He hadn't wanted this thing. He'd already done more than a man's share of killing through the long years. At eighteen with the Texas Rangers against the Comanches before the Civil War. Four more years of it then.
He concentrated his thoughts upon the men following his trail out there. They had accepted Tom Harrow's ill-gotten money to dance, and now the fiddler must have his pay.
In Yuma the repercussions of the prisoner's unexpected release from the penitentiary, and his explosive actions against the marshal almost immediately afterward, were still rocking the town. People were talking about how Jeb Donnelly had resigned as marshal, got himself a deputy sheriff's badge, and gone after Lew Kerrigan, his smashed jaw still bandaged. The night bartender had asked Wood Smith about it the day after the marshal left town. Smith had snarled an unaudible reply, signed for his drink, and gone on up the hill.
He entered the warden's deserted office at the usual time. A key rattled somewhere and Bud Casey, carrying his night lantern, came in from a final vigil in front of Tough Row. He stared at the head guard in surprise.
' 'Mornin', Wood. You're up kinda early to pick up your pay, ain't you? The warden won't be up here for two or three hours yet.'
'Habit, I guess,' the former head guard grinned. 'Couldn't resist this last time.'
He reached up and took down the polished brown club from a peg in the stone wall and slipped the shiny thong over his right wrist. 'Let's go roust 'em out, Bud.'
'Just a minute, Wood,' Bud Casey said quietly. 'You don't work here any more, remember? You finished up last night at dark. And when you did, that rough stuff finished with you.'
'You ain't got my job yet,' Smith grunted. 'Come on.'
There was nothing for Casey to do but shrug and blow out the lantern. He placed it on the floor in a corner and took down his big key ring. Knowing Smith as he did, there was nothing in Smith's actions to arouse undue suspicion.
'Okay, Wood. But I think you're a plain damn' fool to follow Jeb up north to work for Harrow. Maybe it's supposed to be smart for you to wait a couple of days while, so people are whisperin', Kerrigan is run down and killed. I don't think so. You're a plain damn' fool, and so is Jeb. Lew let him off with a broken jaw, instead of killing him like he should have done. You clubbed his arm the other morning to make the kill easy, only it didn't work out that way. In spite of that, Lew didn't stop by the prison on his way north long enough to slide a .45-90 outa the scabbard and put a slug through your belly at two hundred yards. You both had your chances, but I know Lew Kerrigan a lot better than most men. He ain't goin' to give you a second chance. Unless I miss my guess, Lew is going to do the same I read about them wounded tigers in India: waylay the hunter and kill him before he knows what hit him. And now that the professer has made his little speech, I guess I'll shut up. Let's go!' Casey finished angrily.
They went out into the yard, past other guards waiting at the regular cells, walking together toward the hillside dungeons of Tough Row. The big keys began to rattle in iron doors and Wood Smith let go with his usual morning bellow:
'All right, come out of there, you…'
Dim figures emerged in the dim dawn from their burrows. The hard, cold-eyed bad ones. Sullen men who had killed without mercy and would kill again. Men filled with hatred and with only one hope left to sustain them: escape.
Wood Smith saw the familiar figure of the Apache appear in the doorway with his chained left leg out of sight. Standing dark and stoically silent, alone now since Kerrigan's release. Long black hair down around naked shoulders. Ragged pants torn off at the knees.
Looking up at the sky. Always looking up at the sky each morning and maybe praying his damned Apache prayers to the Great Spirit.
Smith snapped the spinning club up into a big hand and his bloodshot eyes began to burn. He moved in on the slight figure, but the opaque black eyes, always so devoid of expression, never moved.
Too late, Bud Casey realized what had been in the former head guard's mind in coming back to roust out the prisoners for the last time.
'Don't stand there like that, you black-faced cholo son of a bitch!' the former head guard roared, and lunged without warning.
Bud Casey's yell to the Apache, however, had come too late. Wood Smith already had swung the club for a skull-crushing blow. But the blow never fell. A black steel spring shot out of the dungeon doorway like a blood- hungry weasel leaping from its burrow at a much larger prey.
Only then did Bud Casey see the big coil of horsehair rope in the Apache's left hand. A rope with a heavy iron ring on one end, made much heavier because wrapped around it were the iron links of fifty feet of light chain.
The Apache's body leaped straight past Smith and was gone, running like a black streak for the far north wall by the river bend. Somebody yelled. Another guard more alert than the others took up the cry. In the tower a hundred yards west of Tough Row two sleepy night guards broke off yawns, grabbed up rifles and tried to peer through the greyness of dawn; shouting to know what the hell was going on down there anyhow.
They heard the booted yard guards in full cry, like a pack of yelping hounds.
'The Apache! He's loose from his chains!
But there was nothing to be distinguished as a target until the sprinting figure reached the wall and a heavy object on one end of a horsehair rope was flung over the thick top. Something that looked like an oversized monkey skinned up the side of the wall, and then the rifles began to crash. Two ex-cowpunchers, wide-awake now, levering shells frantically. The .44-40 slugs struck adobe and stone and screamed off in ricochet like an Apache in his death cry. But the monkey-like figure never paused.
Kadoba went over the top and dropped from sight.
Bud Casey had broken into a run on the heels of the Indian, surprisingly fast on his feet for a man who had spent so many years in the saddle, grabbing at a flying key on his ring as he sprinted. The smaller key was for a gate near the south bank of the river bend, through which water was carried each morning by trusties to slosh down the cells. He jerked open the gate and looked through.
He was in time to see the Apache flitting among the markers of the graveyard as reloaded rifles began to spang anew. Kadoba's flashing body streaked on through, reached the bank where the current swirled past the rocky promontory named the Point, and arced through the air into the water. Then he was gone and there was nothing among the reeds except newly hatched mosquitoes.
Nothing but a small, final geyser of water as a .44-40 caliber bullet slapped futilely into the belly of the river.
'Why, that little son of a gun!' Bud Casey marveled pantingly. 'That black-faced Apache got over the wall into the river! Who'd a thought it?'
He closed and locked the gate and trotted back to where the men from Tough Row stood obediently in line, pointing and cracking coarse jokes while guards in high-heeled boots and big hats gazed down at the body of Wood Smith.
Smith lay sprawled on his back, looking straight up at the grey sky with whiskied eyes that saw nothing. The leather thong of the polished club that had smashed Lew Kerrigan's arm was still around his right wrist.
Protruding from Smith's blood-spurting neck and severed jugular vein were the remaining four inches of a ten-inch file bought in the Big Adobe Store and inserted into a length of sausage when the bespectacled clerk's back had been turned for a few moments.
Bud Casey thought of Kerrigan as he stood looking down at the body of the man who had come up just one time too often to 'roust 'em out.' He thought of Smith's part in the plot against Lew Kerrigan, and the man's intention of going on north to work for Harrow. But that final trip had been too much for Wood Smith to resist. He'd come to kill the Apache.
A half-hidden smile unseen by the other guards and the prisoners came to Casey's genial, sandy-whiskered face.
