Part 8

“Thank God for those heavy boots, Jerry!”

With blazing eyes the snake writhed, coiling for another strike. Its sharp tail, pointed upward, vibrated continuously with dusty laughter. Its golden rippling body was thick as my arm.

Red Roane swung down his heavy marching stock. _Crash!_ Its leaden end struck that lunging mottled head. Halted in mid-strike, that evil wisdom splattered like an egg, brain pan ripped wide.

The rattler lashed in its last agony, its tremendously muscular tail beating the ground with thumping blows, its yellow eyes still blazing with hate, but closing fast in doom.

I tried to say “Thanks, Red!”

Some mesmerism in those yellow, dying eyes! Shaking with disgust, Red Roane bent above that foul fen watcher, put down his hand to pick up that stricken skin, over whose eyes thin eye-membrane already lowered in death.

“Don’t touch it, Red! Wait till the sun goes down.”

_Hark! The rattle!_ Those opaque eyes shuttered back. Those yellow glances, though in mortal pain, were still furious and glistening. Those horny tail-bells clattered. Fangs in that shattered, insensate head yawned, closing in Red Roane’s arm above the wrist.

I see him. Sweat upon his broad brown forehead; his laughing eyes astounded; his thick strong body shivering; wind stirring up his dark red hair. Behind him the brown-green marshes, grasses rippling, a stir going through their depths. His cheeks had never been so red.

Before I could move, he unlocked those jaws and hollow fangs, gripped hard in his arm with mortal rigor. He shivered now from the knees. His face went white.

“Cut!” he whispered. “I’ll sit down.”

With hunting knife I slashed his arm, deep driving four crossed cuts. He laughed, and tried to shout. Howling would have been more pleasant. I sucked those wounds, out of which slow blood was spouting from an artery. We panted now, both of us. He leaned heavily on my shoulder--he, the strong. I bound his arm, my own fingers so numb I fumbled at the work. Sweat on Red Roane’s face was cold, and cold his wrists.

My arms clung about him. He swayed, almost toppling, clutching at grass stems with fading laughter. I picked up his marching stock and beat that golden, gory thing within the mire. Beat it till clay-white flesh, and bone and skin were one with the mucky mire of the swamp. But still its heart ebbed with deep purple pulsing. A smashing blow, and that, too, died.

“It’s over!” Grimly I flung the bloody stave into the swaying grass.

“Yes, Jerry,” whispered Red Roane, “it’s nearly over.”

I could not believe it. Red Roane, the strong man, the shouter, the singer, the gay-hearted lover! Is death then, so much stronger than life?

“A woman, Jerry,” he whispered, “in Havana--Dolores! She dances--”

“For God’s sake, Red, wake up!”

“Dances at the--”

“Red! _Red Roane!_ I’m here, boy!”

Out from the way, whence we had come, faintly I heard a cry. Who wept thus for the soul departing, sang _paean_ for the dead? Was it wind over the stagnant grasses? Frail in the solitude, rose that wail again. The whimper of new-born life! In the squatter’s hut the child had found its soul!

“Dolores!” whispered Red Roane. Beneath that brazen sky he whispered the name of love. “Dolores!”

Past a hundred miles of swamp, past a hundred miles of sea, did Dolores, the dancer, hear him calling her?

“Dolores!”

I hope she heard, for he was a lad, though wild.

With a throat strangling in sobs, I sang to Red Roane. His eyes were closed, yet he heard me. Old campaign songs, songs of the march and the bivouac. Marchers’ tunes.

Then he whispered for a lullaby, and, last of all, for a drinking song.

_V._

Bimi Tal had danced up to us--Bimi Tal, daughter of Red Roane and of Dolores, the dancer.

She laughed and tossed her dark red hair. Her broad nostrils sucked in the hot night wind.

“_I am the daughter of the morning! I shout, I dance. I laugh away. Follow, lover! Hear my warnings. I, the laugher, do not stay...._”

_Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!_ Her body rippled. She cast her eyes at me.

Tain Dirk’s head was rising. His thin, dry, red lips opened wide. His golden eyes burned with undying hate. _Tat! tat! tat!_ his fingers drummed.

“In a minute, Jerry,” whispered Bimi Tal, not pausing from her dance.

Her lovely eyes looked downward, seeing Dirk. She screamed. The music silenced. She struck her arm at him, not knowing what she did.

Mad! the Man was mad! His jaw was opened wide. _He bit her arm above the wrist._

Before the rush of frantic people had fallen over us, I struck his venomous face. With both fists, blow on blow. Blood came from his damned lips.

