" The Torch Escapes " by Cardenio1611

[esercito sconfitto]

The Torch Escapes, First Part
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The Torch Escapes

By Cardenio

Sam Evans, also known as "The Torch," stood in her Bruxton County jail cell waiting, the sound of the hammers putting the hanging scaffold in place distracting her from what she was waiting for. She stood looking through the door of her cell in her black shirt, high black boots, and tight black jeans, her red hair highlighted like the torch that was her bandit name. She had been told that her lawyer would be there in a minute. The blanket that had been draped around the bars to provide her with privacy for her "woman's things" had been pulled back. She thought she heard the steps of her lawyer walking up the jail steps.

Not that anything could be heard clearly with that hammering, and not that a lawyer would do her any good. The scaffold was due to be finished at nine o'clock the next morning, and the trial was to start half and hour later. With any luck, or lack of luck for her, a half hour after that she would be convicted of the murder of a teller, an innocent man to be sure, but someone who could have been shot by anyone during the melee that sprang from the ambush in the bank.

Shortly thereafter, as soon as the crowd from the courtroom emptied into the street and were joined by those from farms and other towns and villages, Sam "the Torch" Evans would be hanged by the neck until dead.

The door opened, and into the jail walked a young woman, a brimmed hat on her red hair, dressed in a tightly buttoned brown suit, wearing glasses, and toting a law book.

"What the--" Sam started to say, and the sheriff finished it for her--

"Hell! Who or what are you, young woman," spat the mustached sheriff Ritter, a cigar clenched at the side of his mouth.

"I, my good sir, am Michaela Thea Massingham, Esquire, graduate of the Boston College of Law, doing work for my firm on a San Francisco merger, and sent here on a successful petition of the court from the Daughters of Justice League to ensure that Samantha Evans receives a fair trial, something that can be seen to only by the legal ministering of one of her own sisterhood."

"Sisterhood?" shouted Sam. "I 'ain't got a sister."

"Oh, but you do. You are sister to all women. Here," she said, handing the astonished sheriff a legal document. "The court order appointing me this woman's attorney. Open the door, officer, so that I can consult with my client. The order gives me an hour today and half an hour alone with her tomorrow before trial. And then draw the blanket so that my discussions with my client can be kept confidential--at least as confidential as possible in this--place."

Michaela was brought into the cell, the door was locked, and the blanket was replaced. She shook Sam's hand warmly. "Good to meet you. May I call you Samantha? Good! Now let us begin," she said, looking around the cell for a place to sit and seeing only the single bed bunk. Her eyes caught the barred window just as her ears were drawn to the hammer's call. "What the blazes?"

As Michaela walked to the window, she was unaware that Sam was looking her up and down. They had the same color hair and were the same height and build. With the hat pulled down and wearing the glasses--it might work.

With Michaela's back to her, Sam stood on one foot as she slid off her right boot with its stout heel. Holding the boot tightly with both hands and pointing the heel at the lawyer, she shuffled toward her.

"They're getting a bit ahead of themselves," Michaela was saying. Sam brought the boot up and crashed it down against the back of Michaela's head.

Michaela's eyes clouded as her mouth popped open. She fell backwards into Sam's arms, who dragged her back and dropped her on the bunk. Quickly, Sam unbuttoned her own blouse and jeans and stripped naked. Reaching down, she unbuttoned Michaela's brown dress, slid it off her, and then drew down the slip, stockings, shoes, and drawers until Michaela too was naked, her mouth still open and her chin pointed high.

The lawyer's legs had drifted open during the undressing, and Sam looked down admiringly at the woman's private parts as she put on the lawyer's drawers, stockings, slip, dress and shoes.

Sam took a moment and listened through the blanket, but she couldn't hear anything. The only comfort was, with all the hammering, neither could they.

She took up her jeans, pulled them over Michaela's legs, draped her shirt around her and buttoned it, and then yanked on the boots. As the crowning touch, took the glasses off Michaela and placed them on her own nose. Her vision became just a tad cloudy, suggesting that the glasses were mostly for show. Then she placed her hat over Michaela's sleeping face.

The hat may have roused her, for Michaela brought her head up. Immediately, Sam fired her fist at the hat, and bounced it off the face behind it. The lawyer's head dropped onto the bed, and the hat settled neatly into place on her face. Sam folded Michaela's hands over her chest, as if she was dead, which, in less than 12 hours, she could very likely be.

From the inside of the cell, Sam called for the sheriff. He opened the cell, barely looked at her, and instead noticed the woman sleeping on the bed.

"Odd to fall asleep before the trial."

"She is comfortable in her innocence," Sam said loftily and swept out of the jail.

Ten hours later, Michaela was awakened by the sheriff Ritter slapping her face. "Wake up! You slept through your last meal. Now you're supposed to meet with your attorney before trial, wherever she is."

Her head throbbing, Michaela looked down at her clothes and seemed to slowly realize what was happening as the sheriff dragged her up.

