outfit. Remember the Army field problems we went out on? On one trip that took place in
the winter I remember that we each were assigned to a truck for the duration of the
problem. In our outfit, Army trucks had no heaters and it used to get pretty cold in those
cabs. I
remember you cutting a hole in the floor-boards of your truck in order to let the heat from
the engine come into the cab. The reason I remember this so well is the impression it
made on me because «mutilation» of Army property was a crime for which you could get
severely punished. Of course I was pretty green in the Army and probably afraid to
stretch the rules even a little bit, but I can remember you grinning about it (and keeping
warm) while I worried about it (and froze). I recall that you bought a motorcycle, and
vaguely remember you had some trouble with it — chased by the police? — crackup?
Whatever it was, it was the first time I realized the wild streak in you. Some of my
recollections may be wrong; this was over eight years ago and I only knew you for a
period of about eight months. From what I remember, though, I got along with you very
well and rather liked you. You always seemed cheerful and cocky, you were good at your
Army work and I can’t remember that you did much griping. Of course you were
apparently quite wild but I never knew too much about that. But now you are in real
trouble. I try to imagine what you are like now. What you think about. When first I read
about you I was stunned. I really was. But then I put the paper down and turned to
something else. But the thought of you returned. I wasn’t satisfied, just to forget. I am, or
try to be, fairly religious [Catholic]. I wasn’t always. I used to just drift along with little
thought about the only important thing there is. I never considered death or the possibility
of a life hereafter. I was too much alive: car, college, dating, etc. But my kid brother died
of leukemia when he was just 17 years old. He knew he was dying and afterwards I used
to wonder what he thought about. And now I think of you, and wonder what you think
about. I didn’t know what to say to my brother in the last weeks before he died. But I
know what I’d say now. And this is why I am writing you: because God made you as well
as me and He loves you just as He loves me, and for the little we know of God’s will what
has happened to you could have happened to me.
Your friend, Don Cullivan.
The name meant nothing, but Perry at once recognized the face in the photograph of a young
soldier with crew-cut hair and round, very earnest eyes. He read the letter many times; though he
found the religious allusions unpersuasive («I’ve tried to believe, but I don’t, I can’t, and there’s no
use pretending»), he was thrilled by it. Here was someone offering help, a sane and respectable
man who had once known and liked him, a man who signed himself friend. Gratefully, in great
haste, he started a reply: «Dear Don, Hell yes I remember Don Cullivan . . .»
Hickock’s cell had no window; he faced a wide corridor and the faces of other cells. But he was
not isolated, there were people to talk to, a plentiful turnover of drunkards, forgers, wife-beaters,
and Mexican vagrants; and Dick, with his light-hearted «con-man» patter, his sex anecdotes and
gamy jokes, was popular with the inmates (though there was one who had no use for him
whatever — an old man who hissed at him: «Killer! Killer!» and who once drenched him with a
bucketful of dirty scrub water).
Outwardly, Hickock seemed to one and all an unusually untroubled young man. When he was not
socializing or sleeping, he lay on his cot smoking or chewing gum and reading sports magazines
or paperback thrillers. Often he simply lay there whistling old favorites («You Must Have Been a
Beautiful Baby,» «Shuffle Off to Buffalo»), and staring at an un-shaded light bulb that burned day
and night in the ceiling of the cell. He hated the light bulb’s monotonous surveillance; it disturbed
his sleep and, more explicitly, endangered the success of a private project — escape. For the
prisoner was not as unconcerned as he appeared to be, or as resigned; he intended taking every
step possible to avoid «a ride on the Big Swing.» Convinced that such a ceremony would be the
outcome of any trial — certainly any trial held in the State of Kansas — he had decided to «bust jail.
Grab a car and raise dust.» But first he must have a weapon; and over a period of weeks he’d
been making one: a «shiv,» an instrument very like an ice pick — something that would fit with
lethal niceness between the shoulder-blades of Undersheriff Meier. The weapon’s components, a
piece of wood and a length of hard wire, were originally part of a toilet brush he’d confiscated,
dismantled and hidden under his mattress. Late at night, when the only noises were snores and
coughs and the mournful whistle-wailings of Santa Fe trains rumbling through the darkened town,
he honed the wire against the cell’s concrete floor. And while he worked he schemed.
