Alexander Key
One Night of Liberty
A tale of law gone wild
    He was doomed to hang – and he was determined to get hold of the little steel box—

    Big Ben McAllister knew he would hang, and he knew that every one else knew it. Throughout the week-long trial he felt people staring at him, wondering why he didn’t rear up and lose his temper in true McAllister fashion. They’d expected him to rage, to hurl deputies aside, to shake his big fists at the prosecutor – fists that were supposed to have smashed the life out of Jake King that day in the lumber office.
    It was the McAllister tradition to go roaring mad in the face of trouble; McAllisters had done that since the first burly, tow-beaded son of a fighting clan had swaggered down from the Alleghenies with a land grant from President Jackson giving him title to five thousand acres of the best hard woods in the South.
    But there was no use fighting now, wearing out a strength he might need later, King-Saunders men sat in the jury box. King-Saunders money had elected the prosecuting attorney. A dozen unfriendly witnesses had seen him whip King. Even the judge was a relative of Coleman Saunders, surviving partner of the King-Saunders Lumber Co.
    No, before a line-up like that, the only thing to do was to sit tight, think, keep his eyes open – and listen. Well, he’d done that, and he’d learned something. Now, at the last hour, as he stood up before the bench in the hushed courtroom, he was beginning to remember things long forgotten, and a plan was forming swiftly in his mind.
    Sure, maybe it wouldn’t work out as he hoped – but he didn’t mind dying if he could settle that final score with the King-Saunders outfit, fix things so young brother Bill would be taken care of.
    He hardly heard the pompous monotony of the judge’s tone. “ – for the malign, willful and premeditated murder of Jake King, I have no other recourse but to condemn you to be hanged by the neck, until dead. And may the Lord have mercy—”
    * * *
    The courtroom awoke to a buzzing of voices. Justice was done; if he’d had three lives, McAllister thought, they’d demand every one of them for King’s death. King had come to town, breathing affability and boom times, clapping people on the back. He knew how to be generous with his money – in the right places. Saunders had hidden a good many questionable deals behind Jake Kings popularity.
    McAllister turned, a hard smile on his lips, and held out his hands to be manacled. Gray, wizened Sheriff Hackett snapped the handcuffs over his wrists, took him gently by the arm. Two deputies fell in step with them as they went through the side door, crossed the narrow alley, and entered the dilapidated structure of the county jail.
    “I’m – I’m mighty sorry, my boy,” Hackett murmured. “Sorry for your sake – and for young Bill’s.”
    Even old Hackett believed him guilty, and for thirty-five years Hackett had been his friend! McAllister said nothing until they reached the upper corridor and his cell door clanged behind him.
    “That King-Saunders bunch,” he rasped suddenly, “cleaned me out of my house and timber. Didn’t it ever strike you as damn strange that they’d want my hide in the bargain? Think that over – and tell that lousy lawyer of mine not to bother me till morning!”
    “Ben,” Sheriff Hackett drawled slowly, “some of us think the court should have been more lenient, and we’ll do what we can to help change matters. I don’t think you set out to kill Jake King. If you’d premeditated it, you’d have played better poker and killed that hawg Saunders instead. King wasn’t a bad sort. As for that other matter—” He shrugged. “I know how you feel about King-Saunders, but they proved title to the property. As long as you had neither deed nor record of any kind to show the land was yours—”
    “McAllisters have held that land for over a century!” Ben McAllister roared back. “Just because I haven’t been able to find that deed—” He checked himself abruptly, his mouth clicked shut. He couldn’t afford to put any ideas in Hackett’s head. The old man was shrewd and it would do no good to have him hanging around, suspicious.
    The sheriff peered at him curiously. The deputies had started back down the corridor. “Please, Ben, be kind of careful for a while longer.” Hackett said in a low voice. “Mebbe something’ll turn up.”
