The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape (3 page)

Seated beside the hard-faced deputy, wrenched with fits of coughing, avoiding the deputy's scowl, Lee felt so
miserable he wondered if he'd make it to the prison hospital before he gave out. The day seemed endless until they deplaned at Kansas City, Lee stumbling down the metal stairs in his leg chains, crossing the wide strip of tarmac to the small terminal. He was allowed to use the men's room, still chained to the deputy, then was ushered into the backseat of another black touring car driven by another deputy marshal who had joined them there. Heading south for Missouri beneath heavy gray clouds, the car had sped through miles of wheat fields stretching away flat as the sea. Trying to ignore the belly chain that dug into his backbone, he'd still had no sense of the ghost cat. He'd felt used up, empty, cold, and aching tired.

His companions hadn't talked much. Both were silent, sour-faced men filled with the power of their own authority, and that had been fine with Lee. He didn't like small talk and he didn't have a damned thing to say to a deputy marshal. As night gathered, the clouds thickened; soon they raced through blackness. The deputies kept the interior of the car dimly lit by the overhead so they could watch him. But soon, far away across the wheat fields, a brighter light had appeared. Tiny at first, but slowly drawing nearer until it turned into an island of lights thrusting bright above the black wheat fields. As Lee took in his first sight of Springfield, suddenly the ghost cat returned. Lee sensed the yellow tom and felt his warmth stretched out across his shoulder, felt the tremble of Misto's silent purr, and Lee's interest in life revived.

“Times will be better at Springfield,” the tomcat whispered so softly the two men couldn't hear. The cat didn't say there would be bad times, too, but Lee knew that. That's what life was about. As long as Misto was near, he knew they would prevail. In the dim car, Lee's desolation dwindled away and he had to smile. The ghost cat had never meant to leave him.

“What are
you
grinning about?” the deputy snapped, scowling at Lee.

“Hoping they'll give me some supper,” Lee said. “I could sure use it, that sandwich at lunch didn't go far.”

The deputy just looked at him. What did he care that Lee had barely gotten down a ham sandwich while the deputies wolfed two hamburgers each. No one had asked if he wanted anything more.

The sky was full dark when they drew up to the massive federal prison, its security lights pushing back the night to reveal well-lit buildings and a manicured lawn. Lee could see a guard tower rising up, probably with rifles trained on the approaching car. All he could think about was a hot meal and a warm bed. Even with Misto near, it had been a long day, a long trip crowded by the damned deputy.

Within minutes of pulling up before the brightly lit prison Lee, still cuffed to his surly companion, was ushered up the steps into the vast, five-story main building. He was searched, all his personal possessions taken from him except the small framed photograph of his little sister. Pictures were the only item the men were allowed to keep. Stripped of his clothes, he luxuriated in the hot shower, getting warm for the first time all day, feeling his muscles ease.

He dressed in the clean prison clothes he was issued, shorts and socks, a blue shirt and a blue jumper with white pinstripes. He was allowed to wear his own boots. A trustee had led him to the dining room, where he'd joined the last dinner shift. The big bowl of hot beef stew tasted mighty good, and there was fresh, homemade bread, and coffee and apple pie. He'd left the table feeling good, was escorted to his quarters, which were not a cell, as he'd expected, but a small hospital room. It was larger than any single cell he'd ever occupied, and far cleaner, freshly painted pale green, and the battleship-gray linoleum looked newly scrubbed. A decent-looking single bed stood in one corner, made up with real sheets and three rough, heavy blankets. There was even a small dresser for his clothes, and a real window, with glass
outside the bars. This wasn't a prison, it was a hotel. He'd looked at the young, wide-shouldered guard. “How long will I stay here before I'm moved to a cell?”

“No cells for hospital inmates, Fontana. The prison-camp men, they're in a dorm, and some in a cellblock, in another building. They're on loan, mostly. Trusties from other facilities. They do the heavy work of the plant, maintenance, heavy kitchen work.”

The young, freckle-faced guard had grinned at Lee's look. “Your job, at Springfield, is to get well. You'll like the stay,” the guard said, smiling. “Your door isn't locked at night, but there's a guard outside, always on duty. And where would you go if you walked out? In your condition, you want to wade through a hundred miles of wheat fields?”

