Johnny yawned at Sam Cragg across the Kid’s sleeping form. “When he talks about bums, does he mean us, Sam?”
Sam got up, stretched and said, “Yow!…”
He leaned over and shook the Kid. “Hey, Kid, wake up. The porter wants to make up your berth…” Suddenly, Sam exclaimed and bent to peer into the Kid’s face. Then his mouth fell open and an expression of horror distorted his face.
“Gawd!” he said.
Johnny Fletcher took one glance at his friend’s face, then stopped over the boy on the bed and shock rippled through him.
The boy was lying on his side, eyes glassy and bulging. Livid, red welts were on the throat. He had evidently been strangled.
By this time the constable saw that something was wrong. “What’s… what’s the matter with him?”
Johnny turned. “He’s… dead.”
“Dead? Why… why…” The constable’s eyes fluttered wildly, then he turned the big key in the lock and pulled the door open. He started to come into the cell but didn’t, for what happened was so sudden and unexpected that even Johnny Fletcher, alert as he usually was, was caught flatfooted.
Old-Timer, the tramp, came up from his bunk and made a rush for the door. A knife flashed in his hand and he struck at the constable. Johnny saw the expression on the constable’s face, heard his cry of pain, and catapulted through the door after the tramp.
Old-Timer was bolting through the street door, and in passing reached out a hand and slammed the door in Johnny’s face. By the time Johnny got it open and hit the street, Old-Timer had a fifty-foot start on him.
It suddenly dawned on Johnny then, that there was something terribly wrong about Old-Timer. He was running as no man of his years or appearance had ever run before. He was gaining on Johnny, on a straightaway track.
Behind Johnny, Sam Cragg yelled hoarsely. “Johnny! Wait for me.”
A couple of the village shopkeepers, letting down awnings in preparation for a hot sun, turned from their work to watch the three men dashing down the main street of the town. But when they saw the constable stagger out of the jail, clutching his side, and heard him crying out: “Stop them! They murdered me,” they ran into their stores.
A hundred feet ahead of Johnny, the tramp whipped around a corner and when Johnny turned it, Old-Timer was in a battered flivver already shooting away.
Johnny groaned and stopped. He stared after the disappearing flivver until Sam caught up to him.
“We gotta keep going, Johnny,” Sam panted. “That goddam tramp stabbed the constable — and did for the Kid.”
“I know,” said Johnny. “And did you see him run? No sixty-year-old bum ever ran like that. Say…” He thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out the card the Kid had forced on him during the night.
He looked at it and whistled, softly. “A pawn ticket. ‘Uncle Joe, The Friend In Need. Columbus, Ohio’… I don’t get it.”
Sam Cragg exclaimed nervously. “If we hang around, they’ll get us. For breaking jail, if not murder…”
“Right you are, Sam,” Johnny said. “We’ve got to put miles behind us. Something tells me that that bum isn’t going to be easy to catch and the boys here’ll pin the Kid’s murder on whoever they can grab — namely Samuel Cragg and John Fletcher. Let’s travel…”
Chapter Five
They traveled. Reaching the edge of the little town, they cut across an open field to a patch of woods and stalked through it as silently as the Indians of old — after said Indians had imbibed too freely of the white man’s firewater.
Neither was much on the pioneer stuff. Burly Sam Cragg, in as fine physical condition as a man can be, was the first to complain of the rough going. “My feet are killing me, Johnny. Can’t we take a rest?”
Johnny Fletcher peered back at the solid wall of poplars. “We haven’t come more than a couple of three miles, Sam. They’ll be after us by now. Maybe with bloodhounds.”
“Bloodhounds!” Sam Cragg’s eyes popped open. “Those long-eared mutts they show in the movies? You… you suppose they’ve got some like that up in this goddam country?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny replied, his forehead creased. “But I do think we ought to put some more miles between us and that burg. They’ll shut off the roads and beat the woods. Murder’s murder, Sam, even up here in Minnesota.”
“But we didn’t do it. The bum did. He must have. When they catch him…”
“When they catch him, Sam. Stop to think a minute — what did he look like?”
“Why, just a bum. An old guy…”
“Old? Did you see him run? No old guy ever ran like that.”
Sam was startled. “Huh? You think maybe he wasn’t as old as he looked?”
“Just what did he look like?”
Sam blinked. “Why, like a bum. Maybe fifty-sixty, dirty clothes and a beard…”
“Suppose the beard’s a phony? And the clothes a disguise. That car he made the getaway in… how’d he know it would be around the corner, with the key in it?”
“You think he had it planted there? That he knew he was going to make a getaway?”
Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know what to think, Sam. Honest, I don’t. But doesn’t it strike you as screwy? The whole thing. Why would he want to kill the Kid? And then stab the constable?”
“We don’t know the Kid was killed. He was dead, yeah. But mightn’t he have died naturally?”
Johnny was thoughtful for a moment. Then he took out the pawn ticket. “The Kid woke me up in the middle of the night to give me this. He was scared. Plenty scared. Uh-uh, I say he was murdered. And in view of Old-Timer’s actions later…”
Sam Cragg got to his feet. “I guess I can go another mile.”
“You’ll go more than that, Sammy old boy.”
They continued through the poplars a half mile and came to a small stream. There Sam had his bright idea. “Say, don’t they always walk through water to lose their trail?”
Johnny grinned a twisted grin. “That picture, ‘Fugitive From A Chain Gang,’ must have made an impression on you. All right, we’ll give it a whack. But I’m taking off my shoes…”
Sam Cragg followed Johnny’s example, and carrying their shoes and socks, the two began wading upstream. Fortunately, for them, the creek had a gravel bottom and they were able to travel it without too much difficulty. The trouble came with occasional large stones on which they stepped.
