Lassiter 4 Read online

  It was hot in the room. Cameron unstrapped his holster and belt and put them into the warden’s desk. The shirt under his dark-blue tunic, when he took it off and hung it over the back of the warden’s chair, was bright red. Dark patches of sweat hung below the armpits.

  Lecky had handcuffed Lassiter’s hands behind him through the back of the chair. Cameron poured another drink and held it out to Lassiter. Lassiter didn’t say anything. Cameron drank it himself. He dragged the warden’s chair from behind the desk and set it down in front of Lassiter.

  “Don’t know Papineau, don’t know Mackenzie? That’s kind of disappointing, my friend. I could even say Papineau and Mackenzie would be disappointed themselves. That is, since they’re planning the biggest rebellion Canada ever saw. Bigger than the rebellions their grandfathers started fifty years ago. Would you believe it, McCall, they really think they can declare a Republic of British Columbia and make it stick? Of course they don’t want to call it that. They have another name for it. They have a number of names for it. Just as they have a number of fathers. They have every half-breed and quarter breed. They have every Frenchman, every Russian, every German. They have every Yankee foreigner and Irish Fenian traitor in the province stirred up with this talk of independence. But you don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  Lassiter kept his head still. Cameron hit him anyway. After the first story he told there would be no use telling about the Montana posse that had chased him over the border, into this mess.

  Colonel Cameron had a lot of energy, and he enjoyed his work. Beating prisoners made him only a little more happy than talking. The Colonel talked a lot while he beat Lassiter, while the guard Lecky held his head. He said he was the biggest man in British Columbia, the biggest and the toughest and the richest. That was why they had appointed him colonel of militia. He said he didn’t give a shit for Canada or Queen Victoria or England, but he’d be damned if he’d let a bunch of dissidents and mongrels and Yanks and half-breeds take over the province. If there were any taking over to be done, any declaring of republics, he would do it.

  “Come on, McCall,” he said, rocking Lassiter’s head with another punch. “I know that Papineau and Mackenzie are hiring American gunmen. Save yourself all this pain. You came north to hire out your gun. Say it, man. Maybe I can use a man like you.”

  Dimly, Lassiter wondered what would happen if he said yes. Not much, he guessed. Maybe they’d keep him in jail or ship him back across the border. But he’d be damned if he said yes to a butcher like Cameron. There was trouble of some kind in Western Canada. He knew about that. He knew something— not much. Papineau and Mackenzie didn’t mean a thing to him.

  Cameron said, “Wake up, McCall,” and hit him again.

  The Colonel said other things, but Lassiter didn’t hear them.

  Chapter Two

  When he came to, a skinny man with a tall hat and a hungry face was poking him in the ribs with a black umbrella. He had seen ladies and whores twirling parasols to keep off the sun. This was the first time he had seen a real honest-to-God umbrella. The kind they made and sold and some fools bought to defend themselves against the rain.

  The hungry-faced man was poking Lassiter in the ribs. Lassiter told the hungry-faced man in the tall hat where he’d stick the umbrella if he didn’t stop using it that way.

  Morning light was in the cell, bright and cold. Threatening the stranger hurt Lassiter’s swollen, blood-caked mouth. Inside his head there was no pain at first. That came right after he spoke and it was clear and hard, like the cold that had soaked into his bones.

  The narrow bed frame creaked when he propped himself up on an elbow. He remembered the last punch the Colonel had thrown.

  “If you want to know who I am,” the stranger said fussily in a New England voice, “I am Granger P. Dowling, and I might add that you aren’t doing yourself the least bit of good by defying Colonel Cameron.”

  “You’re an American?” Lassiter asked.

  The hungry-faced man was short even with the tall hat. The acting U.S. consul in Western Canada was what he was, he said. He wasn’t exactly a regular U.S. representative. But he was looking out for American interests in that part of the world. What he was, in fact, was an American citizen with considerable holdings in British Columbia. He was certainly a most important man, with the full support of Washington behind him and, without a doubt, the highest regard of the Canadian authorities.

  Mr. Granger P. Dowling advised Lassiter to cooperate with his esteemed colleague, Colonel Simon Cameron.

