Eight Hours to Die

by William W. Johnstone

  “They can’t do that,” Dav grated. “I’m the legally elected sheriff in these parts. If they attack me and my men, that makes them outlaws!”

  “It appears they’re willing to risk that,” Wellman said. “I’m sure they thought that if they could remove you from power, they could appeal to the territorial governor for clemency later on.”

  “And Wallace probably would have granted it to them,” Dav said. “Well, they’ll never get the chance. I’ll have their hides, each and every one of them. How dare they try to stage a violent insurrection, and then insult me even more by taking refuge in my jail!”

  Dav’s reaction didn’t surprise Wellman. The sheriff was mad. Clearly he believed that he had the right to run roughshod over anyone who opposed him. He believed it was his destiny to rule over first Chico and then eventually the entire territory.

  And fanatical though he might be, Dav had a chance to make that fever dream come true, Wellman thought. All it took was telling people what they wanted to hear, even though most of it was lies.

  That and crushing any real opposition into bloody ruins, no matter what it took. That was what Dav had to do tonight. He had to make sure this uprising was put down in swift, brutal, ruthless fashion. He had to teach a harsh lesson to anyone who dared to oppose him.

  And he had to kill the man who’d pretended to be John Cobb. That might be the most important thing of all.

  “Stay here out of the way, where you won’t get hurt,” Dav went on. “When this is over, you’ll have to write about how one of my own men betrayed me and tried to help outlaws take over my town. It’ll make people admire me even more when they read about how I stopped that lawless horde from prevailing.”

  Wellman swallowed and said, “Of course, Sheriff.” Staying out of harm’s way was one of the things he did best. “That jail is awfully solid. How are you going to get them out of there?”

  “Let me worry about that,” Dav snapped. He stepped out into the rain and hurried across the street well short of where the shooting was going on. From there he could work his way up to where his deputies had taken cover and find out exactly how the situation stood.

  Wellman had no idea what Dav’s plan might be, but he knew he was very glad he wasn’t the man who had pretended to be John Cobb. The sheriff would want vengeance on that man more than any of the others.

  And Samuel Dav’s vengeance, Wellman was certain, would be a terrible thing to behold.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  John Henry got the ring of keys from the desk, went upstairs, and let himself into the cell block. By now all the prisoners had regained consciousness, but they were still tied and gagged, so all they could do when they saw him was writhe around on the bunks and shout muffled curses at him through the gags.

  He hadn’t brought a lamp or lantern with him, but once the cell block door was open, enough light came from downstairs for him to see the window at the end of the corridor between the cells. It wasn’t barred, but when he examined it more closely he saw that it had been nailed shut.

  That problem could be dealt with. He went back downstairs and found a hammer in the storeroom.

  “Need a hand with something?” Farnham asked. Irregularly spaced shots continued from the men posted at the loopholes.

  “You might be better at this than I am,” John Henry admitted. “Come on.”

  Kate intercepted them on the way to the stairs and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Peabody’s just giving me a hand with something,” John Henry said.

  Farnham said, “You can keep an eye on Nate for me for a few minutes, can’t you, Miss Kate?”

  “Of course,” she said, “but if there’s some other way I can help—”

  “There’s not,” John Henry assured her. “Not right now, anyway.”

  She didn’t look convinced of that, but she didn’t say anything else. As John Henry and Farnham went on up the stairs, Kate walked over to where Nate Farnham sat in one of the armchairs with an anxious look on his face and rested a comforting hand on his massive shoulder.

  “Can you pull those nails?” John Henry asked the blacksmith when they reached the window.

  A grin stretched across Farnham’s bearded face.

  “You bet I can,” he said. “Let me see that hammer.”

  He took the tool from John Henry. The nail heads had been bent over. Farnham straightened them without much trouble, then caught one of them with the hammer’s claw. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched and he let out a small grunt of effort. The nail made a tiny screeching sound as it pulled free of the wood.

  Farnham made short work of the other nails, tossing each of them aside as he pulled them loose.

  “The window ought to open now,” Farnham said when he was finished. “Looks like it might have been painted shut, too, but that won’t be a problem.”

  He handed the hammer to John Henry, got hold of the window, and forced it up. Cool air rushed in, bringing splatters of rain with it.

  “I don’t see what good this does us, though,” Farnham added.

  John Henry leaned over and stuck his head out the window, twisting his neck so he could look up at the roof. Rainwater ran in his eyes. He had to blink several times to clear his vision.

  The building’s roof was flat. The edge of it was about four feet above the top of the window. If he stood on the sill, he would just about be able to reach it.

  There was a good-sized gap on one side of the jail, but the building on the other side, which was also two stories, was only about eight feet away. That wasn’t an easy jump, but John Henry figured he could make it. Once he was on the roof of the other building, he could find a way down to the ground, and then he would be loose in Chico to wreak havoc on Dav’s forces and even the odds. They wouldn’t be expecting him, and that element of surprise would come in handy.

  “I think I know what you’re fixing to do,” Farnham said when John Henry pulled his head back inside the window. “You’d better take somebody with you. I’ll come.”

