The hinges creaked again and light flooded in from outside as Bud Casey swung back the unlocked door. He was silent as he locked the Apache in again, his sandy-colored face sober.
He turned to Kerrigan, heavy key ring dangling. "Come on, Lew. Let's get on over to the storeroom and get your stuff. I'm worried."
They walked through the gummy mud of the yard and Kerrigan said, "Why?"
"Because," Casey replied grimly, "that's the first time I ever saw Wood Smith try to break a man's gun arm the morning of his release."
"I thought for a few minutes it was broken. I won't be able to use it much for a week."
"Something about this whole deal is fishy, Lew. If somebody is out to get you, Wood was in on the deal and did his part a little while ago. Hell of it is," Bud went on, "if they get you, you're six feet under. And if you ever throw a gun again, even to defend yourself, they'll bring you back here. And I'll have to supervise the building of the scaffold they'll hang you from."
"They'll never hang me," Lew Kerrigan said harshly.
"Three other men I know of thought that same thing, Lew. They're down there on the Point below the prison, under six feet of caliche. Right close by where old Martinez will be planted this morning."
CHAPTER TWO
The storeroom was a square, heavily barred affair in the southwest corner of the high-walled yard, and directly south of the warden's office. Casey unlocked another iron door leading in from the prison yard and led the way inside. Full daylight came in through the bar-protected windows and the damp, unused air gave off a faintly musty odor. In the distance the wet mooring ropes creaked and the paddle-wheel boats rocked up and down under the rolling swell of the turgid waters.
Casey turned from a large wooden cabinet in the corner with a card in his hand. He pointed to a warbag with a saddle and bridle beside it on a wide shelf and said, "Over there."
He replaced the card and seated himself on an empty packing case. "Lew, Arizona's territorial laws ain't worth a damn four hundred yards from here, on the California bank of the river. Why don't you hide out until I get off at eight and then let me hunt up a Yuma Indian ferryman and get you across the river?"
"I'm in 'parole' custody to Colonel Harrow, remember, Bud?" Kerrigan almost grinned, opening his warbag.
"You'll at least be a free man. You ain't the type to bend under another man's hand."
"You never spoke a more truthful word in your life, Casey," Lew Kerrigan said, jerking open the drawstrings of the canvas bag containing his "possibles."
Casey sighed and reached for tobacco and papers. "Maybe the sheriff who brought you down here from up north two years ago has a few ideas on what's in the wind. Your guns and money came along last week."
Kerrigan was stripping off his prison shirt. He sat down and began to unlace the iron-hard prison shoes. "Joe Stovers is square. It was his testimony that got me off with a life sentence instead of hanging. It almost broke Judge Eaton's heart to do it, and he told me so in court. He's a Bible-quoting old devil who believes, or pretends to believe, that God sent him to clean out the north part of the territory of every man who ever had to throw a gun for any reason. I've got Joe to thank for being here this morning instead of down there on the Point."
He shed the remainder of his prison clothes and showered from a bucket-operated water stall in a corner. He put on first the worn brown Stetson, crimping it into a sharp "Montana" peak. The jeans and shirt fitted his lank frame a bit loosely now, and the boots were almost too tight. The weight of wheelbarrow loads of dirt and rock had caused his feet to spread inside the ill-fitting prison shoes.
His arm ached more than ever by the time he finished dressing and began to soften up whisker stubble with coarse soap and cold water. Bud Casey had finished his smoke and was yawning, arms stretched above his head.
"Damn it, Lew, if you won't jump the river— if you're determined to stick your head into a wire noose like a rabbit in a trail snare, go down to meet them on a good horse. There's a California horse buyer around town, fellow named LeRoy. Now if you'll…" He looked at Kerrigan busy lathering his cheeks and said, "Ahhh, hell!" in disgust.
Kerrigan said over his shoulder, "Bud, I want you to do something for me. It's Kadoba. You cell with a man for two years, even if he is an Apache, and you grow to like him because he's become a friend you can trust. So when I get my money this morning I'm going to leave a hundred dollars and a few little things at the Big Adobe Store I want you to pick up. Sneak him a big chunk of half-roasted beef now and then. Get him some horse hair for making hackamores you can sell for tobacco money for him. He never should have been tried by Judge Yeager Eaton, but by military authorities at Globe. But the old Bible-quoting hypocrite bulled his way in and showed 'mercy' when he gave him life, where the military boys would have sent him to Alcatraz Rock for a couple of years."
"Leave the money," Bud Casey said, yawning after twelve hours of night duty. "I can feed him nights when everything is all quiet."
Elia Mangrum, a political appointee in a graft-ridden administration in the capital at Tucson, drove up from town in his buggy and turned it over to a Mexican trusty. The territory's population was 30,114, and Mangrum was busy enlarging the newly started prison. Arizona was notorious as a sanctuary for fugitives fleeing California and other vigilantes committees.
Mangrum came in through a hallway built like a mine tunnel and found Lew Kerrigan lounging in a chair in the office, saddle and bridle and warbag on the mortar floor beside him.
Mangrum sat down at his desk without speaking; a man in his middle forties with brown hair spit-curled down over his temples. His mustache drooped a full two inches down over his mouth, and it pleased him to have people say he resembled Wyatt Earp, the famed peace marshal up in Kansas.
He said curtly, "Kerrigan, two years ago you had a small ranch and a hundred head of cattle up in the northern part of the territory near the old abandoned military post of Fort Pirtman. You shot to death a town marshal over a woman named Kitty Anderson. I might as well tell you I stopped her letters and others to you some time back. I didn't want a young woman like that eating her heart out over a lifer," he added sourly. "At any rate, after you fled the law and went to Colonel Harrow's place, Sheriff Joe Stovers finally ran you down. You appeared before Circuit Judge Yeager Eaton, the finest magistrate in the territory for dealing harsh justice to lawless men such as yourself. Instead of hanging you, he sent you down here to serve a life sentence at hard labor. I have been following the court's edict to the letter."
"No doubt about that," Lew Kerrigan said bitingly. "And with the capable aid of Wood Smith's bottle and billy."
"Don't get funny with me, Kerrigan," Mangrum snapped coldly. "You might find yourself back in here sooner than you think. And if it happens, you'll find out soon enough that I have a long memory. Colonel Harrow is waiting for you at the hotel. It is the Colonel's impression that you might be leaving prison with the sole purpose in mind of killing him. I want to know what's in your mind."
"The conditions of my so-called parole to Tom Harrow," Kerrigan answered coolly. "I don't know how much he paid and who he paid it to. It was my money he handed out so generously anyhow. What are those conditions from the Territorial Governor?"
Mangrum's clean-shaven face flushed angrily. "The Colonel has felt all along that the sentence was unjust. He had to wait two years until feeling cooled down before he could make a successful attempt in your behalf. It worked. He wants you freed into his custody to keep you from going on a rampage, as so many men embittered by prison do. They come out hating the world and ready to lash out in any direction. The Colonel says you're too good a man for that. You're in his custody until he feels you're on the right track again. It's as simple as that, Kerrigan."