“How are you going to manage that?” I inquired, gazing with some astonishment at this man who spoke so coolly and confidently of getting out of prison. “These walls seem pretty solid, and you can hardly dig through them with a lone pen-nib. That’s the only implement I see at hand. And I expect the guard will be after that before I get my letter done.” “I don’t know how the thing will be done,” he declared, “but I am surely going to get out of here pretty _pronto_, as the cowmen have it.” He settled back and took to staring at the ceiling. I, presently, became immersed in my letter to Bolton. When it was done I thrust a hand through the bars of my cell and wig-wagged the Policeman—they were good-natured souls for the most part, tolerant of their prisoners, and it broke the grinding monotony to exchange a few words with one under almost any pretext. Barreau was chary of speech, and the Sanders brothers were penned beyond my sight. Sheer monotonous silence, I imagine, would drive even peace-loving men to revolt and commit desperate deeds when they are cooped within four walls with nothing but their thoughts for company. When he came I observed that the guard had been changed since Miss Montell’s visit. The new man was a lean, sour-faced trooper. To my surprise he took my letter and then stood peeping in past me to where Barreau lay on his bunk. After a few seconds he walked away, smiling queerly. In a minute or so he was back again, taking another squint. This time Barreau turned over facing the door, and when the trooper continued his promenade past our cell he got up and stood before the barred window, completely shutting off my outlook. I could not see, but I could hear. And by the sound of his booted feet the guard passed and repassed several times. After a little he tired of this, it seemed, for I heard him stalking away to the front of the guardhouse, and immediately thereafter the creak of a chair as he sat down. Then Barreau sat down on his bunk again. “Try this, kid,” he said, and tossed a package of tobacco and cigarette papers to me. I fell upon the forbidden luxury like a starving man upon food. He rolled himself one out of material in his hand, and in the midst of my puffing changed to my side of the cell—it was but a scant three feet to move—and sat down between me and the door. “Fate smiles at last,” he whispered. “Blackie passed me in a little tobacco. And—see, here in my hand.” I glanced down at what he was snuggling down out of sight between us, a heavy-bladed knife, a tiny saw, not more than six inches in length, and a piece of notepaper marked with what my reason told me must be a ground plan of the very place we were in. “The tools of my deliverance,” said Barreau in an undertone. “I am for the blue sky and the sun and the clean, wide prairies once more.” CHAPTER VIII—BY WAYS THAT WERE DARK