  The cell door closed hard after Lassiter refused to do that. After he suggested a new use for Mr. Dowling’s umbrella.

  They hadn’t given Lassiter any breakfast. Or if they offered to give him breakfast he hadn’t heard them. That was understandable, the way he was feeling.

  He didn’t know he was wearing the convict suit until he lifted his arm to wipe the blood off his mouth. Not much light came into the cell. He saw the color of the prison uniform plain enough.

  The noon whistle was blowing when he woke up again, and, after the prisoners were marched in and locked up, the warden, flanked by two turnkeys, came to look at Lassiter through the barred door. “The prisoner will stand at attention,” the red-haired guard yelled.

  Lassiter didn’t even try, and the warden told the guard to let it go.

  “How are you feeling?” the warden asked.

  “When do I get out of here?” Lassiter said.

  The warden coughed, trying to draw his official dignity around him like a blanket. “You are being held under Section Fifteen of the Sedition Act,” he informed Lassiter, “until such time as the present state of emergency ceases to exist. That means ...”

  “I know what it means,” Lassiter said. “It means I stay in here till Cameron tells you to let me out.”

  “Colonel Cameron is the military commander of this area,” the warden said huffily, trying to convince himself as much as Lassiter that everything was legal.

  “Aw, go to hell,” Lassiter said wearily.

  Rattling his keys, the red-haired guard yelled at Lassiter to mind his damn manners. One more remark like that from the prisoner and he’d come in and kick the shit out of him.

  “Never mind that, Burgess,” the warden said.

  To Lassiter he said, “I’d advise you to make the best of it, McCall. Whatever you may think, to me you’re just another prisoner. You will work like the other prisoners. You will do what you are told. Is that clear?”

  All jail keepers delivered little speeches like that to new prisoners. It never varied in its stupid formality. Lassiter didn’t know why he was grinning at the crooked little warden, but he was.

  A dull red color showed in the warden’s purse-lipped face. “Is that clear, McCall?”

  “What’ll you do if I don’t obey orders?” Lassiter inquired. “Take away my boardinghouse hash?”

  Suddenly the little grafter was all business, rubbing his hands together, jerking his neck around in the starched collar. The hands being rubbed together made a dry papery sound. “All right, McCall. Very well then,” he said. “I was going to let you start work in the wagon shop tomorrow. But since you’re well enough to be insolent, suppose we start you off today. What do think of that, McCall? No more smart answers, it appears.”

  Lassiter was fresh out of smart answers. Instead, he said something about the warden and his wife. It was a lousy thing to say. But it made him feel better.

  After the warden stalked away in outraged dignity, the old Scotchman came back with the soup wagon. “Man, you’re an awful sight,” he said, ladling out some of the watery swill. Most of the soup was gone and he had to scrape hard with the ladle to fill half of Lassiter’s dipper.

  The back-to-work whistle sounded before he finished the soup. Burgess and the other guard were yelling again. Wearily, Lassiter got up and lifted the bed frame against the wall. After the beating he’d taken the night before, standing to attention took some doing.
/>   Burgess, the red-haired guard, took a special interest in Lassiter. Lassiter knew the routine, but according to Burgess everything he did was wrong. They would keep marking time in position until, Burgess said, the new Yank prisoner got the hang of it. One thing Lassiter didn’t have to guess at—Burgess didn’t like Yanks.

  “We got other Yanks like you in here,” he roared. “Tough Yanks like you think you are. Only now they ain’t so tough any more. All it takes is time. Left, Right! Left, Right! Left, Right!”

  After Burgess got tired of the fun, he marched them out to the wagon shop. It was biting cold in the shop, and the men wanted to get back to work. Burgess stood them at attention while he explained the rules —all the rules—for Lassiter’s benefit. Burgess sounded as if he had learned the rules from a book and had repeated them many times.

  “Now listen hard, Yank,” he roared, taking his place behind a desk on a raised platform that looked out over the whole wagon shop. “You will speak to no one unless compelled to. And only when you have raised your hand to obtain my permission. If I nod my head—like this—you may then leave your bench and speak to the man in question. You will work—”

  Burgess cut his lecture short when the old Scotch trusty unlocked the door of the wagon shop and came in carrying a tray covered with a checkered napkin.

