jails. It wouldn’t be expected, and that was one advantage I had. I knew whom I was up against. I knew the layout of the jail. And when I walked into the jail, nobody was going to see a desperate character intent on busting a prisoner out—they were going to see a little eager schoolboy. I think that was the biggest advantage. People do see what they expect to see.
On the other hand, all I had was me, a not-always-effective hell on wheels. If I didn’t do things exactly right, if I weren’t lucky, I would be in jail right beside Jimmy, probably on the third floor.
Just before I got to the jail I stopped and knelt on the wet ground. I took out the sock and I filled it with sand until it was about half full.
I didn’t hesitate then. I went right into the jail. There were warm oil lights in only two of the main floor offices. I looked in the first and Sgt. Robards was there.
“Hello, Sgt. Robards,” I said, going in. “How be you tonight?”
“Hello, Billy,” he said. “It be pretty slow tonight down here. Won’t be later, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. They pick up the Anti-Redemptionists tonight. The boys just went out. You won’t be able to stay long.”
“Oh,” I said.
“How did your paper go?”
I had to backtrack for a moment. Then I said, “I finished it this afternoon. I’ll turn it in tomorrow.”
“Found out everything you want to know?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I just came by to visit tonight. You know when you showed me the target range? That been neat. I thought if you had time you might shoot for me like you said.”
He looked at the clock. Then he said, “Sure. I be local champion, you know.”
“Gee,” I said, just like some of the fatuous boys I know.
We went downstairs, Sgt. Robards leading the way with a lamp. He was picking out the key to the target range when I pulled out my sock. I hesitated for a moment because it isn’t easy to deliberately set out to hurt somebody, but then he started to turn his head to say something. So I swung as hard as I could and the sand hit him wetly across the back of the neck. He crumpled. He was too heavy for me to catch, but I pushed him against the door and then managed to get him to the floor without dropping him on his face. I left the lamp on the floor where he had set it.
The weapons room was across the hall. I took the keys from the floor by Sgt. Robards’s hand and tried the ones on either side of the one he had picked out for the target room door. The door opened on the second try. I left it open and went back to Sgt. Robards, lying on the floor. I grabbed his collar and his coat and heaved him, then heaved him again, and eventually got his dead weight across the floor and into the weapons room. I got out my line and tied his elbows and knees. I emptied the sand out of the sock onto the floor, and then shoved the sock into his mouth. My heart was pounding and my breath was coming fast as I went back for the lamp.
Then I turned to the weapons rack. I took a hurried look over them. There was nothing modern, of course, only powder-and-lead antiques like those in the old books. I’d never fired one, but I understood that they didn’t hold still when you shot them—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and all that—so I picked out a pair of the smallest guns they had. I tested the ammunition until I found the right kind of bullets, and then I put the guns and a number of the bullets in my pocket.
I swung the door shut and locked it again, leaving Sgt. Robards inside. I stood then for a moment in the hallway with the keys in my hand. There were ten of them, not enough to cover each individual cell, yet Sgt. Robards had clinked his keys and said that he could unlock the cells. Maybe I would have done better to stick up the Territorial Governor.
My heart pounding, I blew out the light and started upstairs. I eased up to the first floor. Nobody was there. Then I went carefully up the wooden stairs to the second floor. It was dark there, but