Boy's Cinema (1933)

12 The officer's face underwent an abrupt change as he realised what was afoot, and with an exclamation he reached for his flip. The man Pete took fright, and, turning, leapt for a door at the front end of the van, disappearing through it mto the drizzle and the darkness. Tiie policeman instantly ducked from view, and stood by the kerb, blazing through the gloom after the flying figure of tho fugitive. Inside the van, Jim heard tho smash of the shots echo- ing through the square, and the sound roused him out of a stupor. Completely losing his head, he plunged through the back door of the car, 6pun blindly to- wards tho right, and, swerving, lurched full tilt into the muzzle of the police officer's gun. "No you don't!" the guardian of (he law rapped out. "Stay where you are!" Panting, Jim drew back with upraised hands. Then he heard a man running towards tho scene, and a few seconds later another officer was on the spot. "A stick-up," the first policeman ex- plained tersely "I pinched this fellow, but the other guy got away." "I didn't have anything to do with it," Jim blurted. "You can't pinch me! I didn't have anything to do with it " "No?" the second officer cut in. "Then how did you come by this dough?" Ho gripped Jim's hand as lie spoke, breaking open his fingers with forcible pressure, and the young down-and-out realised that ho was still clutching the five dollars and seventy-five cents that had been the meagre proceeds of the interrupted theft. • • • * ■» A few days later, Jim Allen 6tood in an Atlanta court-room and listened, like a man in a trance, to the weighty words of a stern-faced magistrate. The prisoner's brain seemed clogged, his thoughts confused by the rigmarole of the legal procedure that had marked his trial, but fragmentary sentences of the judge's address to him impressed themselves on his mind. " The testimony of the owner of the restaurant car makes it plain that you were not th« prime mover in this out- rage, Allen " What did he mean by that? Surely that testimony had cleared him! "But the fact remains that, having been encouraged to assist in the theft, you made an attempt to escape with the money. Xow, the pettiness of the sum involved lias no bearing on the case whatsoever, and in allotting sentence I am influenced by certain circumstances. Firstly, your refusal to give any infor- mation that might lead to the arrest of your accomplice tends to show that your instincts are those of a criminal." Information that might lead to the arrest of his accomplice! Hadn't he told them again and again that the man had only been the chance acquaintance of a doss house ? ••Secondly, the eity of Atlanta takes pride in the fact that it has successfully resisted the crime wave which has swept 60 many other great towns in America', and I am one of those who believe that we have the severity of our penal code to thank for that. " Therefore, James Allen, I sentence you to fen years in the convict settle- ment of this county." Ten yeare ! The words seemed to beat through Jim's brain, and he reeled visibly. Ten years—a sentence that would have been incredibly out of keep- ing with the charge even if he had been gv.ilty! April 8th, 1933. BOY'S CINEMA The Chain Gang. RIGGED out in a prison suit of hideous clothes that were a mockery to the la6t vestige of a man's self-respect, Jim looked down at the clanking fetters about his ankles. The imprisoning leg-irons had been hammered around his shins in the forge of the penal settlement. Links con- nected them, go that he was unable to take a full, free stride, but must move with measured and deliberate 6teps. He was in the chain gang. "James Allen," he said to himself, "ex-soldier, one-time sergeant of engi- neers in the American Expeditionary Force. And now—the chain gang." As yet he did not appreciate the awful significance of that phrase. Of course, he had heard of this grim convict system that was in force in some of the Southern States, but lie had imagined that the 6tories told of it were exag- gerated. Before another twenty-four hours had elapsed lie had learned that the reverse was the case. There had been no exag- geration, there could be no exaggera- tion of a life so terrible, where men lived like caged beasts and toiled like slaves. The settlement was thirty miles from anywhere, in a wilderness of swamps, barren hills and tangled brushwood thickets. Day by day the captives were detailed for duty and put to work under armed guards who were picked for their brawn and for their brutality. Day by day the captives toiled under conditions that warped the spirit and toughened the hearts and bodies of those who were strong enough to survive. Hard labour on the rock piles from sun-up till sun-down, hitting with pick and hammer till muscles cracked to the strain. Voices raised in some dreary convict song that