“If we wanted to,” Harold said.
It was about a week later that Mr. Manly woke up in the middle of the night and said out loud in the bedroom, “All right, if you’re going to keep worrying about it, why don’t you see for yourself what they’re doing?”
That’s what he did the next day: hopped in the front seat of the Ford Touring Car and went along to watch the two boys do their road work.
It didn’t bother the guard driving too much. He had less to say was all. But the guard with the Winchester yelled at Raymond and Harold more than he ever did before to come on, pick ’em up, keep closer to the car. Mr. Manly said the dust was probably bothering them. The guard said it was bothering him too, because he had to see them before he could watch them. He said you get a con outside you watch him every second.
Raymond and Harold ran three miles and saw Mr. Manly looking at his watch. Later on, when they were resting, he came over and squatted down in the grass with them.
“Three miles in twenty-five minutes,” he said. “That’s pretty good. You reckon you could cover five miles in an hour?”
“I don’t think so,” Raymond said. “It’s not us, we want to do it. It’s our legs.”
“Well, wanting something is half of getting it,” Mr. Manly said. “I mean if you want something bad enough.”
“Sure, we want to do it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, I guess because we got to do it.”
“You just said you wanted to.”
“Yeah, we like to run.”
“And I’m asking you why.” Mr. Manly waited a moment. “Somebody told me all you fellas want to do is get out of work.”
“Who tole you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who it was. You know what I told him? I told him he didn’t know you boys very well. I told him you were working harder now, running, than you ever worked in your life.”
“That’s right,” Raymond said.
“Because you see a chance of doing something nobody else in the prison can do. Run twenty miles in a day.”
Raymond said, “You want us to run twenty miles?”
“
“You want us to run twenty miles?” Raymond said again.
“I want you to start thinking of who you are, that’s what I want. I want you to start thinking like warriors for a change instead of like convicts.”
Raymond was watching him, nodding as he listened. He said, “Do these waryers think different than other people?”
“They think of who they are.” An angry little edge came into Mr. Manly’s tone. “They got pride in their tribe and their job, and everything they do is to make them better warriors—the way they live, the way they dress, the way they train to harden theirselves, the way they go without food or water to show their bodies their willpower is in charge here and, by golly, their bodies better do what they’re told. Raymond, you say you’re Apache Indian?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Harold, you believe you’re a Zulu?”
“Yes-suh, captain, a Zulu.”
“Then prove it to me, both of you. Let me see how good you are.”
As Mr. Manly got to his feet he glanced over at the guards, feeling a little funny now in the silence and wondering if they had been listening. Well, so what if they had? He was superintendent, wasn’t he? And he answered right back, You’re darn right.
“You boys get ready for some real training,” he said now. “I’m taking you at your word.”
Raymond waited until he walked away and had reached the car. “Who do you think tole him we’re doing this to get out of work?”
“I don’t know,” Harold said. “Who do you think?”
“I think that son of a bitch Frank Shelby.”
“Yeah,” Harold said, “he’d do it, wouldn’t he?”
On Visiting Day the mess-hall tables were placed in a single line, dividing the room down the middle. The visitors remained on one side and the convicts on the other. Friends and relatives could sit down facing each other if they found a place at the tables; but they couldn’t touch, not even hands, and a visitor was not allowed to pass anything to a convict.
Frank Shelby always got a place at the tables and his visitor was always his brother, a slightly older and heavier brother, but used to taking orders from Frank.
Virgil Shelby said, “By May for sure.”
“I don’t want a month,” Frank said. “I want a day.”
“I’m telling you what I know. They’re done building the place, they’re doing something inside the walls now and they won’t let anybody in.”
“You can talk to a workman.”
“I talked to plenty of workmen. They don’t know anything.”
“What about the railroad?”
“Same thing. Old boys in the saloon talk about moving the convicts, but they don’t know when.”
“Somebody knows.”
“Maybe they don’t. Frank, what are you worried about? Whatever the day is we’re going to be ready. I’ve been over and across that rail line eight times—nine times now—and I know just where I’m going to take you off that train.”
“You’re talking too loud.”
Virgil took time to look down the table both ways, at the convicts hunched over the tables shoulder to shoulder and their visitors crowded in on this side, everyone trying to talk naturally without being overheard. When Virgil looked at his brother again, he said, “What I want to know is how many?”
“Me. Junior, Soonzy, Joe Dean. Norma.” Frank Shelby paused. “No, we don’t need to take Norma.”
“It’s up to you.”
“No, we don’t need her.”
“That’s four. I want to know you’re together, all in the same place, because once we hit that train there’s going to be striped suits running all over the countryside.”
“That might be all right.”
“It could be. Give them some people to chase after. But it could mess things up too.”
“Well, right now all I hear is you wondering what’s going to happen. You come with more than that, or I live the next forty years in Florence, Arizona.”
“I’m going to stay in Yuma a while, see what I can find out about the train. You need any money?” Virgil asked.
“If I have to buy some guards. I don’t know, get me three, four hundred.”
“I’ll send it in with the stores. Anything else?”
“A good idea, buddy.”
“Don’t worry, Frank, we’re going to get you out. I’ll swear to it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll see you.”
“Next month,” Virgil said. He turned to swing a leg over the bench, then looked at his brother again. “Something funny I seen coming here—these two convicts running behind a Ford automobile. What do you suppose they was doing, Frank?”
Shelby had to tear his pants nearly off to see Norma again. He ripped them down the in-seam from crotch to
