Yuma Prison Crashout Read online

  The leader of the riot crashed into the burly man, caromed into the dying, throat-cut Irishman, and slipped on the blood himself.

  By then, the Deacon had come up, his face masked in agony, blood spilling from his busted jaw. Fallon swung the stick and caught the other side of the killer’s face. Down again went the Deacon who was bound for the gallows.

  Bullets began peppering the wall behind the open door, splintering the shelves of soap and sponges, and the wall, followed by the sound of ricochets zinging into stacks of clean clothes and piles of dirty laundry.

  Martin and the brute were recovering. Captain Daggett had managed to get at least to his knees. Keeping his makeshift knife and stick, Fallon moved.

  “Get going, Daggett!”

  Fallon kicked the guard’s buttocks. The fat jackass went down, but this time came up quickly. Daggett glanced behind him. Fallon pointed toward the rear of the building.

  “That way.”

  “But . . . the . . . door . . .” He stared with hope at the open door, the one the Italian had run out of to be cut down by one of Joliet’s two Gatlings.

  “Your pals are shooting without looking,” Fallon snapped. “You want to die, go ahead.”

  The man saw the murderous inmates stirring behind Fallon. He turned.

  “Storeroom!” Fallon shouted.

  Terrified, Daggett ran for his life.

  Harry Fallon followed right behind him.

  Once he reached the door, Daggett jerked the handle. The door did not budge.

  “It’s . . . locked!” Daggett wailed. He whirled around, desperate. If any color remained in his terrified face, it vanished.

  Without looking, Fallon pounded the door with the club.

  “Open up!” he screamed. “Quickly! Open the damned door!” He whacked the door harder.

  “What?” Daggett sniffed, not comprehending.

  “You’re not the first guard to run here,” Fallon said. He slammed the stick against the door again. Then he swore at the futility.

  And now those cowardly guards refused to open the door, to risk dying themselves to save Harry Fallon and Captain Daggett. Well, Fallon couldn’t blame them for that. Given the same circumstances, he might have done the same thing. No, he would never have done that. Even ten years in the Illinois State Penitentiary hadn’t stolen everything from his soul.

  “Oh my God!” Daggett dropped to his knees, clasped his hands. “Don’t kill me, Joe. Please, please, God have mercy, don’t murder me . . . don’t . . . kill me . . . like . . .”

  Fallon turned around, knife in one hand, baton in the other.

  “Like a dog?” Joe Martin laughed. “Like a dog. Ain’t that what you always said to me, you miserable swine? Ain’t that what you said to every man you ever abused.”

  The Deacon mumbled something no one could understand, spitting out more blood and bits of teeth and tongue.

  “No, you’ll die, Cap’n. But first this Judas will die . . . like the dirty, lying lawdog he once was, before he became a dog like me and all them others.”

  The Deacon seemed to try to smile, but his busted jaws and mangled mouth refused to cooperate.

  The brute brought his knife up quickly, slashed. Daggett screamed, wet his britches, stumbled back against the door to the storeroom, and fell onto the floor. He covered his head with his arms. He shivered.

  Fallon leaped back, feeling the knife’s blade rip into his coarse shirt. The nightstick whooshed across the air, and the big man sucked in his gut as he ducked back himself. Fallon took in a deep breath, faked a lunge with the knife, stepped back, and almost tripped over Daggett’s quivering body.

  Now, Fallon heard nothing except his own ragged breaths and the pounding of his heart against his ribs. The gunfire and terrifying noise outside of the laundry had not ceased. Fallon just couldn’t hear that reckoning anymore. What happened outside was of little matter to Fallon. The only thing that mattered was right here, right now, between Fallon, Martin, and the big convict.

  Fallon slashed out with nightstick and knife, watching the men dodge, and then he made a dash away from the storeroom, and the cowering Daggett, toward the tubs of water and the dead man whose throat Fallon had crushed. The killers, ignoring Daggett—as Fallon had hoped, though not that hard—came after him. Fallon stopped, went around one of the tubs, and watched the two men charging. He dropped both knife and stick at his feet, grabbed the edge of the table on which the tub sat, and somehow managed to overturn table and tub. Water splashed onto the floor, and both Martin and the big man slipped on the soapy foam.