They waded for a quarter mile or so, which Johnny Fletcher thought was enough to foil bloodhounds. They dried their feet then, with handkerchiefs, as best they could and put on their socks and shoes. There were holes in the toes of Sam’s socks.
The foot bath having refreshed them, Sam made no more complaint. For a mile. Then he thought of his stomach. “Geez, I wish we’d had our breakfast first.”
Johnny had already been thinking about that. He had a hunch, however, that it would be some time before they sat down to another square meal. He wondered if hunger would not drive them back into the arms of the law. This country up here was pretty sparsely settled. They had traveled at least four miles from the town where they had been incarcerated and he had yet to see a house.
They sat down on a log to rest a while and then Sam sniffed the air. “I smell smoke. Must be a house around somewheres. Maybe we can get a handout.”
Johnny wondered about that. It was at least an hour and a half since their escape. How quickly did news travel in this country?
He got up and looked in the direction he judged to be south. The trees seemed thinner and he thought there was a clearing just beyond.
“C’mon, Sam,” he said, “let’s see if there’s fire by that smoke.”
A hundred feet and they saw the clearing, a two- or three-acre patch, in the middle of which stood a ramshackle log cabin. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.
Sam Cragg drew a deep breath. “I haven’t done this for a good many years, but here goes…”
He stepped out into the clearing and leaped back instantly as a huge German shepherd dog came out of the cabin and began barking furiously. A man in overalls appeared in the doorway of the house.
“Git him!” he ordered.
The dog was quite willing. He came for the trees with a rush that sent Johnny’s heart leaping into his throat. Sam jumped for an overhanging limb, but misjudged the strength of it and it broke with his weight, crashing him to the ground.
Johnny stooped and tore the limb from Sam’s hands and whirled just in time to thrust it into the charging dog’s face.
“G’wan home, you—” he snarled.
The dog yelped, rushed back a few feet and baring his teeth, set up a furious racket of barking. Sam Cragg scrambled to his feet, found a foot length chunk of decaying wood and threw it at the dog, which dodged it nimbly.
Out in the clearing, the fanner yelled: “Who’s there? What are you doing out there?”
“Call off your dog!” Johnny replied, “before he gets hurt!”
Swearing softly, Sam Cragg was breaking off a stout club for himself from another tree limb. “Man’s best friend,” he muttered.
The farmer came out of the house, gripping a shotgun in his hands. “C’mon out of there, you!…” he called.
Johnny groaned. He made a sudden rush for the dog with the tree limb, then wheeled and started for the thicket again. Sam lumbered along behind, turning now and then to threaten the dog which followed.
He was a persistent dog, keeping on their heels long after his master had dropped out of the chase; for almost a mile, in fact.
“That settles the food question,” Johnny said, when they had finally lost the canine pursuer. “You won’t find a farmhouse up here without a mutt. Besides — I don’t think we ought to show ourselves just yet.”
“But we’ve got to eat!” Sam protested.
“Why? People go days and days without food sometimes. Tighten that belt of yours and let’s put some more miles behind us. Maybe tomorrow…”
Sam Cragg groaned.
It was a warm day and they perspired freely as they ploughed through the woods, crossing dirt roads hurriedly and avoiding clearings and houses. Johnny watched the sun, so that they continued steadily in a more or less southerly direction. Civilization, he judged, was in that direction and he wanted civilization — in big quantities. A city man, he needed a city in which to lose himself.
When the sun was almost overhead, Sam Cragg declared that he could travel no more and threw himself flat on the ground, under a huge cedar tree.
Johnny seated himself beside Sam, resting his back against the tree. The ground looked inviting, but he was afraid if he stretched himself out on it, he would be unable to get up again.
He said: “How about a card trick, Sam?”
Sam’s hand moved to his pocket, then fell to his side. “No,” he groaned. “Not now.”
Johnny grinned wryly as he looked down at his friend. The big fellow’s feet were all out of proportion to his massive body. Sam could stand almost any kind of punishment — except walking. Well, Johnny didn’t like walking either.
He thought of the bad luck that had dogged them ever since they had entered the State of Minnesota. Six weeks ago, that had been. It had rained every day at the Minnesota State Fair. They had scarcely broken even on the week, after paying their hotel bill and incidentals. Sam had been moving south, then, but Johnny had wanted to see the northern country, the Iron Range.
Disaster had overtaken them up there. On top of everything they had been jugged for vagrancy in a one-horse town.
And now murder.
He and Sam were innocent of the charge, of course, but they couldn’t prove it, locked up. They had to take to their heels. The question was, could they elude capture?
Johnny didn’t know. But he was going to give the thing his damndest.
He said to Sam: “Come on, big boy. We’ve got to go.”
Sam rolled over on his broad back and looked bitterly at Johnny. “Go ahead, Johnny. I’ll just wait here for the cops.”
Johnny laughed without humor. Then, suddenly, he twisted his head sidewards and a glint of alarm came to his eyes. “Quiet, Sam,” he said, in a low tone. “Someone’s coming…”
Sam promptly sat up. “I hear them… sounds like a wagon.”
“A wagon! Say… cops wouldn’t be using a wagon, not even up here in Minnesota. I think I’ll just have a look…”
The rumble of wheels and the clop-clop of a horse’s hoofs on earth told him the location of the road. On hands and knees Johnny scuttled towards it.
It was no more than fifty feet away and was merely a winding trail cut through the virgin forest, a real backwoods road.