Three sevens A detective story
shaking off the pursuer who was at his heels. The worst of it was, he
was no longer free to go where he willed on another account.
That gang of guns and pitchforks who had accompanied the ex-warden of
San Pedro were themselves woodsmen to some extent familiar with the
lay of the land. They were spreading out, as they would have done in
an old-fashioned fox drive.
Twice, now, Craig had all but run into one of them, had swerved just
in time, brought fresh danger to his trail. And, sooner or later, the
pack would begin to close in. Even the stag has to give up at last in
a chase like this. And he himself was almost winded.
He determined on a last, desperate play. He knew where there was a
dry watercourse full of small boulders. He made for this, while he
dragged those footfalls back of him like a curse. He toppled over
the bank of the watercourse there where he could have at least some
cover. He picked up a boulder in each hand.
His lungs were laboring. So was his heart. But he had strength and
the will for almost anything rather than surrender.
He had just turned, just drawn back his right hand with the stone
in it, when the bushes swerved, and a man stumbled through. It was
Harry, the Goose!
It was Harry who had followed him like that through the woods, Harry
who had borne up during the long chase. It was fear that had given
him the strength, even as it had added to the strength of Craig. But
the race had been unequal. It was always easier to follow than to
lead.
But, if it had been unequal in this respect, it was balanced in
another. Craig still had strength. Harry had none. He stumbled to his
knees. He went over on his side. He lay there like a wounded man,
gasping, his mouth wide open, unable to move, his ugly face set to
the lines of exhaustion.
Craig crawled out of his waterway. He took Harry’s pistol from him.
Then he sat at Harry’s side, and pumped the air into his own lungs.
At the same time he listened. This double trail that he and Harry
had made would be easy enough to follow, but now he saw that he had
an advantage, after all. The pursuers knew that at least one of them
was armed, must have believed them both to be armed. There could be
no blind plunging through the woods for them. They would have to go
slow, examine each tree and bush.
There is something about a habit of environment in the matter of
thought. Since his second escape from prison, these woods had become
a thinking place for Craig--a sort of temple, for resolutions, hopes,
and prayers. And the habit declared itself now, strange as it may
seem--with a murderous pack warm on his trail, and an enemy here at
his side who but a few minutes ago had made a cowardly attempt on his
life.
“They’ve got us,” gasped Harry.
“Shut up,” said Craig.
“Gimme a drink!” panted Harry.
“I’ll give you water in a minute,” whispered Craig fiercely.
“Give me water!”
“Yes!”
“You got nerve!”
Harry was for sitting up. He must have been muddled on the
circumstances--must have thought that Craig was as frightened as
he was, that the chase had made them brothers again. Wrong. Craig
flattened him with a push of his open hand.
“Stay there and keep quiet,” said Craig.
Harry, the Goose, sat up.
“I’m going,” he announced, in a snarling whisper.
“Stay where you are. I’ll tell you what you’re to do and what you’re
not to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know whether to tie you up----”
“You tie me up!”
“--and leave you for the posse, or try to take you back myself.”
“Where?”
“San Pedro.”
There for a moment terror and rage were battling for possession of
Harry’s drab face.
It was clear that he thought he had to do with a maniac, and a maniac
who was dangerous. Fear won. His mouth sagged open. It dribbled out
black blasphemy like the drooling of a wounded puff adder.
“If I leave you,” said Craig, “you might get lynched.”
“You’re crazy.”
Harry twitched his eyes this way and that.
“They’ve got a new warden there,” said Craig, “who’s going to give
every one a square deal--even you.”
“You dirty snake!”
And Harry had his hand again in his pocket. He had been so overcome
that it wasn’t until then that he learned his pistol was gone. He saw
it in Craig’s hand, pointed at him.
“Don’t get noisy,” said Craig. “Say what you want to”--he himself
was using the almost silent lip speech that he had learned in San
Pedro--“but say it like this.”
Harry tried to argue.
“They’ll pinch you, too.”
“Maybe!”
“And give you life for what you done. I had no share in it.”
“Maybe!”
“You’re after the reward.”
“That’s also why I’m taking you back myself.”
“Sellin’ me!”
“Giving you away,” smiled Craig. “If I left you to these farmers, the
county or the State would be that much poorer, so I will not do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to pay back to society what I owe.”
This was beyond Harry, the Goose. He sought to mollify his captor,
the while his eyes shifted.
“For Heaven’s sake, Tommy! Me and you ought to be friends.”
“We are! San Pedro’s going to be a place to do you good.”
“And you, you louse!”
“I’ll go back, too--when I’ve finished.”
“But, Tommy!”
“Sh! Some one’s coming. Listen, Goose. Would you rather take a
chance with me, or an old-fashioned lynching bee? You know the
kind--rope--limb--shots--maybe a fire.”
Harry, the Goose, broke down and began to blubber.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “Can’t you have pity on me poor old
mother?”
CHAPTER XVI
MERE RUMORS
A part, at least, of what Craig had seen with the eye of his mind was
right with regard to Joan Gracie. Intuitional, passionate, with both
the passion native to youth and a nature made that way; but loyal!
