A FRIEND IN NEED
"Sure--that's right," he assented. "Well, Lutts, come with me now. You
have to take a bath--everybody that comes in here has to take a bath,
the first dash out the box. You ain't never been in a place like this
before, have you? A blind man can see that," he conjectured, gnawing a
chew off a very black prison plug. "Have a chew?"
"I never hankered fo' t'baccy," declined Lem, smilingly, with a gesture
which he meant for a polite curtsy in lieu of thanks.
As they proceeded across the graveled prison yard, toward the bath
house, Lem's keen inherent sense of penetration had analyzed the man
beside him as accurately as Last Time had read the artless, simple soul
of the big mountain boy, and notwithstanding that Lem knew instinctively
that this bull-necked, scar-faced fellow was a bad and desperate
character, he at the same time felt a warm feeling springing up within
him toward this man. He felt that he had a friend in Last Time, who was
the first and only one to give him a kind look or word since his arrest,
and a sympathetic look or a cheering word coming from any quarter was
indeed a welcome offering to a person in Lem's unfortunate and
distressing position.
As they walked, the convict talked along in a friendly way, and noting
Lem's roving eyes, he proceeded to tell the boy about the various
buildings scattered about the great lot.
"That's the Chapel over there," he said. "That's where you will go to
church on Sunday, if you want to. If you don't, you'll stay locked in
your cell. There's the dining-hall back there by the left wing of the
cell-house. That long shed over there open on all sides is where the
shop men stop to wash up. There's three hundred men over there now at
work. They make brushes and wire fences and shoes and a lot of other
things, but you won't work there--cause you're held for Court--but I'd a
damn sight rather work than stay locked up all day--night's bad enough.
"I hope you don't come back here after your trial. Any man with as much
intellect as an oyster can see that you don't belong here. And there's a
few more like you here, that don't deserve bein' in a place like this--a
waller for the scum of the earth. Don't look at me, Lutts--that don't
include me--I got off damn light. I was due for five spots in the pen.
You see that little brick coop over there, Lutts--without any windows,
and a solid iron door? That's Calcutta--the dungeon--they call it the
'hole.' That's where they put the bad actors. Inside, there's a solid
sheet-iron cell, with an iron cot, and an iron bucket in it--that's
all--not a crack of light. They chain 'em to the bed an' leave 'em--once
a day they give 'em fresh water and toss in a piece of punk. When the
men march in at night, you'll notice the Captain standing at the
cell-house door making the count, and you'll see a bull standing by him,
pullin' men out of line. When you see a guy pulled out, it's Calcutta
for him."
"I've been here nine months, and I've been in that 'hole' five times,
'cause I can't stand these fresh stiffs around here. The last time was
for makin' hamburger out of Blinky. See them little wooden houses away
'cross there up on the wall? Them's for the lookouts. See, there goes
one now, walking on the wall with his cannon in his hand.
"Here's where you get your bath, Lutts. Upstairs over here is the
Hospital. That's where I sent Blinky and a couple more of his cowards."
Last Time's laugh predicated a deep, pleasurable reminiscence, as they
entered the bath house. There was no one in the bath house at this time
save the convict attendant. He handed Lem a towel which in dimensions
resembled a large table napkin, and a piece of yellow soap which in size
looked like a chewing-gum wafer. Here, Last Time reached out and took
the mite of soap and the meagre towel out of Lem's hands.
"Hoggie, I'll look after him. You stay up at the door and watch the
big-top. If you see the bull come out and pike over uneasy, you squeak.
Wait, Lutts--I'll get you a decent piece of soap."
With this he climbed up on a box, and reaching up behind a series of
steam pipes, he produced a half-bar of white soap and a towel of coarse
fabric, but clean and ample. Lem then busied himself with the bath,
which was sunken into the concrete floor. As this new-made friend talked
along, trying to acquaint Lem with the rules of the prison, he noticed
that the boy fumbled, and hesitated, and was plainly abashed when it
came to divesting himself of his clothes. Last Time thoughtfully left
the mountaineer to himself, saying:
"I'll help Hoggie watch for old Caladadac--you can wash your hair if you
want to--that soap is O. K."
Some fifteen minutes later, when Lem had concluded his hasty bath and
joined his conductor at the door of the bath house, a high-keyed bell
suddenly pealed out. It was the first familiar sound Lem had heard since
he left the mountains.
"That's the recall," said Last Time. "Stay back in the door a minute and
you'll see the file come out--they've stopped work now--it's four
o'clock."
The celerity with which these convicts got out of the shops was
remarkable. Hardly had the tower bell ceased when five long rows of
stripes stood ready to march. The guards each blew a mouth-whistle in
turn, and the columns moved across the plaza toward the wash-shed like a
great dragon with hundreds of legs. Then out of the wash-shed the
columns crawled, bent around the dungeon-house, and marched into the big
dining hall, with the scraping rise and fall of the lock-step--a
peculiar, sinister sound.
Lem had peeped out at the bath-house door upon this spectacle with
awesome eyes. He stood in open-mouthed wonder, and was aroused only when
Last Time spoke and touched his arm.
"The night bull 'll come on now, and he'll be hollerin' for me--we
better git along," he said. "You won't eat with them men. You'll git
yours in the dining hall inside."
Upon reaching the cell-house, Last Time conducted Lem to the tables at
the front end of the basement corridor where the Court prisoners were
already at supper, and then left him. A soup-bowl, filled with a
substance that at least resembled coffee; a plate of beans, and a thick
piece of bread were placed in front of Lem by a convict waiter.
Lem felt at the moment that he never again would want to eat anything.
Not only was his appetite wholly gone, but the mere sight of this food
was nauseating, although he had not tasted anything since he had eaten
breakfast at home the day before.
While he sat looking about him with lugubrious eyes, the man next to
him--an uncouth individual indeed--whispered surreptitiously:
"Ain't ye goin' to eat your punk?"
Lem shook his head.
"Kin I have it?"
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 basement 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 scraping, tide-like
rhythm--the muffled 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 scrape, 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
luster 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
assaulted 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 God 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 passed.
"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.