Eight Hours to Die

by William W. Johnstone

  What he needed was an army.

  Not the cavalry, though. If a troop of soldiers showed up, it could lead to a pitched battle in which innocent people would be hurt. What he needed were allies who could blend in until the time came to strike, so they could take the deputies by surprise . . .

  Those thoughts were stirring around in his head as he walked toward the Collinses’ boardinghouse several nights after the whipping of the miners and the publication of the Star. There were people in Chico he could trust, he told himself, but the trick would be getting them to trust him. To them he was an outlaw and a gunfighter named John Cobb who was pretending to be a lawman, no better than the rest of the gang that had taken over the town. He had to convince them somehow that the opposite of that situation was really true.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. Even Kate Collins, who had shown signs now and then of warming up to him early on, had been cold as ice toward him the past few days. A sullen silence reigned in the boardinghouse whenever he was around.

  His hand moved closer to the butt of his gun as he spotted two figures coming toward him in the dusk. He relaxed a little when he recognized them as his fellow deputies Steve Buckner and Aaron Kemp.

  “Howdy, fellas,” John Henry greeted them. “Headed downtown for your shifts?”

  “That’s right,” Buckner said. “You missed supper, Cobb. Miss Kate wasn’t happy with you.”

  “Miss Kate hasn’t been happy with any of us for quite a while now,” John Henry pointed out.

  Buckner let out a rueful chuckle.

  “You ain’t lyin’ about that,” he said. “She’s like everybody else in this town: plumb mad as an old wet hen at us.” Buckner paused and then surprised John Henry by adding, “Can’t say as I really blame ’em, either.”

  “Steve,” Kemp said in a warning tone.

  “Blast it, I can’t help it,” Buckner said. “What the sheriff done to Spivey and those other miners . . . Well, that was rough, Aaron, mighty damn rough, and you know it.”

  That note of dissatisfaction was something John Henry hadn’t heard from any of the deputies until now. He supposed that some of them were afraid of Dav, too, at least to a certain extent, just like the townspeople. Greed had probably drawn them all here to pin on badges and pretend to be real lawmen, but they might have gotten in deeper than they really expected.

  That possibility might be something he could use in the future, John Henry thought. The near future, he amended.

  Because the situation here in Chico was intolerable and couldn’t be allowed to go on for much longer.

  Kemp said, “You flap your gums too much and you’re gonna get us in trouble.”

  “You think Cobb’s gonna go runnin’ to the sheriff tellin’ tales?” Buckner demanded. “I don’t think so, not after the way he sided us in that fight in the Buzzard’s Nest. We’re compadres now, ain’t that right, Cobb?”

  John Henry suddenly wondered if this was a trick of some sort, a test of his loyalty to Dav. He said in a flat voice, “I mind my own business. That goes both ways.”

  “Sure, sure.” Buckner chuckled again. “Hell, I’m just spoutin’ words to hear myself talk. That’s a bad habit with fellas like me who’re in love with the sound of their own voices.”

  Kemp’s taciturn grunt indicated that he agreed with that much, anyway.

  John Henry bid the two of them good night and walked on toward the boardinghouse. He didn’t know how many of the deputies had been rubbed the wrong way by what Dav had done with the miners. For all he knew, Buckner might be the only one. It was nearly impossible to tell how Kemp felt about anything. Still, the conversation had been interesting for a number of potential reasons, and he filed it away in his mind.

  The gloom had thickened by the time he approached the boardinghouse. He swung wide to go around the house and pay a visit to Iron Heart in the stable out back, to make sure the horse was getting along all right. As soon as he got a chance, he needed to take Iron Heart out for a run. The big steed needed to stretch his legs.

  John Henry paused, going stock-still, as he once again noticed two figures in the gloom. This pair was slipping along the side of the stable as if they were up to no good. He was in the thick shadow of a tree, practically unnoticeable, so he stayed where he was and watched as the two forms disappeared into the stable. The light had faded so much he hadn’t been able to tell anything about them, not even if they were male or female.

  He was confident they were male, though. A couple of women wouldn’t have any reason to be out skulking around like that.

  He supposed it was possible they were horse thieves. Sliding his Colt noiselessly from its holster, he started forward again. His natural stealth allowed him to approach the barn without making anything other than the tiniest of sounds.

  When he got closer he heard the murmur of voices coming from inside the stable. It sounded like more than two men talking in there. It seemed like they were trying to keep their voices down, but the discussion was so animated that was difficult.

  “—do something now,” one man was saying as John Henry approached near enough to make out the words. “This can’t go on any longer.”

  “People will die,” another man said. John Henry wasn’t sure, but he thought the voice belonged to old Jimpson Collins, Kate’s grandfather.

