Eight Hours to Die

by William W. Johnstone

  “And you say Governor Wallace sent you here?” Farnham asked.

  “That’s right. He sent in some men before, but none of them ever came back.”

  Farnham grunted and said, “That’s not surprising. Any strangers who showed up in town and acted too nosy disappeared in a hurry. Dav’s men probably took them up in the San Juans somewhere, shot them in the head, and dumped the bodies in a ravine. That’s likely what would have happened to you if you hadn’t come up with the idea of pretending to be that fella Cobb and got yourself hired.”

  “From the sound of that, you’ve decided to believe me,” John Henry said, smiling even though it was too dark in the stable for Farnham to see the expression.

  “Let’s just say I’m not completely convinced you’re a lying son of a bitch anymore. I’ll have to see some proof before I’ll believe it, though.”

  “My badge and bona fides are hidden in my gear in the house,” John Henry pointed out. “We can go take a look at them.”

  “We’re not going anywhere. I want you right here in this barn where there’s nowhere for you to run and not enough room to try any tricks. Open that gate and back up into the stall with your horse.”

  “You plan on locking me up like you were locked up?”

  “It’s not exactly the same thing,” Farnham rumbled. “But if you’re in there with that gate between the two of us, you can’t get to me before I can pull the triggers on this greener.”

  John Henry did what the blacksmith told him to do, opening the gate and stepping back into the stall with Iron Heart. He planned to cooperate as much as possible. He had taken a big risk by revealing the truth to Farnham, and now he had convince the man they were really allies. There was no turning back.

  Once John Henry was in the stall with the gate closed, Farnham scraped a match into life and held the flame to the wick of a lantern hanging from a nail. After being in near-total darkness for so long, the sudden glare was a little blinding to John Henry. He squinted against it and saw that Farnham was having the same reaction.

  The blacksmith had the shotgun in his right hand. He used his left to unhook the lantern’s handle and carry it over to the doors, which were closed almost all the way. There was just a big enough gap for Farnham to stick his foot in it and drag one of the doors open.

  Then he held the lantern up and waved it back and forth in an obvious signal to someone in the house.

  “You were supposed to let them know when I came to, so you could all decide what to do with me,” John Henry guessed.

  “That’s right,” Farnham said. “And don’t go thinking it’s decided already. Just because you’ve got me leaning your way doesn’t mean I can’t be outvoted.”

  He hung the lantern back on the nail and stood near the stall, holding the shotgun with both hands again and keeping the barrels pointed in John Henry’s general direction.

  It didn’t take long for those waiting in the house to respond. John Henry heard footsteps outside.

  Kate Collins was the first one to hurry into the barn, which took John Henry by surprise. He hadn’t known that she was in on the planned uprising against Dav. Her grandfather followed her, and then Alvin Turnage and a couple of other townsmen. John Henry recalled seeing them around the settlement, but he didn’t know their names.

  He felt another shock when he saw Kate clutching something in her hand and realized it was the leather folder that contained his deputy U.S. marshal’s badge and his identification papers. She held it up and said to Farnham, “I was about to come out here anyway when I saw your signal, Peabody. Look at what I found when I searched his belongings!”

  “Wouldn’t be something that says this fella is really a federal star packer, would it?” Farnham asked.

  “How did you know?” Kate’s gaze darted toward John Henry in the stall. “Did he already tell you?”

  “That’s what he said. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, though.”

  Jimpson said, “The badge and the papers look real enough to me. Good Lord, we nearly killed a U.S. marshal! We’d have wound up at the end of a hangrope for sure!”

  “We didn’t know who he was,” Kate said. “We couldn’t have been held responsible.” She came over to the stall and looked over the gate at John Henry. “Why didn’t you tell us who you really are?”

  “I can answer that,” Turnage said before John Henry could reply. “How would he have known who to trust? Any of us could be working secretly for the sheriff. And if he’d simply ridden into town and announced his identity, Dav’s men would have gunned him down right away. Isn’t that right, Marshal Sixkiller?”

  “That’s pretty much the size of it,” John Henry agreed. “I figured on working against Dav from the inside.” He paused, then added, “And I’m not real happy about having my gear gone through like that, but I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do about it.”

  One of the other men said, “Well, now what do we do?”

  With a shrewd expression on her face, Kate said, “It seems that we have an unexpected ally. Can we really trust you?”

  “You can,” John Henry assured her.

  “What did you think he would say?” Turnage asked. “That’s exactly what he’d want you to believe if he planned to betray us to Dav.”

  “All I can do is tell you how things are,” John Henry said. “I can’t force anybody to believe me.”

  The other townsman said, “He was there when they whipped Spivey and the rest of those men from the Lucky Seven. I saw him with my own eyes. He didn’t make a move to stop that hellish thing.”

  “What do you think I should have done?” John Henry asked with a trace of irritation in his voice. “Sure, I could have gunned down Dav. But then the rest of the deputies would have killed me, and you folks wouldn’t be any better off. There’s a good chance you’d be worse off.”

  “He’s right about that,” Turnage muttered. “Some of those deputies aren’t much better than mad dogs. Dav keeps them reined in a little . . . until it suits his purposes to unleash them.”

