man east of the Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the
pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface of the prison yard.
They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north
wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate sidewalk outside
the north wall.
It had taken the twain three months and twenty-one days to achieve the
dugout. Although there was always a guard somewhere on the north wall,
the particular spot where the dugout had come into being was sheltered
from the wall-guard's observation by a small tool-house. Also whenever
the pair were able to dig, which was only at intervals, a bunch of
convicts was always perched on the heap of dirt from various
legitimate excavations within the yard, which Fate had piled up at
that precise spot. The earth from the dugout and the earth from these
other diggings mixed admirably.
Nor, likewise because of the dirt-pile, could any one detect the job
from the south end of the yard. If a guard appeared from around the
mat-shop or coming out of the Principal Keeper's office, the convicts
sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon, or late
in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless
lips to the two diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a
couple of boards over the aperture, kick dirt over the boards, and
even push a barrow over the dugout's entrance--and there you were!
One minute before this narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict
had dropped the boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the
lifer, and Detroit Jim, had crawled. This convict had then frantically
kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down still more dirt, to make
sure nothing could be seen of the hole--had made the thing look just
like part of the big dirt-pile indeed--and then had legged it to the
ball-game now in progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the
extreme south end of the yard, behind the mat-shop.
Dirt trickled down upon the gray hair of Old Man Anderson in the dark
and stuffy hole he shared with his younger companion. But the darkness
and the stuffiness and the filtering dirt were unsensed. Something far
more momentous was in the minds of both. How soon would Slattery, the
prison guard, whom they knew to be lying dead in the alley between the
foundry and the tool-shop, be found? For years Slattery had been a
fairly good friend to Old Man Anderson, but what did that count in the
face of his becoming, for all his friendship, a last-minute and
totally unexpected impediment to the get-away? He had turned into the
alley just when Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim were crouching for
the final jump to the dugout! A blow--a thud--that was all....
Anderson lay now, staring wide-eyed into the black nothing of the
hole. For the second time he had killed a man, and God knew he hadn't
intended to--either time! Fourteen years ago a man had tried to get
his wife away from him, while he was serving a one-year bit in the
county jail. Both men had had guns, and Old Man Anderson had killed
the other or he would have been killed himself. So that was no murder
at all! And as for Slattery--big, heavy, slow-moving, red-faced
Slattery--Old Man Anderson would even have gone out of his way to do
the guard a favour, under ordinary circumstances. But as between
Slattery and the chance to escape--that was different.
Old Man Anderson rubbed his right hand in the dirt and held it before
his eyes in the blackness. He knew that the moisture on it was
Slattery's blood. The iron pipe in Old Man Anderson's hands had struck
Slattery on the head just once, but once was enough.
Old Man Anderson burst into hiccoughing sobs. The younger convict
punched him in the ribs, and swore at him in muffled tones. Anderson
stifled his sobs then, but continued to sniffle and shiver. This time
it would absolutely be The Chair for him--if they got him! In a few
minutes they couldn't help discovering Slattery. Anderson never could
give himself up now, however this business of the dugout and the
hoped-for old sewer conduit should finally turn out. In the beginning
he had counted on crawling out, if worst came to worst, and
surrendering. But to crawl out now meant but one thing--The Chair!
In all his fourteen years behind the walls the vision of The Chair had
terrorized the old man. When they had sent him to prison his first
cell had been in the death-house, separated from The Chair only by a
corridor that, they told him, was about twenty feet long, and took no
more than five seconds to traverse--with the priest. Until they
changed his cell, the gaunt, terrible Thing in the next room edged
every day nearer, nearer, nearer, looming, growing, broadening before
his morbid vision until it seemed to have cut off from his sight
everything else in the world--closer, closer until it was only seven
incredible hours away! Then had come the commutation of his sentence
from death to life!
The next day Old Man Anderson, gray-haired even then, went out from
the death-house among his gray-clad fellows, but straight into the
prison hospital, where for three months be lay a victim of chair-shock
just as surely as was ever a man shell-shocked on the Flanders front.
And never since had the hands of the man wholly ceased to quiver and
to shake.
Now he was a murderer for the second time! In the blackness he
stretched out his hand, and ran it over a stack of tin cans. Detroit
Jim had been mighty clever! Canned food from the storehouse, enough to
last perhaps two weeks! Detroit Jim had had a storehouse job. Twice a
day, during the last ten days, the wiry little ferret-faced
second-story man had got away with at least one can from the prison
commissary. Also he had provided matches, candles, and even a cranky
little flashlight. Only chewing tobacco, because you can smell smoke a
long way when you are hunting escaped convicts. And a can of water
half the size of an ash can!
