It looked like a hopeless job at the beginning, barred and triple barred as the cell window was. There were two sets of inner iron bars in trellis work, and attached to the set nearest to the window sash by four iron rods in sockets was yet an outer trellis. The only way to get through this network of bars was to cut an opening in the two inner trellises, large enough to admit the passage of our bodies, and sever the inner ends of the four rods supporting the outer trellis. This done, the outside trellis could be pried off, when it would drop in the jail yard. But all this necessitated sawing twenty-seven square inches of iron—a tremendous undertaking, as can be readily understood. However, I was determined to succeed, even to the surmounting of greater difficulties.
I decided that the sawing must be done in the daytime, else the rasping of the saw would attract the attention of some one in the jail. Besides, Sheriff Aldrich, who had succeeded Jailer Wilder after Shinburn’s escape, slept in an apartment on the floor below, and not any too far away for our purpose. By daylight we could work fairly well by dodging people passing in front of the jail and those who occasionally came in the corridor leading to the cell. From the inside was where we must expect the most interference. Believing that I could best throw off suspicion, in case any one came near while we were busy, I had Woods do the sawing. The points most pregnable were pointed out, and we began. At once it became a most difficult and tedious job. The weather was frigid, and when we weren’t shivering with apprehension lest we be discovered, we were being badly nipped by Jack Frost. Very frequently people passed in the road, or Jailer Aldrich came in the corridor, or there was danger of our work attracting the attention of some one of the prisoners below. There were days when we accomplished scarcely anything, owing to the almost incessant interference; while on other days we made hopeful advancement. Finally, after two weeks of work and worry, we had cut, all but the shreds, an aperture in the inner trellises, sufficiently large, we believed, through which we could crawl. The shreds we would cut the afternoon before we made the exit. The four bars holding the outside trellis had been similarly treated. Then, having been provided with what we needed to make the journey, we set the following midnight as the hour for our surreptitious exit. The next evening, after supper, we finished the opening in the bars and prepared for the vital moment. We had a stout piece of wood in the cell to use as a lever for prying off the outside trellis, and at midnight, all being ready, I proceeded. Despite my greatest effort, the lever would not move the trellis, and when Woods added his weight, there was no better success. I was shocked and disappointed. It seemed that we had not sawed near enough to the severing point, so far as the four rods supporting the outer trellis were concerned. I had feared that the thing would fall off before we were ready and spoil our escape. The stick seemed too short to furnish the leverage needed. I looked about for something better, feeling satisfied I wouldn’t find it in the cell. Suddenly it flashed across me that I could use a part of the iron bedstead, and I cut off one of its legs, and we went at the work again like madmen, as time was fast leaving us in a sore predicament. Even the new lever didn’t avail us anything further than to show me that we had made the opening in the inner trellises too small. We were confronting a critical situation indeed.
It would soon be daylight, and the jailer would call with our morning meal; and if the aperture in the grating was not filled, we could not expect anything but discovery.
“What can we do, White?” asked young Woods, pale-faced. It was bad enough, he thought, to be in jail for burglary without facing a charge of attempting to escape from it.
I recalled we had cosmetic. Perhaps the iron-work could be kept in place with it until we could get something better. I put the patches of grating back in their places and filled the crevices with the cosmetic. It didn’t seem to me they would stay in. Any vibration, I thought, might tumble them out.
“It’s the best we can do, Woods,” I said, not cheerfully; “and as to that lame bed, we’ll have to be mighty careful it doesn’t betray us. We’ll see that it is carefully made,—no one can do that job so well this morning as one of us.”
“I’ll be the chambermaid,” Woods said, with a laugh that had a false ring in it.
“By cracky, how my back hurts!” I said, with a groan, as I doubled forward and hobbled about the cell. “I never had such a peculiar pain in my life.”
“Must have caught it from the open window,” suggested the young man. “Hope it won’t make you sick. Better get a porous plaster from Aldrich. Mother allers uses ’em.”
“The ordinary kind won’t cure my pain, lad,” I answered, with a laugh and straightening up; “I’ve got to have some pitch—the real pine. Nothing else will relieve me.”