Escape from Five Shadows (1956) by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online Page A

to Brazil?
    Pryde shook his head slowly. To Manring. Somewhere along the line Earl told him you were going to run.
    Chapter 6
    They counted the days by marking the wall with Pryde's belt buckle, a mark for each day scratched in a row on the adobe wall. But even with this, after little more than a week had passed, they were not sure of the count and it seemed there should be more marks on the wall than there were. Twice a day the door opened and they were given bread and water. The guard who carried the bucket and dipper and a half loaf of bread was never armed. But another guard stood in the doorway with a shotgun. They were ordered not to talk to the prisoners and would not answer with even a sign when Bowen or Pryde asked the number of days they had been there.
    In the morning, they would hear Renda or Brazil in front of the barracks lining up the convicts for the wagon trip to the construction site. Then, throughout the day, there was silence, long hours of dead silence only occasionally broken by the sound of a horse crossing the compound.
    In the evening, after the convicts were in the barracks again, the faint murmur of voices, bits of conversation that were never completely clear, would drift into the darkness of the punishment cell. Bowen would sit with his back against the adobe not moving, listening for Manring's voice. But thinking of Manring, wanting to be sure he would still be here at the end of twenty days, made the time pass even more slowly.
    Why had Manring warned Renda that he was planning to escape?
    Pryde said, because he's paid for it. He had seen the same thing at Yuma. There were special privileges for the convict who kept the guards informed on what was going on inside the cell blocks. And, Pryde said, there was only one way to deal with that kind.
    Maybe it was that simple. But Bowen went over in his mind everything he knew about Manring, trying to find a more personal reason.
    They had met in a saloon of the Commercial House Hotel in Prescott just a little more than a year ago Bowen with a trail drive behind him and for the time being nothing to do; Manring looking for a man to help him move a small herd down to San Carlos the two of them standing at the bar. A few minutes after they started talking, they moved to a table.
    Ordinarily, Manring had explained, I work for a spread same as anybody else, but I heard about this cry for beef down at San Carlos and saw it was a chance to make something if you had a little capital. And taking a bill of sale out of his pocket The reservation's grown bigger than the government beef allowance, so now they got to buy more. But they're buying monthly, just a hundred head or so at a time and it don't pay the big owner to take a herd down there. That's why somebody like you or me can make money out of it if you got stock to sell. He pointed to the bill of sale. Which I got.
    Bowen said it sounded all right to him. He was thinking about going down to Willcox to talk to a friend about a mining venture and if he could work his way down that was all the better.
    The next morning they started driving the herd forty head they had gathered themselves. Bowen noticed none of the steers had been vent-branded and he asked Manring about it.
    Why go to the trouble of registering a brand, Manring answered, then waste time putting it on when you'll only have the stock about a week? A bill of sale's good enough to prove ownership.
    When Bowen opened his eyes the next morning, a man he had never seen before was standing over him with a rifle. There were eight or ten others in the clearing and a moment later he saw Manring brought in. Manring was mounted and it was evident he had tried to run when the posse closed in.
    They were taken back to Prescott and formally charged that afternoon, the complaint being signed by R. A. McLaughlin, the man from whom Manring claimed to have bought the cattle. Luckily (the sheriff said) a district judge would be in Prescott the next day so there