Seven Days to Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  Aarn Bildad’s broad grin was the tip-off that cued the audience and clued them in that tonight’s session of Night Court would be a wild one even by the fast and loose rules of Commander Barbaroux himself.

  The spectators began to whoop and shout as the truth of the matter sank home to them.

  Determined to wring the last drop of fun from the situation, Barbaroux played it straight. “Is it your understanding, Mr. Bildad, that long-serving revenue collector Hull Chavis was shot, killed, and posthumously robbed by the three tollgate operators on duty at the time: Park Farner, Hector Sime, and Justus Pike?”

  “That’s the way of it, Commander,” Aarn Bildad said.

  “Anything else you’d care to present in the way of evidence, Mr. Bildad?”

  “Just this, Commander.” Aarn Bildad held up a canvas moneybag, the standard type and model used by Combine revenue collectors in making their rounds. “The posse found this in possession of Justus Pike at the time he, Sime, and Farner were at the docks trying to charter a boat to ferry them downriver to the next county.”

  Bildad held the moneybag up for all those in the Grand Saloon to see. “As is painfully evident, this sack is looking mighty thin. A notebook found in Hull Chavis’s possession at the time of his death—”

  Here Aarn Bildad brandished a leather pocket notepad, holding it out from himself at arm’s length in plain view. “This notepad, containing a column of figures in Hull Chavis’s handwriting, notes the totals received at each of his stops and adds up the amounts for a sum total of over six hundred dollars.”

  Outraged buzzing and shocked angry murmurs sounded in the hall at the size of the amount.

  Aarn Bildad said, “Let me remind my fellow citizens here tonight that under the dynamic new system of Collective Individualism instituted by Commander Barbaroux, this money is your money. Farner, Sime, and Pike stole this six hundred dollars from you.

  “And if it had been you carrying that money instead of unfortunate Hull Chavis, who leaves behind a widow and two young children without a daddy, it would have been you who was shot down like a dog and left to die alone in the dirt of Wahtonka Road last week!

  “Do you want to know what Farner, Sime, and Pike were doing while Hull Chavis was bleeding out with two bullet holes in his guts?!”

  “Hell, yes!”—“Damned straight we want to know!”—“Tell it, Aarn!” were just a few of the responses shouted out by some of the more vocal members among the irate spectators.

  “Pike, Sime, and Farner were over to Halftown, living it up on the six hundred dollars they stole from y’all, drinking, gambling, and wenching!” Aarn Bildad thundered.

  It took some time for the clamor to be quelled and order restored so Barbaroux could pass sentence on the accused. He rose to stand on the platform, looming over the three defendants, looking down at them.

  “Do any of you have anything to say in your own defense before sentence is passed and justice is done?” he asked.

  “Them two did it,” Justus Pike said, stepping forward, rattling his chains. “They shot poor ol’ Hull and kilt him dead. I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t kill nobody!”

  “What did you do to stop them, Mr. Pike?” Barbaroux queried.

  Pike was wringing manacled hands. “What could I do? Their two guns against one of me and I ain’t no killer—”

  “You took your share of the loot and lived it up while Hull Chavis lay dying in the dirt,” Barbaroux pointed out.

  Silence. Pike had no reply.

  Hector Sime stepped up. “I have something to say.”

  “Speak, Mr. Sime,” Barbaroux decreed.

  “How many—” His voice broke and he started again. “How many men—and women, too—have you and your damned Combine left dying in the dirt since you took over the county, and before that, too?!”

  Angry uproar sounded from the crowd, shouts demanding that Sime be shut up, trying to shout him down. The noise was quelled when Barbaroux raised his hands for silence.

  “Let him talk, he has a right to be heard. Every man, no matter how bad, deserves that much when he has to look death in the face,” he said.

  Sime’s voice quavered when he heard that last part about looking death in the face, but he swallowed hard and tried to continue. “You steal big so you get to lord it up over everybody else, being all high and mighty. We stole small and got caught so now we got to pay.

