By O.F. LEWIS
From Red Book
Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, the best second-story man east of the
Mississippi, lay panting side by side in the pitch-dark dugout, six feet beneath the surface
of the prison yard. They knew their exact position to be twenty feet south of the north
wall, and, therefore, thirty feet south of the slate sidewalk outside the north wall.
It had taken the twain three months and twenty-one days to achieve the dugout. Although
there was always a guard somewhere on the north wall, the particular spot where the
dugout had come into being was sheltered from the wall-guard's observation by a small
tool-house. Also whenever the pair were able to dig, which was only at intervals, a bunch
of convicts was always perched on the heap of dirt from various legitimate excavations
within the yard, which Fate had piled up at that precise spot. The earth from the dugout
and the earth from these other diggings mixed admirably.
Nor, likewise because of the dirt-pile, could any one detect the job from the south end of
the yard. If a guard appeared from around the mat-shop or coming out of the Principal
Keeper's office, the convicts sunning themselves on the dirt-pile in the free hour of noon,
or late in the afternoon, after the shops had closed, spoke with motionless lips to the two
diggers. Plenty of time was thus afforded to shove a couple of boards over the aperture,
kick dirt over the boards, and even push a barrow over the dugout's entrance--and there
you were!
One minute before this narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict had dropped the
boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, had
crawled. This convict had then frantically kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down
still more dirt, to make sure nothing could be seen of the hole--had made the thing look
just like part of the big dirt-pile indeed--and then had legged it to the ball-game now in
progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the extreme south end of the yard,
behind the mat-shop.
Dirt trickled down upon the gray hair of Old Man Anderson in the dark and stuffy hole he
shared with his younger companion. But the darkness and the stuffiness and the filtering
dirt were unsensed. Something far more momentous was in the minds of both. How soon
would Slattery, the prison guard, whom they knew to be lying dead in the alley between
the foundry and the tool-shop, be found? For years Slattery had been a fairly good friend
to Old Man Anderson, but what did that count in the face of his becoming, for all his
friendship, a last-minute and totally unexpected impediment to the get-away? He had
turned into the alley just when Old Man Anderson and Detroit Jim were crouching for the
final jump to the dugout! A blow--a thud--that was all....
