Seven Days to Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  The man with the pail scooped up a fresh load of sand and dumped it into the screen box, sifting it through. Again to no appreciable result.

  A third try yielded a hit.

  Nestled in the screen box was a fused lead lump, misshapen and deformed. Barbaroux picked it up, holding it aloft between thumb and forefinger for all to see. “Behold! The lead ball from the .44, showing the effects of being fired into the sand! Proof positive!”

  Applause and cheers from the crowd. Barbaroux repeated the sand barrel test with Sime’s and Pike’s weapons, proving them out.

  Some public workers cleared away the sand barrels. The crowd’s buzzing increased in volume and tempo as the showdown neared.

  “It’s no small thing to put a gun in the hand of a condemned killer,” Barbaroux said, resuming his harangue of the crowd, “no less three at once. The public has got to be protected, and I can’t think of a better guardian than Norris Nye!”

  Barbaroux gestured toward a man standing atop the bleachers set against the portside wall. Norris Nye was a thin towheaded man with silver hair and a white goatee. He cradled a rifle in his arms across his chest.

  He was flanked by two other riflemen posted a few rows below and to the sides of him.

  “Norris Nye was a decorated sharpshooter for the Confederacy—”

  Wild cheers, hand clapping, and foot stomping burst forth from the crowd in the loudest and most enthusiastic acclaim so far this evening. It was peppered by shouts of, “Hoorah for Dixie! Hoorah for the Confederacy!”

  Barbaroux let the ovation run its lengthy course before continuing:

  “Norris Nye is one of the boat’s company on the Sabine Queen and we’re proud to have him. Don’t think that I’m relying on the goodwill or sportsmanship of our three condemned killers to honor the rules of the Trial by Combat, friends.

  “I put my trust in Norris Nye and his two brother sharpshooters whom you see posted in the bleachers. Each will have his rifle aimed at the heart of one of the evildoers. Should they violate the rules of the Trial or show any sign of training a weapon anywhere but at our champion, they will be shot dead.”

  That got almost as big a cheer as Norris Nye’s service for the Lost Cause.

  “You’ve seen the villains in our showdown, but where is our champion? Who will defend the honor of the blindfolded lady with balancing scales and a sword, Lady Justice?” Barbaroux demanded.

  “I will!”

  The voice came from a shadowed alcove to one side of the bleachers. From out of that patch of black darkness emerged a man who strode into the light of the roped-off area.

  The stranger was tall and thin, reedy, with long arms and stiltlike legs.

  He wore a dark hat with a round-topped crown and stiff round brim, a type of hat favored by circuit-riding preachers and similar religious personalities, and a lightweight dark brown duster overcoat, which reached down to midthigh.

  Under the duster he wore dark clothes, good clothes but unprepossessing—no flash in them. Pants were worn tucked into the tops of knee-high riding boots.

  Under the hat was a sharply drawn visage with thin-featured birdlike features. Dark eyes were set in a face with a knife-blade nose and thin lips curving down at the corners.

  He wore two guns down low; the guns fitted butt-out in the holsters. He halted well short of the prisoners in the enclosure, turned toward Barbaroux.

  “Who might you be?” Barbaroux called out to the newcomer. “Your name, sir?”

  “Sexton Clarke,” came the reply.

  A stir rippled through parts of the crowd, caused by widely scattered individuals who knew the name and repute of Sexton Clarke. But the response was muted and absorbed by the vast majority of the assembled that knew not Clarke.

  Born and raised in Tennessee, Sexton Clarke had made his name in the Oklahoma Territory, Rocky Mountain States, and the Great Southwest. He was new to the Texas Gulf Coast area, which generally knew him not.

  Yet.

  “Do you stand for justice?” Barbaroux continued.

  “I do,” Clarke said.

  “Sexton Clarke, my friends! He used to bury corpses in the churchyard for a living not so very long ago. Now he makes them dead and leaves the burying to others.”

  “Sexton Clarke . . . ever heard of him, Sime?” Farner asked.

  “No,” Sime said, slowly shaking his head.

  “He’s supposed to be a gunfighter? Looks more like a choirmaster.”

