Not a pretty song; nor did it make cheerful those guards who passed near Tower Number Three while making the night rounds. But Asa loved that song.
IT WAS while the wall was being extended another two hundred feet to make room within the inclosure for a new cell house that Asa shot the “lifer,” Malcolm Hulsey.
The end wall, extending from Tower Number Three to Tower Number Four, had been torn down and the stones moved two hundred feet farther south to be used on the new wall. A temporary barbed-wire fence had been erected about the area in which the convicts worked on the new wall. Extra armed guards were stationed at intervals of fifty feet outside the inclosure to guard the working convicts.
Malcolm Hulsey had successfully feigned illness one day and was allowed to remain in his cell. Cell house guards had seen him lying in his bunk, only the top of his head showing above the blankets. At lock-up time the cell house guards making the count, saw a foot protruding from under the blankets in Hulsey’s bunk and what they believed to be the top of his head showing at the head of the bed.
At ten-fifteen that night the eagle-eyed Asa Shores, on Tower Number Three, saw a dark figure slip under the lower wire of the temporary fence and run. Asa fired once and saw the man fall.
Then Asa, to comply with the prison rules, yelled “halt!” The command, of course, was needless, Hulsey having halted abruptly when a thirty-thirty rifle ball plowed through his shoulder.
After the convict had been carried to the hospital, his cell was opened by the curious guards. A cleverly carved wooden foot protruded from under the blankets at the foot of the bed, several bags of old clothing reposed under the blankets and a thatch of black horse-hair showed at the head of the bed.
Before Hulsey left the hospital the new wall was completed. Tower Number Four, across from Tower Number Three, had been torn down and a new Tower Number Four built on the new corner of the wall, two hundred feet farther south. On the other corner, across from New Tower Number Four, was New Tower Number Three. Old Tower Number Three was left standing until further orders. Asa Shores remained on the graveyard shift on Old Tower Number Three.
While off duty one day Asa, prowling about inside the walls, met Malcolm Hulsey. The “lifer” was still a bit pale and weak from the gunshot wound.