What madness had seized him I don’t know. Likely it was memory surging back through dead life--the venom of the rattler, hate undying. But of that, who can say? A strange thing is memory.

Yet I knew for sure that to him, the mad sculptor, born in that hut in the hot savannahs, had passed the soul of the dying rattlesnake.

Hands dragged me back from him. I shouted and tore. He quivered, wounded heavily. His nervous fingers faintly clattered on the table, drumming with dreadful music. Police came in.

“Look!” I shouted to them. “Look at those marks of teeth on Bimi Tal’s wrist. Two deep fangs. _There’s the man who killed Ynecita, the dancer!_”

_A “Spooky” Tale With a Grim Background_

_The_ GHOST GUARD

_By_ BRYAN IRVINE

If every one of the sixty guards and officials at Granite River Prison had been asked for the name of the most popular guard on the force, there would have been sixty answers--“Asa Shores.” If each of the fifteen hundred convicts in the prison had been asked which guard was most disliked by the convicts, fifteen hundred answers would have been the same--“Asa Shores!”

If some curious person had asked of each convict and each guard, “Who is considered the most desperate, the hardest, the shrewdest criminal in the prison?” the answer would have been unanimous, “Malcolm Hulsey, the ‘lifer.’”

True, it does not seem reasonable that Asa Shores should be liked by every guard and official and disliked by every convict. To those not familiar with the duties of prison guards it would seem that Asa Shores’ method of handling the convicts, if disapproved of by fifteen hundred convicts, would surely be disapproved of by at least one of the sixty guards. But the explanation is simple.

Asa Shores’ great great-grandfather had followed the prisons as mariners follow the seas. Then Asa’s grandfather took up the work and followed it, with an iron hand and an inflexible will, until one day a cell-made knife in the hands of a long-time “con” entered his back at a point where his suspenders crossed, deviating enough to the left to pierce his heart. Came next Asa Shores’ father, who went down in attempting to quell the famous Stromberg break of 1895.

Asa, therefore, his prison methods impelled perhaps by heredity, looked upon every wearer of gray behind the walls as a convict, nothing more, nothing less. He neither abused or favored any convict. A one-year man was to Asa a convict and no better than the man who was serving a life sentence.

The crime for which any convict was sent up was of little moment to Asa; neither did he bother about who among the inmates were considered desperate. The fact that a man wore prison gray was sufficient, whether he be a six-months sneak-thief or a ninety-nine-year murderer.

When Asa shot and killed Richard (“Mutt”) Allison, when the latter attempted to escape, the warden had said:

“There was really no need of killing that half-witted short-termer, Asa. He was doing only a year and was perfectly harmless. A shot in the leg or foot would have been better.”

And Asa’s reply had been:

“I had no idea who the man was, though I have seen him dozens of times, and I did not know how long he was doing. But I would have made no difference if I had known. He was a convict, sir, and he was attempting to escape. If he was only half-witted, as you say, he should have been in the insane asylum, not in the penitentiary.”

So that was that.

If Asa ever gave a convict a smile it had never been recorded. It is a known fact that he was never seen to frown upon a convict. He was, in short, the smileless, unyielding personification of “duty,” and every convict hated him for what he was. When Asa shot he shot to kill--and he never missed. Four little white crosses on the bleak hillside near the prison proclaimed his flawless marksmanship.

Why was this big sandy-haired, steel-blue-eyed, middle-aged Asa Shores liked by his brother guards? There were many reasons why. It was as if Asa’s unnatural, cold, vigilant, unfeeling attitude toward the convicts was offset each day when he came off duty by a healthy, wholesome desire to drop duty as a work-horse sheds an irritating harness. He was the life of the guards’ quarters; a big good-natured, playful fellow, who thoroughly enjoyed a practical joke, whether he be the victim of the joke or the instigator. If he had a temper he had never allowed it to come to the surface. He excelled in all sports in the gymnasium, and somewhere, somehow, he found more funny stories than any other man on the force. The trite old saying that “he would give a friend the shirt off his back” fitted him like a new kid glove. He gave freely to his friends, and, in giving, seemed to find real joy.

After twelve years’ service on the guardline, Asa was still an ordinary wall guard. This would seem discouraging to many; but not so to Asa. It was not generally known that he drew a larger salary than did the other wall guards. He was an excellent wall guard. Hence, he was kept on the wall, while newer men on the force were promoted to better positions. But Asa drew the salary of a shift captain and was therefore content.