  Down they went. Fallon reached down, picking up his two weapons, and moved to his left. The burly man recovered first, and he still held his knife. Fallon took a chance, shifted his grip on his own blade, and let the weapon sail. It caught the man in his chest, but the blade was too small to make a fatal wound. In fact, the big man did not even seem to notice the knife stuck just beneath his rib cage.

  He started to stand, but slipped again on the suds and wetness. Cursing as he fell, he landed hard on his chest. He grunted, pushed himself up, and then dropped into the suds. The big man did not move, but Fallon noticed the water beneath the convict turning red. Redder. Redder. Fallon understood what had happened.

  When the big man fell in the soapy water, he landed hard, and the force pushed that little knife deeper into his chest, puncturing his heart, perhaps, or his lung, or something. Enough to kill the murdering rogue.

  That left only Joe Martin to deal with. Unless, it struck Fallon, others who had joined the riot remained alive and were heading for the laundry at this very moment. Fallon didn’t give that another thought. If it happened, it happened. Right now, the only person Fallon needed to worry about was Joe Martin.

  Joe Martin, soaking wet, was on his feet. He held a knife and a studded stick, and he stepped up to the man lying facedown in the bloody water. He glanced at the dead man, spit into the water, and waded through the wet mess.

  “I’m going to kill you, lawdog,” Martin said.

  The blade shot out. Fallon parried it with his billy club. He let Martin take the offensive, and he backed away, between the buckets and bins, the carts used to haul laundry here and there. Stick against stick, knife slashing this way and the other. Like two fencers in one of those swashbuckling adventure novels set in old France or among pirates in the Caribbean. Fallon had hoped that Martin would give up on this folly, that he might remember that his only chance now was to somehow get out of Joliet, that even if he killed Fallon and Daggett, he would soon be dead himself, gunned down by the guards already angered by the callous murder of many of their own.

  Martin’s blade slashed deep into Fallon’s left arm, maybe halfway between elbow and shoulder. Blood stained his tattered, wet sleeve, dribbled over his fingertips. The knife he held became more difficult to grip.

  He had circled back toward the storeroom, where Daggett had gathered himself and huddled against the thick door, still locked, gripping his knees with his hands, trying to pull himself into some invisible ball.

  The studded stick swung toward Fallon, who ducked, felt it tear a few strands of hair from his head, and slam against the door. Daggett shrieked. Fallon brought the blade up, but Martin dropped his own blade and grabbed a tight hold on Fallon’s wrist. The killer’s fingers squeezed like a mechanical vise. The studded stick came back toward Fallon’s head, but then both men were tripping over the quivering form of Captain Daggett.

  They landed hard on the floor, Martin on top of Fallon, but Fallon rolled away from Daggett and the storeroom, taking Martin with him. Fallon stopped, came up, and brought a knee toward the convict’s groin. Martin blocked it with his studded stick. The convict swung up his fist, but Fallon ducked beneath it and brought the nightstick down on Martin’s throat.

  Martin died with his larynx crushed, too, and died with hate-filled eyes staring into Fallon’s cold brown ones.

  Realizing that it was over—for now—Fallon dropped back. He was on
his knees, straddling the dead man, and now every muscle in his body screamed in agony. The pains in his various wounds multiplied. He could hear again, the rat-tat-tat of the Gatling gun, the shouts, the whistles, and all of the inhumanity. Mostly, he could see Joe Martin and the others that Hank Fallon had killed. And he could hear the sniffles of the brutal captain.

  Shouts came from everywhere, and Fallon slowly understood that it was all over. The riot had ended. Ended badly for many prisoners, and who knew how many guards. Yet Fallon was alive. So was Daggett.

  “Fallon,” Daggett gasped.

  Fallon did not, could not, answer.

  “Fallon. You saved my life . . .” The man was slowly regaining his grip on reason.

  “Fallon. Listen. I’ll do anything you want, anything. I’ll do whatever I can to see you get . . . I don’t know . . . parole, pardon, maybe to a better prison, a reduced sentence. I’ll do anything. Anything. Just don’t . . . for God’s sake . . . please . . . man . . . don’t let anybody know that I showed yeller. Don’t tell them I was a coward. Promise me.”