  “Barbaroux didn’t bring him in because he’s easy pickings, count on that.” Sime sounded worried.

  “The rules of the Trial by Combat are simple,” Barbaroux was saying. “Kill your opponent and live—lose and you die.

  “What could be fairer?”

  He turned to the condemned. “Your guns await, gentlemen. Take them. But don’t be so foolish as to try to get ahead of the game. Be mindful of Norris Nye and his two fellows, each charged with covering his man and dropping him with a shot to the heart if there’s a violation of the rules.”

  “What’s to stop your riflemen from shooting us while you claim your hired gun did the work?” Farner demanded.

  “Where’s the sport in that? Or the justice?” Barbaroux countered. “It’s not hard to tell the difference between a bullet hole from a rifle or a six-gun; many here can do it and all will have access to what bodies there are to satisfy themselves as to the fairness of the trial.”

  “Trust a cheat to complain the loudest about cheating.” Sexton Clarke laughed.

  “I’ll kill you for that,” Farner said.

  “No, you won’t,” Clarke said calmly.

  “Let me at them guns,” Farner said. He, Sime, and Pike went to the table where the guns were laid.

  Mr. Spivey, shrunken and apelike, stood near the table off to one side of it. He had a baboonlike snout and the exaggeratedly long upper lip of an orangutan. He also had a sawed-off shotgun holstered in a rig under one arm.

  He drew it while the three condemned men were reaching for their gunbelts. “Hey, laddies,” he called to them.

  Farner, Sime, and Pike glanced behind them to see who was making the noise. They saw Spivey holding a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun leveled at them. He stood out of the line of fire of the riflemen in the bleachers.

  “Okay you flotsam, pick up your gunbelts and put them on,” Spivey said. “Do it slowly and carefully. You’re covered so don’t do anything stupid. I’m itching to cut loose with my scattergun. Any of you scum even looks like he’s thinking of reaching ahead of time and I’m gonna open up!

  “I reckon one double-barreled load of buckshot can take out all three of you at once . . . That’d make a pretty good show all by itself, eh?”

  “One I’d like to see,” Cutlass said.

  The condemned men buckled on their gunbelts, careful to keep their hands well away from their guns.

  They formed up in a row, squaring off against Sexton Clarke. They stood shoulder to shoulder with about an arm’s length between each one. Farner took the middle position with Sime on his right and Pike on his left.

  “He’s only one against three . . . one of us is sure to get him,” Pike said, swallowing hard.

  “That’ll be me,” Farner said through clenched teeth.

  “What a shame I have to die with such idiots,” Sime muttered.

  “Huh? What’d you say?” Farner demanded.

  “Let it pass,” Sime said tiredly.

  The scene was set for the showdown. Sime, Farner, and Pike faced off against Sexton Clarke. They were covered, doubly covered by sharpshooters posted in the bleachers and Spivey standing in close with the sawed-off shotgun.

  Rufus Barbaroux had withdrawn to the relative safety of the red velvet–covered platform. He sat in his throne flanked by Flossie and Jonquil. Full-breasted and long-legged, platinum-haired Flossie with skin white as milk, Jonquil dark and swarthy, her flesh golden-bronze.

  Sime stared Sexton Clarke in the face. “If you’re looking to do some s
oul-saving you came to the wrong place, preacher. I been hell bound a long time now and neither of these two birds with me are any better.”

  Sexton Clarke laughed softly. “I’m no preacher but I’ll be glad to say a few words over the bodies.”

  “We’re fast, too!” Farner blustered. “There’s three of us and only one of him. Cut loose on him all at once and one of us is sure to bring him down.”

  “Keep telling yourselves that,” Clarke said.

  “Shut up, you!” Pike shouted.

  Clarke nodded. “The time for talking is done, yes. Actions alone speak. This is the proving ground—the killing ground.”

  “You just shut up, you hear!” Pike was near hysterical.

  “Hold, gentlemen. Not just yet, if you please!” Barbaroux thundered.

  A door in the bulkhead behind and to one side of the platform opened, shafting a fan of dim yellow-brown light into the Great Hall. Framed in the doorway were Malvina and Tanya, the withered crone and the lithe, limber, young girl.