Lee laughed. This was a whole new game, a new kind of incarceration, and it was pretty nice. When at last he was alone he stripped, folded his clothes and laid them on the dresser. He crawled under the heavy blankets and lay floating in the warm comfort of the simple prison bed. He felt a little edgy at sleeping with an unlocked door, wondering what kind of guys might be roaming the halls, but he was too tired to think much about it. He might as well enjoy the freedom, he'd be out of here in a month or so, as soon as he was well enough. Would be back in California digging up the money and heading for Mexico, where the hot sun could bake away the last of the sickness, could ease comfort into his tired bones.

He'd find a small adobe cottage in one of the fishing villages along the Baja coast, he'd learn to speak enough Spanish to get by, he'd get to know the folks around him. If a Mexican liked you, he'd hide you. If he didn't, you were done for. In just a few months from now he'd have his own home, have all the good food, all the chilies and tortillas he'd ever wanted, all the clams he could dig from the shore. It wouldn't be hard to find a woman to cook for him, Lee thought, to keep his house and maybe warm his bed.

Smiling, Lee was nearly asleep when a fit of coughing jarred him awake again. He sat up, painfully sucking air, angered at the betrayal of his weakening body. He was so deep down tired that for one panicked moment he wondered if he would live long enough to retrieve the stolen money and luxuriate, for even a short time, in the hot, bright embrace of that Mexican village.

But then as he'd eased down into sleep once more he'd felt the ghost cat leap on the bed, heavy and purring. With the small spirit curled warm beside him, Lee had known he'd make it to Mexico. Had known for sure that no matter what lay ahead until he got back to the desert, the ghost cat would be with him. That his partner would stay close, traveling beside him.

M
ISTO, WAITING ON
the roof for his prisonmate to leave the doctor's office, was half asleep when he sensed Lee's departure. He didn't see Lee emerge from the building but he could hear his footsteps. The old convict had moved down the inner stairs into one of the subterranean passages that connected most of the buildings. His steady pace echoed along the tunnel from the hospital to the building that held the dining room, the kitchen, the big auditorium, and the prison library.

Lee had found, early on, that not only was the library a comfortable retreat but that librarian Nancy Trousdale, with her bobbed gray hair and laughing brown eyes, was nice to be around. She knew her collection, and the shelves held a surprising number of nonfiction books for inmates with a variety of interests, whether from their own professional backgrounds or prisoners planning to branch out into new endeavors. On Lee's first visit Nancy had guided him to exactly the history section he wanted. She made Lee feel at home as he pursued information about the old train robbers of the last century, looking for mention of his grandpappy.
She had helped him find a surprising number of volumes about Russell Dobbs's time, many with a wealth of information on Russell himself. There were clear descriptions of Russell's train robberies plus a number of tall tales about the old robber and the devil, stories that Lee knew were more than fiction.

As the ghost cat prowled the library, invisible to Nancy and to the inmates reading at the various tables, Lee moved to the desk to return four books. Nancy looked up at him, smiling as she retrieved three new books that she'd saved for him. “You're looking fine, Fontana. Our weather agrees with you?”

“The weather,” Lee said, “the good food—and the good company,” he said, giving her a wink.

“And you're finding what you want about Russell Dobbs?”

“Thanks to you,” Lee said.

“He was a colorful man. You have me reading about him, too. Colorful and bold, a good man to have on
your
side,” she said shyly. “According to the folktales about him, as well as his history, he was bold enough to face up to true evil.”

They exchanged the friendly look of a shared interest; Lee checked out his books, gave her a parting smile, and headed back to his room. Misto followed and passed Lee, a breath of warm wind brushing Lee's face. The tomcat was crouched on the windowsill when Lee came in, but not until Lee shut the door did the cat materialize, first his furry yellow tail lashing against the barred pane, his whiskers curved in a sly smile, then the rest of him.