He did not even seem to mind when he was taken from comfortable Tower Number One, morning shift, and detailed permanently to Tower Number Three on the “graveyard” shift at night from eight P. M. to four A. M. This change was deemed necessary for several reasons. First, because Asa positively refused to discriminate between short-termers and long-termers, or desperate men and harmless “nuts,” when using his rifle to stop a “break” or the attempt of a single convict to escape.

The men being locked in their cells at night, Asa, as a night guard, would have little opportunity to practice rifle shooting with a running convict as the target. Another reason for detailing him to Tower Number Three was because trouble was expected some night at that point in the yard, and with sure-fire Asa on the job the officials felt that any attempt of the convicts to escape would be promptly frustrated.

One of Asa’s wholesome habits, when no convicts were near him, was singing. It was not singing, really, but Asa thought it was and he shortened the long, lonesome hours at night on Tower Number Three with songs--_song_, rather, because he knew and sang but one. It was not a late or popular song, and, as Asa sang it, it sounded like the frogs that croak in the marshes at night:

“_When I die and am buried deep, “I’ll return at night to take a peep “At those who hated me. “I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep, “Chill their blood; the skin will creep “On those who hated me._”

Not a pretty song; nor did it make cheerful those guards who passed near Tower Number Three while making the night rounds. But Asa loved that song.

* * * * *

It was while the wall was being extended another two hundred feet to make room within the inclosure for a new cell house that Asa shot the “lifer,” Malcolm Hulsey.

The end wall, extending from Tower Number Three to Tower Number Four, had been torn down and the stones moved two hundred feet farther south to be used on the new wall. A temporary barbed-wire fence had been erected about the area in which the convicts worked on the new wall. Extra armed guards were stationed at intervals of fifty feet outside the inclosure to guard the working convicts.

Malcolm Hulsey had successfully feigned illness one day and was allowed to remain in his cell. Cell house guards had seen him lying in his bunk, only the top of his head showing above the blankets. At lock-up time the cell house guards making the count, saw a foot protruding from under the blankets in Hulsey’s bunk and what they believed to be the top of his head showing at the head of the bed.

At ten-fifteen that night the eagle-eyed Asa Shores, on Tower Number Three, saw a dark figure slip under the lower wire of the temporary fence and run. Asa fired once and saw the man fall.

Then Asa, to comply with the prison rules, yelled “halt!” The command, of course, was needless, Hulsey having halted abruptly when a thirty-thirty rifle ball plowed through his shoulder.

After the convict had been carried to the hospital, his cell was opened by the curious guards. A cleverly carved wooden foot protruded from under the blankets at the foot of the bed, several bags of old clothing reposed under the blankets and a thatch of black horse-hair showed at the head of the bed.

Before Hulsey left the hospital the new wall was completed. Tower Number Four, across from Tower Number Three, had been torn down and a new Tower Number Four built on the new corner of the wall, two hundred feet farther south. On the other corner, across from New Tower Number Four, was New Tower Number Three. Old Tower Number Three was left standing until further orders. Asa Shores remained on the graveyard shift on Old Tower Number Three.

While off duty one day Asa, prowling about inside the walls, met Malcolm Hulsey. The “lifer” was still a bit pale and weak from the gunshot wound.

“One thing I’d like to have you explain, Mr. Shores,” said Hulsey. “You plugged me in the shoulder, then yelled ‘halt!’ Why didn’t you command me to stop before firing?”

“Well, it was this way, Hulsey,” Asa replied, unsmiling and looking the convict squarely in the eye. “I aimed at the spot where I calculated your heart ought to be, but the light was poor and I had to shoot quick. I naturally supposed you were dead when I commanded you to halt, and, believing you dead, I could see no reason for being in a hurry with the command. Sorry I bungled the job that way, but my intentions were good.”

“But,” the scowling “lifer” persisted, “you haven’t told me yet why you shot before commanding me to halt.”

“Oh, that?” Asa drawled with a deprecatory shrug of his massive shoulders. “That is merely a matter of form with me. I very often, after shooting a convict, yell ‘halt’ some time the next day--or week. Besides, if you had a nice chance to bump me off, you wouldn’t say, ‘Beware, Mr. Shores, I’m about to kill you.’”

For a half minute convict and keeper gazed into each others eyes.

“I get yuh,” Hulsey finally said. “And I guess you’re right. I have an idear though that my turn comes next, Mr. Shores; and there’ll be no preliminary command or argument.”

“Fair enough, Hulsey,” Asa replied as he turned away.

* * * * *

At last the big new cell house was completed.