    McAllister was silent; nothing would turn up and both of them knew it. There was no chance of a reprieve. He’d gone to the lumber office looking for a fight, and the first man he’d met had been King. When it was all over, King was dead. That King had lain alone in the office for several minutes before the doctor arrived was a fact that not even the witnesses remembered.
    With relief, he saw Hackett move away from the barred door, heard his soft footsteps on the stairway. For an instant he stood with his car pressed against the door, listening. Then he whirled across the cell to the narrow window.
    * * *
    He had to get out to-night. To-morrow would be too late. Saunders was leaving town to-morrow and wouldn’t be back for weeks. If it was the last thing he ever did, he had to see Saunders, and, if necessary, kill him.
    McAllister peered out of the window, estimated his chances. There were two hours of daylight left. If only they hadn’t placed him on the second floor! Below him was an unbroken, forty-foot drop to the ground. The one possible means of negotiating that distance was a chinaberry tree growing in the center of the court. The top of its round umbrella foliage was twenty feet beneath the window ledge – and fully twelve feet out from the building.
    If he could tear one of the bars out of the window, there was a chance that an active man could make the leap. But it would be tough getting away, to safely gain the country. Breaking branches make a lot of noise.
    There were other ways of escape, but it would mean a fight – probably with some one like Hackett, whom he didn’t want to hurt.
    He listened again, made sure that both the corridor and the court outside were clear, and then furiously attacked the middle bar in the window. The great muscles swelled and knotted under his sleeves, sweat streamed down the bony ridges of his face and dampened the bricks of the window ledge. Hell, he’d always said that a strong man could break out of this antiquated dump – and he had the reputation of being the strongest man in three counties.
    Once, just before nightfall, a warden made the rounds of the building. When he came to the upper corridor, McAllister was stretched upon a bunk. His sweat-streaked form masked by the shadows. The warden was hardly down the stairway again before McAllister was up, clawing at the bricks and hurling his strength against the barred window.
    The middle bar seemed as solid as ever. He’d only managed to bend it a trifle. A half hour later he sagged against the wall, hands numb, shoulders aching. From below came a sharp tang of dirty bodies, the low mournful chanting of a Negro murderer who would die at daybreak.
    He shook his head at the dull uncertainty tightening in him, and fiercely, deliberately, attacked the window again. Suddenly he stopped, stared across the court and down the narrow alley to the street. Under a street lamp beside the courthouse terrace, was a gray roadster. A fat man sat in the car, talking earnestly with some one standing at the curb.
    Hate leaped into McAllister’s narrowed eyes; his hands clamped upon the window bar with a twisting grip. Even in the dim light he recognized the car, the gross figure sitting at the wheel. It was Coleman Saunders. He’d really started out to whip Saunders that day, only King had gotten in his way.
    * * *
    For a minute McAllister stood rigid, watching the man; veins throbbed in his forehead; little knots of muscle gathered in his cheeks. A hog like Saunders couldn’t comprehend how any one could like virgin timber, want to keep it intact, unspoiled. To Saunders, timber was money; when Saunders finished loggings stretch of land, the place was wrecked, stripped clean, with hardly a sapling left for reseeding.
    And when the devil found he couldn’t buy timber rights to Ben’s property – which adjoined King-Saunders holdings – there’d been trouble.
    The law and its dark windings were things sometimes beyond understanding. Saunders found out that the old McAllister deed was lost; when he was through with the law, the McAllister timberland had been declared part of the original King-Saunders domain – and there was much accompanying talk of early court records and surveyings being wrong.
    McAllister cursed; his fingers clenched and unclenched. Saunders hadn’t been content with just the timber. He’d thrown his legal net over the plowed fields, the old colonnaded house – taken them in judgment against the occasional careful logging the McAllisters had done to pay Bill’s medical expenses. If it wasn’t for young Bill—
    Suddenly McAllister hurled himself at the window again, his big hands damping about the bar and twisting it with a maniacal frenzy. His brother Bill was all that was left of the family, and for five years now. Bill had lain flat on his back, a cripple. Infantile paralysis.