  “People are already dying,” the first man shot back. “What happened to Sid Harney? What about Eddie McCoy, or Fritz Dumars, or Theo Larchmont? We don’t know, do we, because they all disappeared after they tried to stand up to Dav and his gang!”

  A third man added, “I tell you one thing . . . those fellas all left families behind. They’d have come back to their wives and kids if they could. That means they’re all dead.”

  “And a dozen or more besides,” the first man went on. “That’s why we have to do something to get rid of Dav now, before he murders anybody else. Good Lord, we all know he shot down Milton Hammond in cold blood, right in front of Lucinda! He’s never even bothered to deny that.”

  Several more men spoke up, confirming John Henry’s impression that there was a whole group inside the stable. He wasn’t the least bit surprised by what he was hearing. Any time a tyrant took control, resistance against his ironhanded rule would rise sooner or later. No dictator could hold on to power forever. That was just the way of the world.

  “Hold on, hold on,” one of the men said. “I don’t like Dav any more than the rest of you, but you’re all forgetting something: we elected him. He won that election fair and square. If we go against him, then we’re breaking the law!”

  “Maybe the election wasn’t all that fair,” another man insisted. “He lied to us about what he intended to do when he got in office. We thought we were electin’ a decent lawman, not somebody who’d come in and change everything for the worse. Anyway, the only reason we elected him was because he got that bank robbery loot back, and I’m not sure but what that whole thing was a put-up deal!”

  That brought a chorus of agreement from several men, with one of them saying, “I bet some of the varmints who held up the bank are wearin’ deputy badges right now!”

  John Henry suspected the same thing was true. Clearly, Dav had had dark plans right from the beginning.

  Unforeseen circumstances had given him an opportunity here, John Henry mused as he continued listening to the men argue about what, if anything, they ought to do. If he walked in there among them, they might scatter at the sight of him, or they might attack him, thinking he was spying on them for the sheriff.

  But if he could get them to listen to him, if he could convince them of who he really was and that he was on their side, he might be able to swear them to secrecy and lay the groundwork for a plan to oust Dav and his gunmen from power.

  With his characteristic decisiveness, John Henry made up his mind. It was worth a try. He slid his Colt back into its holster. If he showed himself with a gun in his hand, the men would panic and make his job that much harder, no doubt about that
.

  He took a deep breath and was about to step out of the shadows into the stable when he heard the faint scrape of boot leather on the ground behind him. Instinct made him twist around to meet the potential threat.

  He was too late. He wasn’t the only one around here who could be stealthy. He caught a glimpse of an arm rising and falling, and then something smashed into his head with enough force to knock him off his feet and send him spiraling down into an even deeper darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Consciousness crept slowly back into John Henry’s brain, bringing with it pain and a dim awareness of his surroundings. As he began to gather his wits about him, he realized that he was slightly surprised to still be alive. Given the depth of the hatred the citizens of Chico felt toward the sheriff’s men, the group gathered in the stable might well have killed him while he was out cold and helpless.

  Something nudged his shoulder. He felt warm breath against his face. Whatever it was bumped him again.

  His eyelids flickered open. At first he couldn’t see anything. The shadows around him were thick and impenetrable.

  Then his vision began to adjust. He made out a faint glow and after a moment figured out that it was starlight filtering through cracks between boards. He was inside a building. The mingled smells of straw, manure, and horseflesh told him it was probably the stable behind the Collinses’ boardinghouse.

  A huge, dark shape loomed over him. It bent down toward him and nudged his shoulder again. John Henry reached up and felt the soft nose of his horse.

  “Iron Heart . . .” he murmured.

  The horse nickered softly, clearly pleased that John Henry had regained consciousness. Iron Heart’s presence confirmed John Henry’s speculation about where he was.

  When the horse bent down again, John Henry looped his arm around Iron Heart’s neck and used that grip to help him stand up. He was a little unsteady on his feet after being clouted like that. His head spun and threatened to steal his balance from him.

  After a moment, though, things settled down and he was able to stand up without hanging on to Iron Heart. He looked around.

  The inside of the stable was dark. He had been knocked out early in the evening, but it was well after nightfall now, he thought. He had been unconscious for a while.

  As he leaned against the side of Iron Heart’s stall, he checked the holster at his side. Empty, of course. They had taken his gun. It would have been too much to hope for that they hadn’t.

  He reached up and carefully explored the side of his head where the blow had landed. He found a good-sized lump that was sticky where it had oozed blood. He hadn’t seen what sort of bludgeon his attacker used, but he would have been willing to bet it was a gun butt.

  He was lucky his head wasn’t busted wide open or stove in, he told himself. But why was he still alive? Once the conspirators had him in their power, why hadn’t they gone ahead and killed him?

