Slocum's Breakout Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Trouble in the Big House . . .

  “Shut your trap, Meskin. I ain’t talkin’ to you.”

  “I’m not looking for a fight,” Slocum said. He rubbed his left hand over the spot where his cross-draw holster usually hung. He felt naked without his Colt Navy.

  “Fight! Fight!” The chant went up, and Slocum knew he couldn’t walk away.

  “Look, it’s this way . . .” He stepped a little closer, then launched a kick aimed at the big man’s crotch. Slocum’s aim was an inch off, and he caught a heavily muscled inner thigh. The impact hurt his knee and sent him stumbling back. And then he was engulfed in two hundred fifty pounds of smelly, fighting convict.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  SLOCUM’S BREAKOUT

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / November 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  ISBN : 978-1-101-54525-6

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  1

  “No talkin’ !” A rifle butt struck John Slocum in the shoulder and knocked him to his knees. He clanked the chains on his wrists and balled his fists as he looked up at the blue-uniformed guard. The man towered over him. Seeing the hatred in Slocum’s green eyes, the guard stepped away and leveled his rifle. His finger tightened on the trigger. For two cents he would put a slug into Slocum’s head and not think twice about it.

  “I’m getting up,” Slocum said. He put his hands down in the dry California dirt and levered himself erect. It was harder than he’d anticipated because the chains connecting the shackles on his ankles allowed only eighteen inches of play. Walking was impossible; he had to shuffle.

  “Hurry it up. You’re keepin’ the wagon waitin’.”

  “Wouldn’t want that, now would we?” came a voice just loud enough for the guard to hear. The prison guard swung around, his rifle hunting for a target.

  “Who said that? Who’s talkin’ when I tole you all to shut yer pie holes?”

  Slocum shuffled forward with the other ten men, all shackled and looking as if they could chew through their chains and kill, given the chance. Slocum snorted. Most of them had killed somebody. That was how they had ended up in the line of prisoners being herded into the bed of a wagon.

  The guard helped Slocum along with another hard blow to the shoulder. Slocum winced but kept walking, head down. This seemed to appease the guard because he hurried on to another prisoner who refused to show any humility at his condition. From the beating the man received, he might not make it to the prison alive.

  One prisoner already in the wagon reached out his manacled hands and helped Slocum up.

  “Thanks,” Slocum said, then shot a quick look back to be sure the guard hadn’t heard.

  “He’s too busy havin’ his fun with poor Gordon. But you got the right instinct. Do what those bastards tell you, and you’ll get along all right.”

  “You been in before?” Slocum studied the man seated across from him in the wagon. The pallor gave him away as someone who ventured out but little when the sun was high. That might mean he was a gambler, but his stubby fingers didn’t have the dexterity Slocum associated with cardsharps.

  “Wasn’t out but two weeks ’fore they got me on trumped-up charges. The sheriff don’t like me none, the dirt-eatin’, mother—” He clamped his mouth shut when the guard hoisted Gordon and threw him facedown into the wagon.

  Satisfied he had all the prisoners loaded, he bellowed for the driver to make good time. Slocum watched the guard recede and finally disappear in a cloud of dust as the wagon rattled along the rocky road. T
he drought had hung on for the entire year. The usual rain in January hadn’t come down south, and Slocum had drifted up to San Francisco. As the wagon bumped along, he looked up and saw the foreboding gray stone walls of San Quentin getting closer by the minute.

  “Ain’t named for a saint,” the man opposite him said. “Named after some Injun what was captured on the spot.” He shook his head. Slocum saw the sunlight shine off a couple lice migrating through his greasy hair, working their way down to his beard. The man didn’t take much notice. “ ’ Magine that, an Injun named Quentin. Belonged to the Miwok tribe. Was a fighter fer Chief Marin back in the day.”

  “How’d you come to know so much about the history?” Slocum asked. He was growing increasingly apprehensive as he studied the thick stone walls and the alert blue-uniformed guards in the towers at the corners. He was sorry he had agreed to such a crazy scheme as—

  “They call me Doc,” the other prisoner piped up, interrupting Slocum’s growing worry that he had dealt himself into a game that couldn’t be won. “I was a professor at a college ’fore I got myself in bad.”

