James Hopper

“ Ryan dropped her hand and twined a curl about her finger in soothing caress. The child was stilled.
Collins scowled at them—at the mother, standing there, one hand soothing, her whole body tense before her children, a defense, a barrier; at the man, red-faced, perplexed, horror-stricken yet pitying; at the child up in its cot, at the child sleeping with its head among the dishes on the table. Then, warning them once more in terrible and grotesque pantomime with his revolver, he stepped backward through the door, which immediately slammed shut upon the group, petrified in bronze attitudes. ”

“ At a bend, in a little hollow shaded by a live-oak, a mossy watering-trough dripped, and toward the trough a boy was riding at a walk, on a young horse, bareback. Bending low, Collins glided through the brush, down the hillside, and gained a patch of woods that, paralleling the main road along which the two posses were converging, extended to the trough. He stepped out of the fringe of willows just as the boy brought his horse to a stop beneath the live-oak. Men’s voices came to him from the junction of the roads, one hundred yards away; the posse from up the valley was passing it. ”

“ A rat! That was it. A look such as one gets from a rat in a dusky corner.
The murderer was staring dully, past the red flowers and the jetting water which he did not see, staring at the gray walls beyond which he would never pass again. Along the summit of the wall a blue-clad man was pacing slowly, sharply silhouetted; he held in his right hand a rifle, carrying it loosely, like a hunter. The garotter leaned and grinned into the murderer’s face. ”

“ Silently each man stepped out of his cell, and placed his hands upon the shoulders of the man ahead of him, forming the lock-step line. The guard—he was a grizzled blue-eyed fellow who had lived most of his life in prison—unarmed as were all the guards who worked within reach of the convicts, waited till they were in formation, and then unlocked the door at the bottom of the corridor. ”

“ It was near winter, but the drought of the lingering fall had left the land arid, and the rounded hill still rose tawny against the sky. The prison was changed. A consternation brooded in its battlemented façades; within, men were running to and fro, criss-crossing, aimlessly; and from the guards’ wall, near a turret, three trusties were lowering a limp, blue form. Behind and above, like a red eye crooked in its orbit, the dead sun looked. Throwing both hands up into the air and brandishing his rifle, John Collins let out a shrill whoop of defiance and hate ”

“ He laid down his rifle and drew his revolver. He waited there, all alone with his purpose, peering out of the black gut. The whole prison, now, was buzzing about him like a beehive. Shouts sounded, gruff, like orders. A guard passed by on the run, his face very red; two more, putting on their coats as they ran; a whole group of five. He still waited. There was an interval of silence; again the drum of approaching feet. He peered—and then he glided out into the centre of the alley and faced Jennings. ”

“ He saw Nichols, the confidence-man, walking slowly backward toward the inner corridor; he saw him shoot the burglar and run to his cell; he did not understand that. Then he saw himself bounding out into the yard—and stopping before six rifles; he did not understand that. His brain, anyway, was making but dull efforts to understand. All it did was this: it presented to him the two pictures, mechanically, passionlessly, as for inspection—the stony-faced confidence-man shooting the burglar from behind; the guards waiting outside to catch him as he came. ”

“ He worked craftily, with stealth, at night, very slowly; for before him lay years, the eternity of time placed, by a trick of Fate, at the disposal of his purpose; and it was silly to take chances. He worked in the shadows, crouched, rubbing evenly, quietly, but firmly, cutting bars of steel with needles. When he had done each night, he scattered with deep breaths of his lungs the almost imperceptible little heap of steel dust resulting, and smudged over the thin wound in the bar with a bit of moistened bread and lamp-black. ”

“ The red-striped convict never looked up when the garotter came to his loom, bearing the basket of shuttles. He stood with folded arms, his eyes upon the winding cylinder, almost at his feet, and his face was like a mask. It was like a mask of stone. And it expressed patience, a patience stony because infinite, a patience counting upon the future with absolute assurance. ”

“ Crawling, springing from stone to stone, always in the brush, covering his rare tracks carefully, he climbed diagonally up across the face of the hills for several hours; and the afternoon sun struck him in a warm wave as at last he came out upon a round plateau, crowned with a circle of black pines; running to the centre, he thrust his face into the cool tufts of water-cress and drank, in long sucking gulps, like a horse. ”