  “And he saved my boy Nate’s life,” Farnham added. “I’m convinced of it, and I don’t think the real John Cobb would’ve done something like that. Not from what I’ve heard of him.” Farnham pointed a thick finger at John Henry. “That means this fella is somebody besides who he’s pretending to be, and it seems likely to me that he’s telling the truth about being a marshal.”

  Kate came over to John Henry and held out the leather folder.

  “I’m sorry about going through your things,” she said as he took the folder from her. “I was looking for guns more than anything else. We wanted to make sure you were disarmed until we figured out what to do with you. And Peabody said he wasn’t sure you were really who you claimed to be, so I thought I might find some letters or something else that would tell us for sure.”

  “That’s all right,” he told her. He slipped the folder into his pocket. “You didn’t want to take any chances, and when you’re in the sort of fix that you folks are, of course you’re a mite desperate.” John Henry looked around at the people gathered in the stable. “You’re planning some sort of attack on Dav and his men, aren’t you?”

  They exchanged glances. This was it: they had to decide whether to trust him or not.

  After a moment, Turnage said, “That’s right. We’ve got a dozen men lined up. We figure that if we all strike at the same time and take Dav and the deputies by surprise, we have a chance to get the upper hand on them.”

  “You also have a good chance of getting killed,” John Henry said. “Dav’s men are all top gunhands. You’ll be outnumbered, too. Any chance you have will be a small one.”

  “Not all of the deputies are on duty at the same time,” Farnham pointed out. “If we can kill or capture the ones who are, then the odds would be better against the others.”

  John Henry thought about that for a moment, then said, “Turn that around, and you’ll have an even better chance.”

 
; “You mean take care of the ones who are off duty first?” Turnage asked. “That might work.”

  That was a variation on the same plan John Henry had considered, but he had discarded the idea because he knew he couldn’t carry it out by himself. But now, if he had the help of the townspeople . . .

  “And the first step,” he said, “is to take the jail.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  They stayed in the barn for another half hour, making plans. More men had been there earlier, before Turnage had discovered John Henry eavesdropping on the meeting, but the ones who had remained were the leaders. They could pass along any decisions to the others who were involved.

  “Make sure that everyone is trustworthy,” John Henry stressed. “All it would take to ruin everything and put everyone’s life at risk would be for someone to sell you out to the sheriff.”

  “As far as I can see, you’re the weakest link in the chain when it comes to being trustworthy, Marshal,” Turnage said. “Everyone else has known each other for years. You’re not much more than a stranger to us . . . and until just a little while ago, we all thought that you worked for our bitterest enemy.”

  “That’s a good point,” John Henry admitted. “I know you’re putting your faith in me. As far as I’m concerned, that’s one more reason not to let you down.”

  The plan was plenty dangerous, but it had at least a chance of working, John Henry thought. The deputies’ living quarters were scattered across the settlement. Four of them, including John Henry, lived here at the Collinses’ boardinghouse. One of them, a man named Axminster, was asleep inside the house while the discussion was going on in the stable, in fact. Others had rooms in the hotel or upstairs at the Buzzard’s Nest, and three of them had moved into an abandoned house, taking it over.

  “We’ll need to know who’s on duty and who’s asleep,” John Henry explained. “If we can grab the men who are off duty and take them prisoner, we won’t have to worry about them when we make our move against the others.”

  “The middle of the night is the best time to strike,” Turnage said. “That’s always been true in war. Take the enemy by surprise.”

  “And this is a war,” John Henry agreed, “just on a smaller scale. If we can grab half the deputies and lock them up in the jail, we’ll have a place to fall back if we need to, as well as some bargaining chips.”

  Farnham said, “Dav won’t bargain. I don’t reckon he really gives a damn about the lives of his men, not when it comes to whether his plans succeed or fail, anyway.”

  “You’re probably right about that,” John Henry said, “but not all of Dav’s men are quite as ambitious or fanatical as he is. Even with Dav ordering them on, some of them might think twice about attacking the jail if it meant putting their friends’ lives in danger.”

  “What about Dav himself?” Kate asked. “Does anybody know where he spends his nights?”

  “From what I can tell, he moves around a lot. I guess he’s like any tyrant and figures that sooner or later somebody will try to fight back. He doesn’t want to fall into any routines that they might use against him.”

  Turnage said, “If we could lay our hands on Dav right at the start, that would certainly improve our chances.”

  John Henry nodded.

  “That would be a stroke of luck,” he said. “But it may not be possible. We’ll have to wait and see. Tomorrow I’ll see what I can find out and start trying to pin down where everybody is at what times.”

  They had done all the planning they could for now, so the group dispersed. Turnage, Farnham, and the other two townsmen headed for their homes, while John Henry, Kate, and old Jimpson Collins went into the boardinghouse.

  Jimpson clumped up the rear stairs that led from the kitchen to the second floor. Kate paused in the shadowy room and turned to John Henry.

  “You’d better not be playing us for fools,” she whispered with a note of fierceness in her voice. “If you are, I . . . I’ll never forgive you.”