  “No offense, Peabody, but I don’t think you’re really built for clambering around on top of buildings. Besides, Nate would worry himself sick.”

  Farnham sighed and said, “That’s true, he would. But maybe one of the other fellas could go. Mr. Turnage, maybe.”

  “I need him to stay here, too, to take charge of things while I’m gone.”

  Although John Henry didn’t say it, the main reason he didn’t want anyone to come with him was because he didn’t want to be responsible for their safety. He could move faster and more efficiently if he only had to worry about getting himself killed.

  Not wanting anything to hinder him, he took off his hat and coat. Earlier, he had reloaded his Colt and filled all the loops in his shell belt from one of the ammunition boxes in the cabinet. As he got ready to climb onto the windowsill, Farnham stopped him by saying, “You’re not going back downstairs before you leave?”

  “You can tell the others where I’ve gone.”

  “Miss Kate’s liable to be unhappy about you risking your neck without saying good-bye to her first.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” John Henry said. “It’s not like she has any special feelings for me.”

  “Hmmph,” Farnham said, making it clear that he thought John Henry was wrong.

  John Henry didn’t have the time to ponder that now. He threw a leg over the sill, then swung his other leg so that he was sitting in the window. He got a good grip and pulled himself up until he was standing on the sill. It was slippery from the rain, so he had to be careful.

  He braced himself with his left hand and reached up with his right. His fingers came up just short of the rooftop. He stretched as much as he could but still couldn’t grasp the edge of the roof.

  “Blast it,” he said as he lowered his arm and bent slightly to talk to Farnham through the open window. “I’m not quite tall enough.”

  “How much more do you need?” the blacksmith asked.r />
  “Three or four inches.”

  “We can do that,” Farnham said. “Move a little.”

  John Henry did so, and Farnham put his arms out the window and laced his fingers together to form a stirrup.

  “Put a foot in there,” he told John Henry. “I won’t drop you.”

  John Henry lifted his left foot from the sill and placed it in Farnham’s cupped hands. He started to ask Farnham if he was sure he could hold his weight, but then he remembered how effortlessly the blacksmith had carried those captured deputies up the stairs. He tightened his grip of his left hand on the top of the window and said, “All right.”

  “Up you go,” said Farnham as he lifted.

  John Henry felt himself rising, almost as if by magic. His right hand closed over the edge of the roof. As soon as that grip was secure, he let go of the window with his left hand and reached up with it, too. He heaved with his arms and Farnham lifted, and John Henry went up and over the short wall around the rooftop.

  He lay there for a moment with the rain falling on him. The leading edge of the storm had moved on, so that the lightning was now in the distance to the east and the rumble of thunder was like the sound of distant drums instead of cannon fire, but the rain was still steady. That made the night very dark, and since John Henry’s trousers and shirt were dark as well, he hoped that would help him blend into the shadows. That was one reason he had left his lighter-colored hat inside the jail.

  The sound of voices somewhere nearby made him roll quickly onto his belly and reach down to his holster. He drew the Colt and waited.

  The voices came from the roof of the next building, he realized, the same building he had intended to leap over to once he gained the roof of the jail. It seemed that somebody else had had the same idea, only in reverse.

  But not exactly the same idea, he saw as a couple of men appeared, their shapes dim and shadowy in the rain. They were carrying something. They extended it across the gap between buildings, and as they set it down with a clatter, John Henry knew it had to be a ladder. They were going to use it as a bridge.

  That wasn’t a bad idea, he thought as he lay there motionless. With the ladder there, he wouldn’t have to risk making the jump in the rain.

  All he had to do was deal with the two deputies who were about to cross over to the jail. He wasn’t sure what they intended to do once they got here, since as far as Dav knew the second-floor window on the back of the building was still nailed shut from the inside.

  Maybe he had better wait for a minute, John Henry decided, and the deputies would reveal their plan.

  One of them said, “Hold on to that damn ladder,” and started across, crawling on hands and knees almost as if the ladder were upright and he was climbing it. The other man braced the ladder so it wouldn’t slip.

  When the first deputy reached the roof, he stood up and turned back toward his partner.

  “Throw it across,” he called, “but make sure it’s a good throw.”

  The second deputy picked up something from the roof where he stood, held it cradled in both hands, and then carefully tossed it across the gap. The first deputy reached out and gathered it in, clutching it tightly against his body.

  “I don’t see how you’re gonna light the fuse in this rain,” the second deputy said.

  “The stovepipe’s got a cover on it. All I have to do is hold the dynamite under that, light the fuse, and drop these sticks right down the pipe. They’ll blow the stove to pieces and cut down everybody in the office.”

  “That’ll make a hell of a mess out of the office, too.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the sheriff’s idea, so I reckon he’s willing to make a mess to teach those bastards a lesson.”

  “How’s he gonna teach ’em anything if they’re blowed up?”

  “Well . . . it’ll teach the rest of the town, I guess.”

  The man carrying the dynamite turned toward the spot where the stovepipe stuck up a foot or so from the rooftop.

