The Land of Frozen Suns: A Novel

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

And while we ate a trooper made the round of the cells, giving each tumbled heap of quilts a tentative shake, peering into the half-dark corners. That also was part of the routine, perfunctory, as a general thing, but occasionally developing into keen-eyed search. It was the rule to confiscate tobacco or any small articles a prisoner might manage to smuggle in, if he failed of its concealment.

But the faint traces of Barreau’s floor-cutting escaped his eye, and the tobacco was in our pockets. The knife and saw Barreau had slipped within his boot-leg. Personal search was the one thing we had to fear. And it passed us by. The guards—four of them during the meal hour—contented themselves with routine inspection, and when the table was swept clean of food we were herded back to our cells. For once I was glad to be locked up; knowing that though dark would bring a trooper past our cell every half hour, to peer in on us through the barred opening, there was little chance of his unlocking the door.

We lay on our bunks, silent, smoking a cigarette when the guard was safe in front. The smell of tobacco smoke could not betray our possession of it, for the guardhouse reeked with the troopers’ pipes. We had only to conceal the actual material.

Thus eight o’clock came, and brought with it a change of guard. Blackie no longer sat in front with his feet cocked up on a chair, or taking turns with his fellows at peering through cell doors. Nine passed—by the guardhouse clock—and ten dragged by at last. On the stroke of the hour a guard tramped past our cell, on to the others, and back to his seat in front. When he was settled Barreau slid lightly from his bunk. The short pieces of flooring he pried from the hole in the floor. Then he reached a hand to me and shook mine in a grip that almost bruised.

“Good-bye, Bob,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you in St. Louis next year, unless my star sets. And I will have a pretty story for your ears, then. Give me an hour, if you can. So-long.”

His feet were in the opening as he spoke, and a second later the black square of it was yawning emptily. I put the planks over the hole, and got me back to my bunk. I was glad to see him go, and yet, knowing that he would come back no more save in irons, I missed him. I felt utterly alone and forsaken, lying there simulating sleep—with every nerve in my body on tip-toe.

It was a rule of the guardhouse that a prisoner must lie with his feet to the door, so that his head could be seen by the passing guard. Just opposite our door a lamp was bracketed on the wall. What light it gave shone through the bars directly on our faces while we slept. Rules or no rules, a man would shade his face with his arm or a corner of the quilt, when the lamp-glare struck in his eyes. And Barreau, perhaps with that very emergency in mind, had slept with his hat pulled over his face. None of the guards had voiced objection. They could see him easily enough. Now, this very practice made it possible for him to fool them with a trick that is as old as prison-breaking itself. Skillfully he had arranged the covers to give the outline of a body, and his hat he left tilted over the place where his head had rested. The simplicity of the thing, I dare say, is what made it a success. At least it fulfilled its purpose that night.

Here a prisoner snored, and there another turned on his bunk with faint scrapings against the wall. Out in front the Policemen conversed in lowered tones. I could hear every sound in the building, it seemed; the movements of sleeping men, the scurrying of a rat, the crackle of a match when one of the guards lit his pipe. But I did not hear that for which my ears were strained, and I was thankful.

Twice a trooper made the round, seeing nothing amiss—although I imagined the thump of my heart echoed into the corridor when he looked in on me and let his glance travel over the place where Slowfoot George should have been—but was not.

It was nearing the time for his return, and I sat up, nerving myself to give the alarm. For to clear me of complicity and the penalty thereof, Barreau had instructed me to apprise them after an hour. I was to tell them that he was armed, and so compelled me to keep silent while he worked. And I was to say that he had but gone. There would be nothing but his foot-prints, and by those they could not reckon the time of his flight.