Slocum's Breakout (2 page)

“Git up. You ain't gonna lay about all day.”

Slocum had learned how to climb to his feet with the shackles and did so. He started to help Doc to his feet, but the guard shoved him away so he could use a truncheon on the prone man. Doc covered up the best he could and waited for the rain of blows to cease. Only then did he get to his feet. Slocum figured that Doc had been through such treatment before and knew how to survive it.

As he and the others shuffled into the building, Slocum damned Conchita Valenzuela and her brother and the harebrained scheme that had brought him to this point.

Standing in a single file, shuffling forward when the prisoner in front had been processed, Slocum finally reached the desk, where a guard sporting bright gold sergeant's stripes on his uniform sat with a ledger open in front of him. He glanced up at Slocum, then at the book, and ran his finger across a line.

“Jasper Jarvis, in for robbery. Two years.”

Slocum said nothing. The sergeant looked up, one bushy eyebrow rising.

“So? That you or not?”

“It's me,” Slocum said.

“Get those chains off and into those,” the sergeant said as another guard shoved a prison uniform into his hands.

Slocum started to ask how he was supposed to get the chains off when the guard grabbed him and sent him staggering toward an arched doorway. He bounced off one side and then the other, keeping his balance, then saw the prisoner who had been ahead of him at the far end of the stone corridor at an open doorway. The man's hands were already free, and a guard worked to free him from his leg irons. This lent speed to Slocum's shuffle. He wanted out of the shackles as quickly as he could.

Once freed, he went into the room and saw a half-dozen guards, all with rifles trained on the prisoner now shorn of his irons.

“Git yer worthless clothes off and take a shower. Then put your uniform on,” the guard said to the prisoner. Clutching his coarse black-striped white canvas prison uniform, Slocum stripped naked, followed the other prisoner into what was closer to a sheep dip than a shower. He came out coughing and eyes watering. With the guards prodding him, he managed to get into the heavy prison garb.

He put up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, now directly overhead. He was in a yard with dozens of other prisoners.

“You new prisoners will be assigned your cells at the end of exercise. Try not to get killed 'fore then.” The guard speaking laughed harshly, making his real intentions known. If every one of the inmates died, he would be just fine with that.

Slocum stumbled around, getting his balance back after being chained for so long. He had been arrested down in San Francisco after Conchita turned him in as Jarvis. They had pored over wanted posters and found one for the wanted convict who had escaped before being sent to San Quentin, ensuring immediate transport to the prison. Best of all, there hadn't been a sketch of Jasper Jarvis.

Slocum had agreed to assume the identity of Jarvis since his crime was relatively minor—he knew that by the twenty-dollar reward. No one was in a hurry to recapture Jarvis, and the ease with which he had been sent to San Quentin proved that. He was a minor annoyance, not a big clap of thunder to rile up everyone.

As he walked around, he got his bearings and studied the walls, the guards, and the security. He saw that Doc hadn't been joking about how difficult it would be to escape unless a lot of money greased a guard's palm. The ground was rocky and would be difficult to tunnel through. The walls were both sturdy and tall. While they might be scaled, it had to be at night. The guards in the towers at each corner of the penitentiary alertly watched their wards below in the yard. That might slack off with time; Slocum had no idea how long the guards had been on duty or if they might catch a few winks when the officers weren't looking.

Chancing on a sleeping guard just as he intended to climb over the wall didn't strike him as a good escape plan.

The sound of the wagon that had brought the prisoners rattling and clanking back out drew his attention.

“Ain't gonna hide in that,” came a gruff voice. Slocum looked over, then up. He stood six feet tall. This giant with a bushy beard, tiny, deep-set eyes, and hair so wild it might have been a tuft of black prairie grass loomed above him.

“Didn't want to be so obvious,” Slocum said.

“You just got in. All you fish are like that, thinkin' you kin get outta here. You cain't. Live with it. Let 'em release you . . . unless you're in for life.”

