9009/Chapter 14
9009 picked up his rifle and made for the wall. There were two guards upon it at the point which he chose, holding their rifles in both hands, like hunters waiting for a flock of quail to rise, and they fell to the double crack of his rifle ere they could pull a trigger. One dropped inside the yard, the other hung, quivering, on the edge of the wall. Unwinding the rope around his waist, 9009 threw the grappling iron across the rail of the guards’ walk, and hurling his rifle ahead of him, climbed swiftly up like an ape. He paused for the flicker of an instant, there on the top, the inside of the prison like a diagram beneath him, the guard, now still, at his feet; then, disdainful of the rope, sprang down. He lit, huddled, by his rifle, seized it, and then, hunch-backed, ran for the hill. Shots sounded as he climbed, bullets whined by him, but he reached the summit, dived over it, and scrambled into the broad road at the point whence, years before, his coupled wrist raised by the garotter’s pointing hand, he had had first sight of the prison’s turreted walls. 9009 stopped and looked.
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; then, turning, plunged on down the hill.
To the south, gray beneath a gray sky, lay the bay, whipped up into sudden bursts of livid fury by cold squalls. Collins kept it to his left and made for the edge of the chaparral lining a patch of forest to the west. If he could gain this, the immediate pursuit would end, and there would be an interval of rest before the systematic man-hunt would begin. He ran across the hills, crackling dry with the drought, a strange, red-striped animal whose eyes flashed, who bent and ducked and crouched and sought hollows. Once only did he stop; this to the drumming approach of a guard, who had been able to obtain a horse. From the top of a knoll where he lay flat, Collins shot down the guard, then went on, leaving the well-trained horse standing with long bridle dropped to the ground by his rider’s reclining form. The halt had given him a | glimpse of other blue-clad guards scattered over the land to the rear; he threw himself on with fresh impetus, and it was gasping, with veins swollen, that he reached the fringe of the chaparral just as the sun, definitively breaking through the veil of morning vapours, began to pour its yellow heat pitilessly upon the yellow land.
He went on straight till among the pines, then turned to the right toward the north. The city, which was his goal, lay to the south; yet till noon, for ten miles, he travelled straight north. During that time he showed himself only three times.
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 the song died in a high quaver.
“Gimme food,” he growled; “quick!”
The woman stared at him, white-faced, the dish that she had been wiping held tight against her breast. He scowled; the dish fell to the floor in twenty fragments.
“Quick!”
Without a word, she turned to the pantry.
“An’ don’t squeak,” he went on; “if ye do, I’ll cut your head off.”
She placed the food before him on the table—bread, meat, potatoes, milk, a pot of lukewarm coffee. He gulped it down like a dog, watching all the time the woman through narrowed lids. Once, at some noise in the yard, he took up his rifle and glided a-tiptoe to the window. He stood there a moment, peering out; meanwhile, the woman took hold of the table with both hands, leaning forward heavily, her eyes closed; but as he turned and went back to the food, she stood up again, very stiff.
When he had done eating, he crammed under his jacket the meat and bread that remained, strode out, and vanished in the woods.
An hour later he heard the sound of an axe. He crept toward it through the undergrowth and saw a wood-chopper working over a fallen log. The man’s shirt was open on his chest; his face was red and shiny, and at each stroke he uttered a sound between a grunt and a shout. “Huh-huh-huh,” he said as he chopped. Collins rose before him as the axe rose—and the wood-chopper became a statue poised with axe high in air.
“Put down that axe,” Collins growled.
The chopper dropped the axe.
“Now, take off your clothes,” said Collins. The chopper began to strip. But when he had pulled off his shirt, an abrupt change came over him. “Say, what’s the matter with you, eh? What’s the matter with you?” he shouted.
His face was aflame, his eyes glistened; he doubled up his fists. Instantly the fists loosened and sprang high over his head as with a smart tap the muzzle of Collins’s rifle settled against his stomach. “Oh, all right, all right,” he said in subdued tone; “all right, all right, don’t shoot.” Then slowly, as if in an aside directed to the trees: “For God’s sake!”
A moment later Collins crashed out through the brush clad in the garments of a workingman, leaving the wood-chopper in the clearing, naked before a striped huddle at which he gazed with indecision and disgust.
