Rite of Passage

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 hail. I took the keys from the floor by Sgt. Robard’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 a little light leaked up from the first floor and down from the third. There were voices on the third floor, and somebody laughed up there. I held my breath and moved quietly to Jimmy’s cell.

I whispered, “Jimmy!” and he came alert and moved lo the door of the cell.

“Am I glad to see you,” he whispered back.

I said, “I have the keys. Which one fits?”

“The key marked ‘D.’ It fits the four cells here in the corner.”

I couldn’t see well enough there and I didn’t want to light a match, so I moved back to the light and fumbled through the keys until I found the key tagged “D.” I opened the cell with as little noise as I could manage.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here in a hurry.”

He slipped out and pushed the door shut behind him. We started for the stairs. We were almost there when I heard somebody coming up. Jimmy grabbed my arm and pulled me back. We flattened out as best we could.

The policeman looked around in the dark and said, “Be you up here, Robards?” Then he saw us and started to say, “What the hell?”

I stepped out and pointed one of the pistols at him. I hadn’t loaded it. I had just stuck them in my pocket.

I said, “Easy now. I’ve got nothing to lose by shooting you. If you want to live, put up your hands.”

He put up his hands.

“All right. Walk down here.”

Jimmy opened the door for him and the policeman stepped inside the cell. While his back was turned, I hit him with the pistol. I probably hurt him worse than I did Sgt. Robards — a gun is a good deal more solid than a sack of sand — but I didn’t feel quite so bad about it because I didn’t know him. He groaned and fell and I didn’t try to break the fall at all. Instead I swung the cell door shut and locked it.

Then I heard the sound of low voices in one of the other cells and somebody said, “Shut up,” quite clearly to somebody else.

I turned and said, “Do you want to get shot?”

The voice was collected. “No. No trouble here.”

“Do you want to be let out?”

The voice was amused. “I don’t think so. Thank you just the same. I be due to be let out tomorrow and I think I’ll wait.”

Jimmy said, “Come on. Come on. Let’s go.”

On the stairs, I said, “Where’s your signal? We’ve got to have it.”

“It’s not here,” Jimmy said. “The soldiers took all my gear when I was arrested. All they have here are my clothes.”

“We’re in trouble,” I said. “My signal is broken and lost.”

“Oh, no!” Jimmy said. “I was counting on you. Well, we can try to get mine back.”