Shot to Hell

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “What the hell happened?” Stark demanded. “Who got ’em?”

  “Same one that’s gettin’ everybody,” Duncan answered, “Perley Gates.”

  “How can that be?” Stark demanded. “Three men who handle guns for a livin’ get done in by one man? He had to have some help. I don’t care what they told you.”

  “He said the only one in the shop with him was the barber-undertaker jasper and that’s all,” Duncan maintained.

  “Yeah, and he mighta been japin’ you, just for the hell of it,” Stark asserted, unwilling to believe this one man was able to cause him so much trouble. In the span of a few days, his gang of nine men had been reduced to four—and by the actions of one man. “I need those two men in that jail, and we’re goin’ into town and break ’em outta there.”

  “When you figurin’ on doin’ it, Boss?” Sledge asked.

  “I think Sunday is a good day for a jailbreak,” Stark replied, suddenly feeling his old invincibility again. “Get your weapons ready, we’re goin’ to Bison Gap as soon as we get saddled up.” He went inside then to tell Frank Deal to prepare for a raid. In short order, they were all five mounted and armed and ready to ride. Before making the ride into town, he gave them their orders once again. “That town council wants to get up an army to protect themselves—well, I’ve got my army ready, and we’ll strike first. We’ll ride straight to the jail first and get our men outta there. I’ll give John Mason the chance to get his head straight and start takin’ orders from me again. If he doesn’t, I’ll shoot him. Then we’re gonna go through that town like a tornado. I wanna be sure they know we were there today. Anybody not sure what we’re gonna do today?” Nobody admitted it. “All right,” he shouted, “let’s ride!”

  * * *

  Unaware of the attacking force gearing up to descend upon the peaceful town, the congregation emptied out of the First Baptist Church to hurry home for Sunday dinner. In Rachael Parker’s case, it was to be the usual roast beef dinner Bess always prepared in the hotel dining room. Alice and Melva always helped serve the Sunday dinner, so Kitty could have a day with her husband. The dinner at the hotel had been so popular that it was becoming a tradition with many of the families of Bison Gap.

  Neither Rooster nor Possum made it to church, but they were both early to arrive at the dining room to make sure they were seated at one of the tables. Rachael and Bess, with the assistance of Alice and Melva, hurriedly began to serve the guests already seated. In the midst of their activity Rachael suddenly grabbed Perley by the arm. “Perley,” she said, “I forgot about the sheriff and his two prisoners. Sheriff Mason always comes for our Sunday dinner, but he didn’t come today.”

  “I forgot about that, too,” Perley admitted. He didn’t explain that he had been quite busy all through the night and hadn’t gotten much sleep. “The sheriff has got two prisoners that he doesn’t want to leave alone to cause mischief. I’ll tell you what, fix up a plate for him and I’ll take it down there to him. Fix a couple plates for the prisoners, too. I’ll take ’em all.”

  “You’re an angel,” she said and hurried to the kitchen to prepare the food. When it was ready, she stacked them one on top of the other but thought, “You can’t carry a coffeepot, too.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Mason’s got a coffeepot down at the jail. We’ll make ’em a fresh pot. They’ll think it’s Thanksgivin’.” He took the plates and headed out the door.

  “Open up, Sheriff,” Perley called out when he arrived at the sheriff’s office. “It’s me, Perley. I’ve got your grub.” In a few seconds, he heard the bolt slide, and the door opened. Sheriff Mason took a cautious look out the door before opening it wide. “Here’s some dinner for you and your guests. I couldn’t carry a coffeepot, too, so you’ll have to furnish that yourself.”

  “I swear, that looks like Thanksgivin’,” Mason said when he saw the food piled up on the plates, causing Perley to chuckle at the remark. Perley put the plates on Mason’s desk, while the sheriff immediately locked the door again. “I ain’t takin’ no chances with this pair in the cell room,” he explained his caution to Perley. “I’m thinkin’ there’s a good chance I might get a visit from Ned Stark, tryin’ to get these boys outta here. And he ain’t gonna be too happy when I tell him I can’t let ’em out.”

