The Red Debt Part 16

And all in turn contributed their jest calculated to furnish fun for the others.

"Here comes Brizz now," announced Blinky. "Ha, there, Brizz--I brought your clippers down. Pipe this guy's hair--you'll never git that reaped twixt this and sun-down. Say, Shorty, you been bellerin' for a mattress ever since I knowed ye--now's yer chance--rake this pretty hair up as fast as Brizz mows it, and feed it to that hungry tick of yourn. I'll bet my plug Sat.u.r.day to three matches that the bell won't wake ye up."

At this moment, Brizz, a heavy man with a ponderous paunch, crowded in and took the clippers out of Blinky's hand. Brizz was the official reception room barber.

"It do look uncommon extensive, don't it?" said Brizz.

All this while, Lem had grown more and more uneasy, and his first resentment was rapidly amounting to real anger under these unkind criticisms, and the jeering faces that now encircled the bench.

"I'll swear it do," reiterated Brizz. "Still, I'm a regular old rip when it comes to mowin'--come here young feller," he urged with a business-like flourish of the clippers. "Let's start early so's we'll get done for supper."

He laid a hand on Lem's shoulder. Whereupon, Lem rose up, his jaws set, his muscles tense, while a steady light shot his gray eyes.

"Ef yo'-all tech me with them things," he said, low and steady, "I'll take em away from yo' an,'--an' hit yo' with 'em."

The men were so enthralled with these festive proceedings that they failed to notice Last Time sneak up from behind, where he was taking it all in. When Lem stood up and showed fight, a chorus of low derisive laughter rippled around the circle which was instantly disrupted as Last Time burst ruthlessly into their midst, throwing one of the convicts completely off his feet.

"What you fixin' to do, Brizz?" he growled.

"Who--me?--I'm here to cut this man's hair," wherefore, the barber applied the clippers so unexpectedly and so roughly to the head of the man who had been seated next to Lem, that the unlucky fellow protested loudly. Last Time turned upon Blinky. He scowled at him for a second, his lips curled away fiercely, emphasizing an under-shot jaw.

"You old clothes thief," he hissed, "you rod-ridin', cheap, ugly leather-s.n.a.t.c.her--you forgot the hammerin' I handed you last month, eh?"

Last Time shot a quick look across the corridor at the guard's back.

Then he reached out and took a clutching handful of Blinky's shirt-front, and thrust his right fist close to Blinky's nose. Blinky, who was a head taller, now hung away, white and dumb.

"You let this new man alone--do you get me? You let him alone. The next time I get at you I'll take your jaw off--I'll send you across the lot for many a day--get away--get," he snarled, with a violent, contemptuous push.

The minute the other onlookers had noted Last Time's att.i.tude toward Lem, they faded noiselessly away like so many rats. All except Shorty.

He stood meekly, holding the shirt and the trousers across his arm.

"That's the bully of the jail," said the convict, following Blinky with a belligerent look. "He's got 'em all bluffed--but one," he added with a scornful laugh.

"What you waitin' on?" he demanded of Shorty.

"Here's his clothes," replied Shorty, indicating Lem with a jerk of his head. Last Time scathed him with a withering look.

"Say, I had a trained c.o.c.kroach once that could learn things quicker than you--you get dumber and dumber day by day. This man is on the court side--he keeps his own clothes. Take them things back to the dud-cubboard, and put 'em back where you got 'em from. Let's see--you're Lutts, ain't you?" he broke off, producing from his pocket the pink slip Lem had seen the guard have when he was first brought into the cell house.

"Yes--I air ole Cap Lutts' boy o' Moon mountain."

The convict shot a curious look at Lem.

CHAPTER XI

A FRIEND IN NEED

"Sure--that's right," he a.s.sented. "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 a.n.a.lyzed 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 d.a.m.n 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 sc.u.m of the earth. Don't look at me, Lutts--that don't include me--I got off d.a.m.n 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 coa.r.s.e 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 appet.i.te 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 surrept.i.tiously:

"Ain't ye goin' to eat your punk?"

Lem shook his head.

"Kin I have it?"