  “What is it, Scotty?” he asked, patting his wide belly in anticipation.

  Scotty said liver and onions.

  Burgess blew a long blast on his whistle and the men picked up their tools. “That means you, too, Yank,” he yelled to Lassiter. He didn’t say what Lassiter was supposed to do. For a while anyway, he was more interested in the food than the prisoners.

  The man working across the workbench from Lassiter was long and skinny, about fifty. There was a touch of madness in his pale-blue eyes, and he spoke with a fancy Irish accent, like a mucker who’d gone to school and liked to talk.

  “Pick up the plane and start planning,” the Irishman told Lassiter. “Ours not to reason why. Pretend you’re planing the lard from Mr. Burgess’s fat belly and the work will go easier. Now that we’re working together, my name is Pierce McCain.”

  The Irishman said all this without moving his mouth, a sure sign that he’d been in one jail or a lot of jails for a long time.

  Lassiter ignored him. The jackplane he had to work with was old, worn-out, the blade pitted with rust. A stack of rough-cut boards stood beside the bench. The unskilled prisoners did the rough planing before passing on the boards to the wagon builders’ helpers. Lassiter put a board into the vice and tightened the screw.

  The plane ripped and tore into the wood as he began to shove the plane. Shoveling a forkful of fried onions into his mouth, Burgess raised his eyes from the plate and looked over the shop. Lassiter brought back the plane for another shove.

  The Irishman was bent over his work. “Easy, Yank,” the words came. “Keep it level. Don’t dig in so deep. You don’t want Burgess the bastard to get you on a destruction of property charge.”

  Still not saying anything, Lassiter tried it that way. The wood was still gouged by the bad blade, but it was an improvement.

  “Thanks,” he told the Irishman, keeping his head down.

  “Don’t mention it, friend,” the Irishman said.

  Planes rasped on raw wood and they didn’t say anything else for a while. Up on the platform, Burgess finished his meal and belched. But there was no sign of good humor when he wiped his greasy chin and pushed the plate away.

  “All right then, you convicts,” Burgess roared, picking his teeth with a wooden match. The string of liver was in deep, and he had to root for it. He got it and swallowed it. “All right, you convicts and criminals,” he said. “I want to see some honest sweat.”

  So did Lassiter. The wagon shop was long and high and cold. So cold that a man could see his breath when he exhaled. Except for the oil stove placed beside the guard’s desk, there was no heat.

  McCain, the Irishman, caught Lassiter looking around. Bent again over his work, he said, “Don’t try anything. They’ll be watching you to try something. Then they can kill you and the problem’s solved. About what to do with you, I mean.”

  Lassiter wasn’t about to try anything, not yet anyway. It was none of the Irishman’s business what he did. He was fairly polite about telling McCain.

  “It is my business,” McCain said. “I wouldn’t take it friendly if you tried something. I’ll—we’ll stop you if you try. Is that plain enough?”

  McCain didn’t look like the toughest man in the shop. There was toughness and meanness in him but not the brute force it took to boss a prison. Without moving his lips, Lassiter told him to go bull himself.

  McCain wasn’t offended. “That’s the spirit. Now we better stop talking and work faithfully, like the man said. We’ll have a talk later in the bathhouse. Today is bath day you’ll be glad to know.”

  Lassiter didn’t know what to make of the Irishman. Every jail had at least one slick-talking character who claimed to know all the angles. Some of them did. Some of them were just oily rats looking out for themselves. Lassiter had no objection to that. It was the rats who ran to the warden with stories that you had to look out for. McCain was someone to think about.

  Lassiter didn’t look up when he heard Burgess getting down off the platform. Holding the thick cane in his right hand, patting the end of it against the palm of his left, the guard strolled down to where Lassiter was working. He did it slowly.

  Lassiter was aware of the guard’s heavy breathing, of the light slapping sound of the cane. Now the turnkey’s foul breath was thickened with liver and onions. Lassiter tried to keep the jackplane level, but after five or six more shoves, with Burgess watching, the rough blade dug in hard and tore the wood.