Despair fastened upon Old Man Anderson, and a wave of sickness swept
over him. All the food in the world wouldn't bring Slattery back to
life. And again that Thing in the death-house rose before his mind's
eyes. Throughout all the years he had carried a kind of dread that
sometime a governor might come along who would put back his sentence
where it had been at first--and then all his good behaviour in these
endless years would count for nothing. Until Detroit Jim had told him
about the long-forgotten sewer conduit, he had never even thought to
disobey the prison rules.
The old man's teeth chattered. Detroit Jim's thin fingers tugged at
his sleeve. That meant getting busy, and digging with the pick with
the sawed-off handle. So Anderson wriggled into the horizontal
chamber, which was just large enough to permit his body and arms to
function.
As he hacked away at the damp earth, he could see in the pitch
darkness the dirty sheet of paper, now in Detroit Jim's pocket, upon
which their very life depended. It was a tracing made by a discharged
convict from a dusty leather-covered book in the public library in New
York, sent in by the underground to Jim. The book had contained the
report of some forgotten architect, back in the fifties of the last
century, and the diagram in his report showed the water and sewage
conduit--in use! It ran from the prison building, right down across
the yard, six feet under ground, and out under the north wall, under
the street outside, and finally into the river. Built of brick, four
feet wide, four feet high. A ready-made tunnel to freedom!
Old Man Anderson could hear Detroit Jim's hoarse whisper now, as he
chopped away at the dirt, which he shoved back under his stomach, to
where Jim's fingers caught it and thrust it farther back.
"We're only a couple of feet from that old conduit right now. Dig, you
son of a gun, dig! Can the snifflin'! You dig, and then I'll dig!"
They were saving their matches and candles against necessity.
Mechanically the old man chopped and hacked at the wall of earth in
front of him. Now and then the pick would encounter a stone or some
other hard substance. In the last few days they had come upon frequent
pieces of old brick. Detroit Jim had rejoiced over these signs. For
the old man every falling clod of earth seemed to bring him nearer to
freedom. They also took his mind off Slattery.
So he chopped away, how long he did not know. Suddenly his pick struck
an obstacle again. He hacked at it. It gave slightly. A third time he
struck it, and it seemed to recede. An odour of mouldy air filled his
nostrils. In that little aperture his pick touched nothing now! He
heard something fall! Then he knew! There was a hollow place in front
of them! The abandoned conduit? He stifled a shout.
From somewhere, muffled at first, but ultimately faintly strident,
rose a prolonged wail that seemed to issue from the very earth. The
sound rose, and fell, and rose again. Frantically the pick of Old Man
Anderson hacked away at the dirt, and then at whatever was in front of
him. Detroit Jim snapped the feeble flashlight then. It was a
wall--the conduit wall!
Meantime, the prison siren shrieked out to the countryside the news of
an escape.
What time it was--whether night or day or what day, neither Jim nor
Old Man Anderson knew. They had slept, of course, and Jim had
forgotten to wind his watch. Had one week or two weeks passed? If two
weeks had slipped by and if the prison officers ran true to form they
would by now have ceased searching inside the prison walls.
Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim huddled close to each other in the
darkness of the conduit. A hundred times they had crawled from one end
to the other of their vaultlike trap! In their desperate and fruitless
search for an outlet to the conduit they had burned many matches and
several candles. Besides, Old Man Anderson had required light in which
to fight off his attacks of nerves, and the last of the candles had
gone for that. Now total darkness enveloped them.
The conduit was blocked! By earth at one end, and by a brick wall at
the other! All along the winding hundred feet of vault they had hacked
out brick after brick only to encounter solid earth behind. Only a few
tins of food remained and the water was wholly gone; the liquid from
the food cans only served to increase their thirst.
Old Man Anderson had grown to loathe Detroit Jim. Every word he
murmured, every movement he made, intensified the loathing. He had
made up his mind that Jim was planning to desert him the next time he
should fall asleep; perhaps would kill him and leave him there--in the
dark. The two had practically ceased speaking to each other. In his
mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with
satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall
asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall,
pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out,
and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be
shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he
was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on
account of the things that were forever crawling through the place!
His contemplation of his plan was broken in upon by his companion
clutching him spasmodically by the arm. The old man's cry died in his
throat.
Footsteps! Dull and distant they were, and somewhere above
them--momentarily more distinct--receding--gone!
Detroit Jim pulled Andersen's head toward him, and whispered:
"Sidewalk! People going by! We've never sat right here before! We
wouldn't hear them if they weren't walking on stone, or slate, or
something hard!"
