Free Escape from Alcatraz by J. Campbell Bruce Page A

suicide, the pistol in his hand. No one knew why; they had been a devoted couple.
    There is no evidence that the Spanish explorers ever set foot on The Rock, nor the Mexicans after them. Certainly the Indians, before either of them, did not. But the Indians had a special reason to shun the island. They considered it a dwelling place of evil spirits.

Chapter 7
    A FEW YEARS AGO a marshal escorted an Alcatraz convict to the Federal Prison Bureau’s hospital asylum at Springfield, Missouri. Word had spread, and a score of guards gathered to stare at the prisoner—a man from The Rock. It was striking evidence that guards as well as convicts at other penal institutions hold Alcatraz in awe.
    You are a rookie guard at Alcatraz, a place Time once described as “the human zoo of the ‘world’s most dangerous men.’ ” You had been aware of its reputation for years, and your very training for the job had heightened that awareness. And now for the first time you walk into the cellhouse, unarmed. The muscles around your stomach knot up. You walk down Broadway outwardly cool and unconcerned, but inwardly keyed to a high pitch, every nerve alive.
    A former guard says: “I never lost that feeling. In time I got to know the convicts and as individuals many of them were pretty good guys. Really surprising, a lot of them, after what I’d heard: polite, intelligent, no trouble, like fellows you might run into anywhere. But there was that wall between you, an invisible wall; you could sense it in their courtesy, in the way they addressed you, always as Mister. Something uncanny about it. This feeling could bug you if you let it, for wherever you were—the cellhouse, the mess hall, the yard, the shops—you knew that eyes were on you, watching, speculating. And every morning as I walked into the cellhouse, my stomach muscles tightened up. I always had the thought: maybe today’s the day it’s going to happen.”
    Another former guard says: “I got a kick out of the men. They were like kids, in a way, up to some prank or a bit of mischief, and real clever about it. Such experts at casing, if you moved something two inches, next time they came through they knew it. My shop had a partition with a window so I could keep an eye on the men in the next room. One day Tex Lucas winked at Machine Gun Kelly, then slipped up and laid a shiny green wrapper off a typewriter ribbon on the window sill. Kelly tipped me off, and we watched out of the corner of our eye. Pretty soon a prisoner in the other room hurried by the window, did a double take, moseyed back, shot a glance around to see no one was looking, then peered over his shoulder at the green wrapper. He started on, came back again, glanced carefully around, then peered closer. He went across the room. A moment later one of the other men comes over as if he’s got important business, but as he passes the window he slows down and, making sure nobody’s looking, takes a quick gander at the wrapper. He goes back. A third man saunters across, as if he hasn’t got a thing on his mind, but as he gets near he glances around, then sidles up and peers, shoots another quick look my way, then peers down close. That thing really bugged them—some sort of signal sure as hell, maybe for a break. They were a kick, all right, but you had to keep your wits just the same, always a jump ahead of them. I’d look at a man and think: ‘Now, if I were him, just what would I be plotting?’ It was no place to be caught napping.”
    That’s the way it was with the guards: perhaps amusing moments, yet a constant vigilance against a constant danger. At any moment of the day, or night, anything could happen—and often did. It happened one day at the noon meal, a sudden and savage attack, not by a big-name gangster but a studious young inmate.
    Trouble had been long brewing. For a year and a half the convicts had endured the crushing grind of relentless routine, and then on January 22, 1936, they revolted