  The cane cracked across Lassiter s shoulders and he spun around with the heavy plane in his hands. Burgess had the cane raised above his shoulder, ready to smash Lassiter across the head. Lassiter was weak and sweating, and he caught himself.

  Burgess wanted him to try something. “Lay down that plane, you Yank bastard,” he roared.

  Lassiter tightened his grip on the plane. He knew the guard would hit him no matter what he did.

  “All right, you asked for it,” Burgess roared.

  The Irishman stood up straight, and there was more than a little madness in the pale-blue eyes. He dropped his plane hard on the workbench. Furious, Burgess looked at him. McCain smiled like a hungry wolf. The smile didn’t go with the soft tone of voice he used.

  “With all respect, Mr. Burgess,” he said. “You’ve got to make allowances for the Yank. He’s a new man here and kind of nervous by the looks of him. I’m sure he meant no harm.”

  “Silence!” the guard yelled, and he was so angry it was more like a scream. For the moment he had forgotten about Lassiter. There was no noise in the shop.

  “You!” Burgess yelled, cracking the cane on the workbench. “You, McCain! Did you speak to me? Did I hear you speak to me without permission?”

  The thick cane was made of pickled ash. With every word Burgess cracked it on the workbench. It bent and bounced without breaking.

  “Did you? Did you?” Burgess roared.

  “Guilty as charged, sir,” the Irishman agreed. “It wasn’t my place to do that, sir. I know that now, sir. I hope you won’t hold it against me, sir.”

  Lassiter had never seen a man look less sorry for what he had done. The clenched-teeth smile on the Irishman’s face reminded him of more than one killer he had known.

  Quick for his size, Burgess swung the cane across the bench and cracked the Irishman on the side of the head. Because he had to reach to do it there was no real force in the blow. McCain was long and thin, but it didn’t move him.

  The silence in the shop made the guard uneasy. His eyes darted to Lassiter, standing beside him, the heavy plane still in his hands. Lassiter was ready to crush his skull with the plane if Burgess tried to use the stick on him.

  McCain
looked at Lassiter. “I deserved that, Mr. Burgess,” he said. The dangerous smile was still fixed in place.

  Burgess looked at Lassiter, then at McCain. Slowly, he lowered the cane. He tried patting the end of it against his hand. Finally, he brought it down by his side. Anger still puffed him up, but there was something like fear in his eyes. He didn’t know Lassiter, so it had to be the Irishman he feared. Lassiter no longer had any doubts that McCain was a dangerous man.

  “You don’t fool me, McCain,” Burgess said, not half as confident as he sounded. There was tension in his big body, because the cane swung stiffly by his side as he moved away from the workbench. He remembered that he had the other prisoners to shout at.

  “Did I tell you to stop?” he roared.

  The noise started again. Burgess, with his back turned, moved one step at a time toward the platform. Lassiter picked up another board and screwed it into the bench vice. The side of the Irishman’s face was beginning to swell. He didn’t even rub it. Lassiter started to shove the plane.

  Before Burgess got to the platform, he turned around. The cane swung up above his head, threatening nothing in particular. “You don’t fool me, you Irish bastard,” he roared. With the sawing and hammering and planing, he had to roar like a madman to make himself heard. Purple mixed with the red in his meaty face, and his dull eyes bulged. “Just watch it is all,” he shouted. “Next time you sons of bitches ...”

  The noise killed the rest of the threat.

  Planing steadily again, his head bent, speaking only to himself, the Irishman said, “Such a violent man is Mr. Burgess. It’s sure to bring him to an early grave.”

  Once again Lassiter was reminded of certain killers he’d known, and he wouldn’t have bet a nickel that Mr. Burgess would live long enough to draw his pension.

  They worked until six o’clock. It got dark long before that, and before it did another guard came into the wagon shop and lit the large oil lamps hanging by chains from the ceiling. The guard who lit the lamps took over from Burgess. After Burgess left, the new guard told them to down tools, to line up as ordered, to dress off, to mark time in position. The new guard was young and not much interested in his work. There was no energy in the “Left, Right! Left, Right!” he threw at them.