“And you have the one from your car. I’ve got the one from mine too. So we’ve got four. That’s quite a bit of firepower if we need it.”

“Should we station the rifles at both ends of the line so the escapees can’t outflank us?” she asked.

He raised his voice. “Gutierrez, take a spot at the end car up there. Willenz, take a spot at the other end. Don’t let any of them get around us.” He turned back to Leah. “I want you near the middle, so you can help me take the heart out of them if they come at us hard.” He saw Mark Ballard a few feet away with the shotgun resting on his forearm and pointing down at the pavement, like a pheasant hunter.

“Hey, Mark,” he said. “Nice to have you with us. I hereby deputize you with a rank of field marshal.”

“Thanks, Chief. Anything special I should know?”

“Just stick with the lieutenant. If you do what she does, you’ll be fine.”

It was only a moment later that Leah saw the dark mass of men moving up Constitution Street toward Main. They were still a block away, but they were a long, shadowy, moving thing, like a monstrous animal crawling along the street. They stretched from one sidewalk, filling the street, to the other. They must have come from the prison on foot, trotting or walking the three or four miles of alfalfa fields. She strained her eyes and estimated that there must be at least five hundred men. As the throng streamed along Constitution Street, some of them would climb or be lifted by others to the level of the old-fashioned streetlamps. The top man would lift off the glass cover of the lamp, leaving the big bulb bare. Then he would smash the bulb, leaving that section of the street in darkness. When they were still a hundred yards from Main Street, they looked like they were emerging from a tunnel.

The first three or four ranks of escapees were armed with what Leah later confirmed were weapons from the prison arsenal. The next ranks carried looted weapons from houses that had been hastily abandoned by their owners or stormed by the mob. There were hunting rifles, shotguns, a number of revolvers, and compact semiautomatic pistols. There were even three men carrying compound bows and quivers full of steel-tipped deer hunting arrows. Behind them the crowd was still in deeper shadow.