  The sheriff’s remarks were enough to give Perley some encouragement. If Mason meant what he said, then it would mean that the sheriff had finally made his decision to back the people who paid his salary. He decided to hang around long enough to help Mason while he fed his prisoners, thinking it a good idea to have someone watching them when he passed their plates into them. The next thing was to get a pot of coffee working, which Mason started right away. With Eli and Slim eating their dinner, and the coffeepot bubbling away, Perley was ready to go back to the hotel to get his dinner. “I’m startin’ to smell that coffee,” he said. “I’d best get myself up to the dinin’ room before all the food’s gone.”

  He started to unlock the door, but a glimpse of something through the window caused him to hesitate. He took another look through the window to be sure. “Uh-oh,” he announced, “I think you’ve got company.”

  His statement captured the sheriff’s attention right away. “Stark?” He asked automatically.

  “Yup,” Perley answered, “Stark and four men with him.”

  Mason hurried over to the window to see Stark walking his horse toward the jail with four men riding abreast, two on each side of him. Catching a glimpse of the sheriff at the side of the window, Stark called out, “Sheriff, I’ve come to take my two men off your hands. Open up.”

  Perley decided it best to stay out of sight to see how this turned out and was disappointed to see Mason go to the door and unlock it. It appeared that the sheriff was still under Ned Stark’s yoke. He was surprised, however, when he heard Mason’s response to Stark’s request. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ned,” the sheriff said. “These two men are under arrest for breakin’ in Floyd Jenkins’s place of business and attempted murder.”

  “What attempted murder?” Stark wanted to know. “They was just some fellows that had a little too much to drink and wanted to get in the barbershop to look for more.”

  “Carl Leach drew on Perley Gates with intent to kill him,” Mason said.

  “And Leach is dead,” Stark replied. “What’s that got to do with Eli and Slim? Let ’em outta there.”

  “Can’t do it, Ned. They were in on it with Leach, so they’re gonna have to stand trial for their part in the crime. Best just leave this up to the judge and jury and go on about your business.”

  His temper heating up now, Stark stepped down off his horse and walked toward the door. “Damned if you ain’t forgot who’s been butterin’ your bread for the last year or so,” he sought to remind him.

  Mason hurriedly closed the door and bolted it, hoping Perley had not heard Stark’s comment about buttering his bread. “Any arrangement between you and me is over and done with,” he said through the door. “You’d best get along now, before I have to arrest you for disturbin’ the peace.”

  Still standing back out of sight of the window, Perley grimaced as he thought, Maybe you shouldn’t have threatened him with that, even though he was impressed that Mason was intent upon standing up to Stark. In the cell room, Eli and Slim were standing up at the bars, straining to hear everything said between the sheriff and Stark.

  Stark responded to Mason’s threat just like Perley feared he would. “Arrest me!” Stark exploded. “You think I’m disturbin’ the peace? I’ll damn-sure show you some disturbin’ the peace, if you don’t open that door and let my men outta there right now!”

  In the cell room, Eli grinned at Slim and said, “Hot damn! I knew we weren’t gonna be in here long.” He yelled out at the top of his voice then. “Get us outta here, Ned!”

  “Open that damn door!” Stark ordered. “I’ll shoot it down, if you don’t!”

  Shoot, Perley thought, I didn’t get my dinn
er. After hearing Stark’s threat, he went to the gun rack on the wall behind Mason’s desk and took a Henry rifle and a box of cartridges. He ducked down behind the desk when Stark suddenly cut loose with his six-gun, firing all six shots into the door. But none of the shots penetrated the heavy, double-oak door. Luckily, the sheriff’s office and jail was a solidly built structure. The only vulnerable places were the two windows, one in front and one in back of the office section, so these were the places to defend. “I’ll take this one,” Perley said, since he was already near the back window. Mason understood and positioned himself by the front window, which was shattered moments later by a blast of gunfire from the five outlaws. Stark quickly sent two of his men around to the back of the office to fire through that window.