    The fact hadn’t bothered Saunders. Saunders had taken over the house, and he and Bill had had to get out. With time, money, and proper care. Bill would get well – had been getting better, in fact, when Saunders—
    The bar moved. He poured all his strength into his jerking, twisting hands. A brick snapped, old mortar and fragments showered the floor. Another jerk – there! He knew it could be done. The lower end of the bar was free.
    * * *
    Some one was coming up the stairway. For a bare instant McAllister hesitated. No, he couldn’t stop now; the damage would be seen.
    He braced one foot against the wall, seized the bar again, and jerked violently. The iron bent far inward, leaving a foot of space between the other two bars.
    Instantly he hauled himself to the window sill, thrust his shoulders side-wise through the opening. Now he was perched on the ledge outside, shifting his feet for the long leap to the foliage below.
    At a sound in the corridor, he shot a swift glance over his shoulder. One of the wardens had reached the cell door and was staring at him in stupid amazement. Then the man shouted and reached for his gun.
    As white flame ripped toward him, McAllister sprang. His clawing fingers touched leaves, grasped at twigs, and then he was crashing downward with his arms flaying the brittle limbs to break his fall. The ground came up, shocked his feet. But he wasn’t hurt.
    He rocked on his heels, whirled to the alleyway as a gong rang loudly in the jail. There were hoarse cries behind him. shots. He stooped, ran erratically toward the street. Somewhere in the rear old Hackett was shouting. “Stop, Ben! I don’t want to shoot you! Stop!”
    He burst upon the lighted sidewalk, straight-armed a frightened Negro blocking his path, and spun to his right. Abruptly his eye took in the long gray roadster at the curb. Saunders’ roadster – and Saunders had stepped out of it, leaving the engine running!
    In one leap he had vaulted behind the wheel, slammed the clutch in gear. His foot pressed the throttle to the floor: the car leaped from the curb, screamed down the street. Once he glimpsed Saunders tumbling down the courthouse steps, tugging at something under his armpit. But he had whirled the roadster around a corner before Saunders could release his gun.
    The streets were almost empty. In. a minute he was out of town, roaring past dense, dark fields of sugar cane, stretches of pine. He was going in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go, but later he could turn, weave carefully back through the country when he had thrown off all pursuit. He couldn’t have Hackett or any one else suspecting where he was going, what he was planning to do.
    He switched off the lights: there was enough moonlight to show the road, and country.
    Five minutes later he slowed briefly and listened. From the region of town came the wailing of a police siren: penal stabs of light were beginning to cut the night as other cars swung into the highway, joined in the chase. One of them was uncomfortably close.
    * * *
    Grimly, McAllister pushed the throttle to the floor boards, fought to keep the powerful roadster in the center of the road. It was a good thing: Saunders went in for expensive cars – give Ben a half hour longer with a machine like this, and he’d be safe. Stealing a car, getting away with it, was a piece of luck he hadn’t hoped for. He’d expected to have to hoof it back home – a ten-mile trot across country, through swamps, canebrakes, black timber.
    Home! Saunders’ house now! But if his luck held, he could get the place, land and all, back again for Bill. All he needed was a chance to be alone for a little while in that old library. During those weeks in jail, in the courtroom, he’d been thinking it out, piecing vague memories together.
    He was certain now that the deed would be found in the library – somewhere near the great fireplace. As a kid he remembered his father going through a handful of documents in a small steel box. He’d never seen where his father put the box, but always it had appeared, disappeared, in the region of the fireplace.
    His father died; the box and early memories of it were forgotten until the sharp press of circumstance forced them out again. Yes, once back in the library, he’d find the box – and then he’d wait for Saunders.
    What happened to him afterward didn’t matter. His work would be done.
    He slowed down once more, listened. From far lack of him came the whine of racing motors. Abruptly he spun the wheel, slid into a narrow timber trail winding south through slash pine and old cuttings. Sometime later he came out upon the county road that would carry him home.
