With this, since Dreer was now close to the bars, the sheriff went forward and held out his hand. But he was caught at the same time by either shoulder and flung strongly backward.
“None of that!” cried the two guards who paced the passage. “None of that, Caswell! Nobody's to pass nothing through them bars.”
The sheriff remained silent for a moment. His hat had been knocked down over one eye by the violence of that jerk, and now the muscles at the angle of his jaw bulged. But at length he smiled and quietly straightened his sombrero.
“Not even a bare hand?” he asked, showing that inoffensive member.
Sheriff Caswell looked from the face of one guard to the other. Something about his look appeared to be intensely interesting to Jess Dreer.
“Well,” said the sheriff, “I see you boys are a mighty smart pair. Claney must of picked you out real special. And if that's the way you work it, I'll play with the same rules.”
“I dunno just why I came, Jess. It wasn't sure to look you over and gloat on seeing you behind the bars. You believe that?”
“Matter of fact,” and the sheriff nodded, gratified by this admission, “I'm mighty sorry for you, old man. Wish it had been a different end. Wish you'd gone down for the last time with your boots on, and two guns working.”
“You forget, Caswell. I'm not a two-gun man. I ain't got that many talents.”
“You got enough talent to pass,” he declared. “But when I think of what lies in front of you, Jess—” He stopped abruptly. “I suppose I shouldn't talk about them things, though.”
“It's all right. No harm done. I'll tell you how it was. I might of busted through the boys, but I didn't have the nerve. I got sort of tired. Didn't seem like it was worthwhile taking the long chance—and killing a pile of boys I'd never had a grudge agin'. But here I am, and no whining, Caswell. But I'm sorry for you.”
At this the patient man gasped. He was openly astonished.
“Sorry for me. Now, is that a joke, Dreer?”
“It ain't. You hear me talk straight talk today, pardner. Of all the gents that ever took my trail, you're the squarest shooter, the cleanest hand, the best head. Of the whole gang I'd rather of been taken by you. Caswell, I mean that so much that I sort of hanker to shake hands on it!”
“Clancy had his own ideas about that,” said the sheriff very quietly.
“Speak up, gents!” exclaimed one of the guards. “Speak up so the four of us can hear you.”
The sheriff turned deliberately and looked them one by one in the eye; then he said to Jess Dreer: “You must be pretty young, Jess; they got you chaperoned to a finish.”
“Yep,” nodded Dreer, and he also looked with singular attention at the four, “they got a lot of thoughtful gents around Salt Springs. I'll try to remember 'em all. Well, I don't kick. This is a pile drier night than the time you run me through the hills down by Lawson, Sheriff.”
“Speaking of Lawson, I've always wondered how you got past me through them hills, Jess.”
“Didn't go through the hills, Sheriff. I tried to twice and then I found that you'd got your posse strung out about one man every hundred feet.”
“Well, that made it sure you couldn't come through, Jess.”
“Sure it did. I couldn't come through as myself, so I come through as somebody else. You know how you had your scouts out ahead of the rest? I rode right back to the line like I was one of the scouts. It was along about evening; pretty dim. I sings out that you want 'em to close up—rode back part ways with 'em—and then ducked away. Went straight on through Lawson with Angelina trotting or walking, and nobody even looked crosswise at me. They expected I'd be going the other way as fast as the old hoss would take me.”
Sheriff Caswell swore again, and his eyes lighted.
“Fox or no fox, you've give me a great run for the money—and I wish you had it coming into your money bags, Sheriff.”
Caswell flushed. “I was never on your trail for the price, Jess.”
“But seems like I'll have a pretty empty kind of life, Jess, with you gone. The old days is ended. I'll hang up my guns and let 'em rust.”
Here, after a brief consultation with one of his companions, a guard approached them.
“Clancy ordered that if any gent come in and got real friendly with Dreer, we was to run him out. I guess that goes with you, Caswell.”