Loyalty was the crown of her character, topping off the complex all
of it as did the yellow hair on top of her complex, strong, and
likewise beautiful physical presence.
This was part of what had been in Major Gracie’s brain that afternoon
he had sat out there with Daniel Craig--one-time Thomas Masters,
convict No. 3777--at the side of him and yet raised no hand to
capture him. The major himself was loyal. But with him also--as it
must have been with his daughter--this loyalty had not been so simple
as he could have demanded.
Loyalty to the State! Loyalty to this man--this mere boy who had thus
far so badly bungled his life!
The major hadn’t forgotten that stark terror that had been in his
heart the day that the delayed special was rushing him to San Pedro.
What had happened to Joan? And what might not have happened to her if
it hadn’t been for this same Daniel Craig.
He understood Joan’s feelings. It hadn’t been necessary for her to
give him much of a report on what she herself had done--not at first.
They had learned to take each other for granted.
The fuller report had come that night, late, when she and her father
were alone, and when she knew, and he knew, that Daniel Craig was
miles away on the borrowed horse. It was only then that she brought
out Craig’s photograph--“Thomas Masters, manslaughter, No. 3777”--and
told her father the reasons that had inspired her in helping him to
his precarious liberty.
The major heard her through.
A tall and thoughtful man was the major, with a curved and heavy,
but short, gray mustache, a tuft of gray hair under his lower lip,
short-clipped gray hair, tossed back near one temple in what used to
be called a “cowlick.”
“You did this on your own responsibility?” said the major.
“Yes, sir,” said Joan, standing very straight in front of him, as she
always did when talking business.
“You committed a crime.”
“It was a crime that was--right.”
The major himself had written a work on “Crime and Moral Turpitude.”
But he did not smile.
“Why didn’t you trust me with this before?”
“You were involved. Your hands were tied by your oath of office.”
“I might have won him a pardon for saving you.”
“And had the whole world saying that you had staged the thing to
disgrace your predecessor!”
The major saw the point. He never did have a head for politics. Joan
did. Few women that have not. But the major also saw something else,
dimly, a little more clearly, then more clearly yet. It was as if, at
the time, he had known there would come a day when he should want to
recall the picture. He was recalling it now:
A dingy courtroom where a boy was on trial for his life; a boy who
was upstanding, with a fine, strong profile, a melancholy but
soldierly gray eye; a boy who would speak no word in his own behalf,
or tell what his name was, or from whence he came. Some one else had
said that his name was Masters--Thomas Masters. Some one else had
said that he had been found in the dark near where the boss of the
camp was shot down; that from the place where he was there had come
the flash of the shot; that at his side was the revolver with one
cartridge empty, of a caliber that fitted the bullet.
The prosecutor had begged for a verdict of first-degree murder. The
lawyer appointed for the defense had mumbled a perfunctory address on
the lack of motive and the presence of a reasonable doubt. The jury
had brought in a verdict of manslaughter. And his honor the judge:
“Thomas Masters, what have you to say why judgment of the court
should not be pronounced upon you according to law?”
Still no word; no word at all from the boy through all of this.
The judge had harped on this silence in his discourse preceding the
sentence. He was one of those judges who are easily hurt and savage
in reprisal. “I shall therefore sentence you to twenty years in
State’s prison.”
Not the palatial penitentiary, nor the reformatory, but State’s
prison, San Pedro! The major himself had groaned a bit in his heart,
although he was no sentimentalist at all, where lawbreakers were
concerned.
“When he told me that he was innocent, I believed him,” said Joan.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the major, out of his
thoughtfulness. “Although any man in the prison would have said the
same thing, though not once in a thousand times would it be the
truth.”
“It was true this time. It must be true.”
The major’s mind slipped from his daughter’s words to what he had
heard from No. 8888--that little old-timer named Yarmouth. He also
had made a statement like this one almost word for word: “’Tis the
truth this time, sir. It must be true.”
Perhaps Eddie, the Yegg, also was intuitional. Eddie, almost as the
sole remaining prisoner outside the hospital at the time that the new
warden of San Pedro arrived, had reported in full all that had taken
place--his own oath, down there in the punishment block, an oath to
obey orders as given by Three Sevens, to kill no man, and to make no
effort to escape on his own account. Eddie recounted all of this with
touches of pride and imagination.
For, in the course of his professional career, Eddie had been through
a number of prison revolts and riots, and this had been different
from all of them, somehow mysterious and beautiful.
Said Eddie: “’Twas the thought back of it, sir, that ought to’ve
brought him the luck.”
Perhaps Major Gracie was of the same opinion.
Not so, Gary Lee. For, a couple of days after he had driven the
strange man away from San Pedro in his big car by night and brought
him to the refuge of Aunt Katherine’s, Lee had driven again to San
Pedro and there had called on Joan and her father--particularly on
Joan.
“Bad business, Joan,” he said, when he and the girl were alone.
“What?”
“Your having anything to do with getting this man away from prison.
I wish that you and your father had decided to remain in Fairhaven.
Confound it! When I think of you and him being mixed up with a lot of
felons!”