Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [33]
“What do you want of me?” Slocum asked. He was tired of hearing all the details. He wanted to know what Murrieta had in mind. Twice the alcalde had saved him, and he felt he owed the man something. Just how much would depend on what Murrieta asked.
“Atencio is to be hanged,” Murrieta said. “I want help in breaking him out before this happens. If we can get him here, we can be sure he returns to Mexico, where he would be safe.”
Slocum looked out at Maria. She was anxious, shifting from one foot to the other and back.
“This Atencio is her cousin?”
Murrieta’s eyebrows arched, and he looked over his shoulder at Maria.
“You have learned much while you have been in my village,” Murrieta said, turning back. “Does this matter?”
“No, not at all,” Slocum said. “I owe you my life, or if not my life, then my freedom. Twice you came to my aid when you didn’t have to. But I’m not pretending to be a convict to get back inside those walls.” Slocum closed his eyes and perfectly pictured the stone walls rising around the prison. It was imposing from the outside. Looking at those walls with the guard towers from inside suffocated hope and destroyed his soul. Better to die in a gunfight than to let them lock him up again.
“I understand this. The escape through the wall is something to be done only once.”
“By now,” Slocum said, “they probably have it completely sealed off. No doorway, completely concreted and stoned.”
“You are a clever man, John Slocum. You can come up with another way to save Atencio. He is not to be hanged for another week.”
Slocum inwardly groaned. A week was hardly time to come up with a rescue plan. They might need dynamite to blow open the gate or more firepower than all the peones in this village could provide, even if Murrieta risked his entire peasant army. San Quentin was a fortress designed not only to keep prisoners inside but to keep out those wanting to rescue them.
“Would there be any chance your lawyer could get a stay of execution?”
“Pah,” Murrieta said, waving his hand about in dismissal. “He would not bother.”
Slocum frowned in concentration then said, “What if the banker told the judge he made it all up?”
“Why should he? He wants our land. It is nothing to him if Atencio dies in prison, disgraced.”
“A man who desires money that much can be bought.”
“We cannot pay our mortgages. How can we bribe him?”
“The Valenzuelas robbed his bank,” Slocum said, thinking aloud. “They have money he’d want back.”
“So you would rob them?”
Slocum smiled. That thought had crossed his mind more than once. They owed him for the time he had spent in San Quentin, and the entire loot taken from Galworthy’s bank would be a good start. He wanted more from them—and Conchita—but taking what they had stolen would be a beginning. If the money could free Atencio, it would relieve Slocum of a debt to Murrieta even if it wouldn’t give him a pair of coins to rub together for his trouble.
“That might work, unless they have hightailed it out of town,” Slocum said. Somehow he thought Conchita would remain in the area. And why not? Sheriff Bernard thought he had robbed the bank because of her lying testimony. The Valenzuela family was free to do as they pleased, and somehow Slocum doubted they were finished yet even if José was sought as an escaped prisoner from San Quentin.
Before he could say another word, Maria hissed and caught Murrieta’s attention. The man leaped to his feet, grabbed a rifle, and told Slocum, “Do not come out. We will take care of this.”
Slocum got to his feet and cautiously peered out. Into what served as a town square—the community water well was there—rode Sheriff Bernard and four deputies. All the men carried rifles or shotguns resting in the crooks of their left arms. They were ready for a fight. Slocum considered giving it to them. Getting rid of the tenacious sheriff might not solve all his problems, but it would cause enough confusion in Miramar and throughout the county that he could get the hell away.
“We’re looking for an escaped prisoner,”