The Under Dog | Page 5

corn that they had ploughed and shucked. It was their corn, not the Government's. Men who live in the wilderness, and feed and clothe themselves on the things they raise with their own hands, have no fine-spun theories about the laws that provide revenue for a Government they never saw, don't want to see, and couldn't understand if they did.
Marny and I stood before the grating, looking each man over separately. Strange to say, the artistic possibilities of my visit faded out of my mind. The picturesqueness of their attire, the browns and grays accentuated here and there by a dash of red around a hat-band or shirt-collar--all material for my own or my friend's brush--made not the slightest impression upon me. It was the close smell, the dim, horrible light, the quick gleam of a pair of eyes looking out from under shocks of matted hair--the eyes of a panther watching his prey; the dull stare of some boyish face with all hope crushed out of it; these were the things that possessed me.
As I stood there absorbed in the terrors before me, I was startled by the click of the catch and the clink of keys, followed by the noiseless swing of the steel door as it closed again.
I turned and looked down the corridor.
Into the gloom of this inferno, this foul-smelling cavern, this assemblage of beasts, stepped a girl of twenty. A baby wrapped about with a coarse shawl lay in her arms.
She passed me with eyes averted, and stood before the gate of the last steel cage--the woman's end of the prison--the turnkey following slowly. Cries of "Howdy, gal! What did ye git?" wore hurled after her, but she made no answer. The ominous sound of drawn bolts and the click of a key, and the girl and baby were inside the bars of the cage. These bars, foreshortened from where I stood, looked like a row of gun-barrels in an armory rack.
"That girl a prisoner?" I asked the Warden.
I didn't believe it. I knew, of course, that it couldn't be. I instantly divined that she had come to comfort some brother or father, or lover, perhaps, and had brought the baby with her because there was no place to leave it at home. I only asked the question of the Warden so he could deny it, and deny it, too, with some show of feeling--this man with the sliced ear and the gorilla hands.
"Yes, she's been here some time. Judge suspended sentence a while ago. She's gone after her things."
There was no joy over her release in his tones, nor pity for her condition.
He spoke exactly, it seemed to me, as he would have done had he been in charge of the iron-barred gate of the Colosseum two thousand years ago. All that had saved the girl then from the jaws of his hungriest lion was the twist of Nero's thumb. All that saved her now was the nod of the Judge's head--both had the giving of life and death.
A thin mist swam before my eyes, and a great lump started from my heart and stuck fast in my throat, but I did not answer him; it would have done no good--might have enraged him, in fact. I walked straight to the gate through which she had entered and peered in. I could see between the gun-barrels now.
It was like the other cages, with barred walls and sheet-iron floors. Built in one corner of the far end was a strong box of steel, six feet by four by the height of the ceiling, fitted with a low door. This box was lined with a row of bunks, one above the other. From one was thrust a small foot covered with a stocking and part of a skirt; some woman prisoner was ill, perhaps. Against the wall of this main cage sat two negro women; one, I learned afterward, had stabbed a man the week before; the other was charged with theft. The older--the murderess--came forward when she caught sight of me, thrust out her hands between the bars, and begged for tobacco.
In the corner of the same cage was another steel box. I saw the stooping figure of the young girl come out of it as a dog comes out of a kennel. She walked toward the centre of the cage--she still had the baby in her arms--laid the child on the sheet-iron floor, where the light from the grimy windows fell the clearer, and returned to the steel box. The child wore but one garment--a short red-flannel shirt that held the stomach tight and left the shrivelled legs and arms bare. It lay flat on its back, its eyes gazing up at the ceiling, its pinched face in high light against the dull background.