    McAllister glanced over his shoulder to study the road for headlights, and with the movement came a twinge of pain in his left arm. The shirt sleeve clung to it stickily. Amazed, he felt the spot; somebody had winged him back there in the alleyway, and he’d been too damned excited to notice it! Suddenly he whipped the car into the shadows of the trees and bound the wound with a handkerchief. The thing was a handicap he couldn’t afford to have right now.
    Hardly was he back on the road again when lights swept the trees, and cars swung around the bend a hundred yards in the rear.
    McAllister’s mouth set in a tight line; the gray roadster leaped ahead. The lights behind crept closer.
    Could Hackett have sent men off in this direction on the chance that he’d try a break for home? Damn Hackett! The old fellow must have guessed something. Yes, they were Hackett’s men. They were firing. A bullet clipped the windshield.
    Well, he’d give them a run for it! The whine of the gray roadster’s motor rose to a steady scream. The way was clear, the road, narrow and high-banked, left the pines and led straight through marsh and straggling low-lying clumps of cypress.
    A half mile – a mile. He was almost to the creek bridge now, and the cars behind were dropping farther back.
    Then, sharp and clear ahead, was the bridge. And on the bridge, moving slowly across it, was a flimsy farm wagon piled high with bay and children. Kids out for a bay ride! Great Heaven!
    McAllister’s mind functioned with the speed of light. There was no chance of stopping in time. A car going ninety would whip through an obstruction like that and keep on going, unless—
    Violently he jerked the wheel. And as he did so, he clawed upright, tried to leap free. The car hurtled over the embankment, its motor shrieking like a crazed live thing.
    * * *
    McAllister clutched at space, felt it hiss through his fingers, then he was rolling, slithering across a mud flat. He stopped at last, raised his head drunkenly. He must have heard the crash; but things were vague, he was in a suddenly quiet world with only the faint tinkle of glass somewhere, the far-off cries of children. Children! He jerked around, stared.
    The kids were safe. They were piling out of the wagon, running down the dim embankment to stare out at the roadster that had smashed against a cypress. And on the road cars were stopping, armed men tumbling from them.
    They hadn’t seen him yet. He flattened out. pulled himself across the stretch of mud that had saved his life. Behind a willow thicket he stood up, peered back at the road to get his bearings, then began moving carefully along the willow scrub marking the higher ground. He had to hurry, yet every step must be taken with caution; there was quicksand here, and bog holes where a man could sink out of sight in an instant.
    From behind came the sucking sounds of feet in sticky mud, voices. Lights were flashing, swinging about. Soon they’d find his trail and know he wasn’t hurt. He plunged on, faster. Throbbing pain shot through his left arm, he felt dizzy, sick. But he had to get to the house, somehow, before they caught him.
    He reached an outflung coil of the creek, floundered through hip-deep mud, and entered the water. Fifty yards up the still, tepid stream brought him to a spur of timber. He crawled upon the bank and lay there gasping.
    They’d know he’d have to cross the creek – it was the only way out of the marsh. Ahead of him lay a black tupelo swamp, interspersed with sloughs and dark cypress pools – and just beyond it was the beginning of his own timber.
    Suddenly he lurched upright and began to run. Before a half hour passed, there’d be dozens of men beating both edges of the swamp; they’d come with the hounds, seek to bottle him up in the place, hold him there till morning. You couldn’t do much with bloodhounds on your trail.
    McAllister stopped. The swamp was a trap. Even now, from the road, there came sounds of cars hurrying off in both directions. While one shot back to town for help, the others, probably, would hasten to the timber trail that cut through the neck of land where the swamp lay. A handful of men, stationed on that trail, could see any one making a dash for the higher ground.
    There must be some way out. But he couldn’t cross the marsh, nor return to the road. Several men were still moving along the mud flats near the bridge, guarding the road in case he should come back. McAllister cursed. They were out for blood, confound them! They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him on sight. He was dangerous – an escaped murderer.