The old man's heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Detroit Jim seized the
pick and began to pry the bricks loose from the arched roof of the
conduit. They worked like mad, picking, hacking, pulling, piling the
bricks softly down on the conduit floor.
Once, for an instant, Jim stopped working. "How far from the hole we
came in through, do you think we are?" he whispered.
"'Bout a hundred feet, I guess," answered the old man. "Why?"
Without replying Detroit Jim resumed his picking, picking, at the
bricks. A hundred feet from where they had entered would not be under
the sidewalk. Finally, he understood. This conduit wound around a good
deal; it would take a hundred winding feet to cover thirty
straightaway.
Finally, also, Detroit Jim turned the pick over to the old man, who,
feeling in the blackness with his hands, discovered the span as wide
as his outstretched arms, from which Detroit Jim had removed the
bricks. It was a span of yielding earth into which the old man now dug
his pick. As he worked, the loosened dirt fell upon him, upon his
head, into his eyes and nose and ears....
Abruptly the old man's pick struck the flagging above them! Detroit
Jim mounted upon the pile of bricks and shoved Anderson aside.
Jim felt along the edges of the stone clear around. It seemed to
measure about three feet by two, and to be of slate, and probably held
in place only by its contact with other stones, or by cement between
the stones. No light appeared through the crevices. Detroit Jim took
from his pocket a huge pocket-knife and with the longest blade poked
up between the main stone and the one adjoining. The blade met
resistance.
Ultimately, and abruptly, however, the blade shot through to the hilt
of the knife. Jim drew it back instantly. No light came through the
crevice.
"I smell good air," he whispered, "but I can't see a thing. It must be
night!"
They knew now what to do. The flagging must be removed at once, before
any one should go by! The hole would be big enough to let them out!
Old Man Andersen's heart leaped. It was over. They had won. Trust him
to go where they'd never get him for the Slattery business! As for
Detroit Jim, he already knew the next big trick that he would pull
off--out in Cleveland!
Ultimately, as Detroit Jim worked upon it, the stone began to sag. An
edge caught upon the adjacent flagging. The two men, perched upon the
wobbly bricks, manipulated the stone, working it loose, until,
finally, it came crashing down.
The stone had made noise enough, it seemed, to wake the dead; yet
above them there was no sound. Swiftly they raised the flagging and
set it securely upon the heap of bricks. When Detroit Jim stood upon
this improvised platform his head was level with the aperture they had
made. He could see no sky, no stars, could feel no wind, discover no
light such as pervades even the darkest night.
"Good God!" he breathed. His fingers went out over the flagging. His
knife dropped. The tinkle echoed dully down the conduit. He stooped to
where Old Man Anderson stood, breathing hard.
"It's a--a room!" he whispered.
"A--a room?" repeated Old Man Anderson dully.
"Come! After me! Up! I'll pull you up!"
Detroit Jim, being wiry, swung himself up, and then bent down, groping
for the old man's hands. Winded, panting, exhausted, the two men stood
at last in this new blackness, clutching each other, their ears
strained to catch the slightest sound.
"For God's sake, don't fall down that hole now!" hissed Detroit Jim.
"Listen. We'll both crawl together till we get to a wall. Then you
feel along one way, and whisper to me what you find, and I'll crawl
the other. Look for a window or a door--some way out! We'll come
together finally. Are you ready?"
"I'm--I'm afraid," whined the old man.
Detroit Jim's fingers dug into the other's arm, and he pulled the
latter along. Their groping hands touched a wall--a wall of wood.
Detroit Jim stood up and pulled Anderson beside him. He felt the old
man shiver. He shoved him gently in to the left and himself moved
cautiously to the right, slowly, catlike.
Finally, Jim came to a door. He could perceive no light through the
chinks in the door. Sensing the increasing uncanniness of a room
without windows, without furniture, with flagging for a floor, he
turned the knob of the door gently, and it gave under his touch.
Just then there came to him a hoarse whisper from across the room. It
made him jump. "I've--I've found some wires," the old man was saying,
"in a cable running along the floor----"
"See where they lead!" Detroit Jim was breathless, in anticipation.
And then, shattering the overwhelming tension of the moment, shrilled,
suddenly, a horrible, prolonged, piercing shriek ending in a gasp and
the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor! What, in God's name,
had happened to the old man? And that yell was enough to awaken the
entire world!
Detroit Jim groped his way across the room. He could hear now no
further sound from the old man.... Steps outside! He sank upon his
knees, his hands outstretched. He heard a lock turn; then following
upon a click the whole universe went white, and dazzling and
scorching!