  Slocum doubted it but said nothing about the man’s background. Instead, he asked, “Anybody ever broken out?”

  “Oh, sure, there’ve been a few. Mighty few, I’d say, but it can be done. Them guards is human mostly. They look the other way, and a few clever folks can sneak on out. Need a lot of money to bribe ’em, though, if that’s what you got in mind.” Doc leaned closer and said in a husky whisper, “You got money?”

  “If you’ve got a way out,” Slocum said. “I don’t intend staying behind the walls too long.”

  “Smart man. The longer they got you, the harder it is to get away. They starve you, and some of the unlucky bastards get put in the dungeon. Yup, that’s right,” Doc said, seeing Slocum’s startled expression. “They got theyselves a dungeon, jist like the tyrants over in Europe got in their castles.”

  “Torture?”

  “Not so much, ’less you earn it.” Doc looked smug. “Truth is, most new prisoners earn it. Keeps ’em from thinkin’ ’bout escapin’ later. That’s what’s known as gentle persuasion.”

  “What’s gentle about it?” Slocum asked.

  “They reckon they don’t have to hang you, that’s gentle.”

  The heavy gates opened and the wagon rolled through. The brief flash of shadow from the wall caused Slocum to shiver in dread. He liked this less and less, but he realized he had gotten what he deserved for not thinking things through. He should never have listened to Conchita or fallen under her spell. If he had kept riding north, up to Oregon maybe, he wouldn’t have spent those nights in the sultry woman’s bed and—

  He jumped as the gates slammed shut behind him. Slocum watched the guards draw the locking bar into place, then padlock it securely. That lock was as big as his head and would take a stick of dynamite—more!—to open without the key. The wagon pulled around to the side of a three-story building made entirely of stone.

  “You kin see San Francisco Bay from the roof,” Doc said. “Fact is the south side of the prison fetches up along the shoreline, but don’t think to get out that way. Water’s colder ’n a witch’s tit all year round, and they got guards in boats patrolling outside all the time. A signal goes up and they shoot anything that moves.” He chuckled. “They shot ’emselves a shark last time the alarm was sounded.”

  “A bell?” Slocum asked.

  Doc looked at him funny, then nodded. Before he could answer, rough hands grabbed his coat and dragged him out to crash onto the ground. Slocum was similarly treated. The others in the wagon had difficulty keeping their footing, but Doc and Slocum took the brunt of the punishment compared to other prisoners getting down from the wagon. More than one boot caught Slocum in the back, making movement painful. He cried out when a guard kicked him hard in the side.

  “Git up. You ain’t gonna lay about all day.”

  Slocum had learned how to climb to his feet with the shackles and did so. He started to help Doc to his feet, but the guard shoved him away so he could use a truncheon on the prone man. Doc covered up the best he could and waited for the rain of blows to cease. Only then did he get to his feet. Slocum figured that Doc had been through such treatment before and knew how to survive it.

  As he and the others shuffled into the building, Slocum damned Conchita Valenzuela and her brother and the harebrained scheme that had brought him to this point.

  Standing in a single file, shuffling forward when the prisoner in front had been processed, Slocum finally reached the desk, where a guard sporting bright gold sergeant’s stripes on his uniform sat with a ledger open in front of him. He glanced up at Slocum, then at the book, and ran his finger across a line.

  “Jasper Jarvis, in for robbery. Two years.”

  Slocum said nothing. The sergeant looked up, one bushy eyebrow rising.

  “So? That you or not?”

  “It’s me,” Slocum said.

  “Get those chains off and into those,” the sergeant said as another guard shoved a prison uniform into his hands.

  Slocum started to ask how he was supposed to get the chains off when the guard grabbed him and sent him staggering toward an arched doorway. He bounced off one side and then the other, keeping his balance, then saw the prisoner who had been ahead of him at the far end of the stone corridor at an open doorway. The man’s hands were already free, and a guard worked to free him from his leg irons. This lent speed to Slocum’s shuffle. He wanted out of the shackles as quickly as he could.

