message they had received Wednesday evening:
About 7:30 A.M., halfway to Sentinel, Fisher said to the guard sitting next to him, “Put your gun on Frank Shelby and don’t move it till we get to Florence.”
Harold Jackson, next to the window, looked out at the flat desert country that stretched to distant dark mounds, mountains that would take a day to reach on foot, maybe half a day if a man was to run. But a mountain was nothing to run to. There was nothing out there but sky and rocks and desert growth that looked as if it would never die, but offered a man no hope of life. It was the same land he had looked at a few months before, going in the other direction, sitting in the same upright straw seat handcuffed to a sheriff’s man. The Indian sitting next to him now nudged his arm and Harold looked up.
The Davis woman was coming down the aisle from the front of the coach. She passed them and a moment later Harold heard the door to the toilet open and close. Looking out the window again, Harold said, “What’s out there, that way?”
“Mexico,” Raymond answered. “Across the desert and the mountain, and if you can find water, Mexico.”
“You know where the water is?”
“First twenty-five, thirty miles there isn’t any.”
“What about after that?”
“I know some places.”
“You could find them?”
“I’m not going through the window if that’s what you’re thinking about.”
“The train’s going to stop in Sentinel.”
“They open the door to put people on,” Raymond said. “They ain’t letting anybody off.”
“We don’t know what they going to do,” Harold said, “till we get there.” He heard the woman come out of the toilet compartment and waited for her to walk past.
She didn’t appear. Harold turned to look out the window across the aisle. Over his shoulder he could see the Davis woman standing by Bob Fisher’s seat. She was saying something but keeping her voice down and he couldn’t make out the words. He heard Fisher though.
Fisher said, “Is that right?” The woman said something else and Fisher said, “If you don’t know where what’s the good of telling me? How are you helping? Anybody could say what you’re saying and if it turns out right try to get credit. But you haven’t told me nothing yet.”
“All right,” Norma Davis said. “It’s going to be at Sentinel.”
“You could be guessing, for all I know.”
“Take my word,” the woman said.
Bob Fisher didn’t say anything for a while. The train swayed and clicked along the tracks and there was no sound behind Harold Jackson. He glanced over his shoulder. Fisher was getting up, handing his revolver to the guard sitting across the aisle. Then he was past Harold, walking up the aisle and holding the woman by the arm to move her along ahead of him.
Frank Shelby looked up as they stopped at his seat. He was sitting with Junior; Soonzy and Joe Dean were facing them.
“This lady says you’re going to try to escape,” Fisher said to Shelby. “What do you think about that?”
Shelby’s shoulders and head swayed slightly with the motion of the train. He looked up at Fisher and Norma, looking from one to the other before he said, “If I haven’t told her any such thing, how would she know?”
“She says you’re getting off at Sentinel.”
“Well, if she tells me how I’m going to do it and it sounds good, I might try it.” Shelby grinned a little. “Do you believe her?”
“I believe she might be telling a story,” Fisher said, “but I also believe it might be true. That’s why I’ve got a gun pointed at your head till we get to Florence. Do you understand me?”
“I sure do.” Shelby nodded, looking straight up at Bob Fisher. He said then, “Do you mind if I have a talk with Norma? I’d like to know why she’s making up stories.”
“She’s all yours,” Fisher said.
Harold nudged Raymond. They watched Fisher coming back down the aisle. Beyond him they saw Junior get up to give the Davis woman his seat. Tacha was turned around watching. She moved over close to the window as Junior approached her and sat down.
Behind Harold and Raymond one of the guards said, “You letting the woman sit with the men?”
“They’re all the same as far as I can see,” Fisher answered. “All convicts.”
Virgil Shelby, holding a shotgun across his arm, was out on the platform when the train came into sight. He heard it and saw its smoke first, then spotted the locomotive way down the tracks. This was the worst part, right now, seeing the train getting bigger and bigger and seeing the steam blowing out with the screeching sound of the brakes. The locomotive was rolling slowly as it came past the coaling shed and the water tower, easing into the station, rolling past the platform now hissing steam, the engine and the baggage cars and the two coaches with the half-dozen faces in the windows looking out at him. He could feel those people staring at him, wondering who he was. Virgil didn’t look back at them. He kept his eyes on the last coach and caboose and saw them jerk to a stop before reaching the platform—out on open ground just this side of the water tower.
“Come on out,” Virgil said to the station house.
Howard Crowder and Dancey and Billy Santos came out into the sunlight through the open door. Their hands were behind their backs, as though they might have been tied. Virgil moved them out of the doorway, down to the end of the platform and stood them against the wall of the building: three convicts waiting to be put aboard a prison train, tired-looking, beaten, their hat brims pulled down against the bright morning glare.
Virgil watched Bob Fisher, followed by another guard with a rifle come down the step-rungs at the far end of the prison coach. Two more guards with rifles were coming along the side of the caboose and somebody else was in the caboose window: a man wearing glasses who was sticking his head out and saying something to the two guards who had come out of the prison coach.
Bob Fisher didn’t look around at Mr. Manly in the caboose window. He kept his gaze on the three convicts and the man with the shotgun. He called out, “What’re the names of those men you got?”
“I’m just delivering these people,” Virgil called back. “I wasn’t introduced to them.”
Bob Fisher and the guard with him and the two guards from the caboose came on past the prison coach but stopped before they reached the platform.
“You the only one guarding them?” Fisher asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m the one found them, I’m the one brought them in.”
“I’ve seen you some place,” Fisher said.
“Sure, delivering a prisoner. About a year ago.”
“Where’s the station man at?”
“He’s inside.”
“Call him out.”
“I reckon he heard you.” Virgil looked over his shoulder as the S.P. man appeared in the doorway. “There he is. Hey, listen, you want these three boys or don’t you? I been watching them all night, I’m tired.”
“I want to know who they are,” Fisher said. “If you’re not going to tell me, I want them to call out their names.”
There was silence. Virgil knew the time had come and he had to put the shotgun on Fisher and fill up the silence and get this thing done right now, or else drop the gun and forget the whole thing. No more than eight seconds passed in the silence, though it seemed like eight minutes to Virgil. Bob Fisher’s hand went inside his coat and Virgil didn’t have to think about it any more. He heard glass shatter as somebody kicked through a window in the prison coach. Bob Fisher drew a revolver, half turning toward the prison coach at the same time, but not turning quickly enough as Virgil put the shotgun on him and gave him a load point-blank in the side of the chest. And as the guards saw Fisher go down and were raising their rifles the three men in convict clothes brought their revolvers from behind their backs and fired as fast as they could swing their guns from one gray suit to another. All three