    He spat, slapped at swarms of mosquitoes clustering on his flesh, and stared down at the water. Small sticks, patches of scum and dead vegetation moved slowly past, flowing down to the bridge.
    Suddenly he was up, searching in the dim light for a few sticks of dry wood, tufts of grass. In a minute he found them. Carefully, he entered the creek again.
    With his body far down in the water, he pulled the debris about his head and held it there with one hand. With the other hand he began to swim.
    Cautiously, taking great pains to make no splash, he let the current carry him down toward the bridge. If he could pass the bridge there was a chance that he could get away, reach home before morning. They wouldn’t be looking for him to head for the house. It was Saunders’ place now, and Saunders lived there.
    He was almost at the bridge. He could hear voices, see lights flashing along the road. Some one, too, was moving along the bank not a dozen feet away. He held his breath, heart pounding furiously. A light swept out over the water, fastened on his head. Did the tufts of grass hide him sufficiently, or—
    For several agonizing seconds the light held him, then it moved away. The dark shadows of the bridge loomed closer. Once in the fringe of woods beyond it he would have a clear trail, though it meant double the distance he would have to travel.
    A half hour later McAllister hauled himself to the bank far downstream and plunged into the woods. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the wailing of a police siren, and hounds baying. But it would be morning, at least, before they could discover which way he’d gone – and by that time his mission would be done.
    * * *
    A long time later he was stumbling up a footpath that wound familiarly in the hard-wood hummocks; great trees crowded out the sky, their immense trunks pressed close around him in the blackness. The dark did not trouble him; he knew the way now, had followed this same trail a thousand times. In the fierce eagerness that came over him he forgot the throbbing in his arm, forgot the dull weights that seemed to be tightening in his chest, making it an effort to keep moving.
    There was moonlight ahead, a rail fence, open ground – and fruit trees. There were trees he’d planted with his own hands – trees other McAllisters had planted long before. And beyond the orchard he could see the dim columns of the house.
    He climbed over the fence, swung quickly through the orchard. But on the edge of the lawn be came to an abrupt halt. A wing of the house, the library, had a light glowing in it. It was way past midnight. Some one, of course, must have brought Saunders home. But what was Saunders doing up, prowling through the library at this hour?
    McAllister gave the grounds a quick scrutiny. There was no one about, no cars on the driveway. Then Saunders would be alone. It was some distance down the hollow to the Negro quarters – too far for them to hear anything.
    He gained the veranda, tiptoed lightly across it. The screen door yielded to his cautious fingers, and then he was in the hall, gliding to the open door of the library. He froze on the threshold, took in the room with a glance.
    The room was in wild disorder; books, furniture, papers littered the floor. In places the floor boards had been torn up. panels ripped from the walls. Some one had been searching for something, and that search had evidently been going on for many days.
    McAllister’s eyes jerked to the fireplace. Saunders was stooped by the hearth. His thick, fat fingers were feverishly pawing over the contents of a small black box.
    McAllister entered the room. Beneath the streaked grime, his face was bleak, his eyes deathly cold. In one swift survey of the room, the box, Saunders, the entire thing was clear. Saunders had known all the time of the box and the deed it held, known it was somewhere in the library. The judge had told him.
    In the old days the judge had been a frequent visitor here, until some dispute over a business matter – when the elder McAllister had cursed him for a scoundrel and driven him off the place. And here was the deed – dangerous until it was found, destroyed. No wonder Saunders had wanted the house!
    “So!” McAllister rasped, “you finally found it, eh!”
    Saunders whirled to his feet. The box dropped from his hands as he stared at the apparition of McAllister, with torn, mud-blackened clothes clinging to his great frame.
    “It gave you a fright when I escaped, didn’t it ?” McAllister went on. “Afraid I’d remembered where the deed was – afraid I’d get here and find it before you found it yourself, eh?” McAllister gave a short laugh, steel hard. “But that‘s not the only reason I came. Saunders. I‘ve been looking forward to finding you here, too!”