  Once freed, he went into the room and saw a half-dozen guards, all with rifles trained on the prisoner now shorn of his irons.

  “Git yer worthless clothes off and take a shower. Then put your uniform on,” the guard said to the prisoner. Clutching his coarse black-striped white canvas prison uniform, Slocum stripped naked, followed the other prisoner into what was closer to a sheep dip than a shower. He came out coughing and eyes watering. With the guards prodding him, he managed to get into the heavy prison garb.

  He put up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, now directly overhead. He was in a yard with dozens of other prisoners.

  “You new prisoners will be assigned your cells at the end of exercise. Try not to get killed ’fore then.” The guard speaking laughed harshly, making his real intentions known. If every one of the inmates died, he would be just fine with that.

  Slocum stumbled around, getting his balance back after being chained for so long. He had been arrested down in San Francisco after Conchita turned him in as Jarvis. They had pored over wanted posters and found one for the wanted convict who had escaped before being sent to San Quentin, ensuring immediate transport to the prison. Best of all, there hadn’t been a sketch of Jasper Jarvis.

  Slocum had agreed to assume the identity of Jarvis since his crime was relatively minor—he knew that by the twenty-dollar reward. No one was in a hurry to recapture Jarvis, and the ease with which he had been sent to San Quentin proved that. He was a minor annoyance, not a big clap of thunder to rile up everyone.

  As he walked around, he got his bearings and studied the walls, the guards, and the security. He saw that Doc hadn’t been joking about how difficult it would be to escape unless a lot of money greased a guard’s palm. The ground was rocky and would be difficult to tunnel through. The walls were both sturdy and tall. While they might be scaled, it had to be at night. The guards in the towers at each corner of the penitentiary alertly watched their wards below in the yard. That might slack off with time; Slocum had no idea how long the guards had been on duty or if they might catch a few winks when the officers weren’t looking.

  Chancing on a sleeping guard just as he intended to climb over the wall didn’t strike him as a good escape plan.

  The sound of the wagon that had brought the prisoners rattling and clanking back out drew his attention.

  “Ain’t gonna hide in that,” came a gruff voice. Slocum looked over, then up. He stood six feet tall. This giant with a bushy be
ard, tiny, deep-set eyes, and hair so wild it might have been a tuft of black prairie grass loomed above him.

  “Didn’t want to be so obvious,” Slocum said.

  “You just got in. All you fish are like that, thinkin’ you kin get outta here. You cain’t. Live with it. Let ’em release you . . . unless you’re in for life.”

  Slocum’s jaw tightened at the idea that an escape attempt might just mean his life. Damn Conchita! Damn his own charity. She had assured him her brother had been locked up on bogus testimony. And then she had added—

  “You’ll only git tossed into solitary, tryin’ to escape. Them guards got their eyes on you, the way you’re watchin’ the wagon and all.”

  “Thanks,” Slocum said.

  “You got a name?”

  Slocum almost answered with his own, then caught himself in time and said, “Jarvis.”

  “Hmph,” the giant said. “You got a brother named Jarvis?”

  Slocum stepped back a half pace and looked at the mountain of a man.

  “Nope,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I got a bone to pick with Jasper Jarvis, that’s why. The sneaky li’l toad got me locked up in here for somethin’ he done down in San Francisco.” The convict squinted hard at Slocum. “You don’t look nuthin’ like ’im, so I reckon you ain’t kin.”

  The heavy canvas prison garb turned into a furnace as Slocum sweat. He was having nothing but bad luck.

  “You know another prisoner name of José Valenzuela?”

  “You got a score to settle with him?”

  “Got a message from outside,” Slocum said. “Never met him.”

  “That’s him over yonder,” the man said. “You watch yer step. He’s a Meskin. Cain’t trust ’em. Worse ’n Jarvis.” With that, the man turned and walked away. Slocum fancied he felt the ground rumble with every step the huge prisoner took. Only when he thought it was safe, Slocum turned and looked in Valenzuela’s direction.