“Just then I happened to look down by the stove and seen the coal pail, and there was the poker in the pail. The poker was long and heavy. Of course I hadn’t ever thought anything about the poker, but I looked down there and seen it, and she kept yellin’ right at me, ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ I said: ‘Shut up your mouth, damn you, or I will kill you!’ But she just yelled back, ‘Why don’t you do it! Kill me! Kill me! You miserable dirty coward! Kill me!’ Then I looked down at the poker and I just reached and grabbed it, and swung back as hard as ever I could.
“Her face was kind of turned up toward me. I can see it now just as plain—I s’pose I’ll see it when I’m standin’ up there with the black cap over my eyes. She just leaned back and looked up as I swung my arm and she said: ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ And I brought it down just as hard as ever I could right over her forehead,—and she fell down on the floor.”
V
“You might go and talk to the guard a little bit, I’ll be all right in a few minutes. You know this is the first time I’ve ever told it, and I guss I’m a bit worked up.”
Hank got up, without looking at Jim’s face. His own was white as a corpse. He moved over to the little iron door and spoke to the guard.
“Could you give me a drink of water—or could you make it whiskey? I’m sure that would be better for Jim.”
The guard passed him a flask, and told him to just keep it. Hank took a drink himself and handed it to Jim.
“Well, I guess ‘twould do me good. I believe if I was out of here I wouldn’t never take any more, but I don’t see any use stoppin’ now; anyhow I’ll need a lot of it in the mornin’. Just ask the guard if any word has come for me. I s’pose he’d told me, though, if it had.” Jim held the bottle to his mouth long enough to drink nearly half of what was left.
Hank looked out at the silent corridors. Over in the court he could still hear the hammer and the voices of the workmen; from the upper tiers, the wild shriek of an insane man called on someone to save him from an imaginary foe. A solitary carriage rolled along the pavement and the voices of two or three men singing came up from the street below. A faint breath from the lake just stirred the heavy prison smell that seemed dense enough to be felt. The guard asked him how he was managing to pass the night. Hank answered that it was going much faster than he had thought.