  “You know the truth now, Kate,” he told her. “I give you my word on that.”

  “And I’ll give you my word . . . if you betray us, I’ll do my best to kill you myself.”

  “You sound like you mean that,” John Henry said.

  “You’d better believe that I do,” Kate said.

  * * *

  Ever since he had come to Chico, John Henry had taken special note of the comings and goings of Sheriff Dav and the deputies, figuring that the more he knew about their habits, the better. Over the next few days he increased that scrutiny even more, until he knew when each man was on duty and when he wasn’t, and where they spent their time when they weren’t working.

  Not surprisingly, the only one whose movements he really couldn’t predict was Samuel Dav himself. The sheriff was an extremely cautious man. He could pop up anywhere, any time. John Henry recalled how the baker, Wilhelm Heinsdorf, had claimed that Dav was some sort of supernatural being. John Henry could almost believe that. The man was a phantom, as hard to grab as the air.

  Without his crew of gun-wolves, though, Dav would be no real threat, so first things first, John Henry reasoned. He and the leaders of the uprising met in the stable behind the Collinses’ boardinghouse each night and put together their plan of assault.

  Alvin Turnage would strike first, capturing Fred Axminster at the boardinghouse. Once Axminster was tied and gagged, Turnage would go to the blacksmith shop and join forces with Peabody Farnham and four other men. The six of them would proceed to the hotel, where they would grab the four deputies who would be there.

  Meanwhile, five more men would go after the three deputies who would be sleeping in rooms on the second floor of the Buzzard’s Nest. Speed, stealth, and surprise would be essential to the success of both missions.

  While that was going on, John Henry would take care of his part of the job: capturing the jail. Gil Hobart would be there, possibly with one or two deputies. If everything went as it was supposed to, the townsmen would bring their prisoners to the jail to be locked up. Once eight or nine of the deputies were behind bars, the odds would be a lot closer to even.

  There was plenty that could go wrong with the plan, John Henry knew. He fully expected that before it was over, something would go wrong. Men might well die. But the alternative was letting Dav’s brutal rule over the town continue, and no one was willing to accept that.

  The next night, the group of “revolutionaries” would make their move.

  * * *

  John Henry and the others had all left the stable and gone their separate ways after finalizing their plans. The night was quiet and dark. The only sound inside the barn was the occasional stamp of a hoof or the swish of a horse’s tail.

  No one was around to see the shadow that suddenly stole along the outside of the stable’s rear wall. The man had been concealed there in the thickest darkness, where he stood almost no chance of being spotted, and had waited in complete silence with his ear pressed to a tiny crack between the boards, listening to the low-voiced discussion inside.

  Nor was this the first night he had spied on the plotters inside the barn. He knew every bit of their plans.

  As he moved away from the stable, he stuck to the shadows as much as possible. He didn’t want to be spotted back there. That could ruin everything.

  He couldn’t avoid the moonlight entirely, though, and as he crossed quickly through a patch of it, for a second the silvery glow illuminated his features, casting shadows and throwing his features into stark relief.

  Then Deputy Steve Buckner was out of the moonlight and continued hurrying through the night, away from the boardinghouse.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  John Henry had always been blessed with cool nerves, so he was calm the next day and able to carry on with his normal routine as if that night wouldn’t likely bring with it powder smoke and flaming death.

  His day’s patrol went peacefully. He went into both the bank and the blacksmith shop, and when Alvin Turnage
and Peabody Farnham looked at him, their expressions were stony, as if they still considered him one of Sheriff Dav’s gun-wolves and weren’t aware of his true identity. That was exactly how they needed to regard him for now, John Henry thought.

  Despite his steady demeanor, the day seemed to drag, and John Henry was glad when the sun sank behind the San Juans. He went back to the office, where Carl Miller was sitting at the desk. Dav himself hadn’t been around much the past few days, or at least he wasn’t showing himself.

  “Everything’s quiet,” John Henry reported.

  Miller nodded and said, “That’s what I’m hearin’ from the other fellas.” A frown creased the deputy’s forehead. “Somethin’s not right, though.”

  John Henry was careful not to show the alarm he felt. Had Miller somehow tumbled onto the fact that an uprising was in the works?

  “Thought I heard some thunder rumblin’ up over the mountains awhile back,” Miller went on. “Could be we’ll get a storm tonight.” He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “I always get this funny feelin’ back here when there’s fixin’ to be a storm.”

  “You could be right,” John Henry said. He had seen a few clouds gathering to the west, as well, but they hadn’t closed in and blotted out the sun before it set. If a storm was indeed on the way, it would probably still be several hours before it got there.

  That might be a good thing, he mused. Some thunder and rain would help him and his allies conceal what they were doing.

  And under the circumstances, he would take any stroke of luck he could get.

  “I guess you’re on your way back to the boardin’ house,” Miller went on.

  “That’s right. Miss Collins doesn’t like it when people are late for supper.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to make any gal as pretty as Kate Collins mad at me,” Miller said with a grin. “Of course, Steve Buckner’s got his eye on her, too. You boys aren’t gonna wind up in a shootin’ scrape over her, are you?”