    * * *
    For a second Saunders stood rigid, heady, piglike eyes unblinking. Then his heavy face went purple. “Damn you!” he snarled. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with anything.” His hand flashed to his armpit.
    McAllister hurled himself across the room, lashed out with his good arm. Saunders’ head snapped back; the gun fell as he crumpled downward. McAllister kicked the weapon out of reach. He didn’t need a gun to deal with Saunders. A gun was too quick.
    Slowly Saunders raised his big bulk from the floor. Me was beefy, huge, but most of his weight was centered upon his waist. He catapulted forward suddenly, cursing, driving with both fists. McAllister lashed back, side-stepped, struck again. Saunders spat blood, weaved groggily. But he still had courage.
    “To-night,” McAllister said softly, “I’m going to settle accounts – not all at once, but gradually. The score is a long one. Saunders, but when I’m finished, it will be paid in full.”
    Saunders came at him blindly, rocked as a bony fist deftly laid open his check, fell back as another jab seared his mouth. This wasn’t the old McAllister, roaring mad in a fight: this was a new one, a cold fury without mercy, who whipped calculated blows upon him as he spoke.
    “You see. Saunders,” – and the words were like thrusts of steel – “I’ve been watching you in the courtroom. A man can’t keep his fears from his face – not when there’s blood on his hands. There are just two people who know who killed Jake King. One’s the man who knows he didn’t do it – the other is you!”
    A right hook smashed Saunders to the wall. He flattened there, cringing, face ghastly white except for its gathering blotches of red and purple.
    McAllister’s voice became lower, more deadly. “I whipped King that day, yes – but he was only dazed when your gang came in the office and pulled me away. You got them outside – and then you finished King when you were alone with him. Probably used the butt of your gun.
    “Sure, I know why you did it – even though the truth may never be learned outside of these walls. King was sharp – but even King couldn’t stand the raw deal you handed me! Maybe he threatened to squeal because his cut wasn’t large enough. But you had a fortune in timber at stake. You killed King and—”
    Hate and stark fear wrought a sudden change in Saunders. Like a frenzied, maddened beast in a trap, he hurled himself at McAllister, and the two crashed to the floor – rolling, thrashing, jabbing, clawing. A table, a chair, a vase were knocked to bits as they lunged over them, pounded each other down the length of the room.
    * * *
    McAllister felt his strength slipping from him; his left arm was nearly useless, his head spun drunkenly. He’d been through a lot during the past six hours – more than enough for most men. But he fought on.
    All at once he saw that Saunders had leaped away. Saunders was crouched in the center of the floor – and in his hand was the gun.
    “Yes!” Saunders shrieked through raw lips. “Damn you. yes! King was a rat – yellow! He didn’t want to go through with it. Sure, I killed him! And now you’ll get yours!”
    McAllister tried to force himself to one side as the gun’s muzzle swung toward him. There was an explosion; he smelled the acrid reek of powder.
    But something was wrong. The gun had slipped from Saunders’s fingers. Saunders was sinking to his knees, crumpling, a look of dazed wonder on his face.
    “You all right, Ben?” said a voice. “Kinda figured I’d find you here!” And then a slight, familiar figure was thrusting a service revolver back into its holster, moving toward him from the shadow of the doorway, helping him to his feet. Hackett! Behind him strode one of the deputies.
    “I got to thinking you’d want to come here – mebbe to even up things with Saunders before he went away to-morrow,” said the little sheriff.
    “I never knew a McAllister yet who wouldn’t fight things to a finish, even if he had to break jail to do it. We saw you come in here, and we both agreed it would be only fair if you paid off a few scores, considering the circumstances. So we stuck around and listened in on the ruckus. I’m plumb glad we did!”
    The sternness left Hackett’s face. “I reckon you’ll be a free man in a few days, son – and I reckon it’ll do young Bill a heap of good to get back home.”

    1936
    (Dynamic Adventures, vol. 1, #6, March, pp.92-101)

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