CHAPTER IV
ON THE TRAIL
AS THEY entered the place Billy, who was ahead, sought a
table; but as he was about to hang up his cap and seat
himself Bridge touched his elbow.
"Let's go to the washroom and clean up a bit," he said, in
a voice that might be heard by those nearest.
"Why, we just washed before we left our room," expostulated Billy.
"Shut up and follow me," Bridge whispered into his ear.
Immediately Billy was all suspicion. His hand flew to the
pocket in which the gun of the deputy sheriff still rested. They
would never take him alive, of that Billy was positive. He
wouldn't go back to life imprisonment, not after he had tasted
the sweet freedom of the wide spaces--such a freedom as the
trammeled city cannot offer.
Bridge saw the movement.
"Cut it," he whispered, "and follow me, as I tell you. I just
saw a Chicago dick across the street. He may not have seen
you, but it looked almighty like it. He'll be down here in
about two seconds now. Come on--we'll beat it through the
rear--I know the way."
Billy Byrne heaved a great sigh of relief. Suddenly he was
almost reconciled to the thought of capture, for in the instant
he had realized that it had not been so much his freedom that
he had dreaded to lose as his faith in the companion in whom he
had believed.
Without sign of haste the two walked the length of the
room and disappeared through the doorway leading into the
washroom. Before them was a window opening upon a squalid
back yard. The building stood upon a hillside, so that while
the entrance to the eating-place was below the level of the
street in front, its rear was flush with the ground.
Bridge motioned Billy to climb through the window while
he shot the bolt upon the inside of the door leading back into
the restaurant. A moment later he followed the fugitive, and
then took the lead.
Down narrow, dirty alleys, and through litter-piled back
yards he made his way, while Billy followed at his heels. Dusk
was gathering, and before they had gone far darkness came.
They neither paused nor spoke until they had left the
business portion of the city behind and were well out of the
zone of bright lights. Bridge was the first to break the silence.
"I suppose you wonder how I knew," he said.
"No," replied Billy. "I seen that clipping you got in your
pocket--it fell out on the floor when you took your coat off
in the room this afternoon to go and wash."
"Oh," said Bridge, "I see. Well, as far as I'm concerned
that's the end of it--we won't mention it again, old man. I
don't need to tell you that I'm for you."
"No, not after tonight," Billy assured him.
They went on again for some little time without speaking,
then Billy said:
"I got two things to tell you. The first is that after I seen
that newspaper article in your clothes I thought you was
figurin' on double-crossin' me an' claimin' the five hun. I
ought to of known better. The other is that I didn't kill
Schneider. I wasn't near his place that night--an' that's straight."
"I'm glad you told me both," said Bridge. "I think we'll
understand each other better after this--we're each runnin'
away from something. We'll run together, eh?" and he extended his
hand. "In flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt, here, pal,
is my calloused hand!" he quoted, laughing.
Billy took the other's hand. He noticed that Bridge hadn't
said what HE was running away from. Billy wondered; but
asked no questions.
South they went after they had left the city behind, out into
the sweet and silent darkness of the country. During the night
they crossed the line into Kansas, and morning found them in
a beautiful, hilly country to which all thoughts of cities, crime,
and police seemed so utterly foreign that Billy could scarce
believe that only a few hours before a Chicago detective had
been less than a hundred feet from him.
The new sun burst upon them as they topped a grassy hill.
The dew-bespangled blades scintillated beneath the gorgeous
rays which would presently sweep them away again into the
nothingness from which they had sprung.
Bridge halted and stretched himself. He threw his head back
and let the warm sun beat down upon his bronzed face.
There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I,
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.
And then he stood for minutes drinking in deep breaths of
the pure, sweet air of the new day. Beside him, a head taller,
savagely strong, stood Billy Byrne, his broad shoulders
squared, his great chest expanding as he inhaled.
"It's great, ain't it?" he said, at last. "I never knew the
country was like this, an' I don't know that I ever would have
known it if it hadn't been for those poet guys you're always
spouting.
"I always had an idea they was sissy fellows," he went on;
"but a guy can't be a sissy an' think the thoughts they musta
thought to write stuff that sends the blood chasin' through a
feller like he'd had a drink on an empty stomach.
"I used to think everybody was a sissy who wasn't a tough
guy. I was a tough guy all right, an' I was mighty proud of it.
I ain't any more an' haven't been for a long time; but before I
took a tumble to myself I'd have hated you, Bridge. I'd a-hated
your fine talk, an' your poetry, an' the thing about you
that makes you hate to touch a guy for a hand-out.