  Tanya belonged to Malvina in some way, though whether by kinship or some less wholesome channel was known only to them. No family resemblance could be seen between the two but this was not surprising; the withered living mummy that was Malvina bore little likeness to few among the living.

  Malvina stood behind Tanya, holding her slim shoulders with clawlike hands. Tanya wore a colorful satin sash tied around the top of her head and held a violin case cradled in her arms.

  Malvina eased the grip of her spidery fingers, releasing the girl. She had been holding back Tanya to mute her youthful enthusiasm and keep her from running out front too soon.

  Now that Barbaroux motioned for her to come to him, Tanya dashed forward, violin case banging against her thin chest as she ran.

  She circled around to the front of the platform. Halting in front of Barbaroux, she dropped a sort of curtsy, head bowed, but looking up from the tops of her eyes at the Commander.

  “Rise, child,” Barbaroux said, smiling down at her.

  Tanya rose.

  “I see you’ve brought something for me. May I have it?”

  She handed him the violin case. Someone groaned at the sight of it. Barbaroux didn’t see the offender. He hoped one of his spies had so he could make the boor suffer later.

  He nodded, dismissing Tanya. She hurried back to Malvina.

  Barbaroux opened the case, removing a violin and bow. Violin, not fiddle. An expensive violin from the looks of it. Its glossy exterior shone a bright golden-brown, its finish mellowed by time.

  Barbaroux held the violin in one hand and the bow with the other. He spoke to the combatants in the showdown. “Now to get on with the trial. I will play a short musical piece—”

  This time the crowd knew what to do—clap dutifully, which they did, if a trifle unenthusiastically. Some Combine flunkies worked the visiting guests, motioning for applause, which swelled in volume.

  Barbaroux basked in the acclaim, which to his lights ended too soon. But the crowd was waiting for a gunfight, bloodshed, and death.

  “When the last note of music sounds, go for your guns,” Barbaroux said. “Warning!—I caution you, make sure the violin has sounded its last note before shooting. This is imperative, a matter of life and death—yours.

  “He who reaches for a gun before the music stops will die, shot by the sharpshooters. Be very sure that while playing I have not paused for a rest. These are the conditions I have set. Reach before the music ends, die! When the music does stop, shoot!

  “Do you understand, challengers?”

  The three condemned bandits nodded yes.

  “Don’t just nod, say it,” Spivey cued them from out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Understood!” Sime shouted, speaking for the three of them.

  “Good. And you, champion?” Barbaroux prompted.

  “I savvy, Commander,” Sexton Clarke said.

  Farner’s hand twitched with the effort of keeping it from reaching for his gun.

  Barbaroux had rosined up the bow and put the violin in place resting on his left shoulder. Setting bow to violin strings, he began to strike up a tune. He played from memory, with no sheet music to guide him, a short piece, one of many known to him by heart.

  It was not a happy tune. This was no joyful noise. It was slow, ominous, a kind of funeral dirge.

  Barbaroux was a passable amateur musician, a little better than average perhaps but no more. He was able to carry a tune, “but not far enough away,” as some wit later observed to a few trusted comrades.

  He hit some bum notes and clinkers along the way to conclusion. Knowing the lusty appetites and short attention span of his creatures, Barbaroux planned to keep it short, but after the first sixty seconds of the unhappy droning issuing from his violin, the crowd stirred restlessly.

  Not all of the crowd was overawed by Barbaroux. Some, but not all. There was a sizable group of hardcases who resented the Commander’s high-handed ways. But the money was good, whiskey and whores were plentiful, and pesky lawmen were all but absent. So the rebellious swallowed their distaste for now and soldiered on.

  Not so Sexton Clarke, waiting for the last notes to sound before shooting. His long fine-boned face looked mournful, but his spirits were dancing at the prospect of the kill.

  Kills.

  It was a habit he’d picked up during his years as a churchyard gravedigger, when strict employers insisted he maintain proper decorum not only during burials but whenever Clarke was on church property. He’d schooled himself to keep a solemn expression on his face night and day, on duty or not.