  “You stole the whole county, so nobody can tell you where to get off. You’re stealing everything that ain’t nailed down. When Moraine County is squeezed dry you’ll move on to the next one that’s ripe for the plucking and let that one fall into your lap.

  “But what do the rest of us do when the town is plucked clean and dying on the vine and we’re dying with it? Us boys just wanted a little piece of the pie. You’re eating the full twelve-course banquet and sticking us townsfolk for the check. It ain’t right! We just wanted something for ourselves, a little pittance, that’s all we done.”

  “You killed a man,” Barbaroux said gravely.

  “How many did the Combine kill taking over? A hundred, two hundred more like, maybe more. That’s not counting the folks that starved to death because they got run off land the Combine wanted.

  “How many more will you kill before you’re done?” Sime demanded.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Barbaroux said irritably. “You’ve had your say, man. Stand down and be done with it; we’re done with you.”

  Barbaroux’s gimlet-eyed gaze came to fall on Park Farner. “And you?”

  Farner said, “I reckon you had your fun playing cat-and-mouse with us, putting on a show, making like you didn’t know we was working Wahtonka station when Hull Chavis got burned down.

  “Sooner or later somebody’s gonna play you the same way and you see how you like it.

  “Sure, I gunned down Hull Chavis because I told him not to reach and he reached, going for a gun like he thought protecting money that’s gonna wind up in your pocket was worth dying for. Man that dumb ain’t gonna live long nohow.”

  “Are you finished?” Barbaroux asked coldly.

  “Give me a gun and I’ll do my talking with that!” Farner said.

  “Ah, a show of spirit. So much the better, adds spice to the game,” Barbaroux said, smiling frostily. “Better sport than we dared hope for.”

  He motioned to the guards to remove the prisoners to the sidelines, off center stage, which he was once more commandeering for himself. “Judgment must be rendered,” he said. “I don’t pass sentence, we pass sentence. One man, one vote. You know how it works.”

  Barbaroux demonstrated dramatically, graphically, by showing them the actions. “Thumbs-up, Life!”

  The hand reversed, thumb pointing downward to earth and the grave.

  “Thumbs-down, Death!”

  “I’ll cast my vote now,” Barbaroux said, turning turns thumbs-down: “Death!”

  “Now it’s your turn, friends,” he went on. “Thumbs-up or thumbs-down, Life or Death, how rule you?”

  The crowd voted; they were Barbaroux’s crowd, handpicked by him. They were mostly ambitious strivers with no limits who saw which way the wind was blowing and wanted to get a piece of the pie before it was all gone. Barbaroux never doubted they would vote the way he wanted and they didn’t disappoint:

  “Thumbs-down!—Death!”

  Barbaroux ordered the guards in the detail to remove the prisoners’ chains. Keys were fitted into the locking slots of manacles chaining their hands, fetters binding their feet. Presently the prisoners—the condemned, to call them rightly—were unbound if not free.

  Farner stomped his feet, trying to restore their circulation. Pike stood there huddled and trembling, looking more bewildered than anything else. He looked like he was going to cry but managed to keep himself together.

  Pike sidled over to Sime. “Hey, what for you think they took the chains off, Sime?”

  “Maybe they want us to make a break for it so they can shoot us
,” Sime spat.

  Pike gave a start. “You think they would?”

  “You like hanging better than being shot?” Sime’s tone was hostile, sarcastic.

  “No talking,” a guard snapped.

  “You heard the man. No talking, dummy,” Sime said.

  “That goes for you, too,” the same guard said to Sime.

  Farner unchained made the guards nervous. He was too big, too hostile. They grouped around him, ready to swarm if he moved wrong.

  A guard with shifty eyes stood on Farner’s left, facing him. He stood still but his eyes kept shifting around like two black olives rolling around in an empty jar.

  Barbaroux stood at the head of the red velvet–colored platform holding his arms up in the air signaling for attention. He got it. He waited for the hubbub to die down before speaking.

  “My friends, to be just, justice needs to be seen being done. Tonight, you have voted in solemn conclave to purge our community of three extraordinarily vicious individuals: Park Farner, Hector Sime, and Justus Pike,” he said. “To that end, we will now put on a demonstration.

