him a favor.”
“Did us all a favor,” Yaqui Mendoza said. “One less man to get a share of our fortune.”
“It was a despicable thing to do,” Gloria Adler said. “He was harmless.”
“Harmless, my dear?” Monk Quinn chuckled. “Harmless men . . . nor harmless women like you . . . do not spend any time behind the iron of Yuma Territorial Prison. His wife didn’t find Pinky harmless, especially when he had his hands around her neck and was strangling the life out of her so many, many years ago. That’s why Pinky was in Yuma. He got us out. He got himself out so he could die a free man, more or less, and maybe go up to heaven and ask his wife, who has been feeding worms since ’74, for forgiveness.”
Quinn’s head shook with bitter amusement. “He strangled her. Strangled.” He showed off his own hands. “That’s the only person he ever killed. And I do not need men who strangle. Stranglers will do us no good when we get closer to the gold I’ve buried. I need guns. Gunmen. Good men with guns.”
Percy Marshall managed to find his voice: “Is Doc Fowler any good with a gun?”
“He’ll be good at patching any of you up who turn out to be not as good with a gun as you said you are.”
“And the señorita?” Yaqui Mendoza asked.
Quinn laughed. “She will make sure Doctor Fowler does his job. And I think she can handle a gun very well too. So does the man she shot to death.”
“Where is it we’ll be going?” Preacher Lang asked. “Where we will have need of our proficiency with firearms?”
“In good time. In good time. Again, I did what I had to do for Pinky. I even think I did him a favor.”
“Is that the kind of favor you plan on doing to me?” Morgan Maynard asked. “I could’ve drowned too.”
Quinn shrugged. “I did not anticipate how my wonderful, unsinkable ship would react once the anchor was weighed.”
“Weighing an anchor,” Fallon said, “is pulling it up. Not dropping it.”
The killer grinned. “On my ship, it is whatever I say it is. Pinky did what he was supposed to do for us. I did what I had to do for him. That’s all we shall speak of this.”
“No,” Preacher Lang said as he removed his hat. “First, we must say farewell to the comrade we have buried at sea. Matthew, chapter fourteen, says, ‘And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.’ And if Pinky was Jesus, or Peter with Jesus with us, he would still be with us. Although nothing in the Good Book says Jesus could have walked on water handcuffed to an anchor. I’m sure Peter couldn’t have done that miracle. And where in Poseidon’s name did you find an anchor in this country? Amen.”
He laughed, and returned the hat to his head.
“How much farther?” Quinn asked Allan.
The raft was turning around, moving downstream. The captain of the prison guards peered into the blackness and shrugged. “Hard to tell. I’ve never come down here by the river before.”
Quinn let out a heavy sigh. “I’m beginning to see less in your usefulness than I saw in Pinky’s, Captain. You had better find those horses.”
“We’ll find it, Quinn. Can’t miss it. And if you try to chain me to an anchor, that anchor will get dropped and it’ll be weighing you down.”
Quinn clapped his hands. “A pun. The great captain of Yuma Territorial Prison has made a pun. Too bad he doesn’t know what a pun means.”
It would have made things easier, Fallon thought, if Captain Allan whirled around and shot Monk Quinn dead with the Winchester just as Monk Quinn put a bullet in Allan’s heart. Yet things did not go easy for Harry Fallon.
The conversations stopped. Fallon shivered in the cold. Gloria Adler attended to Doc Fowler while Maynard and Yaqui Mendoza worked the oars and Percy Marshall clutched the ribbing tightly. Preacher Lang lay on his back and stared at the heavens. Captain Allan scanned the eastern banks of the river. Monk Quinn picked his teeth with the long nail of his right pointer finger. Harry Fallon kept shivering.
The raft kept floating down the Colorado—moving farther and farther away from the sunken body of a convict called Pinky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“There it is.” Allan turned and gave a nod in the direction where the river began to bend to the southwest. Fallon saw the yellow glow of a lantern.
“You said it was the southeast,” Yaqui Mendoza said.
“That’s right. So if you killed me, you’d never find it.”
Monk Quinn was standing. “My first mate, he has a brain too. Let us dock and sink our wonderful boat.”
* * *
The trading post on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, across the Arizona border in California, was nothing more than a jacal, a small hovel of dirt. The corral surrounding it was massive, and horses danced around, kicking up dust.
It was night. They were on the water. But the air remained dry, and that had helped dry Fallon’s soaking clothes considerably. The front of the barge struck land, and Monk Quinn leaped off, turning quickly and pointing at Percy Marshall and Morgan Maynard.
“Chop the boat to pieces. Then meet us inside the post.”
“There better be tequila there,” the young lunger said.
“There better be bullets,” Maynard said.
Quinn chuckled. “There better be both!”
* * *
There was tequila. There were bullets. And there was a skinny man in white cotton pants and shirt, a blue denim jacket, and a sugarloaf sombrero who called himself Diego, who kept his lecherous eye on Gloria Adler and his right hand on the butt of his Colt revolver.
The trader had a fire going in what passed for a fireplace, although it probably sucked more heat out of the tiny building than anything else.
“Where are the clothes?” Allan asked.
Diego, moving neither his hand nor his good eye, tilted his head toward a table against the crumbling wall.
“All right,” Allan said. “I did my best guessing at your sizes, so help yourself. We can’t go around Mexico looking like you just broke out of the Yuma prison.”
The men seemed more interested in the tequila and the ammunition than in dressing. Monk Quinn had to warn them. “Boys, you know we are in California, not Mexico. Still part of our United States.”
Reluctantly, the men and Gloria Adler went to the table. Someone passed Fallon a bottle of tequila. He set it on the table.
“I didn’t know you were coming along, Fallon,” the Yuma captain said. “So you don’t have any duds. Well, there’s Pinky’s. But his won’t fit you. I didn’t know the girl was coming neither.” He scowled at Quinn. “So there ain’t nothin’ fer her neither.”
“Pinky’s will fit her just fine,” Quinn said. “Tight, maybe. But that would be all right. Get dressed, honey.”
“Is there another room?” Gloria asked.
Diego grinned. “I hang a blanket over there.” His head bobbed. “It is where I sleep.” He wet his lips.