"Wait A minute!" Michaela shouted. "I'm not her! She took my clothes1"

"Sure, sure!" the sheriff said without listening, pushing her to the door.

"I said WAIT!" Michaela said, fighting him, holding onto the cell door and kicking. "Don't you understand, I am Michaela Thea Massingham! Michaela Thea Massingham!"

She struggled so hard, like a wildcat, that Ritter's deputy came Tex running in. Seeing what was happening, he took the gun from his holder and grabbed it by the barrel and ran behind the woman.

"I am Michaela Thea Massingham. Boston Law School. Class of '03," she was saying as Tex whacked her with the handle of his gun. Her body lost its substance as she fell backward into the deputy's arms.

But Ritter had finally registered what she had been saying. He reached down and pulled her head yup by her red hair to see her face. "Oh hell! It's her. I mean--it's not her. It's the damn lawyer. The Torch has escaped."

Tex looked at the unconscious face too and was so shocked he let go of her, causing her to drop onto the cell floor like a bundle of rags.

"What are we going to do?". Tex shouted.

"Lower your voice," Ritter snapped. "Here's what you do. Go out and find out where the lawyer went."

Five minutes layer, Tex returned. "Right after she waltzed out of here, she went to the livery stable, rented a horse for an evening ride, and 'ain't been back."

Ritter knelt down and looked at the unconscious woman. "Hell, she's got 10 hours on us. She could be in Kansas by now."

Tex knelt down on the other side of the woman. "Sheriff, now, don't get mad at me. But, here's an ideer. Say we pour some liquor over her and keep her groggy like this, you know, givin' her a hit every now and then, and prop her up in the courtroom saying somebody snuck her a bottle or something. The jury convicts her and we let 'em hang her. I mean, hell, she has it comin'--sorta. Women aren't supposed to be lawyers. She took the risk and she pays the price!"

Ritter considered it for ten whole seconds. "It's an interesting idea, Tex. But--once the Torch robs another bank, it'll be clear that we'd hung an innocent woman and the whole Boston law establishment will be down on us for murder."

Tex sighed. "Yeah, there's that."

"Come on, let's get the judge and take our whipping."

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The Torch Escapes, Second Part
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The judge was so angry he convened a town meeting and the town by acclamation voted Ritter and Tex out of office. Their successors organized a posse but returned two days later, saying there was no trace of her.

A day after that, Sam was sitting on her blanket at her campsite, which was shadowed by the great hills, drinking coffee. She was wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans--her own clothes having been left behind.

She heard a noise and immediately drew her gun, only to see a familiar face. "Emily!" she called out.

The woman who had been called Michaela, wearing a old grey dress, rode in on an old mare. She seemed tired and even listless.

"Where you get that dress," Sam asked, holding the reins while Emily dismounted.

"From the school teacher. She said she's just gotten a new one from the Sears and Roebuck catalog and was going to turn this into dish rags anyway. I sold your clothes to a man who said he was going to put them in a museum or something to get money to buy this horse. The town wasn't giving me much help. Seems they kinda hold me responsible for what happened. Judge even hauled me into court and disbarred me from practicing law in that county."

"Hey, that was my robbing outfit!"

"Sorry," Emily muttered and moved to tie up her horse.

"I went and dug up the money and then untied the lawyer lady from the shed where you'd left her. Boy," Sam said grinning, "I wish I coulda seen her face in that instant when she realized what you were doing to her. Here you go to San Francisco, hire her, pay her to get that court order, and then five miles from the train station you bang her on the head, put on her clothes, and leave her tied up naked in an abandoned rail shed."

"That's why I paid her so much up front," Emily said weakly.

"I stole her a horse and pointed her in the direction of the train station, but I told her we wouldn't take kindly if she told anyone about what had happened, and it wouldn't do her lawyering career no good either."

"All I know is that if she goes back to Bruxton County she won't me able to practice law. Ohh!" Emily held the back of her head. "Tell me again why you really had to knock me out?"

"It had to look real! And boy, it did!"

"Haven't you ever heard of acting. And then the deputy cracks me on the same exact spot."

Suddenly realizing that Emily had been a little slow moving since she'd arrived, Sam got concerned. "Here lemme see," she said, feeling the back of Emily's head. "Has the swelling gone down at all?"

"A little. But the doctor said there was no concussion."

"Here," Sam said, setting Emily down on the blanket and handing her a cup of coffee. Emily drank it and then looked up to see Sam's anxious face. For the first time, Emily smiled. "Glad you're out, sis."

"Thanks for getting me out, sis," Sam said, kissing Emily on the lips. "And--I got an idea," she said, taking a pair of glasses from her shirt pocket and placing them on Emily's face. "I kept these as a souvenir from that lawyer lady but, as you found out, they're mostly glass and make a hell of a disguise. There's a bank near Reno that's owned by a woman who wears glasses. She has blonde hair but you could wear a wig--"

"Oh, no you don't," Emily said, laughing. "Next time, you wear the disguise, you get cracked on the head--"

The day with its dimming light ended under the shadow of the hills with the sisters laughing.

8/6/2008,