  “Your safety is our paramount concern. Our public works crew will now clear a space on the main floor of the hall. Please move to a safety area to watch the demonstration. Thank you.”

  The public workers were part of the boat’s permanent party, a work detail of ten men. They wore blue uniforms and flat white caps trimmed by a free-hanging black ribbon.

  They eased the guests to the sidelines to clear a center area fronting the throne at right angles to the long, central axis of the hall and boat as it ran from stem to stern, aft to bow.

  The new area was roped off on all four sides. Lengths of thick rope were strung to upright stanchions nailed in place to wooden pallets placed at regular intervals along the perimeter, enclosing the space. Workers were posted inside the enclosure to keep out the curious.

  Woven hempen mats were set down on the floor in the center of the enclosure. Several heavy barrels were placed upright on the mats. The upper lids were removed, revealing that the barrels were filled with sand.

  These curious preparations caused the humming conversations among the onlookers to buzz louder.

  Barbaroux stepped down from the platform, entered the enclosure, and went to an area on the side where the three prisoners were being kept.

  Farner, Sime, and Pike were closely guarded, the members of the detail hemming them in. The guards were so tense they all but vibrated. They put their bodies between the prisoners and Barbaroux to forestall any of them making a lunge at the Commander.

  Barbaroux addressed the prisoners, speaking loudly enough to be heard by the crowd of onlookers who now lined the perimeter of the roped-off area to see what would happen next.

  “Farner, Sime, and Pike—You challenged me before, challenged the righteousness of this court to condemn you to death—well and good!

  “The fact remains that you have been so condemned and the sentence will be executed forthwith—you will be executed forthwith.

  “Yet you need not necessarily die. I now give you a choice between certain death and a chance to live. What do I mean? In ancient days our ancestors determined the rightness of a cause by the honorable institution of Trial by Combat. Simplicity itself. Two contending parties fight to the death. Whoever lives is the winner: He is vindicated and his cause decreed righteous in the eyes of the law, justice, and his fellow men.

  “I now propose that you three defend your cause—which is nothing less than your right to rob and kill without punishment—defend it with your lives.

  “Our champion, he who will defend our cause, will put his life on the line to uphold our honor, our inalienable right to punish robbers and killers with the supreme penalty of death.

  “You three have the right to fight a duel to the death against our Champion of Justice. In the interest of fairness, the combat will be fought not with swords or similar exotica but with the weapon with which you are most familiar, the six-gun. The very weapon with which you committed the crime that brought you here. Fitting, no?

  “Should you win, you will be pardoned, free to go from this place with no reprisals, no further action taken against you by us. What say you, aye or nay? Will you duel with six-guns to the death with our champion?”

  The condemned men put their heads together for a hurried conference.

  “What’ll we do, what’ll we do?” Pike fretted.

  “Do what you want, yellowbelly. I know what I’m going to do. I’ll take the gun,” Sime said.

  “Bah! It’s all a trick,” Farner scoffed, sneering.

  Pike’s head whipped around this way and that as he followed the back-and-forth between Farner and Sime.

  “Trick or not, I’d rather die by the gun than the rope. Hanging’s a hard way to die, Farner.”

  “You can’t trust that red-bearded bastard, Sime!”

  “I know. I’d still rather take a bullet than the rope.”

  “You might have something there.”

  “So you’ll give it a go?” Sime asked.

  “Like you said, it beats hanging,” Farner said.

  “What about me, fellas?” Pike asked.

  “You can go to the devil for all I care,” Sime said.

  “I was scared before, that’s why I said what I did. I’m not scared now. Besides,” Pike went on, “three guns are better than two.”

  “Well—all right,” Sime said, not liking it but feeling he had no other choice.

  “Thanks,” Pike said, heartfelt.

  “Just don’t screw up anymore than you have to,” Sime added.

  Barbaroux once more came to the fore. “Well? Your decision?”

  “It’s a go,” Sime said.

  “You’re in, all of you?” Barbaroux eyed each man in the trio, one by one.

  “All,” Sime said curtly.