"I'd a-hated myself if I'd thought that I could ever talk
mushy like I am now. Gee, Bridge, but I was the limit! A
girl--a nice girl--called me a mucker once, an' a coward. I
was both; but I had the reputation of bein' the toughest guy
on the West Side, an' I thought I was a man. I nearly poked
her face for her--think of it, Bridge! I nearly did; but something
stopped me--something held my hand from it, an' lately
I've liked to think that maybe what stopped me was something
in me that had always been there--something decent
that was really a part of me. I hate to think that I was such a
beast at heart as I acted like all my life up to that minute. I
began to change then. It was mighty slow, an' I'm still a
roughneck; but I'm gettin' on. She helped me most, of course,
an' now you're helpin' me a lot, too--you an' your poetry
stuff. If some dick don't get me I may get to be a human
bein' before I die."
Bridge laughed.
"It IS odd," he said, "how our viewpoints change with
changed environment and the passing of the years. Time was,
Billy, when I'd have hated you as much as you would have
hated me. I don't know that I should have said hate, for that
is not exactly the word. It was more contempt that I felt for
men whom I considered as not belonging upon that intellectual
or social plane to which I considered I had been born.
"I thought of people who moved outside my limited sphere
as 'the great unwashed.' I pitied them, and I honestly believe
now that in the bottom of my heart I considered them of
different clay than I, and with souls, if they possessed such
things, about on a par with the souls of sheep and cows.
"I couldn't have seen the man in you, Billy, then, any more
than you could have seen the man in me. I have learned much
since then, though I still stick to a part of my original articles
of faith--I do believe that all men are not equal; and I know
that there are a great many more with whom I would not pal
than there are those with whom I would.
"Because one man speaks better English than another, or
has read more and remembers it, only makes him a better
man in that particular respect. I think none the less of you
because you can't quote Browning or Shakespeare--the thing
that counts is that you can appreciate, as I do, Service and
Kipling and Knibbs.
"Now maybe we are both wrong--maybe Knibbs and
Kipling and Service didn't write poetry, and some people will
say as much; but whatever it is it gets you and me in the same
way, and so in this respect we are equals. Which being the
case let's see if we can't rustle some grub, and then find a nice
soft spot whereon to pound our respective ears."
Billy, deciding that he was too sleepy to work for food,
invested half of the capital that was to have furnished the
swell feed the night before in what two bits would purchase
from a generous housewife on a near-by farm, and then,
stretching themselves beneath the shade of a tree sufficiently
far from the road that they might not attract unnecessary
observation, they slept until after noon.
But their precaution failed to serve their purpose entirely. A
little before noon two filthy, bearded knights of the road
clambered laboriously over the fence and headed directly for
the very tree under which Billy and Bridge lay sleeping. In the
minds of the two was the same thought that had induced
Billy Byrne and the poetic Bridge to seek this same secluded
spot.
There was in the stiff shuffle of the men something rather
familiar. We have seen them before--just for a few minutes it
is true; but under circumstances that impressed some of their
characteristics upon us. The very last we saw of them they
were shuffling away in the darkness along a railroad track,
after promising that eventually they would wreak dire vengeance
upon Billy, who had just trounced them.
Now as they came unexpectedly upon the two sleepers they
did not immediately recognize in them the objects of their
recent hate. They just stood looking stupidly down on them,
wondering in what way they might turn their discovery to
their own advantage.
Nothing in the raiment either of Billy or Bridge indicated
that here was any particularly rich field for loot, and, too, the
athletic figure of Byrne would rather have discouraged any
attempt to roll him without first handing him the "k.o.", as
the two would have naively put it.
But as they gazed down upon the features of the sleepers
the eyes of one of the tramps narrowed to two ugly slits while
those of his companion went wide in incredulity and surprise.
"Do youse know dem guys?" asked the first, and without
waiting for a reply he went on: "Dem's de guys dat beat us
up back dere de udder side o' K. C. Do youse get 'em?"
"Sure?" asked the other.
"Sure, I'd know dem in a t'ous'n'. Le's hand 'em a couple
an' beat it," and he stooped to pick up a large stone that lay
near at hand.
"Cut it!" whispered the second tramp. "Youse don't know
dem guys at all. Dey may be de guys dat beats us up; but dat
big stiff dere is more dan dat. He's wanted in Chi, an' dere's
half a t'ou on 'im."
"Who put youse jerry to all dat?" inquired the first tramp,
skeptically.