“ On the next Sunday, 9009 was again denied his pass, and the window, which had been white-washed during the week, was closed, cutting off the patch of blue. After that, 9009 ceased to ask for his pass; he spent his Sunday afternoons on his back, staring up at the bunk above him.
Sometimes his cell-mate, the little black-faced, spike-haired man, returning from the yard turned upon him his inflamed eyes with a strange look, almost of wistfulness, as though he wanted to speak; but 9009 mastered a desire to break their silence, and lay without a word, staring upward sullenly. ”

“ He was alone in his cell at night; in the daytime a strange convict sat at the emery wheel—a long, lean man with a lead-hued face. And the toil was harder than it had been before—and his savage questioning, insistent and implacable, rebounded from the hard faces of his fellows as from blank stone walls. ”

“ It may have been the pillar of shade, the blacker shadow in the black shadows which had not been there before—for peering straight toward the place, the guard became very tense; in the glare 9009 could see his features tighten, his left arm crook. The rifle was still going up; it stopped halfway between hip and shoulder; the two men stood still as graven images—the guard, a sharp figure in the blue-white light, bent, taut, watching; the barred convict in the shadow, crouching, motionless, his eyes peering without lid movement, like the pitiless eyes of a snake. ”

“ A stripes-clad man was coming out of the turnkey’s office. “The bath-trusty” whispered the garotter, immediately resuming his cringing posture; “he’s come for us.” The bath-trusty was dressed as the man Collins had seen at the gate, but his hair, instead of being cropped close, like the other’s, was of medium length. He was scanning a slip of paper in his hand, and in his sharp face, bent to read, Collins fancied he saw the shadow of what he had seen in the face of the convict by the gate. As the man looked up at him, the impression was confirmed. The man had rat eyes. ”

“ A guard hissed by in his rubber shoes along the gangway.
“You ought to kick,” 9009 began again. “I’d roar till somebody heard.”
Two words fell back through the darkness. “No use.”
“Why in hell don’t you go to the hospital?”
“Can’t.”
They were silent for a long time. The darkness lay upon them like a heavy vapour, lay upon the strong man in the lower bunk, tortured with twitching nerves, upon the little man above, nauseated with weakness; it lay upon them heavy, tainted, without mercy, turned from the sweet poppy-consoler to a hostile, sullen power keeping them awake to their torments. ”

“ It lay behind the mask, far back in the dull eyes. Something couchant there for days had moved; it had gathered itself and crouched, now, quivering. And in the mask had come a new heaviness, a heaviness that was a satisfaction, almost a satiety. But the man still stood motionless, his arms folded upon his breast, his face turned down.
The garotter came toward him; and, as it always did, his walk changed; he bent forward, touching the floor with the balls of his feet only, his eyes upon the red-striped convict. ”

“ The farmers in the fields worked with rifles in their hands, with pistols, with pitchforks; children armed with shot-guns watched in the kitchens while their mothers cooked; the officers of five counties at the head of posses tracked him indefatigably; and leading them all was the best man-hunter of the State—the grizzled, keen-eyed sheriff who, years before, had taken John Collins to prison. Twice, close-pressed Collins had seen him, with his broad sombrero, his black moustache, streaked with gray ”

“ The garotter muttered an oath and slowly raised his white face. “Who is that?” asked John Collins.
“Jennings—one of the jute-mill guards,” answered the thug; “look out fer him.” He spoke almost in a whisper and lapsed silent at once.
The sheriff and his deputies were leaving. The sheriff shook hands with the murderer and the garotter. “Good-bye, boys,” he said; “do the best you can for yourselves.” He turned to John Collins. “It’s your first time,” he said: “remember and keep to yourself. Keep to yourself and hang on to your good-time; hang on to your copper.” He hurried on after the others. ”

“ A small boy, with a shout, raised his arm, pointing; the men sprang to their feet. And then, right from the hip, Collins’s rifle cracked; the big, jovial man pitched forward on his face. The rifle leaped to Collins’s shoulder, and with his right arm suddenly limp, another man of the group staggered into the saloon. Behind him the rest of the posse jammed, fighting to get in. Only one made for the rifles, stacked against the wall, and Collins toppled him over just as his hand was upon the nearest. Running low, Collins made for the horses. ”