Slocum's jaw tightened at the idea that an escape attempt might just mean his life. Damn Conchita! Damn his own charity. She had assured him her brother had been locked up on bogus testimony. And then she had added—

“You'll only git tossed into solitary, tryin' to escape. Them guards got their eyes on you, the way you're watchin' the wagon and all.”

“Thanks,” Slocum said.

“You got a name?”

Slocum almost answered with his own, then caught himself in time and said, “Jarvis.”

“Hmph,” the giant said. “You got a brother named Jarvis?”

Slocum stepped back a half pace and looked at the mountain of a man.

“Nope,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“I got a bone to pick with Jasper Jarvis, that's why. The sneaky li'l toad got me locked up in here for somethin' he done down in San Francisco.” The convict squinted hard at Slocum. “You don't look nuthin' like 'im, so I reckon you ain't kin.”

The heavy canvas prison garb turned into a furnace as Slocum sweat. He was having nothing but bad luck.

“You know another prisoner name of José Valenzuela?”

“You got a score to settle with him?”

“Got a message from outside,” Slocum said. “Never met him.”

“That's him over yonder,” the man said. “You watch yer step. He's a Meskin. Cain't trust 'em. Worse 'n Jarvis.” With that, the man turned and walked away. Slocum fancied he felt the ground rumble with every step the huge prisoner took. Only when he thought it was safe, Slocum turned and looked in Valenzuela's direction.

A half-dozen Mexicans huddled together but one stood apart. From the description Conchita had given him, that had to be her brother. As he got closer, he saw the pink half-circle scar on his cheek and knew this was José Valenzuela.

A bell rang, and the convicts started moving toward the large central building where they were housed.

“Wait up,” Slocum said. “I've got a message for you. From your sister.”

“From . . . Teresa?”

“Don't know that sister. Conchita says your pa is mighty ill and won't last much longer.”

Slocum fell into step beside Valenzuela as they made their way slowly toward the cell block.

“She sent you?”

“We're going to have to break out. She said your lawyer couldn't get clemency from the governor so you could be with your pa.”

“Durant is such a
pendejo
. How long?”

“Conchita said he had a week or two at the outside.”

“No, no, how long before we break out? You have a plan?”

“Everybody tells me nobody gets out, yet I'm in here impersonating somebody and they never caught on. The security might be as lax as the way they bring in prisoners.”

“Who are you?”

“Call me . . .” Slocum's voice trailed off as they neared the huge man who had pointed out Valenzuela to him. “Call me John. Don't call me by the name I used to get inside.”

“You took the place of another to free me? So I could escape and see my papa?” Valenzuela stared at Slocum, openmouthed. “You are not my amigo, yet you would do this for me, a stranger?” Then he burst out laughing. “You are the
novio
of my darling Conchita! You do this for loving her!”

“Keep your voice down,” Slocum said.

“Oh, this is
bueno, muy bueno
.”

“Jarvis, you and him got off to a good start,” the huge prisoner said, scowling. “You know him from the outside?”

“Jarvis, eh?” Valenzuela nodded sagely.

“What's goin' on?” The prisoner stepped in front of them, blocking their way to the cells, blocking most of the sun as well. “I thought you was gonna have a cow when I said I wanted to beat Jasper Jarvis to a bloody pulp. You
are
a relative of his?”

“Oh, no, Big Mike, he—”

“Shut your trap, Meskin. I ain't talkin' to you.”

“I'm not looking for a fight,” Slocum said. He rubbed his left hand over the spot where his cross-draw holster usually hung. He felt naked without his Colt Navy and how especially vulnerable he was now. They were drawing a small crowd. The last thing he wanted was to attract attention, and now he was the center of it.

“You some lily-liver like Jasper Jarvis? He always run when it came to a fight.”

“Fight! Fight!” The chant went up, and Slocum knew he couldn't walk away.

“Look, it's this way . . .” He stepped a little closer, then launched a kick aimed at the big man's crotch. Slocum's aim was an inch off, and he caught a heavily muscled inner thigh. The impact hurt his knee and sent him stumbling back. And then he was engulfed in two hundred and fifty pounds of smelly, fighting convict.