“Ain't you stepping kind of hard?”
“I'm taking no chances. Well, if you two want to swap lies about old times, go ahead for five minutes more.”
The sheriff nodded. He turned to Jess Dreer and for a moment looked at him without a word.
“Seeing this here jail, Jess,” he began at length, “reminds me of an old shack I used to run down the country. Full of holes that jail was. Remember Garry Smith? I had him three times, and every time he got clean off. Then I sent him up, and when he'd come through with his term, I swore him in as a deputy and got him to show me how he used to get clear of the irons. Man, man, it was a sight to watch Garry work! Nothing in the shape of an iron could stick on him. He had long hands like yours, and he showed me how he could bunch up his hands and make them smaller'n his wrists and shake the bracelets off'n him.”
“Never tried leg irons on him, eh?” said Jess.
“I never believed in treating a man like a dog,” said the sheriff with a side glance at the guards, “but after Garry was my deputy, I put on the ankle irons for fun. Didn't see how he could make his feet smaller'n his ankles.”
“Sure, he didn't. But after he got his hands loose, he'd take out a little bit of a watch spring and go to work on the lock of his leg irons. He tried to show me how it was done, but I couldn't get the hang of it. I don't suppose you know how to work a lock like that, eh?”
Jess Dreer looked the sheriff straight between the eyes.
“No,” he said slowly, drawling the word.
There was just a twinkle in the eyes of the sheriff.
“But where did Garry keep the watch spring? Didn't you search him?”
“Clean down to the skin, after the first time, but the second time he'd put it in his hair, and the third time he'd put it between his big toe and the second toe—they was sort of hammered together and didn't spread out when he walked around barefooted. That was how he got the watch spring into the jail.”
“Then you didn't give him the kind of a search Clancy gave me,” said Jess Dreer. His jaw set like iron. Then he went on: “He even combed my hair, Sheriff, if you can believe that.”
“Somehow,” said the sheriff, “I can.”
He was fumbling in his vest pocket with thumb and forefinger. He brought out a toothpick.
“Time's up, Caswell,” called the guard who had last spoken.
“All right, friend.” And the sheriff turned.
The cells were dimly lighted from a skylight, brown back above the passage where the guards walked up and down on their beat. Jess Dreer, to relax the suspicious interest with which the guards watched him while he talked with Caswell, had gone back to his bunk. And now, by the dim light, something glittered faintly in an arc that disappeared at the feet of Dreer. Also, there was a tinkle of metal on stone.
“What's that?” cried the guard.
“What?” asked Dreer, lifting his head.
Sheriff Caswell had completed the motion of raising his hand to his mouth and now had a toothpick between his teeth.
“Something jingled, sort of. Something near you, Dreer.”
“I tell you, son,” drawled the outlaw, “when you get older, you'll find out that chains rattle now and then.”
At this the guard flushed. In reality he did not wish to persecute this silent, gentle-appearing man with too many suspicions.
“Sounded sort of smaller and lighter than the chains,” he grumbled.
Jess Dreer had moved one of his feet and now kept it still.
“If they's a slip, Sheriff, and I get loose ag'in, I'll be glad to have you back on my trail.”
“Jess, don't you make no mistake. If you was to get free, I'd foller you to the end of the world and drop you if I got the chance.”
“Same here, Sheriff. Thanks for looking me up. Good-by.”
He tried to make a gesture of farewell, but the manacles checked him, and the best he could do was to rouse a harsh rattling of the chain.
“Now, there's what I call a friendly man,” said Jess to one of the guards, and he began to roll a cigarette.
“He talks too much,” answered two of the guards in chorus.
“Well, sir,” said Jess, “most generally when he talks a lot he's got something to say.”
At this point the cigarette paper fluttered down out of his hand and came to a rest beside his foot. He leaned over, moved his foot, and when he sat up again, the paper was in the tips of his fingers, and against the palm of his hand was a little strip of strong steel, a watch spring.
