Terror at Hellhole (4 page)

“The five prisoners who escaped were responsible. They got away by killing Guard Sheaves, shortly after you and Palma went with Allison to get Ayala,” Tarbow said. “Harplee and four guards took Chato and went after them but didn't catch up until after they wreaked havoc on your place. They were an all-night work detail, so they weren't missed until morning relief. Harplee caught up with them just after they left your place. Their shackles were found at an old prospector's shed not far from here.”

Tarbow paced back and forth, trying to read some sign of sorrow in the young Quechan's hawklike features, but with the exception of a light that now blazed in the obsidian eyes, no emotion was evident.

“Chato wounded Carugna, would have killed him but Harplee struck the rifle down just as Chato fired, knocking off his aim,” Tarbow said. “If only he killed them all!”

Then he paused, looking aghast at what he had just said. He added, “I say this only to you; because of my position, I cannot express such thoughts to the public. But you know how honorable Ben Harplee is, he would not allow Chato to kill them. He even ordered Chato back alone, not trusting the Apache to help bring in live prisoners.”

“Names, Warden, who are they?” Honas asked coldly. “I want their names.”

“Print and Laustina, you already know. Carugna, Dwyer...” Tarbow stopped abruptly, a quizzical expression replacing his sad look. Noting both men's silence, he asked: “Say, you are not thinking of...?”

“Thinking of what?” Honas asked, his bronze face blandly reflecting light from the window. But the Quechan's dark eyes still blazed.

“Well, I—I...” Tarbow shook his head. “Anyway, the three were sentenced to life imprisonment by Judge Morcum the following day because of their earlier misdeeds. Dwyer and Powers were given an additional year to be added to their five-year sentence.”

“These men, this is all the sentence they received for rape and murder of two women?” Honas asked, not comprehending the white man's justice. “This Morcum, this judge—he is as guilty as they, and he, too, should be sentenced.”

Tarbow threw up his hands in exasperation. “Maybe so, but he's all we have for a judge. You should see how lenient he is when he's sober, but half drunk, he's impossible! Why he nearly threw the case out of court when he found out that the murdered women were Indians.”

The young Quechan's jaw tightened and his voice was cold. “And if the women had been white, then what would this Judge Morcum have done?”

The superintendent shrugged, gesturing helplessly with his hands. “I—I don't know.” Then sensing the Quechan's discouragement, he added softly: “I'm sorry, Honas. The tide of justice courses strangely at times and washes over us all. At any rate, they have been sentenced to long terms.”

“It is true, they have now all been sentenced,” Honas said coldly, and his tone caused Tarbow to throw him a quick look.

“Let it lay, Honas,” he said, his eyes trying to find something in the Quechan's face. “You're a good man, so don't do anything foolish.”

“I never do anything foolish, sir,” Honas told the superintendent. “And you say that they have been given sentences that can be changed at the whim of any other judge?”

“Their terms will be carried out, at least as long as I am here.”

“And if you should happen to leave...” Honas paused, then added, “Or if some other judge chooses to reduce their sentences?”

“W-well.” The superintendent shrugged. “I'm sorry, truly sorry.”

Honas nodded gravely. “Thank you for your concern, Warden.” he said before striding purposefully from the room.

Palma stood looking at Tarbow a moment longer, his face void of expression. Then he, too, walked quickly out the door left open by his son-in-law.

* * *

The smoky coal oil lamp was dim. The fetid air inside the small back room of the clapboard shack would have been unbearable to most white men, but the odors were entirely unnoticeable to the three men sitting on rickety chairs at a crude table.

Located a short distance off the alley did not save the shack from the loud songs and laughter cascading from the open cantina doors; the sounds were nearly drowned by guitars and accordions. Raucous laughter and squeals of delight floated down from bawdy house windows, houses that lined the dusty thoroughfare of iniquity. This street of sin known to the inhabitants of Yuma as Rincon Alley, stretched from First Street northward to Jones. The alley harbored the most violent atmosphere in Yuma outside of the grim prison walls on the hill above.

Here, whiskey, drugs, and women could be had for the asking, while murder required only a few more words to seal the bargain.