  “Excellent!” Bright spots of red color shone in Barbaroux’s cheeks. He enthusiastically rubbed his palms together in a hand-washing motion.

  He turned to face the onlookers massed at the rope line. “The condemned have accepted the challenge, the duel is at hand!”

  Loud cheers, happy faces.

  The crowd was intrigued by the Trial by Combat. It is doubtful whether even the thrill of a triple hanging, which ordinarily would have been something to see for them, could have been so novel and exciting.

  Barbaroux was joined by Cutlass and Mr. Spivey, two of his sidemen.

  Cutlass was built like a circus strongman. He was shaved bald with a thick black mustache. A set of three gold rings piercing an ear added to his piratical appearance.

  Mr. Spivey embodied a completely opposite physical type. He was small, shrunken, and prematurely aged looking. His eyes were watery, his expression leering.

  “The firearms, friend Cutlass, if you would be so good,” Barbaroux commanded.

  Cutlass opened a canvas sea-bag secured at the mouth by drawstrings. Reaching in with an oversized hand, he hauled out into the light three gunbelts with holstered guns. They were looped over one of his brawny arms.

  Barbaroux addressed the prisoners but again pitched his words loud enough for the crowd to hear. “You recognize these items, gentlemen? They are gunbelts, your gunbelts, complete with the guns you were wearing when you were taken.”

  “It looks like them,” Sime allowed grudgingly, the other two nodding in agreement.

  “I promise you that these guns are in fine working order and have not been tampered with in any way. What’s more, they have been fully reloaded with fresh ammunition. In fact, I will now prove just that,” Barbaroux said. “Set the gunbelts down on the table prepared for that purpose, Cutlass, there’s a good fellow.”

  Cutlass deposited the gunbelts on a card table standing to one side of the barrels of sand, and stepped away from them.

  Barbaroux went to the table, taking up a black leather gunbelt with twin-holstered .44s. He drew a gun from its holster, setting down the gunbelt.

  “A goo
d gun,” he mused. “Your gun, Mr. Farner. You’re the two-gun man here.”

  “If you say so,” Farner smirked.

  “Now now, Mr. Farner, don’t be coy. If you’re not going to enter into the spirit of the thing, we can just hang you as a prelude to the Trial by Combat.”

  “That’s my gun.”

  “Good. I will now prove it’s in perfect working order,” Barbaroux said. He spun the gun’s cylinder so that it revolved on its axis until a chamber clicked into place. “Observe: The spin was perfectly random, it could have stopped at any chamber.”

  He raised the gun, pointing it at a glass-shrouded candle mounted on the leading edge of the wagon wheel chandelier hanging suspended over the exhibition area.

  Barbaroux pulled the trigger. A shot sounded. The glass candle cover disintegrated as did the candle behind it, snuffing out the flame. A crystal shower of broken glass sprinkled down to the floor.

  After a pause, the spectators applauded.

  Barbaroux holstered the gun. Drawing the other gun from the belt, he crossed to a sand barrel. “The previous mode being somewhat rough on the lighting, the sand barrel will suffice for this next and the others.”

  Barbaroux spun the cylinder to select a chamber at random. He held the gun pointed downward at the sand in the barrel.

  The gun fired with a crashing boom, tiny flames lipping the muzzle. A cloud of gunsmoke appeared.

  “Watch closely please, to make sure there’s no chicanery, no sleight of hand,” Barbaroux said, playing to the crowd. He signaled to a pair of public workers who’d been standing nearby, off to the side.

  They came forward, taking their positions at the sand barrels. One held a large square of fine-meshed metal wire screen held in a wooden frame, a screen box. The other held a medium-sized pail.

  The worker with the pail made a show of holding it high and turning it upside-down to demonstrate that nothing was hidden inside. He shoved the pail into the sand barrel the gun had been fired into, scooping out a goodly portion of sand. He upended the pail into the wooden-framed metal screen, which his partner held over an empty barrel, and poured the sand into it.

  The partner shook the screen box back and forth, sifting the sand through the mesh into the catch-barrel beneath. The full load of sand was sifted through the screen to no result.