Seven Days to Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  He didn’t want to lose a horse to the Torrent. Hell, he couldn’t afford it! Not with a couple of bags of gold in his saddlebags.

  He didn’t want to get shot, either. Bullets from the duo on shore whipped past Johnny’s head, too close.

  Johnny dropped put two slugs into Guy’s middle. The shots came one after the other, one-two, sounding like one big leveling blast.

  Guy spun, fell, stretched his length on the grass of the riverbank.

  Rafey stopped shooting and did a take when he saw his sideman go down. “Guy!” he cried, anguished.

  Setting his jaw, squaring his shoulders, Rafey popped shots at Johnny as quick as he could jerk the trigger. Fury didn’t help his aim any, because all he hit was air.

  Johnny fired two at Rafey, a sudden lurch of the barge throwing him off-balance. The first shot missed Rafey.

  Johnny did an instant correction and the next shot tagged Rafey him in the side, knocking him sideways. Rafey tripped over Guy’s dead body and fell to his hands and knees, the gun still in hand. Shouting wordlessly he raised the piece for another try.

  Johnny pointed his gun at Rafey and fired.

  And then there were none.

  “You okay, Bill?”

  “Yes—you?”

  “They missed.”

  Johnny and Bill had their hands full for the next few minutes getting control over their horses, gentling them down. Being on the water had made them uneasy . . . the violence, blood, and death really driving them wild.

  Presently the horses had settled down, though their ears were pointed straight up and their eyes were wide and rolling.

  Order of a sort was finally restored to the raft. It stood in midriver.

  “The barge line is gonna need some new proprietors,” Johnny said sourly.

  “That’ll teach those Clewtes not to go taking what isn’t theirs,” Bill said.

  “Too bad Purley didn’t recognize you after we got to the other side, now we’re stuck in the middle of the river.”

  “I’ve got a feeling he suspicioned it might be me early on . . . he was a cagey one.”

  “I don’t mind a little killing but now we have to haul the raft the rest of the way.”

  “Don’t forget I’m a bargeman, too. I’ve been doing my share of the work with Cullen for months.”

  “Don’t you forget that was before you got shot,” Johnny said. “I don’t want you ruining yourself hauling away on the line.”

  “The barge isn’t going to move itself,” Bill said.

  “Let’s get rid of this dead weight first,” Johnny said, indicating the bodies of the Clewtes brothers sprawled and leaking on the deck planks.

  He had Bill hold the reins of the horses, keeping them in check while he took care of the body dumping. He dragged Reese’s body to the forward end of the barge, tumbling the corpse into the water, which sucked it away and gone. Purley followed his brother into the river.

  Johnny cut a short length of rope from the lariat hung coiled at the side of his horse’s saddle. He used it to tie the forward gate closed.

  He got a pair of wrist-length work gloves out of his kit and fitted them over his hands. “Got gloves, Bill?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cut some strips off your bedroll and use them to wrap your hands to protect them.”

  “I don’t need gloves, I’m a ferryman,” Bill said. He held up his hands palms out. “I didn’t get these calluses sitting in the shade drinking dandelion wine.”

  “They look like they’ve softened up some. You’ve been laying off the job for a month or more,” Johnny said. “Don’t get those hands all tore up, you’ll need them in good shape for gunwork.”

  Bill bowed to the logic of necessity, cutting some strips off the edge of a blanket and wrapping his hands with them.

  He and Johnny got into position along the upstream rail, Johnny posted forward and Bill aft behind him. They laid hands on the cable rope and began hauling away. To maximize their efforts they both tugged on the rope at the same time in one synchronous motion.

  “Pull!” Bill shouted, calling the cadence, and they both heaved away at the cable line. “Pull! Pull!”

  At first the barge seemed motionless, anchored in place. Presently it started to inch forward.

  Johnny Cross was medium sized with a trim, athletic build. There was real strength in his well-knit form. Bill Longley was a professional bargeman whose strength was still far from being fully restored, but he had a skilled technique that helped make up for it.