Asa wondered whether he would be left on Old Tower Number Three. It had been decided, he knew, that the old tower would be left on the wall but perhaps not used.

To celebrate the completion of the new building, the warden declared a holiday and issued orders that all the inmates be given the privilege of the yard that day. There was to be wrestling, boxing, foot-racing and other sports.

Asa Shores’ sleeping quarters was a low-ceilinged room on the ground floor in one of the towers of the old cell house. Asa had been warned a number of times that his room was not a safe place to sleep in the day time. Convicts in the yard could enter the room at any time during the day, without being seen by the yard guards or wall guards. Though the one door to the room was thick and heavy, Asa seldom if ever locked it.

Asa had risen in the afternoon, complaining to himself about the noise being made by the convicts in the yard. His peevishness vanished, however, after a cold wash, and he sang as he stood looking out at one of the windows and brushing his hair:

“_When I die and am buried deep, “I’ll return at night to take a peep “At those who hated me. “I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep, “Chill their blood, the skin will creep, “On those who--_”

Asa’s song ended there--ended in a horrible gurgle. A “trusty” found him an hour later lying in a pool of blood near the open window.

His throat had been cut by a sharp instrument in the hand of a person unknown.

Hulsey the “lifer” was questioned, of course, but there was absolutely nothing to indicate that it was he who committed the murder.

The guards looked sadly upon all that remained of Asa Shores and said to each other in hushed voices:

“It had to come. Asa was too good a convict guard not to be murdered.”

And though the prison stool pigeons kept their ears and eyes opened, though each guard became a detective, the murder of Asa Shores remained a mystery.

Old Tower Number Three was closed and the doors locked. There was no immediate use for it; but the warden was contemplating the advisability of having another guards’ entrance gate cut through the wall under the tower. In this case, of course, the tower would be used again.

* * * * *

Night Captain Jesse Dunlap sat alone in the guards’ lookout, inside the walls, at one o’clock on the morning following the murder of Asa Shores. Bill Wilton, the night yard guard, was making his round about the buildings in the yard.

Captain Dunlap lazily watched the brass indicators on the report board before him. The indicator for Tower Number One made a half turn to the left and a small bell on the board rang. The captain lifted the receiver from the telephone at his elbow and received the report, “Tower Number One. Anderson on duty. All O. K.”

Dunlap merely grunted a response and replaced the receiver on the hook. Presently the indicator for Tower Number Two turned to the left, the bell tinkled, and Dunlap again took the receiver from the hook.

“Tower Number Two. Briggs on duty. All O. K.” came the report over the wire.

Then came New Tower Number Three; next Tower Number Four. From the three outside guard-posts came the reports, and one from the cell house, each guard turning in his post number, his name and the usual “O. K.”

All the indicators on the board, except that for Old Tower Number Three, were now turned. Captain Dunlap relaxed in his chair, sighed heavily and lit his pipe. Lazily his eyes wandered back to the indicator board.

The unturned indicator for Old Tower Number Three held his gaze and utter sadness gripped him for a moment. Night after night, promptly on the hour, he had seen the indicator for Old Tower Number Three flip jauntily to the left and had heard the tinkle of the little bell on the board. It had always seemed to him that the indicator for Asa Shores’ tower turned with more pep than the other indicators, that the bell had tinkled more cheerily, that good old Asa Shores’ report carried a note of cheerfulness that lightened the lonesome watches of the night.

Now the old tower was cold, even as poor old Asa was cold; the doors were locked and barred. Never again, thought Dunlap, would be heard Asa Shores’ familiar song on the quiet night air. What were the words to that song?

“_When I am dead and buried deep, “I’ll return at night to take a peep “At those who hated--_”

Captain Dunlap suddenly sat erect in his chair. The pipe fell from his lips and clattered on the floor, as his lower jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide to stare at the indicator board; for--

The indicator for Old Tower Number Three was moving--moving, not with a quick turn to the left, but in a hesitant, jerky way that caused the root of every hair on Captain Dunlap’s head to tingle. Never before had the captain seen an indicator behave like that. In fact, the indicator system was designed and constructed in such a way that, being controlled by electric contacts, the various indicators would snap into position when a push button in each tower was pressed by the guard on duty in that tower.

In short, an indicator, in accordance with all the rules of electricity as applied to the system, must remain stationary or jerk to the left when the button in the tower was pressed. But here was indicator for Old Tower Number Three wavering, trembling to the left, only to fall back repeatedly to a vertical position. Then again, jerkily, hesitantly to the left, as if a vagrant soul strove to brush aside the veil that banished it from the living.

