The Red Debt Part 17

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 sc.r.a.ping, tide-like rhythm--the m.u.f.fled 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 sc.r.a.pe, 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 l.u.s.ter 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 a.s.saulted 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed.

"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.

CHAPTER XII

THE STIGMA

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 h.e.l.lsfork, 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 succ.u.mb 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 c.u.mberland Kingdom.

Lem probed his conscience for the hundredth time in quest of the crime he had committed to bring him to this h.e.l.l. 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 a.s.suage 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l; 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 b.u.t.ton through which two cords pa.s.sed through separate holes.

Standing, he lifted his knee, placed the box thereon, and with dextrous skill started the b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.o.o.by-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. h.e.l.lo--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."