  While the windows were the only vulnerable spots, they were also the only spots for defensive fire. This proved to be unfortunate for the defenders of the jailhouse, for in order to fire at their attackers, it was necessary to expose their rifle barrels as well as a portion of their bodies. Consequently, it became a dangerous game of trying to pop up, take a quick shot, and duck down before catching return fire. This while their attackers watched for them to try to take the shot. It soon became sport for the outlaws, who were blasting away at the slightest movement at either window. “We got him jumpin’ back and forth like a jackrabbit,” Junior said. Like his partners, he assumed Mason was alone in the office.

  This went on until Perley got a glimpse of one of the outlaws when he looked toward the front of the office to see if Mason was all right. He realized that he had a better line of sight on the shooters through the front window than he did from the window he was guarding. And to find a target, he could move from side to side in the back of the room to get the angle he needed to take the shot. So he told Mason what he was going to do. “Stay back from the window.” Then, using the sheriff’s desk for cover, he laid the Henry on top of the desk and waited for a shot.

  Frank Deal was the unfortunate target when he moved up to get a better angle at the sheriff when he popped up to take another shot. Perley saw him moving closer to the front door. He shifted over a couple of feet until he could see more of him and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went through the front window and caught Deal in the right shoulder, spinning him around to drop to the ground. “I’m shot!” He cried out, then began to crawl back toward his horse. In response, Stark and Junior flattened themselves against the wall of the office.

  Inside, when Mason saw what Perley had done, he turned to see if he had a shot through the back window. Perley ducked out of the way while Mason waited for one of the men in back of the office to give him an angle of fire. Not as patient as Perley, he fired as soon as he got a glimpse of Jim Duncan, resulting in a slug swiping a shallow trench along Duncan’s side. “Damn, I shoulda waited,” Mason swore, but the results of the two shots caused the outlaws to seek cover while they tried to come up with a better plan.

  Determined to get his two men out of the jail, Stark sent Junior around the cell room section of the building to see if there was a window in the cells. When he got around to the side, he looked up to see the one small window. Junior was a tall man, as well as big, so he jumped up and caught the window ledge with his fingertips. Pulling as hard as he could, he almost managed to get his head up to the barred window. Then, in a loud whisper, he called, “Eli, Slim, you in there?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he was answered at once. “We’re in here. Get us out.”

  “All right,” Junior called back and dropped to the ground again. “I’m gonna go tell Ned.”

  “Can we get a rope on the bars?” Stark asked when Junior reported that there was a window in the cell that Eli and Slim were locked in. “All right,” Stark said, “let’s go see.” They ran around to the back again and Junior pointed to the small window high up on the wall, obviously a window meant only for light and ventilation. “Eli!” Stark whispered loudly, “Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I can hear you,” Eli answered, his voice louder than a whisper, since there had been so much gunfire it seemed unnecessary to whisper.

  “If we yank them bars outta that window, can you get through it?” Stark asked. Eli said he sure as hell could, so Stark said, “We’ll get the horses and some rope. When we throw the rope up, can you catch it?” Again, it was a yes from Eli, so Stark and Junior ran back to the front to get their horses. “We’ll tie two ropes around the bars and use both horses to yank that window out,” he told Junior.

  Inside the cell, Eli and Slim pulled Slim’s bunk out of the way and moved a four-foot bench that served as their dinner table under the window, which was near the ceiling of the cell. By standing on it, Eli could reach the window. Leaving Duncan and Sledge to keep firing through the windows to keep the sheriff occupied, Stark and Junior took their horses around to the back. With Junior in the saddle, he easily handed two ropes to Eli, who quickly tied them to the window bars, then stepped down to watch the show. “I don’t know,” Slim said. “That window looks awful small. You think you can get through that?”

  “Hell, yes,” Eli responded. “You can, too.”