  The three robbers’ attitudes were mixed.

  Farner’s face was a mask of hate, a silent snarl with teeth bared.

  Sime had a faraway look in his eyes, as if his thoughts were already beyond this world. He knew Barbaroux hadn’t staged this game to lose it.

  Pike was fighting the fear. His eyes were ringed with white circles, his hands trembled, and his flesh oozed cold sweat. He felt doomed. But he was determined to play the man and see the duel through to the end without funking. He would not let his partners down, he told himself.

  The music shrilled on, its high notes tearing at the nerves, its long low notes telling of dreariness and sorrow. And that was just the effect it had on the onlookers.

  Its effect on the duelists was infinitely more intense. Locked in a gunfight to the death, they strained to hear the onset of combat in the final notes of a haunting tune unknown to them.

  It was not the shivering Pike who broke first but rather Sime, seemingly the most balanced and stable of the robbers.

  Barbaroux sawed at the violin, sobbing notes rising and falling, with no sign of a climax.

  “Make an end to it!” Sime suddenly shouted, startling many, including his sidemen. But he was near the breaking point where he couldn’t take much more of this.

  “This is worse than being shot!” he added.

  A few gasps rose up from the crowd. A smile quirked the corners of Clarke’s mouth, his only reaction to the outburst.

  There’s one in every crowd, as the saying goes, and this one was Tom Ingster. So taken by surprise and delight was he at Sime’s voicing of his own sentiments, that he broke out laughing.

  A Tom Ingster laugh was no quiet thing but a loud, rude guffaw—a braying horselaugh, loud, ringing, insulting.

  A rift opened around Ingster as those in his vicinity sought to distance themselves from the offender, to show that they were not he. Ingster was seen by spying eyes. Aarn Bildad had a hasty word with Cutlass and Spivey.

  Cutlass moved to the rear of the hall, taking up a watchful post. He stood with his back to the wall, a vantage point that allowed him to survey the crowd and all the exit doors in case Ingster tried to make a sneak.

  Barbaroux decided to skip ahead to the finish. It was a short piece but he cut it shorter, rushing into the last passage, sawing streams of notes into a crescendo.

  The end of the piece was near. Sexton
Clarke knew it, the robbers knew it, the audience knew it.

  The volume peaked, Barbaroux ripping out a last ringing note from the violin, then abruptly breaking off into silence, ending his playing.

  He stood motionless, right hand holding the bow well clear of the violin strings. Like all others in the hall, his attention was focused, riveted, on the duelists.

  The last note was still echoing in the air when the combatants reached.

  Clarke’s gun leaped into his hand before any of the bandits could get their guns clear of the holsters. His speed was awesome, dismaying his foes.

  Farner’s face fell into slack-jawed stupefaction.

  “Oh, hell,” Sime said, now recovered from his outburst.

  Pike vented a shriek of berserker rage.

  The robbers clawed for their guns, Pike drawing first.

  Clarke took him first, placing a shot square in the forehead. A black-red disk appeared on the flesh where Pike had been tagged.

  After a beat, blood jetted from the head wound as Pike was going down. At that, Pike’s gun was in hand and he went down firing off a shot, which missed Clarke and buried itself in the ceiling.

  Farner drew, leveling his gun. Clarke dropped a slug into him, hitting him in the side, knocking him off-balance.

  Farner staggered, still shooting. Clarke put a quick one into Farner’s knee, sweeping the leg out from under him and knocking him down. Farner howled with pain.

  Sime had his gun out and working, drawing a bead on Clarke. He was too eager, his first shot missing. Clarke sidestepped and Sime’s next rounds whipped through a patch of empty air where Clarke had been.

  Clarke threw two rounds into Sime, hitting him above the belt buckle. Sime folded, collapsing, gun dropping from his nerveless hand.

  Farner wriggled around on the floor like a broken-backed snake, whiplashing, trying to bring his gun into line with Clarke. The last thing he saw in this world was Clarke standing there calm as you please, pointing a gun at him.

  Clarke smiled with his lips, a chilly little smile for Farner as he sent a bullet crashing into his brain.