Terror at Hellhole by L. D. Henry

as far as the pyramidal roof, permitting the guards an unobstructed view in all directions. The hill on the south side of the prison formed an eighteen-foot-high wall where the yard had been dug into the solid caliche. On the east side, the hill sloped downward, necessitating the long wall to extend the entire length of the prison, northward from the hill where they were working.
    â€œPick up those tools and start pounding,” Hack cried. He moved back a few paces so that he could better watch them all, not wanting to be too near the swinging sledges.
    Being smaller than the others, Powers held the drill for the huge Print who swung the ten-pound sledge with effortless regularity. The other men shoveled away loose rock shattered by the earlier blasting.
    Heat and sweat irked the toiling prisoners, while the sound of ringing steel splintering rocks and the grating of shovels dragging stone chips mingled with the heavy dust shrouding the area.
    And the morning ticked slowly away. The sun was a fiery orb hanging directly overhead when the whistle blew to signal the noon meal.
    â€œYou men can lay down your tools now and line up,” Hack told them, his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. “You’ll have a chance to fill your bellies with beans.”
    Powers wiped a hand across the thin film of moisture on his upper lip. Hell, he hardly sweated anymore. Dwyer, he recalled, hadn’t sweated much either, only when he had been seized with those body-shaking fits that often beset him. Otherwise, Fish hadn’t been perspired, hadn’t even enough meat on his rack of bones to perspire.
    Lined up, the prisoners were ready to eat. At the guard’s command, Powers stepped off, following in the footsteps of the other convicts. Damned Arizona sun, he thought, hot enough to bake the balls off a man without any juices. He grumbled to himself all the way up to the mess hall area where he got into line with the other prisoners without comment.
    But not even the time they spent in the hot, steamy hall did much for him because he had somehow lost his appetite in the noisy, clattering area permeated with a boiled cabbage odor. He did, however, drink two glasses of cool water while picking desultorily at the food on his plate. He was glad when the whistle signaled them back to the job.
    At the lineup, Hack ordered Print and Laustina to pick up a ladder from the carpenter shop building just north of the mess hall, then they marched back to the work site in silence.
    â€œSet that ladder against the wall next to that guard tower,” Hack ordered, waving the 44–40 rifle clutched in his rough fists. “And don’t try anything funny, Jake, not unless you figure you can beat a bullet over that wall.”
    Using his impaired hand, Laustina held two fingers and thumb to his nose in the age old gesture of disrespect, but Hack merely laughed, not letting it bother him.
    After placing the ladder, the men resumed their toil with sledges and shovels, gouging deeply into the caliche hill. A faint east wind wafted a slight odor of stagnant water from Gila Slough, which mingled with the musky smell of the swine yard down beyond the cemetery. And the hot, tiresome afternoon dragged on.
    Under Superintendent Tarbow’s policy, lifers worked until sunset, and although Powers had a shorter sentence, he was included because of his misfortune to have been in the crew with the lifers on this day. Maybe, he thought, it was because he had been with them during their escape attempt. And it had not been of his own choosing, for never would he wittingly go with such callous and brutal killers.
    The sun had almost lowered to the west wall when Hack decided that the proposed cell had reached the dimensions for jail cells. The guard called to him: “Powers, you shinny up that ladder. This cell is about ready for a ventilator hole. You gotta punch a hole through about two feet of rock roof. Do a good job up there and maybe