  Even so, it was hard, grueling work. The steaming humidity of the swampland didn’t make things any easier, though the swift current of the Torrent generated a much welcome cooling breeze.

  Johnny and Bill were soaked with sweat before they’d moved the barge more than a foot or two. Johnny called frequent breaks to ensure Bill didn’t put a hurting on barely healed wounds.

  Heave away, pause, heave some more. The duo fell into a machinelike rhythm, losing track of time, absorbed in the seemingly endless business of tugging away on the cable line to advance the barge to the other side of the river.

  At last the forward edge of the barge crunched against the Torrent’s north bank. Johnny and Bill rested from their labors.

  “Bill, my hat’s off to you,” Johnny said when he’d finally caught his breath. “That’s a damned hard job and no mistake!”

  “I never knew just how much of the work Cullen was doing when we were manning the lines; he was doing the lion’s share. One lick of this without him is enough to send me right straight back on the owlhoot trail!” Bill said fervently.

  Once they were sufficiently recovered, they disembarked. Johnny opened the forward gate. He and Bill lowered the boarding ramp to solid ground and disembarked their horses.

  “What about the barge? I’m minded to burn it so no other varmints like the Clewtes can come along and milk it for their own,” Bill said.

  “Leave it be, leave it be,” Johnny said. “Don’t close a back door until you’re sure you ain’t gonna need it. This here barge might come in handy for a getaway after we bust Cullen loose. We can always cut the line and let the barge run downriver once we’re safely on the other side. That’d slow up any posse by hours, hours that could be the difference between getting away clean or not.”

  “You’re talking sense,” Bill said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  This was the clearing on the Torrent’s north bank where not so long ago Cullen Baker, his wife Julie, and Bill Longley had lived and worked. There’d been some changes made, not for the better.

  The long-standing hunter’s cabin that Baker and Julie had used for their home had been burned out. Its stone foundation was now a pen for charred mounds of half-burned timbers and sodden ash heaps.

  Bill’s one-room wooden shack nearby had been torn down for kindling for a bonfire.

  Bill’s eyes glistened but their dark irises and pupils were blazing. His face was long, downcast. “Why do people have to be so damned mean? It was a good cabin, and it would have stood for a long time. Folks could have used it, lived in it. Young couples could have sneaked off here for some loving. Hell, let it stand just for a place to get out of the rain . . .”

  Yet there had been times not so very long ago when he had gladly and gleefully spread terror by fire when riding with the original Baker gang.

  * * *

  There was a roadhouse outside of Halftown where a rival gang congregated. The Baker gang had come by night, using the cover of darkness to douse the outside of the structure with lamp oil and paraffin. Then they put it to the torch.

  “It’s burning like a bastard!” one of the gang happily exclaimed.

  The rivals tried to shoot it out from inside the roadhouse until the flames got too high, too hot. Then they came out. Some tried to surrender, some tried to run, some to shoot it out, but they were all gunned down.

  A few stayed in the burning house too long and caught fire themselves, running out of the inferno, human
torches screaming. It was a mercy to kill them, put them out of their misery.

  Cullen Baker had been at the center of things, like always, ramping up the mayhem with a gun in each hand. Firelight outlined his huge shaggy-haired form as he methodically fired a shot first from one gun, then the other, never missing his man.

  And right beside him was Bill Longley . . .

  * * *

  “Hey, Bill!” Johnny Cross called. He was on the other side of the burned-out cabin, in a cove of grass that reached into the trees, pushing back the brush.

  Something in Johnny’s tone set Bill’s ears quivering with unease. “What?”

  “I think you better see this.”

  Bill Longley went around the cabin’s burned-out wreck, circling around back. He found Johnny standing in a grassy glade ringed by a curved arm belt of woods.

  Johnny had his back to Bill, his head bowed and bared. He held his hat down by his side. He was looking down at something at his feet.

  Bill came alongside him, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw the thing:

  A grave.

  A fresh-dug grave, not more than a few weeks old by the looks of it. The grave mound was sunken. At its head stood a crude wooden cross, tilted to one side.