He raised one arm to his blinking, throbbing eyes. A rough voice
shouted: "Hands up!"
There was a rush of feet, the rough clutch of hands at his
shoulders.... Presently he found himself blinking down upon the
fear-contorted face of Old Man Anderson dirt-streaked, bearded, gaunt,
dead!
Slowly his eyes crawled beyond the body on the floor.... Before him,
its empty arms stretched toward him, its straps and wires twisting
snakily in front of him, was The Chair!
"AURORE"
By ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD
From _Pictorial Review_
"Your name!--_Votre nom_?" Crossman added, for in the North Country
not many of the habitants are bilingual.
She looked at him and smiled slowly, her teeth white against
cardinal-flower lips.
"Ma name? Aurore," she answered in a voice as mystically slow as her
smile, while the mystery of her eyes changed and deepened.
Crossman watched her, fascinated. She was like no woman he had ever
seen, radiating a personality individual and strange. "Aurore," he
repeated. "You're not the dawn, you know; not a bit like it." He did
not expect her to own to any knowledge of the legend of her name, but
she nodded her head understandingly.
"It was the Curé name' me so," she explained. "But the Curé and me,"
she shrugged, "never could--how you say?--see--hear--one the
other--so, I would not be a blonde just for spite to him--I am a very
black dawn, _n'est-ce pas_?"
"A black dawn," he repeated. Her words unleashed his fancy--her heavy
brows and lashes, her satiny raven hair, her slow voice that seemed
made of silence, her eyes that changed in expression so rapidly that
they dizzied one with a sense of space. "Black Dawn!" He stared at her
long, which in no wise disconcerted her.
"Will you want, then, Antoine and me?" she asked at length.
He woke from his dream with a savage realization that, most surely, he
wanted her. "Yes. Of course--you--and Antoine. Wait, _attendez_, don't
go yet."
"_Why_ not?" she smiled. "I have what I came for."
Her hand was on the door-latch. The radiance from the opened door of
the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and
intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw. In black
corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik's, she stood at ease,
her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots.
"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she said. "In two days we go with you to
camp--me--_and_ Antoine."
"Wait!" he cried, but she had opened the door. He rose with a start,
and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath
of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power.
All about him the night was radiant. Of a sudden the sky was hung with
banners--banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of
rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost
emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens,
swaying across the world in mysterious majesty. Immensity, Silence,
Mystery--The Northern Lights! "Aurora!" he called into the night,
"Aurora--Borealis!"
The Curé of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook
himself from his blankets; his _soutane_ was rolled up around his
waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the
heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His
appearance was singularly divided--clerical above, under the long
wool-lined cape, and "lay" below. Though the thermometer showed a
shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun,
busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring.
The sky was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one
immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its
brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws,
the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling
to the woodsmen's onslaughts--Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital
centre of joyous activity.
The Curé grinned and rubbed his mittened hands. "H--Hola!" he called.
At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to
the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a
grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome."
"Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I
thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly
circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou."
He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with
outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively.
"My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North."
"Ah, so? I am the Curé of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must
wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and
the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My
team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred
sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now
sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an
overseer for the company?" suggested the Curé, politely curious--"or
perhaps you cruise?"
Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon père_. I came up here to get well."
"Ah," said the Curé, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of
the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's
sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again."
Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender
finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world
sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of
the world."
"You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and
began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say
well. It strikes at the _heart_."
Crossman nodded.
"Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in
Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God
work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and
sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He
nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding.
"Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair.
"So," murmured the Curé, continuing his thought as he sank into the
embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take
hurt there, my son?"
Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but
of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the
doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like
Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the
world--and not found my hold on another."
"Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my
son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was
silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of
the sled-dogs.
Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Aurore in her red
mackinaw and corduroy trousers. A pair of snowshoes hung over her
back, and her hand gripped a short-handled broad axe. Her great eyes
turned from Crossman to the Curé, and across her crimson mouth crept
her slow smile. The Curé sprang to his feet at sight of her, his face
went white, and the lines from nose to lips seemed to draw in.
"Aurore!" he exclaimed; "Aurore!"
"_Oui, mon père_," she drawled. "It is Aurore." She struck a
provocative pose, her hand on her hip, her head thrown back, while her
eyes changed colour as alexandrite in the sun.
The Curé turned on Crossman. "What is this woman to you?"
Her eyes defied him. "Tell him," she jeered. "What _am_ I to you?"