  Repulsion. Gall. Hatred. Remorse. Exhaustion. Sick. Miserable. Self-loathing. Disgust. Fallon felt all of those. Then, because he had spent ten years in this hellhole, living in a cell infested by rats, he felt the way most men here felt.

  He felt nothing. Not one damned thing. Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Drop the damned gun, you son of a bitch!”

  Slowly, Fallon turned toward the open door. He stared down the barrel of the shotgun at one of the guards, the new, pockmarked youngster who had started his job just two weeks back, held in shaking arms. The kid’s uniform was soaked. Fallon didn’t know if it came from an enormous amount of sweat, or if the warden had called in that pumping engine from the firehouse down the street to turn the hose on the inmates. He knew one thing. He didn’t have a gun. Didn’t even hold the club or a makeshift knife anymore. So he just stared at the kid, as three other guards rushed in.

  “No!” Captain Daggett rose quickly. “Hold your fire, men. It’s all right. We’re safe. The inmates here are dead.”

  Daggett grabbed the stick Fallon had used to kill Joe Martin and banged it on the door to the storeroom. “It’s all right. We’re in control. You can open the door and come out now, you damned yellow-backed cowards.”

  A bitter, mirthless laugh escaped Fallon’s lips. He shook his head. He had to give Captain Daggett credit for one thing. The man recovered quickly, and he thought amazingly fast for a man who had barely escaped a brutal death, who had been paralyzed by fear just moments ago.

  The door to the storeroom did not open. Fallon wondered if the men inside could hear.

  Cautiously, the new guards, led by the potbellied man named Goodman, moved around the wreckage of the laundry. The boy holding the shotgun lowered the weapon and brought up the rear. Their whispers reached Fallon’s ears as the men saw the dead prisoners, but the men did not seem shocked. Probably, after all that had happened outside, nothing would surprise these men ever again.

  “Captain,” Goodman said. “Did you . . . kill . . . all of these . . . ?”

  Another guard finished the sentence. “Yourself?”

  “Yes,” Captain Daggett said, but stiffened at the lie. His eyes flashed toward Fallon, and the fear returned, but only briefly. He made a quick correction, but not a complete one.

  “No. No. Not all. Fallon here. He helped. He killed this one . . . and that one . . . and helped me with Joe Martin.”

  “Why’d you do a thing like that, bucko?” Goodman asked. His breath stank of breakfast and vomit.

  “Fallon was once a deputy United States marshal,” Daggett explained quickly, fearing Fallon might answer Goodman’s question with the truth. Fallon had no intention of answering.

  Goodman rolled his eyes. “Like old habits are hard to break. Something like that, Fallon? Or did you . . . ?”

  “Goodman,” Daggett said hoarsely. He found a clean prisoner’s shirt and wiped his face, then dropped the striped cloth onto the soapy and bloody floor. “Lay off Fallon. I mean it. If not for Fallon, I’d be dead.”

  At least, Fallon thought, that much was true.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” said another one of the guards.

  “Get Fallon back to his cell.”

  “His cell? Those bastards set that whole block on fire.” Fallon didn’t know who said that. He was too busy staring at Captain Daggett.

  “Then get him to another cell. Any cell.” Daggett turned. The door to the storeroom was finally opening. “Or better yet, we can leave Fallon here. For now. Till the warden figures out . . .”

  “The warden’s dead,” the youngster said.

  “No, he ain’t,” Goodman corrected. “That was the deputy warden Klaus. Got shot off the west wall.”

  “I thought . . .”

  So it would go. Rumors. Lies. The men whose lives Fallon had saved stepped out of the storeroom, uncertain, faces drained of color, eyes rimmed red from tears and pressure and fear.

  “In here, Fallon.” Captain Daggett held open the door. “In here. Just for a while. Till we can figure out what Warden Cain wants. All right?” The captain of the guards was asking Harry Fallon for permission.

