Maybe it was that simple. But Bowen went over in his mind everything he knew about Manring, trying to find a more personal reason.
They had met in a saloon of the Commercial House Hotel in Prescott just a little more than a year ago-Bowen with a trail drive behind him and for the time being nothing to do; Manring looking for a man to help him move a small herd down to San Carlos-the two of them standing at the bar. A few minutes after they started talking, they moved to a table.
“Ordinarily,” Manring had explained, “I work for a spread same as anybody else, but I heard about this cry for beef down at San Carlos and saw it was a chance to make something if you had a little capital.” And taking a bill of sale out of his pocket-“The reservation’s grown bigger than the government beef allowance, so now they got to buy more. But they’re buying monthly, just a hundred head or so at a time and it don’t pay the big owner to take a herd down there. That’s why somebody like you or me can make money out of it if you got stock to sell.” He pointed to the bill of sale. “Which I got.”
Bowen said it sounded all right to him. He was thinking about going down to Willcox to talk to a friend about a mining venture and if he could work his way down that was all the better.
The next morning they started driving the herd-forty head they had gathered themselves. Bowen noticed none of the steers had been vent-branded and he asked Manring about it.
“Why go to the trouble of registering a brand,” Manring answered, “then waste time putting it on when you’ll only have the stock about a week? A bill of sale’s good enough to prove ownership.”
When Bowen opened his eyes the next morning, a man he had never seen before was standing over him with a rifle. There were eight or ten others in the clearing and a moment later he saw Manring brought in. Manring was mounted and it was evident he had tried to run when the posse closed in.
They were taken back to Prescott and formally charged that afternoon, the complaint being signed by R. A. McLaughlin, the man from whom Manring claimed to have bought the cattle. Luckily (the sheriff said) a district judge would be in Prescott the next day-so there wouldn’t be a delay in the trial.
Bowen remembered that first night in a jail cell clearly-watching Manring lying on his bunk smoking and for a long time neither of them spoke. But there were some things Bowen wanted to say and finally-
“If you’d vented McLaughlin’s brand at the time of the sale we wouldn’t be in jail.” He was sorry as soon as he’d said it. That if-talking was like closing the barn after everything had run out. But Manring drew on his cigarette, not bothering to answer, and Bowen could feel his anger begin to rise.
“Why didn’t you vent his brand when you closed the deal?”
Manring’s head turned on the mattress. “I told you.”
“Earl…this McLaughlin said you worked for him once, about three years ago. Took you on for a Kansas drive.”
“I heard him.”
“You claimed that wasn’t so.”
Manring stubbed out the cigarette. “You going to do the hearing all over again?”
“Earl”-he remembered that his voice was calm and that he wasn’t yet really angry-“did you buy those cattle or did you steal them?”
Manring was on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“Earl, they’re going to try me tomorrow for something I don’t know anything about!”
“Have a good cry,” Manring muttered.
Bowen rose. “I asked you a question. I want to know if you really bought that stock!”
“So does the judge,” Manring said. He started to roll over, turning his back to Bowen, but suddenly Bowen was dragging him up by the arm and as he came off the bunk Bowen hit him. He hit Manring four times before the sheriff’s deputy came in to separate them.
The trial began at ten o’clock the next morning. At noon they recessed for dinner and for the jury to reach a decision. Then at two o’clock that afternoon the judge passed sentence. Seven years in the Territorial Prison at Yuma. There had been no time wasted. It was McLaughlin’s word against Manring’s and as far as both the judge and the jury were concerned, this was not a two-sided question. In sentencing them, the judge admitted being lenient, since to his knowledge neither of the accused had a previous criminal record.
That night Bowen and Manring were placed in separate cells to await transportation to Yuma.
For the next nine months, on Prison Hill, Bowen saw Manring every day, but they seldom spoke. He made himself believe that Manring was also innocent. That made it easier to live with him. Still, they had little in common and there was no reason for a friendship to exist between them. Gradually, then, he ceased to even think about Manring and the trial and he began to consider him nothing more than another Yuma convict. Being in different cells-though both were in the main cell block-made it that much easier.
From the first day he entered Yuma, Bowen thought of escape. He had made up his mind that he was not going to pay with seven years for something he didn’t do. But thinking of escaping from Yuma you had to consider the Gatling gun over the main gate, the hundreds of miles of desert surrounding the prison, the Pima trackers who would bring you back for a bounty and, finally, the “Snake den” cell in the dungeon block where you would live for a month or more, chained to the stone floor, if the escape failed.
During the time they were at Yuma, construction of the cell block for incorrigibles was still in progress-a project planned to carve a dungeon of twelve cells out of solid granite. Bowen was assigned to the dynamite crew; and it was the experience gained in this work that was primarily responsible for his leaving Yuma some months later.
Their transfer came unexpectedly. Bowen, Manring and four other convicts-one of them Pryde-were taken from their cells one evening soon after supper. Nineteen days later, a wagon rolled through the barbed wire gate of the convict camp at Five Shadows as Frank Renda stood by to greet them.
In their three months here, Bowen had talked to Manring more often; and only a few days before the supply trip to Pinaleño, Manring had hinted at a plan of escape. But by then, Bowen had made up his mind to try it his own way and Manring’s hints had been too vague to even arouse his curiosity.
Still, he thought now, Manring had considered him in his escape plan. That was the point. That was the main reason Pryde’s story of Manring informing on him left a question in his mind.
There were twenty-two marks on the wall the morning Brazil opened the door and told them to come out. As soon as they were outside, both men lifting a hand to shield the sun from their eyes, and unexpectedly noticing the convicts grouped along the front of the barracks watching them, Brazil slammed the heavy door and walked away.
“It’s Sunday,” Bowen said.
Pryde was looking toward the convicts. “He’s not there.”
“Let me worry about Manring,” Bowen said.
He walked along the front of the barracks, every convict in the yard watching him, and those near him nodded as he approached then moved aside as he entered the barracks. Over the yard there was a silence.
Two convicts playing a card game looked up as he entered. They seemed to hesitate. Then one of them began dealing the cards again. The other convict looked past the dealer, down the length of the adobe, down the row of straw mats that were lined along the wall, before his gaze dropped to the cards again.
Manring was lying on his side, his eyes closed and his left arm pillowing his head. Then his eyes opened, raising from Bowen’s shoes up to his face.
“Corey, you look thinner.”
Bowen said nothing, but his gaze remained on Manring’s bearded face. He heard a step behind and he knew it was Pryde.