“ They shot from a circle, at the stretched figure in the centre. It was hidden by the grass, it lay flat, it was a hard shot; the thing took a long time. Bullets spattered all about Collins; after a while one went through his left arm, which lay across his chest. To the sting he rose, half angrily, and made a movement toward his rifle, then, ‘‘Oh, hell!” he said again, with heavy indifference.
It was almost sundown when the wily old sheriff, taught by many lessons the futility of haste, ordered a concentric advance. The men rushed forward; they met face to face above a lifeless body. ”

“ Controlling the sickness within him, he went around the cell several times, eyes shut, groping carefully; and at last, like a blessing, there came to his finger-tips the feel of the joining of the door-edge; and the world, swinging, readjusted itself ”

“ Once only did he sicken with impatience and worry; this was when lipless prison rumour told him that Jennings lay ill in the hospital. Two weeks later, though, he heard that the guard was back at his duty in the jute-mill, and his bars roared out his relief in a rattle that reverberated long in the dusky corridor. But this had been a lesson; he saw the danger of procrastination, and concentrated his mind on the problem of leaving his cell. And finally the solution came.
He began to ask for needles often—as often as he dared, making the while a great show of repairing his garments. ”

“ He spoke lightly, and his heavy sallow face showed no emotion; yet into it, bending downward on the bowed head of the other, there seemed to creep, somehow, a dull menace. “Back again,” he repeated musingly; “and you thought I wasn’t going to make you!” He chuckled with little sound. “I know a friend that’s here, a-waiting to see you; a good friend—ain’t you glad he’s still here, eh?” There was some deadly meaning to the words. Collins saw the garotter shrivel beneath them. Then the man was staring at him. John Collins stared back, as it was his habit to do. ”

“ Some limped from burns, and some bore on hands and faces ugly sores—the marks of spattered liquid iron. They were savagely reckless at their work, and the guards had to watch them closely lest they maim themselves. They sweated in torment and strange wordless feuds existed among them; stealthy blows were struck without cause.
The moulding room was long and low, earth-floored, dusky with shadows at noonday. On the earth floor, in rows flanking path-wide intervals, lay the moulds—wooden frames about which was tamped black sand. Walls and roof were of corrugated iron. ”

“ The taint in the air, it came from men, many men, caged.
The idea made him a little sick. But now, something else was troubling him, something still more vague, more elusive, more irritating than that which he had just caught—something that he must solve.
He felt a vast sense of stoppage—stoppage, that was it. A sense one has on a steamer when suddenly the clanging engines cease with a sigh; that which comes when one is alone in a room with the ticking of a clock, and this ticking stops; the feeling that comes when one passes without warning from the tumult of a storm into a great calm. ”

“ He fitted them close together, like the teeth of a comb; they were hard; they made a diminutive saw; and they bit steel. With these needles he began to saw his bars.
He sawed for a year, and had three bars nearly through; and then his cell was changed.
His patience, now, had become something fundamental within him, as granite is fundamental of the earth. He sat down and waited. They changed him again to another cell. And then to another. He spent nearly three years in different cells, and then, one morning, he found himself again in the cell where he had sawed. That night he tested the bars. ”

“ He leaped like a lean greyhound, he sped through the outer door, a ray of sun struck him hot on the cheek, he whipped around the corner into the wall-bound yard, he took three great strides—and stopped, facing six black disks. ”

“ A quiet was about him, a great golden quiet; a little bird went by his head with a squeak and a whir, and the silence came flowing back in long ripples, like a sea. It was the silence of altitudes, vibrant, supersensitive, through which a sound passed aquiver like a pain; along its crystal, a whisper, a mutter, the crackling of a twig, would come for a mile. ”

“ The first time was at a farm-house—a small, weather-beaten house in the centre of a clearing, to which he came just after the breakfast hour. A clatter of dishes, the song of a woman’s voice, met him as he approached. He stood in the doorway, red-barred, sullen-jawed, the rifle in hand ”

“ And so, night after night, with intervals of long separations, he fondled the file, and beneath his caressing and firm sculpturing gradually it grew into the shape he loved—pointed, razor-edged, well-poised. The feel of its well-balanced weight in his hand was a constant joy. It could split a skull or carve out a rib. ”