第50章 CHAPTER XIV(1)

When, at the conclusion of my first ten days' term in the jacket, Iwas brought back to consciousness by Doctor Jackson's thumb pressing open an eyelid, I opened both eyes and smiled up into the face of Warden Atherton.

"Too cussed to live and too mean to die," was his comment.

"The ten days are up, Warden," I whispered.

"Well, we're going to unlace you," he growled.

"It is not that," I said. "You observed my smile. You remember we had a little wager. Don't bother to unlace me first. Just give the Bull Durham and cigarette papers to Morrell and Oppenheimer. And for full measure here's another smile.""Oh, I know your kind, Standing," the Warden lectured. "But it won't get you anything. If I don't break you, you'll break all strait-jacket records.""He's broken them already," Doctor Jackson said. "Who ever heard of a man smiling after ten days of it?""Well and bluff," Warden Atherton answered. "Unlace him, Hutchins.""Why such haste?" I queried, in a whisper, of course, for so low had life ebbed in me that it required all the little strength Ipossessed and all the will of me to be able to whisper even. "Why such haste? I don't have to catch a train, and I am so confounded comfortable as I am that I prefer not to be disturbed."But unlace me they did, rolling me out of the fetid jacket and upon the floor, an inert, helpless thing.

"No wonder he was comfortable," said Captain Jamie. "He didn't feel anything. He's paralysed.""Paralysed your grandmother," sneered the Warden. "Get him up on his feat and you'll see him stand."Hutchins and the doctor dragged me to my feet.

"Now let go!" the Warden commanded.

Not all at once could life return into the body that had been practically dead for ten days, and as a result, with no power as yet over my flesh, I gave at the knees, crumpled, pitched sidewise, and gashed my forehead against the wall.

"You see," said Captain Jamie.

"Good acting," retorted the Warden. "That man's got nerve to do anything.""You're right, Warden," I whispered from the floor. "I did it on purpose. It was a stage fall. Lift me up again, and I'll repeat it. I promise you lots of fun."I shall not dwell upon the agony of returning circulation. It was to become an old story with me, and it bore its share in cutting the lines in my face that I shall carry to the scaffold.

When they finally left me I lay for the rest of the day stupid and half-comatose. There is such a thing as anaesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne. And I have known that anaesthesia.

By evening I was able to crawl about my cell, but not yet could Istand up. I drank much water, and cleansed myself as well as Icould; but not until next day could I bring myself to eat, and then only by deliberate force of my will.

The program me, as given me by Warden Atherton, was that I was to rest up and recuperate for a few days, and then, if in the meantime I had not confessed to the hiding-place of the dynamite, I should be given another ten days in the jacket.

"Sorry to cause you so much trouble, Warden," I had said in reply.

"It's a pity I don't die in the jacket and so put you out of your misery."At this time I doubt that I weighed an ounce over ninety pounds.

Yet, two years before, when the doors of San Quentin first closed on me, I had weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds. It seems incredible that there was another ounce I could part with and still live. Yet in the months that followed, ounce by ounce I was reduced until I know I must have weighed nearer eighty than ninety pounds.

I do know, after I managed my escape from solitary and struck the guard Thurston on the nose, that before they took me to San Rafael for trial, while I was being cleaned and shaved I weighed eighty-nine pounds.

There are those who wonder how men grow hard. Warden Atherton was a hard man. He made me hard, and my very hardness reacted on him and made him harder. And yet he never succeeded in killing me. It required the state law of California, a hanging judge, and an unpardoning governor to send me to the scaffold for striking a prison guard with my fist. I shall always contend that that guard had a nose most easily bleedable. I was a bat-eyed, tottery skeleton at the time. I sometimes wonder if his nose really did bleed. Of course he swore it did, on the witness stand. But I have known prison guards take oath to worse perjuries than that.

Ed Morrell was eager to know if I had succeeded with the experiment;but when he attempted to talk with me he was shut up by Smith, the guard who happened to be on duty in solitary.

"That's all right, Ed," I rapped to him. "You and Jake keep quiet, and I'll tell you about it. Smith can't prevent you from listening, and he can't prevent me from talking. They have done their worst, and I am still here.""Cut that out, Standing!" Smith bellowed at me from the corridor on which all the cells opened.

Smith was a peculiarly saturnine individual, by far the most cruel and vindictive of our guards. We used to canvass whether his wife bullied him or whether he had chronic indigestion.

I continued rapping with my knuckles, and he came to the wicket to glare in at me.

"I told you to out that out," he snarled.

"Sorry," I said suavely. "But I have a sort of premonition that Ishall go right on rapping. And--er--excuse me for asking a personal question--what are you going to do about it?""I'll--" he began explosively, proving, by his inability to conclude the remark, that he thought in henids.

"Yes?" I encouraged. "Just what, pray?"

"I'll have the Warden here," he said lamely.

"Do, please. A most charming gentleman, to be sure. A shining example of the refining influences that are creeping into our prisons. Bring him to me at once. I wish to report you to him.""Me?"

"Yes, just precisely you," I continued. "You persist, in a rude and boorish manner, in interrupting my conversation with the other guests in this hostelry."And Warden Atherton came. The door was unlocked, and he blustered into my cell. But oh, I was so safe! He had done his worst. I was beyond his power.

"I'll shut off your grub," he threatened.