  Outside, Stark and Junior pulled the ropes taut with their horses, then kicked them hard. The ropes stretched and strained, threatening to break until the window, frame and all, suddenly snapped out of the wall. There was no hesitation on Eli’s part. He jumped on the bench again, grabbed the bottom of the opening, and pulled himself up. But he couldn’t get his shoulders through. The window was too small. Not to be stopped by a minor handicap, he said to Slim, “Let me get on your shoulders, so I can stick my arms through first, then I can pull myself through from the outside. Then I’ll pull you through.”

  Having heard a noise from the cell room, Perley thought he’d better check on the prisoners. He started to go but paused when his eye caught sight of a couple of pairs of handcuffs on Mason’s desk. Might be a good idea to handcuff them to the bars to keep them from doing anything to cause trouble, he thought, so he picked them up. “Be right back,” he told Mason and went into the cell room just in time to see Slim push Eli up to his hips through the tiny window. He drew his .44 and held it on Slim. “Back away,” he ordered. Slim backed away, leaving Eli hanging on his stomach, halfway in and halfway out of the window. Perley took the cell key from a peg on the wall and opened the cell next to the one they were in. Then he unlocked the cell they were in and motioned Slim out. With Perley’s gun on him, Slim offered no resistance and went dutifully into the other cell. Perley locked him in, then holstered his pistol.

  While Slim was being transferred to the other cell, Eli took advantage of what time he had and struggled and strained to pull himself to freedom, successful finally in pulling his stomach through. But that was as far as he could manage, even though he had the use of both his hands on the outside wall. His hips were wider than he had thought. In spite of that, his determination was so strong that he was sure he could still make it, if he twisted and turned enough. “Gimme a hand!” He cried out to his two dumbfounded partners outside, standing fascinated while watching his efforts.

  Inside, equally fascinated by Eli’s struggles, Perley took a look at the two sets of cuffs he had taken from Mason’s desk, then went inside the cell. He closed one end of each cuff around each of Eli’s ankles even with Eli kicking to avoid it. Then he picked up one end of the four-foot bench and clamped the open end of one handcuff around one leg of the bench. Satisfied that it would not slip or slide, he repeated the procedure on the other end of the bench. “I declare, Eli,” he had to say, “you just don’t get along with windows, do you?” He stepped back to take another look at the hapless outlaw wedged in the window with a four-foot bench clamped to his ankles and dangling above the floor. “I’d best see how the sheriff is doin’,” he said aloud.

  He was turning the key in the cell door where the half-man was hanging when he heard a scream of pain from outside the wall. “No, no! Don’t pull no more. You’ll pull me in two.”

  Perley paused
in front of the cell Slim was now occupying to say, “You shoulda gone first. I believe you’da made it.”

  “What was all the noise?” Sheriff Mason asked when Perley came back.

  “They were tryin’ to escape. Stark musta hitched a horse up to the window ’cause he managed to pull the whole thing out.” Mason was at once concerned, but Perley told him his prisoners were still secure. “If Stark pulls Eli out, he’s gonna take half the wall with him.”

  That was enough to cause Mason to have to see for himself, so he got up from his kneeling position by the door. “Watch yourself, Perley. Whoever that is in the back keeps tryin’ to sneak up to the window so he can see the whole room inside.” He got up in a crouch and went into the cell room. When he came back, he said, “I ain’t even gonna ask how he got himself in that fix. I think that’s a good place to leave him.” He looked at Perley, who had taken his original position beside the back window. “What I wanna know is, after all that big talk last night about the vigilance committee, where the hell are they? With all the shootin’ goin’ on, why don’t somebody come to help?”

  “Sheriff, that’s a mighty good question, and I ain’t got any answer for it.” As soon as he said it, they heard shots coming from the street, just across the creek.

  Mason looked at Perley. “You reckon?”

  “I reckon,” Perley answered and shrugged.

  The shooting through the windows stopped and brief seconds later, they heard the sound of horses galloping away. “They’re gone!” Mason blurted and ran to unlock the door. He stepped out on the porch in time to see the five horses start across the bridge to Main Street but stop and turn up the bank of the creek instead. Mason put his rifle against his shoulder and fired at the fleeing outlaws. Jim Duncan fell forward on the neck of his galloping horse.