Honas looked at the swarthy French half-breed sitting in the dimness across the table from Palma. French Frankie Coneaut was a man of great and varied talents, and an ability to ferret out anything salable. With an errant Frenchman for a father, and a Papago slave woman mother, he had a penchant for dealing in anything illegal, and nothing was too large or small for his notice if enough money was involved.

“I need a blasting cap and a short length of fuse,” Honas told Coneaut. “And you will bring me five expensive cigars from the Colorado Hotel, the best that money can buy, understand?”

“Oui,”
Coneaut said, shrugging. “But it will cost you maybe a half-dollah each cigar,” he said, then added: “The blasting cap is no problem.”

Honas nodded, knowing that he had come to the right man for his needs. “I also want a length of very thin wire, such as is found in pianos.”

“Ho, ho,” Coneaut exclaimed, his little eyes widening. “Some piano wire, an' a fine garrote it makes, by God!”

The young Quechan eyed the Frenchman wordlessly, the angle of his hawk face shining strangely in the dim light. Getting no response, the half-breed arose from his chair, his face becoming almost lost in the aura of the dim lamp.

“
Mon Dieu
, it will take some more time to find what you ask,” he halted, then stretched out his hand, “I weel need some advance money, by God.”

Honas took two ten-dollar gold pieces from a leather bag tucked in the belt of his denims, and laid them on the table. “We will wait for you here.”

Coneaut pocketed the coins. He waved a hand expansively around the room. “There is more brandy in the cupboard. My shop is your shop,
monsieurs
.”

Palma found two tin cups on a shelf near the bottle of brandy after the Frenchman had gone. He poured two stiff drinks and they sat down to wait, listening to the cantina noises disturbing the night. Listening and drinking, they passed the time without talk, each man deep in his own thoughts.

Much to his credit, Coneaut had moved quickly, covering the distance to the Colorado Hotel located on Gila Street at the east end of First in short order. He placed the five cigars on the table in the dim light before he turned back to the door.

“Frankie,” Honas called, and when Coneaut turned, he pointed toward the cigars. “Have one, you did good.”

“
Monsieur
.” Coneaut nodded his thanks for the smoke, sticking it in his mouth. He closed the door softly behind him and moved away in the hot night.

Honas broke a thin slat of wood from a packing crate, then, using his knife, he carefully whittled the slat into a long thin point. Then, even more carefully, he probed the pointed stick into the open end of the cigar, twisting it like a drill bit slowly until he had drilled a hole about halfway into the length of the cigar, tamping the shredded tobacco from the cigar onto the table as he drilled. Not satisfied with the hole, he repeated the process on two more cigars until he was certain that the hole was long enough and that the outside appearance of the cigar did not show any damage from the drilling. He laid the stick beside the cigars before he poured himself and Palma another drink.

The brandy bottle was empty by the time Coneaut returned. He placed a shiny copper blasting cap on the table, then from the inside of his shirt he took a twelve-inch length of fuse and laid it triumphantly beside the blasting cap. Then he stooped beneath the counter and brought up a small loop of thin, glistening steel wire and laid it on the table.

“
Sacre Dieu
!” the Frenchman chortled, slapping his hands together. “What is this about Indians cannot drink, eh? I return an' find my brandy, she is all gone, an' there are no drunken Indians.” He waved his arms in an arc. “Everyone, say do not give the Indians to drink or they will be drunk. Here I find my Indians still very sober, by God!” he cried, slapping his hands together gleefully.

“Do not believe everything the white man says,” Honas told him.

While Palma and Coneaut poured drinks from a fresh bottle, he cut a short piece of fuse and crimped it carefully into the blasting cap, then trimmed it so that only a half inch of fuse was visible. With steady fingers he gingerly pushed the copper blasting cap into the hole he had drilled in a selected cigar, and cutting a short section from one of the other cigars, he peeled some of the flat tobacco and rolled it tightly, then plugged the hole in the cigar, hiding the fuse.

He held the cigar up and inspected it critically. He handed it to Palma, and the older Quechan turned it around and around, looking at it carefully. Grim-faced, he gave it to Coneaut with a grunt of satisfaction.