was a lament of crushed men. Hammer and pick, ham- mer and pick—stroke upon stroke. No respite until the bullying guards pro- claimed a brief interval of relief. A man could not call his soul his own, for, unless he asked permission, the right to mop his brow was even denied him, as Jim found out When he drew his hand across his forehead and was felled by the fist of a gigantic, warder. "I was only wiping off the sweat," Jim mumbled, as he dragged himself to his feet with a rattling of chains. " Yeah ?" the armed guard snarled. " Well, I knocked it off for yah," Sometimes they wero hired out for constructional work, building roads, bridges, dams. Always there was heart- breaking toil, in rain, sweltering heat, in freezing cold. At uight6, back to the cages where, they slept in their shackles. The food turned the stomach, the treatment was inhuman. Doubtless there were many in that prison camp who deserved the worst punishment that mankind could devise, but there were others who had been sentenced for the pettiest of offences, and there was Jim Allen, who had not been given the benefit of a pretty strong doubt when his case had come up for trial. All, regardless of their crimes against Society, were accorded the same degree of tyranny. A flogging for some trivial breach of regulations was a daily occurrence. Jim himself camo under the lash for cursing a guard below his breath, and his back was raw with weals before he was per- mitted to crawl to his bunk. He occupied a cage in which about thirty other convicts' were housed, aud. though he had nothing in common with any of those men, lie struck up some Every Tuesday kind of friendship with two who were' about the least villainous of the- assortment. One was known as the Bomber, a man of fifty, weather-beaten and wiry, a con- firmed vagrant who was serving time for petty theft. The other was a massive negro, Sam by nana?, and both he and the Bomber were looking forward to release within the next twelvemonth, when their sentences would expire. One night Jim leaned from his bunk and spoke in an undertone to the Bomber, who slept in the next bed on the New Englander's right. "Bomber," he said, "does anyone ever try to make a break here ?" The old convict eyed him quizzically. "You mean—get away?" he muttered. "Yeah, there was a young feller jumped the outfit just before you came. They went after him with bloodhounds an' rifles—an' they buried him in the swamps." "That would be better—than this," Jim breathed hoarsely, with a tragic glance at his surroundings. "I've got to the end of my tether, Bomber. I can't stand it!" "Now listen," the older man coun- selled. "You don't want to finish up with a dose o' lead inside you, like the feller I've just told you about. If you've got a hunch, figure it out in every detail. Don't lose your head, but bide your time. Play the waitin' game —for weeks, months maybe. It'll pay in the end, and when your chance conn s the odds won't be a million to one against you. They might only be a thousand to one," he added ruefully. Jim had not the ghost of an idea in his bead, but in the long days and nights that followed the thought of escape was the dominating feature in his mind, and as time went on the en- during horrors of the chain gang system keyed up his every faculty for that cherished ambition. Eight months after Jim's appearance in the chain gang, the convicts were put to work tearing up the metals of a disused railway track, battering at the lines with sledge-hammers and levering them from position with crowbars, dig- ging up the sleepers with pickaxes. It was while they were engaged on this gruelling task that an inspiration occurred to Jim. To free himself from hi? leg-irons had hitherto been the problem that had occupied him, for so long as those shackles hampered Ins movements liberty was but a dream. The plan that he now evolved was the creation of a desperate man, demanding the courage of a Spartan and a deter- mination to suffer agonies. But he was ready to submit to any ordeal. Sam, the giant negro, was his next number on the track, and, while Jim handled crowbar, the black's muscular arms swung a hammer. Throughout the length of a whole day Jim watched tho big nigger's mighty strokes, rhythmic and true, the hammer-head crashing each time on the identical bolt or rivet for which the coloured man aimed. He h]td been employed in a blacksmith's forge before he had stepped to the wrong side of the law. That night Jim singled'out the negro in the sleeping cage, and, after some hesitation, the powerful black agreed to the young white man's proposition. The following day work was resumed on the railroad, and, when the eyes of the guards were off him, Jim backed close to Sam as the latter was hitting at a joint in the metals. " Now's vmir chance," he said through his teeth. "Get busy on this leg-iron."