Slocum blocked a hard punch that would have taken off his head, then another intended to kill him. He danced back favoring his knee, sized up his opponent, faked another kick to the balls, then caught the man's overreaction by driving his fist straight for his belly. Slocum felt the shock all the way up into his shoulder. Every part of this Goliath was oak-hard. Breath whooshed from the man's lungs, then he took a step back and sat down hard, his face beet red as he gasped for air.

Slocum had been in enough fights to know it wasn't over. He judged distances again and launched another kick. The toe of his boot caught the man square on the chin and snapped his head back. This time when the convict flopped onto his back, he was out like a light.

“You, get back, get back!” Guards pushed their way through the circle of prisoners and roughly grabbed Slocum by the arms. “No fightin' allowed. You're goin' into the hole for a week.”

Two guards half dragged Slocum away as the sergeant who had checked him into San Quentin came running up.

“You got it under control? You dumb apes. Don't let'em fight. You know better, and if I catch you bettin' on'em again . . .”

“Aw, Sarge, we stopped it.”

“Let me enter this onto his record. Fighting. Jasper Jarvis, five days in the hole for fighting.”

As Slocum was dragged away, he saw the man he had knocked out shaking his head, then become alert when he heard the name
Jasper Jarvis
. Slocum felt the beady eyes boring a hole into his back all the way into the cell block, then down stone stairs and into the dungeon.

He had lied his way into San Quentin to rescue José Valenzuela, and now it looked as if he would spend the next two years serving the sentence of a man he didn't even know.

Slocum cursed himself and Conchita, her brother, and the man he had knocked out, then started all over again on himself.

Slocum shivered in the cold, dark cell. He could reach out and touch the stone walls—it didn't matter where he sat in the cell. Worse, there was no light. The pitch-black robbed him of all sense of how long he had been imprisoned there. It might have been minutes, or it could have been hours. His belly growled from lack of food, and his tongue felt like a bale of cotton, all puffy and sticky from lack of water.

But the cold was worst of all. He tried standing, but the ceiling was a few inches too low to allow him to stretch upright. He found the splintery wooden door and tried to pick away at the weakest part, hoping to see out. Too many others had tried and failed. Slocum reckoned they had been locked up here longer than he ever would be.

He settled down with his back against the door since this promised him more warmth—or less cold—than any other position. His head dropped forward and rested on his upraised knees as he dozed. For an instant or an hour? He didn't know, but there came a sharp rap at the door. He felt it in his spine as well as hearing it.

“Get on back away from the door or you'll get shot,” came a muffled voice that was strangely familiar.

He did as he was told and the door creaked open to reveal the prisoner he had ridden into San Quentin with standing in the corridor outside, a tin plate and cup in hand.

“Here's yer vittles,” Doc said. “Won't get more 'n this for another day, so don't let the rats beat you to it.”

Doc handed him the plate, only to be rebuked by the guard behind him.

“None of that. No contact with him. None.”

Doc was roughly yanked back and the door slammed shut, but Slocum sat for a moment, his finger holding firmly against the tin plate a slip of paper Doc had passed him. How he was ever going to read in the dark was a poser until he slid the paper away and found a lucifer glued to the bottom of the plate.

He was torn between lighting the match and reading the note and eating. His hunger won out. He wolfed down the stale bread and almost gagged on the tough meat on the plate with it. He hoarded the water jealously in the cup, then couldn't restrain himself. He downed it with a single long gulp that did nothing to soothe the thirst or the way his tongue had swelled.

Still, the food and drops of water restored him and sparked his anger at the guards and San Quentin and . . .

Who else? He tried to blame Conchita and her brother for his predicament, but he had volunteered. Over the years he had learned the lesson not to let nether regions of his anatomy think for him—and this time he had ignored that sage experience. That José might be busted out of this prison was one thing, but doing it was proving more difficult. Slocum didn't know how long José and Conchita's father had before he upped and died, but the lovely, dark-tressed, fiery woman had hinted that it wasn't too long.