Captain Dunlap sat rigid and watched the uncanny movements of the bright brass indicator. Vague, fleeting, chaotic thoughts of crossed wires, practical jokers, wandering souls tumbled one after another through his brain.

If only the bell would not tinkle! If it did ring? Well, death then, though it had taken away what was mortal of Asa Shores, had not conquered his eternal vigilance and strict attention to duty.

Farther to the left wavered the indicator, hesitatingly, uncertainly, then--_the bell rang_!

A weak, slow ring, it was, that sounded strange and unnatural in the deathlike silence of the dimly lighted lookout.

* * * * *

Captain Dunlap was a brave man. He had smilingly faced death a dozen times in Granite River Prison.

But always his danger was known to be from living, breathing men. Abject terror gripped him now; a nameless terror that seemed to freeze the blood in his veins, contract every muscle and nerve of his body, smother his heart.

But even then reasoning struggled for recognition in his mind. What if it were a part of Asa Shores, a part of him that remained on earth to defy death and carry on? Hasn’t Asa always been Captain Dunlap’s friend? Why should he fear the spirit of a friend?

Dunlap reached forth a trembling hand, took the receiver from the hook and slowly, reluctantly, placed it to his ear. How he wished, hoped, prayed that no voice would come over the wire!

But it did come, preceded by a faint whispering sound:

“Old t-t-t-tow--” a long pause, then weakly, almost inaudibly, as if the message came from a million miles away--“Old t-t-tower n-n-n--three. S-S-Sho--”

Another pause, a jumble of meaningless words, then a chuckle. God! Asa’s familiar chuckle!

“On duty. All O-O--all O--”

A light laugh, a sharp buzzing sound, a sigh, the faint tinkle of a bell, then silence!

Dunlap heard no click of a receiver being replaced on a hook. The line was apparently still open.

Still holding the receiver to his ear, the captain moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. His free hand went involuntarily to his forehead in a vague uncertain gesture and came away damp with perspiration. Must he answer that ghost call? Must he speak to the _thing_ that held the line.

When he at last spoke his voice was husky, a strange voice even to him:

“Who--who did it, Asa? Who--who--if you are dead--if this is you, Asa, tell me--_who did it_.”

Again that queer, unfamiliar buzzing sound. Then, from Old Tower Number Three, or from beyond the grave perhaps, came a faint, whispering, uncertain voice:

“He--he--it was....”

The voice ended in a gurgle.

Dunlap replaced the receiver on the hook, and as he did so his eyes rested on the indicator board and he gasped sharply; for the indicator for Old Tower Number Three went wavering, trembling back to a vertical position on the time dial!

This unheard-of behavior of the indicator was the deepest mystery of all. The indicators, each controlled independent of the others by push buttons in each tower, were constructed mechanically to turn only from right to left.

The indicator for Old Tower Number Three had _turned back from left to right_!

* * * * *

Captain Dunlap made no effort to solve the mystery.

Old Tower Number Three was securely locked and could not be approached except by crossing over the wall from New Tower Number Three on the Southeast corner of the wall, or from Tower Number Two on the Northeast corner of the wall. Dunlap himself had closed and locked the doors and windows of the tower. There was but one key to the tower doors, and that key was in Dunlap’s pocket.

Unlike the other towers, Old Tower Number Three could not be entered from the ground outside the wall. It was built solidly of stone from the ground up, and the only entrances were the two doors communicating with the top of the wall on either side of the tower.

Besides, strict orders had been given that no one enter the tower unless ordered there by a shift captain. And, too, in the glare of the arc lights near the wall, it would be impossible for anyone to cross the wall to the tower, without being seen by other wall guards.

Could the mysterious report have come from one of the other wall towers? Impossible for this reason: When the push button in one of the wall towers--say, that in Old Tower Number Three--was pressed by the man on duty there, the indicator on the board in the captain’s lookout turned to the left a quarter-turn on the time dial, the small bell on the board rang and all telephone connections with the other wall towers were automatically cut off until the captain had replaced the telephone receiver on the hook after receiving the report from Old Tower Number Three.

Dunlap said nothing to Bill Wilton when the latter returned to the yard lookout, after making his round in the yard. It would be best, he reasoned, to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious call. They would only laugh at him if he told them about it. If the indicator had not returned to a vertical position on the time dial he would have some proof on which to base his wild story of the ghost call. But the indicator had, before his own eyes, returned to its former position after the call.