  A thin plank served as the horizontal crossbar. Carved on it was the legend:

  JULIE MORGAN BAKER

  1851—1867

  Bill Longley let out a cry of loss and pain, an anguished howl that seemed to shake the leaves in the trees. He staggered, as if struck a tremendous physical blow.

  That was all from him, that single outcry. It was still echoing when Bill shuddered, then slowly drew himself up to full stature. A furious gaze burned in a face set in hard lines that promised no good for the objects of his ire.

  Bill Longley was a good hater.

  Johnny Cross stood there uneasily, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He didn’t know what to say.

  He knew this, though, an insight to which he would never give voice:

  Bill Longley had loved Julie, too.

  “Sorry, Bill . . .” Johnny’s voice trailed off.

  “She was a mighty fine gal,” Bill said, his voice husky. “I set a lot of store by her, in a respectful way, her being Cullen’s wife and all.”

  “Sure,” Johnny said.

  “Julie always had a smile even when things looked blackest. She had a gentle spirit. Seeing her was like the sun coming out after a storm.”

  “You want some time alone to say a few words over her, Bill?”

  Bill Longley shook his head no. “She doesn’t need any words from the likes of me. She’s one of the angel band now. Let’s be doing.”

  Johnny put on his hat and clapped Bill roughly on the shoulder. “We’ll make them pay, hoss.”

  “Lord, yes!” Bill said feelingly.

  A twig snapped behind them. Johnny and Bill whipped around with guns in their hands quick as lightning.

  “Easy, gents,” a voice said. Standing on the far side of the clearing was its owner, a big woman who took up a lot of space.

  She bulked larger than a lot of men and it was all brawn and no fat. A straw planter’s hat with the brim curled up at the sides was pulled down over a melon-sized head. Black hair marbled in gray was pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head. She had dark eyes, an eagle beak nose and a jack-o’-lantern mouth.

  She wore a man’s button-down shirt, dark and loose ankle-length skirt, laced-up thick-soled boots. She held a double-barrel shotgun pointed down at the ground.

  “Easy, Johnny,” Bill said. “That’s Kate. She’s a friend.” He eased the hammer down on his gun, holstering it.

  Johnny did likewise. “Dangerous game in these parts, sneaking up on folks,” he said, his blood still up and running high.

  “Lucky I recognized Bill Longley or I might have cut loose on you on general principles,” Kate said. “I stepped on that twig to let you know I was here. Elsewise you’d never have knowed.”

  Kate advanced. “Combine men tried to put out the word that they’d run you out of the county with your tail tucked between your hind legs, Bill, but I wasn’t having none of it.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I see Barbaroux’s crowd hasn’t done for you yet.”

  “Nor will they. That crowd specializes in dirty tricks and back shooting but they have to find me first, and in the back country that takes some doing,” Kate said.

  She cut a quick side glance at the gravesite. “So—you know.”

  Bill nodded. “What happened, Kate?”

  “Julie was worn to a frazzle even before Cullen was tooken. After that she had to go into hiding. Barbaroux wanted her; it would have tickled him to torment Cullen that his wife was being held on the Big White Boat with Lord knows what being done to her.

  “I looked after her best as I could, but you know running and hiding in the swamps night and day is no life for a young girl. And Julie always was of a delicate constitution. She come down with swamp fever bad. Tore her down. She was already near half-crazy with worry for her man. I tended to her with herbs and such, but I’m no doctor. Afore I could fetch a real sawbones she was gone. She went to sleep and never woke up. She passed quietly, if that’s any consolation.”

  “Not hardly,” Bill Longley said, his dark eyes pits of cold fury.

  “Didn’t ’speck it would be, ain’t hardly no comfort to me, neither, but I’m giving all of it to you, the way it was,” Kate said. “Julie was happiest here at the landing for those few months when she was fresh wed to Cullen, before the trouble started and them Combine hounds came sniffing around looking to fatten their coffers. I laid her to rest here. It was like burying my own daughter.”

  “You did a real nice job, Kate. I thank you for it. I know Cullen would thank you, too,” Bill said.