  Fallon didn’t answer. He returned to the form of a prisoner, not a federal lawman. He lowered his eyes, stared at the floor. You did not look a guard in his eyes—not if you knew what was good for you. Fallon walked through the opening and stood between the shelves, barrels, and kegs the guards had used to barricade themselves in, to prevent the door from being opened.

  “Fallon,” the captain of the guards whispered. “Remember what I said. I won’t forget you. I promise you.”

  As Fallon sat on one of the overturned barrels, the door closed, sending Fallon back into a world of midnight. They’d leave a guard outside. Maybe two. And Fallon knew that, most likely, other inmates would soon join him. Those who had lived through the nightmare.

  * * *

  Two days later, eight armed guards escorted Fallon and five others out of their new cells. They looked down as they walked to the exercise yard. Fallon and the old trusty named Langendorf stopped by the pine box, which they lifted—Langendorf gasped in pain at the weight—and carried the box through the front gates.

  They loaded the coffin in a buckboard, and then came back through the gate to find another coffin. The other four prisoners also worked in pairs.

  Twelve coffins. It had seemed a lot worse. Twelve prisoners dead. Hell, Fallon had killed most of those himself. But sixteen more were in the prison hospital, and two others had been transported to nearby Chicago, where they could get better care. The assistant warden and three other guards were also dead, but they would not be buried in the prison cemetery. Some of these men would lie in this flowerless, not hallowed, ground only briefly, till relatives or loved ones came to dig up the body and take the poor soul, no longer suffering, to rest among his own.

  Once the coffins had been loaded, the guards escorted the men on wagons to the graveyard. There, Fallon took a shovel. He wondered if this was Captain Daggett’s payment. Letting him bury the men he had killed.

  “How come they let us out?”

  The boy with the pickax, the starry-eyed kid from Springfield, Honest Abe Lincoln’s home, looked around.

  Fallon didn’t answer; he just let the shovel dig up earth.

  “I mean . . . why’s the graveyard beyond the walls?”

  “You’re in Joliet for the length of your sentence,” Fallon answered. “Ten years. Fifteen. Or life.”

  The kid stared. Fallon looked at him.

  “The prison has you for life,” Fallon said. “But not after you’re dead.”

  The boy turned around, but Langendorf and Fallon both barked out a short rebuke.

  Turning back, the kid asked, “What?”

  “Don’t look,” Fallon said.

  “At what?”

  “The outside,” Langendorf told him. Meaning, F
allon knew, what the outside of Joliet looked like. What the free world looked like.

  “But . . .”

  Fallon said, “Our guards will think you’re uppity, getting some notions. Maybe will want to try to escape. You don’t want that. Don’t look. Just dig.”

  The kid asked no more questions.

  “Enjoy it though,” the trusty Langendorf said, and laughed his laugh of a man dying from consumption. “You’re breathing free air.” He drew in as much breath as his mangled lungs could hold, coughed, cursed, and tried to laugh it off.

  But Fallon knew how much it meant to men like Langendorf. The chance to get beyond Joliet’s walls. To breathe free air. Fallon stopped to adjust his work gloves and drew in deeply. The old, dying lunger was right. The air was different. It felt better. It felt fresher. Free.

  He dug.

  Langendorf and the boy left Joliet two days later. They would spend some time in the Joliet jail till the burned wreckage of the cell block had been rebuilt. A few of the more hardened prisoners were escorted to Chicago, to be housed in the damp, tough jail there. Fallon found himself left behind, put in another wing in another cell. The cell was meant for two prisoners. It housed five more, not including Fallon. Six men. Straw for beds. One slop bucket.

  “Scuttlebutt has it that you saved Daggett’s life.”

  Fallon leaned in his corner of the cell, the one that didn’t have the disgusting slop bucket that hadn’t been emptied in two days. Fallon’s legs were pulled up. His back pressed against the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least he didn’t have to fight for straw for a bed. He could sleep in this sitting position. And no one would be able to stick a knife in his back.

  The cell was dark. Lights out had been sounded four hours earlier, as though there had even been light here. You didn’t get a candle. Inmates with candles had a tendency to set cells afire. When the sun went down, you slept. Or you remained awake to stay alive.