The half-breed Frenchman peered at the tampered end, then sniffed at it deeply, noting that the strong tobacco covered the black powder odor. Nodding sagely, he handed it back to the young Quechan, and standing up, he squared his shoulders so that his posture became soldierly. Raising a hand smartly to his brow in a mock salute, he chuckled.

“
Mais oui!
” he cried enthusiastically, clicking his heels together sharply. “The condemned man, he smoked one last cigar, by God!”

The two Quechans exchanged glances but said nothing. The truth of his words would come on the morrow.

On the last day of his life, Fishel Dwyer, morphine addict, sneak thief, and larcenist, awoke shakily when the prison guard banged his heavy key ring against the bars of the outer door. The cell was one in the row of fourteen single stalls reserved for incorrigibles and troublemakers. He was a fiddle-string taut, nervous man not given to violence, yet like a magnet, he was invariably drawn to trouble because of his insatiable need. Being a morally weak man, he found it easier to blot things from his mind with drugs or by smoking loco weed. But his immediate predicament was not of his own doing, but rather a whim of fate.

On the bunk across from him, Dalton Powers sat with his small feet encased in worn boots dangling over the side of his cot.

“Smile, Fish,” Powers said without enthusiasm. “Our maximum-security time is up now, an' we're free as anyone in here.”

When the jibe didn't bring any response from the emaciated Dwyer, he added: “Well, at least they didn't hang us even if the man said that we were accessories to murder.”

Fish, as Fishel Dwyer was called by the other convicts because of his pasty skin and large bulgy eyes, was also given to spasms of twitching and shaking—body movements that he had manifested after many years of smoking opium, and now more recently, the easily obtainable loco weed, which was a product of the general area.

His long face was heavily lined for a man of forty-five years of age. It had been that way even before the rigors of three months in the Yuma Territorial Prison's maximum-security section for attempted escape and accessory to rape and murder. One hundred and thirty pounds of sallow flesh hung on his tall, bony frame. His pale, bulgy eyes watched Dalton Powers swing his small body, monkey like, from the bunk.

“C'mon, Fish, let's get in the chow line before it gets too long.” Powers nodded toward the open corridor. “You oughta eat.”

“Ain't hungry,” Dwyer mumbled. He ran a hand nervously over his balding scalp, his tongue swabbing at thin, dry lips.

Powers shrugged, pushing himself away from the grated-iron inner cell door. “You'd be a damn sight better off eatin',” Powers told him, “instead of always thinkin' about that junk you're takin' or smokin' loco weed.”

Wordlessly, Dwyer watched the small man pass through the outer cell door to join the other prisoners in the corridor on their way to the mess hall. He doubled the thin straw mattress at the head of the bed, then piled his folded blankets on top in the prison's prescribed manner. Walking up the corridor he went through the cell block gate, then stood looking at the motley array of prisoners waiting in the breakfast line. All the men wore floppy-brimmed straw hats, with white duck pants or striped black-and-gray jackets and trousers. His mind wandered absently while he watched the men file inside the dining hall to their seats.

Suddenly, with teeth on edge, his hands began to tremble and a pain, sharp as claws, dug into his belly. Cold perspiration formed on his upper lip. Even after a month in an isolation cell, a time spent screaming and clawing the concrete floor as he lay in agony, the trembling still periodically seized him. Granted, the spells were not as long, nor as severe now that his body was slowly accepting his helplessness in getting relief, but today, standing here in the sunshine, the feeling seemed unbearable; the pain again gnawing in his belly.

He clutched the iron gate for support to ease his shaking body while his eyes darted upward, following the wooden stairs to the medical room above the cells. The city doctor who visited the prison weekly maintained a small office there—where he could find ample morphine to settle his shakes. His eyes swept the two north guard towers trying to determine if he was being observed while mentally measuring his chances of running up those steps without being detected.

Sagging against the gate, his pitiful body quivering, he knew that he'd never make it up the steep office steps, and this knowledge made him afraid.

Why, oh why, had it happened to him? he groaned inwardly. Just when everything was going so well, why had fate taken a hand? Certain people in town had been supplying him with enough loco weed to meet his needs, and when his urges demanded greater relief, two of the Chinese prisoners smuggled in sulfate of morphine for those who could afford it.