screen, Cribben following her on the other side, sullenly replying to her, now and then.
"Ket, I'm Jo," said Joan Daisy, pleadingly.
"Don't I know it?" he returned. "Ain't I breaking my neck to see you?"
She lifted herself to tiptoes and thrust her finger-tips into the little holes and pulled up to increase her height.
"Watch your step!" he warned her, sarcastically.
"Why?"
"Somebody'll figure you're trying to slip me a saw or dope or dynamite or something."
"Oh!" she said. "That's why they've got this."
"That's why," replied Ket, "so you can't. Fat chance."
"Ket, how are you? You're well?"
"Well, I ain't sick in bed. . . . Bed," he repeated the word bitterly. "It's a cot, kid, between one on top of me and one underneath. I've got the middle one; we're three in the cell. All night there, kid, between two"—his voice lowered to a whisper which Joan Daisy hardly could hear—"burglars. By God, you hardly can move. I gotta lie there in the dark all night and mosta the day, when they shove the chow into the cells. They shove it in on a plate on the floor under the bottom bar; you inhale it or stick in your fingers. They don't take a chance slipping anybody a knife and fork.
"Then all you gotta do is clean your cell and keep from scrappin' till they turn you out in the bull-pen. This's the big time, kid. You've come right at it. When we get real wild we play 'How many fingers up?' We got a ball, too—a soft ball to bat with your arm or fist. No wood bat for the bull-pen. Then back to the cell with your bunkies and nothin' to do; by God, nothin' to do, day and night, dark and light. Dark—damn the dark, the way it smells and snores. Damn the dark—"
"Ket!" cried Joan Daisy.