"I was in de still wit 'im--he croaked some guy. He's a
lifer. On de way to de pen he pushes dis dick off'n de rattler
an' makes his get-away. Dat peter-boy we meets at Quincy
slips me an earful about him. Here's w'ere we draws down de
five hundred if we're cagey."
"Whaddaya mean, cagey?"
"Why we leaves 'em alone an' goes to de nex' farm an' calls
up K. C. an' tips off de dicks, see?"
"Youse don't tink we'll get any o' dat five hun, do youse,
wit de dicks in on it?"
The other scratched his head.
"No," he said, rather dubiously, after a moment's deep
thought; "dey don't nobody get nothin' dat de dicks see first;
but we'll get even with dese blokes, annyway."
"Maybe dey'll pass us a couple bucks," said the other
hopefully. "Dey'd orter do dat much."
Detective Sergeant Flannagan of Headquarters, Chicago,
slouched in a chair in the private office of the chief of
detectives of Kansas City, Missouri. Sergeant Flannagan was
sore. He would have said as much himself. He had been sent
west to identify a suspect whom the Kansas City authorities
had arrested; but had been unable to do so, and had been
preparing to return to his home city when the brilliant aureola
of an unusual piece of excellent fortune had shone upon him
for a moment, and then faded away through the grimy entrance
of a basement eating-place.
He had been walking along the street the previous evening
thinking of nothing in particular; but with eyes and ears alert
as becomes a successful police officer, when he had espied two
men approaching upon the opposite sidewalk.
There was something familiar in the swing of the giant
frame of one of the men. So, true to years of training,
Sergeant Flannagan melted into the shadows of a store entrance
and waited until the two should have come closer.
They were directly opposite him when the truth flashed
upon him--the big fellow was Billy Byrne, and there was a
five-hundred-dollar reward out for him.
And then the two turned and disappeared down the stairway
that led to the underground restaurant. Sergeant Flannagan
saw Byrne's companion turn and look back just as
Flannagan stepped from the doorway to cross the street after
them.
That was the last Sergeant Flannagan had seen either of
Billy Byrne or his companion. The trail had ceased at the
open window of the washroom at the rear of the restaurant,
and search as he would he had been unable to pick it up
again.
No one in Kansas City had seen two men that night
answering the descriptions Flannagan had been able to give--
at least no one whom Flannagan could unearth.
Finally he had been forced to take the Kansas City chief
into his confidence, and already a dozen men were scouring
such sections of Kansas City in which it seemed most likely an
escaped murderer would choose to hide.
Flannagan had been out himself for a while; but now he
was in to learn what progress, if any, had been made. He had
just learned that three suspects had been arrested and was
waiting to have them paraded before him.
When the door swung in and the three were escorted into
his presence Sergeant Flannagan gave a snort of disgust,
indicative probably not only of despair; but in a manner
registering his private opinion of the mental horse power and
efficiency of the Kansas City sleuths, for of the three one was
a pasty-faced, chestless youth, even then under the influence of
cocaine, another was an old, bewhiskered hobo, while the
third was unquestionably a Chinaman.
Even professional courtesy could scarce restrain Sergeant
Flannagan's desire toward bitter sarcasm, and he was upon
the point of launching forth into a vitriolic arraignment of
everything west of Chicago up to and including, specifically,
the Kansas City detective bureau, when the telephone bell at
the chief's desk interrupted him. He had wanted the chief to
hear just what he thought, so he waited.
The chief listened for a few minutes, asked several questions
and then, placing a fat hand over the transmitter, he wheeled
about toward Flannagan.
"Well," he said, "I guess I got something for you at last.
There's a bo on the wire that says he's just seen your man
down near Shawnee. He wants to know if you'll split the
reward with him."
Flannagan yawned and stretched.
"I suppose," he said, ironically, "that if I go down there I'll
find he's corraled a nigger," and he looked sorrowfully at the
three specimens before him.
"I dunno," said the chief. "This guy says he knows Byrne
well, an' that he's got it in for him. Shall I tell him you'll be
down--and split the reward?"
"Tell him I'll be down and that I'll treat him right," replied
Flannagan, and after the chief had transmitted the message,
and hung up the receiver: "Where is this here Shawnee,
anyhow?"
"I'll send a couple of men along with you. It isn't far across
the line, an' there won't be no trouble in getting back without
nobody knowin' anything about it--if you get him."
"All right," said Flannagan, his visions of five hundred
already dwindled to a possible one.
It was but a little past one o'clock that a touring car rolled
south out of Kansas City with Detective Sergeant Flannagan
in the front seat with the driver and two burly representatives
of Missouri law in the back.