Once, the first winter after he had finished high school, Hickock had hitchhiked across Kansas
and Colorado: «This was when I was looking for a job. Well, I was riding in a truck, and the driver,
me and him got into a little argument, no reason exactly, but he beat up on me. Shoved me out.
Just left me there. High the hell up in the Rockies. It was sleeting like, and I walked miles, my
nose bleeding like fifteen pigs. Then I come to a bunch of cabins on a wooded slope. Summer
cabins, all locked up and empty that time of year. And I broke into one of them. There was
firewood and canned goods, even some whiskey. I laid up there over a week, and it was one of
the best times I ever knew. Despite the fact my nose hurt so and my eyes were green and yellow.
And when the snow stopped the sun came out. You never saw such skies. Like Mexico. If Mexico
was in a cold climate. I hunted through the other cabins and found some smoked hams and a
radio and a rifle. It was great. Out all day with a gun. With the sun in my face. Boy, I felt good. I
felt like Tarzan. And every night I ate beans and fried ham and rolled up in a blanket by the fire
and fell asleep listening to music on the radio. Nobody came near the place. I bet I could’ve
stayed till spring.» If the escape succeeded, that was the course Dick had determined upon — to
head for the Colorado mountains, and find there a cabin where he could hide until spring (alone,
of course; Perry’s future did not concern him). The prospect of so idyllic an interim added to the
inspired stealth with which he whetted his wire, filed it to a Umber stiletto fineness.
Thursday 10 March. Sheriff had a, shake-out. Searched through all the cells and found a
shiv tucked under D’s mattress. Wonder what he had in mind (smile).
Not that Perry really considered it a smiling matter, for Dick, flourishing a dangerous weapon,
could have played a decisive role in plans he himself was forming. As the weeks went by he had
become familiar with life on Courthouse Square, its habitués and their habits. The cats, for
example: the two thin gray toms who appeared with every twilight and prowled the Square,
stopping to examine the cars parked around its periphery — behavior puzzling to him until Mrs.
Meier explained that the cats were hunting for dead birds caught in the vehicles’ engine grilles.
Thereafter it pained him to watch their maneuvers: «Because most of my life I’ve done what
they’re doing. The equivalent.»
And there was one man of whom Perry had grown especially aware, a robust, upright gentleman
with hair like a gray-and-silver skullcap; his face, filled out, firm-jawed, was somewhat
cantankerous in repose, the mouth down-curved, the eyes downcast as though in mirthless
reverie — a picture of unsparing sternness. And yet this was at least a partially inaccurate
impression, for now and again the prisoner glimpsed him as he paused to talk to other men, joke
with them and laugh, and then he seemed carefree, jovial, generous: «The kind of person who
might see the human side» — an important attribute, for the man was Roland H. Tate, Judge of the
32nd Judicial District, the jurist who would preside at the trial of the State of Kansas versus Smith
and Hickock. Tate, as Perry soon learned, was an old and awesome name in western Kansas.
The judge was rich, he raised horses, he owned much land, and his wife was said to be very
beautiful. He was the father of two sons, but the younger had died, a tragedy that greatly affected
the parents and led them to adopt a small boy who had appeared in court as an abandoned,
homeless child. «He sounds soft-hearted to me,» Perry once said to Mrs. Meier. «Maybe he’ll give
us a break.»
But that was not what Perry really believed; he believed what he’d written Don Cullivan, with
whom he now corresponded regularly: his crime was «unforgivable,» and he fully expected to
«climb those thirteen steps.» However, he was not altogether without hope, for he too had plotted
an escape. It depended upon a pair of young men that he had often observed observing him. One
was red-haired, the other dark. Sometimes, standing in the Square under the tree that touched
the cell window, they smiled and signaled to him — or so he imagined.
