Sulky, morose, sluggish as a saurian, Dutch lay in his cell and waited for deliverance. The weeks passed. The Dodsons sent him word to say nothing, that when the time came they would set him free.
He suspected them as he suspected everybody. If they failed him he meant to betray them. But the time had not come for that yet.
As he grew weary of confinement his restlessness found vent in a plan of escape. From his boot he worked the tin piece used as a stiffener for the leg. With this as a tool and a piece of a broken bed slat as material he began to shape a wooden pistol. He worked only when he knew he would be alone. The shavings that came in thin slivers from the pine he hid in the mattress upon which he slept. When the weapon was finished he rubbed it with lamp black till it took in a measure the colour of steel.
It was in the man’s temperament to be patient as an Apache when he found it to his advantage. He waited for his chance and found it when the jailer made his round one evening to see that all was secure.
The moonlight was shining through the barred window on the bed in checkered squares of light. Dutch was pacing up and down his cell when the guard appeared. He moved forward to the door.
“Gimme a chew, Hank,” he said ingratiatingly.
The killer was a sullen and vindictive prisoner. The jailer had tried to placate him, for now that Scot McClintock was getting better it would be only a question of time till Dutch would again be loose on the world.
“Sure, Sam.”
The jailer dived into his right hip pocket, found a plug of tobacco, and handed it through the grating to his prisoner.
Dutch caught the man’s wrist and twisted it down against the iron bar of the lattice. Simultaneously a pistol barrel gleamed through the opening.