  A burlap croker sack with a top strap was slung over one of Kate’s broad shoulders. She reached into it with her free hand, pulling out a tight bouquet of wildflowers. “I come by when I can to leave some small remembrance. I saw two strangers standing by the grave. Y’all seemed respectful else I’d have just blowed you away with this here scattergun and picked through the pieces later. Danged if the bad penny himself hadn’t turned up again in the form of that young hellion Bill Longley! I knew you’d be back sooner or later, but I didn’t know when.”

  “I had to take a long hard ride, Kate.”

  “And this is what you brung back, huh?” Kate said, indicating Johnny Cross. “You’re almost too blamed fast with the plow handles, Bill, but danged if your friend here didn’t shade you on the draw when you both reached.

  “Still . . . seems like a lot of time and trouble to go to to fetch back just one man even if he is a fast-draw artist.”

  “Not just any man, Kate,” Bill said, corners of his lips quirking in the phantom of a smile. “He’s a friend. Friend to me and Cullen, good friend.”

  “Who be you, stranger?” Kate demanded.

  “Johnny Cross, ma’am.”

  Kate’s eyes narrowed, then got a faraway look as if peering through shades of memory. “Johnny Cross,” she repeated. “’Pears to me I recollect the name at that. You was in that first Cullen Baker gang a couple of years back.”

  “That’s right,” Johnny said.

  “Yes, I heard of you. You look a tad undersized for the hell-raising, fire-eating Johnny Cross the barroom idlers used to talk up, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Say what you please, it’s a pleasure to hear a body speak her mind straight out.”

  “You won’t get much of that on the Blacksnake. Not now.”

  “Johnny got reformed, Kate,” Bill said.

  “You sure picked a hell of a time to do it, mister. Not that this whole blamed county couldn’t use some reform. And you aim to do it?”

  “No, ma’am,” Johnny said, “I came here to help out two friends, Bill and Cullen Baker.”

  “If you want to help Cullen you’ll have to act fast and then some more.
He’s slated to hang in seven days,” Kate said. “Seven days!”

  “Then Bill and I had best be about our business. Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” Johnny said.

  “Call me Kate, friend,” she said, extending a pawlike hand that looked like an oversized mitten. “Shake!”

  “Go easy on him, Kate, he’s going to need that hand,” Bill said, only half-joking.

  Johnny shook hands with Kate. She shook like a man, a bone-crushing power in her grip, held in restraint.

  “Saw you looking at these mitts of mine,” Kate said. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows, baring brawny forearms thick with scar tissue down to the fingertips. “I catch and sell crawdads to earn me some spending money. That’s why they call me Crawdad Kate. Them critters don’t come without a fight . . . they always nip you with their claws a moment afore they go to the cooking pot.”

  “Can you blame them?” Johnny said.

  “Not at all! I’d do the same in their place.” Kate laughed, then she got serious fast. “I’m gonna do what I came here to do, if you’ll give me a moment.” She wasn’t asking, she was telling.

  Kate went to the gravesite and put her shotgun down. She took the bouquet from her sack and laid it down on the mound at the head of the grave. She got down on her knees, folded her hands, and prayed silently to herself, her lips moving.

  Johnny and Bill drifted away a bit to give her some privacy. Kate wasn’t long, only a moment or two. She rose, brushing dirt off her knees, and took up her shotgun, all business now.

  “I take note that them egg-sucking dogs the Clewtes brothers and their chicken-thieving friends seem to have absented themselves from the locality kind of sudden,” she said.

  “They retired from the barge business,” Johnny said dryly. “Seems they couldn’t handle the freight.”

  “Well you’re off to a good start and no mistake,” Kate said. “But the Clewtes and their ilk are mighty small fry compared to the Commander in the Big White Boat, Not to mention Warden Munday in Clinchfield Gaol. The place is a fortress.”

  “No nut too tough to crack,” Johnny said.

  “I admire your spirit if nothing else, but what’re you gonna use for a nutcracker?” Kate asked.