Lee laid his books on the small night table and stretched out on the bed. As he doubled the pillow behind him and selected a heavy volume, the cat leaped to the blanket and settled against his knee. Lee checked the index, found the sections on Dobbs, and marked them with some torn slips of paper that he kept on the nightstand. He knew well enough the more spectacular events of his grandpappy's history, the tales that had been told over campfires or were in the local
papers. What he was looking for were the periods in Russell's life that, whenever he'd asked questions of his mother or Pa, they would ignore and abruptly change the subject to something more “respectable.” Lee had wanted, even as a child, to understand better the long-standing curse on Russell. He hadn't known, then, that this curse would spill over to harass him as well.

He'd been twelve years old that morning on their South Dakota ranch when he stood beside his grandpappy watching Satan's shadow move across the open prairie.

No figure walked there, only the tall, drifting shadow where there should be no blemish against the pale ground and cloudless sky. The haunt had frightened Russell's horse so he reared back where he was tied and broke his reins, and had made the steers in the pasture wheel away running. The shadow had frightened Lee's grandpappy in a way Lee would never have guessed. It was the only time ever that he'd seen Russell Dobbs show fear

But Russell was his idol. Lee had put aside his grandpappy's unease, had put aside the strangeness of that day. As Lee grew older he'd patterned his life on that of Russell Dobbs. Before he was twenty-one, most often working alone, he had taken down some nice hauls of cash—and spent most of the money as fast as he stole it, on women, cards, and whiskey.

Only when the old steam trains began to vanish, replaced by diesels too fast for any horseman, did Russell change his methods. He took on a few partners and moved into the new era. But Lee didn't like the diesels; he stuck to the few steam trains remaining, on the smaller lines. He had stayed away from the large and vicious train gangs that Russell sometimes confronted. Detective Pinkerton had long ago become a whole army of Pinkertons, and for a long while Russell avoided them, too, as he avoided the shadow that hounded him.

The cat looked down from the dresser at Lee so deeply lost in tales of the past century, then nosed with curiosity at
the picture of Lee's little sister that Lee had placed beside the lamp, the tintype of Mae taken some sixty years ago, the picture that could easily be of Misto's own Sammie.

Sometimes in Misto's spirit life distant events came to him clearly; other times they remained uncertain, endlessly frustrating. Lee knew nothing of Sammie Blake, but Misto felt clearly that the child and the old man would meet.

The ghost cat lost in speculation, and Lee lost in the past, were jerked back to the present when the noon whistle blasted.

Carefully closing the book, Lee rose, washed his hands and face, and headed out to the mess hall. Misto, leaping on the bed, knowing Lee would return to his room directly after lunch for the noon count, pawed out a warm nest among the covers and snuggled down, purring. A count was taken every morning, another after lunch, a third count before supper. Lee had no work detail at Springfield. It still amused Lee and amused Misto that the prison work, the gardening and kitchen, the farm work, the cleaning and maintenance was handled by trusties from other prisons. Men assigned from Leavenworth, from El Reno, or from the Atlanta Pen, first offenders chosen as the most responsible among their prison populations.

Once Lee had left for lunch, closing the door behind him, the cat's thoughts turned back to Georgia where the murder trial of Sammie's daddy was about to begin. The tomcat was well aware of Morgan Blake's arrest. He knew Morgan hadn't committed the murder he was charged with, he had suffered with Sammie when her daddy was jailed. He didn't doubt this trial would herald a painful time in the lives of the Blake family; he didn't like to think what life would be like if Morgan was found guilty and sent to federal prison on a life sentence. Bank robbery and murder weren't looked upon kindly in rural Georgia. Morgan was just a young man, a clean-living, hardworking man who did not deserve the
bad luck, the cold and deliberate evil that now surrounded him and his family.

The ghost cat, vanishing and reappearing as he pleased, visited Sammie often. He would snuggle into her dreams at night and into her arms to comfort her. Though he remained unseen, Sammie stroked and cuddled him, put out a finger to feel his soft paw or gently scratched his ragged ears the way she'd done when he was alive. She didn't question that he was a ghost, she loved and needed him. But when, deep in the night, Sammie slept soundly, at peace again, Misto would return to Lee.