  John Henry’s blood had turned cold in his veins as he listened to the conversation. These men were about to carry out mass murder. Kate, her grandfather, Alvin Turnage, Nate Farnham, everybody who was in the sheriff’s office would die. John Henry might have to give up the advantage of surprise as far as the rest of the gunmen went, but he had to stop that bomb from going off.

  He surged to his feet, leveled his gun at the deputy who was about twenty feet away, and shouted, “Drop that dynamite, mister!”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Instead of following the order, the man whirled around to face John Henry and grabbed desperately for the gun in his holster. John Henry pulled the trigger, aiming to wound the man in the leg and knock his feet out from under him.

  But the hand holding the dynamite was swinging around, too, and just as John Henry’s bullet ripped through the air, the bundle of explosive cylinders intercepted the slug’s path.

  The bullet must have struck one of the blasting caps attached to a twisted-together length of fuse, because it detonated with a sharp crack.

  The boom that followed instantly was like the biggest clap of thunder John Henry had ever heard, and the ball of fire was brighter than any flash of lightning.

  The force of the explosion threw John Henry backward. He sailed through the air and slammed down on the rooftop, skidding across it. He might have slid right off the building if the little wall around the edge hadn’t stopped him. As it was, he was stunned, unable to make his muscles respond to any of the desperate commands his brain was sending them. He was completely deaf as well and couldn’t hear anything except a gigantic ringing in his ears that threatened to drive him mad.

  He felt splinters spray against his face as a bullet struck the wall near him. That made him aware that somebody was shooting at him, probably the man who’d been left on the roof of the other building.

  He knew he didn’t have to worry about the man who’d been holding the dynamite. There wouldn’t be anything left of that hombre.

  John Henry tried again to move, and this time he was able to. He rolled onto his side and struggled to lift his gun. The explosion had half-blinded him as well as deafened him, but as he blinked rapidly he was able to spot some muzzle flashes from the other roof. He thrust the Colt toward them and triggered three shots as fast as he could manage to squeeze the trigger.

  He couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything, but the shots from the other building stopped, which told him he had either wounded the man over there or at least forced him to flee. He rolled on over, onto his belly, and pushed himself to hands and knees, pausing there to shake his head groggily.

  His brain began to clear, along with his eyesight. He still couldn’t hear anything except the ringing. He hoped his hearing wasn’t gone permanently, but he couldn’t worry about that right now.

  John Henry struggled to his feet and looked around. The ladder was gone, dislodged from its position by the blast. The roof had collapsed where the man had been standing when the dynamite went off, leaving a gaping hole with ragged, splintered edges. The hole was a good ten feet wide, and when John Henry stumbled closer to it, he found himself looking down into the cell block. The deputy who’d been in the cell directly underneath the explosion was dead, turned into a gory mess by the debris that had come crashing down on him.

  The muffled sound of shots was the first indication John Henry had that his hearing was starting to come back to him. His step was a little steadier as he moved over to the front of the building. Dav’s men had renewed their frontal assault on the jail. Muzzle flashes flickered like fireflies from the building across the street where they had forted up.

  If he could get behind them, he could turn the tables, he thought. The ladder might be gone, but he could still make the jump across to the other building.

  But as he turned in that direction, more men appeared up there and opened fire on him, forcing him to dive to the roof. The other deputy must have gotten away, he thought, and spread the word that he was u
p here trying to escape the trap that the jail had become.

  That deadly volley of gunfire continued to rip across the roof. If he stood up, he’d be drilled in a split second. That left him with only one option. He kept his head down and crawled over to the hole in the roof.

  Holstering his gun, John Henry turned around and maneuvered backward until his legs were dangling over the opening. He slid the rest of the way into the hole, hanging by his hands for a second before he let go and dropped into the wrecked cell. One foot slipped in a puddle of blood that had leaked from the dead prisoner.

  The blast had buckled the door of this cell so that it was partially open. John Henry grasped the bars and forced it back enough for him to slip through the opening.

  Across the aisle, Steve Buckner had finally worked his gag loose enough that he could talk.

  “Damn it, Cobb—” he began.

  “Sixkiller,” John Henry interrupted. “My name’s John Henry Sixkiller.”

  “I don’t give a damn what your name is,” Buckner said. “Untie me and give me a gun.”

  “So you can shoot me? I’m not that loco, Buckner.”

  “No, blast it! I’ll help you. Dav’s bound to have you outnumbered, and you can use every gun you can get!”

  With the death of the deputy on the roof, John Henry figured the odds were about even, at least as far as the numbers went. He said, “Why would you turn on the sheriff that way?”

  Buckner glared at him from the cell, then said, “Because I know Kate’s here. Dav’ll wipe out the whole bunch of you, includin’ her, and I can’t let that happen.” He sighed. “Anyway, I may be a hardcase, but Dav’s like some sort of crazy lobo wolf! When he whipped that fella the way he did, I knew I couldn’t keep backin’ his play for much longer.”

  Buckner sounded sincere, John Henry thought, but it might all be a ruse to strike at the jail’s defenders from within.