These short apparitions, Collins found, had been sufficient to his plan. The chase was pressing up northward. Once, throwing himself into the ditch beside the county road, he let pass two blue-clad guards on horseback, going swiftly, bent forward in their saddles. Later, from a knoll he saw a whole sheriff’s posse trot by, shining with newly distributed badges, clattering with weapons—sawed-off shot-guns, repeating rifles, six-shooters. The bead of his gun was upon the little band, playfully springing from one to the other, but he did not shoot.
He came upon them again at noon, in a little town consisting of a general merchandise store, a saloon, a post-office, and a huddle of cottages. They were gathered in a picturesque group on the high wooden sidewalk in front of the saloon, tilted back on rawhide chairs, or standing about with clanging spurs, their rifles against the wall, their horses tied to the rack in the street, a circle of admiring urchins about them. The leader, a big, jovial man, was speaking vociferously amid a popping of small boastful interruptions, when Collins, gun in hand, chin thrust forward, walked in down the middle of the main street. 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. He untied them, scattered them, all but one, with a fusillade from his revolver, sprang upon the one he held, and galloped out of the town—still going north. Two miles away, he led the horse down the bed of a brook into a ravine, tied him to a tree, and then, afoot, doubled back toward the south, toward the city, his goal, at last.
He travelled the rest of the day as few men have ever travelled—running, leaping, walking swiftly, always silent, always flitting forward without rest. Only twice did he stop, to watch from some hiding-place, along the barrel of his rifle, posses going by; one was led by the sheriff who six years before had taken him to the prison, a grizzly fellow with a long moustache, and wearing a sombrero; both times the posses were going northward, so that he had to master his desire to kill. Dusk came, and he pressed on, reeking with sweat, but unweary, the monstrous glare-dome of the city ahead. Finally, the glow resolved itself into details, and he trotted in between two rows of street-lamps.
Almost immediately he came upon a policeman. The man, a big, burly hulk, was walking slowly, twirling his stick, his helmet slightly tilted back. Collins dropped into a blind alley.
“Here, come out of there, you,” growled the policeman, half jocosely; “come out, come on, I want to see you!”
Collins stepped out and without raising his arm shot him. The policeman sat down with an astonished expression, coughed, and lay back on the sidewalk, Collins went on at a rapid silent walk to the next street, and, turning, ran. To his ear came the shrill affrighted cry of a police whistle. From the right another came; from the left. He ran, smoothly and carefully, his ears taut to the rasping whistles, his eyes piercing the shadows ahead.
A milk-wagon rattled across his way as he came to a corner. He sprang toward it; the muzzle of his rifle touched the driver. The man drew in, and Collins leaped up by his side. They rattled noisily down the deserted streets wanly lit up by rare gas-lamps. The whistlings dwindled, ceased. Several times they passed policemen, frozen figures upon their beats. Collins’s rifle lay beneath the seat, but the muzzle of his revolver, all the time, was against the ribs of the driver, who handled the reins to Collins’s fierce whispers. They went a tortuous way through a district of fine residences where the close lights gleamed upon broad asphalt avenues; then the houses on both sides began to diminish in size and wealth. He left the wagon and went on at a walk.
The houses became smaller and humbler; he went by the shadowy walls of a gas tank, crossed a network of railway tracks, entered a narrow street lined with dingy cottages, and turned a corner. It was years since he had come this way, and then he had had a guide; but he had not forgotten a detail of the street. He went on without hesitation and knocked at the door of a small cottage, newly painted red. There was a long silence, then a stir, and the door opened. Tom Ryan faced him, Tom Ryan, the friend of his boyhood, with whom he had eaten shortly before his last arrest, the hod-carrier whose security, then, he had envied.
Tom Ryan’s face was very white, and his face was no welcome. He stood at the door and stared with eyes that showed fear, at the man he had known in boyhood. Suddenly a gulp came in his throat. “Good God,” he said, “you’re not John Collins, John, are you? You’re not John Collins, are you, John? Oh, my God!”
Collins caught the look, the fear, the shocked surprise. “Yes, it’s me,” he said, anger flaming through him. “What sort of a hand-out is this you’re giving me? Do I get in?”
And roughly he pushed within. The door closed behind them; they were in the narrow hallway, which smelled of must and cookery. “Good God,” muttered Ryan; “I didn’t think you’d look like this; not like this!” Through the jar of the door at the bottom of the hall, with the stifling odour of a room at once kitchen and nursery, came a streak of yellow lamp-light. In the faint glow the two men looked at each other, the hod-carrier with shoulders white with plaster and face white with emotion, the murderer with bloodshot eyes and corroded brow, his mouth like a straight blue scar. Ryan was trembling. “Man,” he said, “what have you been doing! I never looked for anything like that when I told Nell I’d help ye!”
John Collins was silent for a moment; with a certain astonishment he saw the horror in the other’s face. A scowl deepened his brows.
“Done!” he muttered. “Done—that’s nothing to what I’ll be doin’ to ye if ye don’t shut up that jaw of yours. Is that all ye’ve to say to me”—his voice rose—“is that all, eh? And Nell, where’s Nell?”
A stir came from the room at the bottom of the hallway, then the thin wail of a baby. Ryan raised his hand.
“Sh-sh-sh,” he hissed, and made a warning gesture. “Sh-sh-sh; the old woman, she don’t know. I done it fer you—was willing you meet here. But I didn’t know you’d do that, not that. And the papers full of it—I don’t know—God help me,” he ended with a groan.
“'Where’s Nell?” said Collins, and he shook Ryan by the shoulders; “where’s Nell; quick; where’s Nell?”
“She was to be here—let go, man, let go my shoulder—she’s not come. Wish to God she had—I never knew ’twould come to this—be still—for God’s sake don’t go in there, not in there!”
But Collins, brushing him aside, had strode into the kitchen.
Mrs. Ryan was bending over the cradle—the same cradle where she had bent years before, and it was in the same corner, and from it came the acid cry of her last born. Side by side, by the cradle, were three cots; upon the pillows of two were the grimy blond heads of two older children; but one child, the eldest, a girl, had fallen asleep in her chair; her head, pillowed on her arms, lay amid the unwashed dishes of the table, half-hidden by the large leaves of a newspaper sprawled loosely across.
“Sh-sh-sh, the babe, the babe,” Mrs. Ryan was murmuring, holding up with her left hand a corner of a little blanket; and then, looking beneath her arm at the sound of entering feet, she caught sight of the sinister figure behind her. She whirled around, in one bound placed herself before the beds, her face lit up with a white ferocity; and she shot both clenched hands forward in a movement half sign of aversion, half blow. Collins shrank from the gesture.
“Go away,” she cried, “from this room. Get out of sight of these children, you”—her breast swelled, then the words came slowly, drawn deep from her thick chest—“you murrdhering monster!”
Collins clenched his fist and scowled at Ryan, now come within the room. “Shut up that woman,” he said.
Ryan went to his wife and placed his hand on her shoulder; but she stared straight ahead over his, at Collins, her breast heaving.
And on the table Collins saw the newspaper, an evening edition marked “Extra” in black affrighted letters, and across the page in great red letters was his name, and in a frame, the names of the men he had killed—five—and those he had wounded—three more.
“Ye murrdhering monster,” panted Mrs. Ryan, following the movement of his eyes.
From the porch outside there came a faint shuffling of feet. Collins crouched, his hand went to his waist-band, the heavy black revolver flew out. “One more sound,” he said—and his voice became low with steady menace—“and I’ll blow out the heads of every wan of you.”
One of the children raised up in her cot; she gazed round-eyed at the strange man above her, and began to cry. Without changing her position, Mrs. 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.
Out in the hallway, he wheeled and covered the outer door, which was opening. It shut again. A woman had come in. “Nell,” he whispered.
She was by his side, in the darkness, putting something in his hand. “Quick!” she said.
He opened the box and dropped the rifle cartridges loose into his pocket. She gave him another one.
“Quick!” she said again; “the place’s going to be shadowed.”
He grasped the thing that she gave him.
“All I could get,” she whispered; “all I could get; two years’ stealin’s.”
It was a bundle of bank-notes. To the touch an old forgotten feeling swept hot through him. “Who’s keepin’ you? Who’re you hanging up with?” he growled, his iron fingers sinking into her shoulder.
She was against him; in the semi-obscurity he could see her face, worn now; it was turned up to him wide-eyed.
“I couldn’t do it alone, John,” she said, in a wondering tone; “I couldn’t climb walls and plant guns; I couldn’t do that, John.”
He thrust her aside and started for the door. Her two hands half went out after him in an unvoluntary detaining gesture, but “Quick,” she whispered, fiercely; “quick, for the hills!”
The door swept open; he plunged down the steps as if into a black sea; his feet did not sound; there was immediate silence.
“He’s gone,” she said, there alone, in the still dark hallway.