  If they’d done that, they would have had a body to dispose of, he reasoned. Maybe they didn’t want to take a chance on his corpse being found and Dav going on a rampage that would leave significant numbers of the townspeople dead.

  Or maybe they’d just drawn the line at killing him in cold blood. John Henry wanted to think that was a possibility.

  He was puzzled, though, by the fact that they had left him not only alive but apparently unguarded. Surely whoever had knocked him out had realized that he was eavesdropping on the meeting. They believed him to be one of Dav’s deputies, so they would expect him to go running to the sheriff to reveal the conspiracy as soon as he regained consciousness.

  It was more than he could figure out right now. His brain was still too fuzzy. He needed to get out of here, needed a chance to gather his wits more. He wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to go into the boardinghouse, though.

  John Henry felt around on the stall gate until he located the latch. He opened it and swung the gate out wide enough for him to leave the stall.

  “See you later, pard,” he muttered to Iron Heart as he closed the gate and fastened it.

  The unmistakable, distinctly menacing sound of somebody cocking both barrels of a shotgun made him stiffen.

  “Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t,” rumbled a familiar voice. “That all depends on what you do next.”

  So they hadn’t left him unguarded after all.

  John Henry lowered the hand he had used to latch the gate but otherwise didn’t move. The man with the shotgun had probably been lurking here in the darkness for quite a while, and there was a good chance his eyes were more adjusted to the shadows than John Henry’s were.

  “Take it easy, amigo,” he said quietly. “Some of those scatterguns have hair triggers.”

  “This one doesn’t. If I splatter your guts all over this barn, it’ll be on purpose.”

  John Henry had placed the voice now. He said, “You don’t want to do that, Mr. Farnham.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Peabody Farnham, the blacksmith,” John Henry said.

  “Then you’ll know I just got out of jail earlier today. Me and my boy spent a week in there partially because of you, mister. I’m not inclined to be overly fond of you right now. There’s only one reason you’re not in worse shape than you already are.”

  “What’s that?” John Henry asked, genuinely curious.

  “Because I had a lot of time to think while we were locked up, and I’m convinced my son, Nate, would be dead right now if it wasn’t for you.”

  That took John Henry by surprise. He said, “How do you figure that?”

  “I went over it and over it in my head,” Farnham said. “When Nate charged at the two of you, Miller was about to kill him. I saw him reaching for his gun. But then you bulled into him and knocked him down before he could draw.”

  “I was just trying to get in Nate’s way,” John Henry said.

  “I don’t think so. You were getting in Miller’s way so he wouldn’t gun down my boy. Damned if I can figure out why, though, Cobb. I know your reputation. You’re a badman, a killer. What’d you do, take pity on a dummy for a second?”

  “That’s not the way it was,” John Henry replied before he could stop himself or frame the sort of callous answer that the real John Cobb might have given.

  After a few seconds, Farnham said, “I didn’t really think so. That’s why I convinced the fellas who were in here with me a while ago not to cut your throat. I wanted a chance to talk to you first. To thank you, I guess. As bad as the last week was, at least my son is still alive, and so am I.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “With the meeting, you mean? It broke up in a hurry. Catching one of the men you’re plotting against spying on you will do that.”

  “Who was it that hit me?” John Henry asked.

  “I’m not sure I should tell you that.”

  “As long as you’ve got that shotgun, I’m not in any position to make trouble for anybody, now am I?”

  “I suppose not,” Farnham admitted. “And since you won’t be leaving here tonight unless I’m convinced we can trust you, I guess it won’t do any harm to tell you it was Alvin Turnage.”

  “Turnage?” John Henry repeated, surprised. “The bank teller?”

  Farnham chuckled in the darkness and said, “You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but Alvin rode with Jeb Stuart’s cavalry during the war. Did plenty of scouting for the Rebs, too. He’s as tough a man as you’ll find in Chico, outside of the sheriff and his gang of hardcases.”

  “That’s good to know,” John Henry said. He wasn’t completely shocked by the revelation about Turnage. Plenty of men had performed heroically during the war and then gone on to lead quiet, peaceful lives once the great conflict was over.

  Men such as that would make good allies if and when the showdown with Dav came.

  “So after he knocked me out, somebody dragged me in here?” John Henry went on.

  “I did.”

  “I think
I remember hearing your voice earlier. And Jimpson’s. I didn’t recognize the others.”

  “Then you can’t retaliate against them, can you?”

  “I don’t plan on retaliating against anybody,” John Henry said. “You don’t know the full story of what’s going on here, Farnham.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me?” the blacksmith suggested. “Convince me that I shouldn’t kill you. If I did, that would cut down the odds by one when we finally strike back against Dav.”

  “That’s what you’re planning to do? Stage an uprising against the sheriff?”

  “You heard it for yourself, didn’t you? He’s going to just keep on killing, keep milking this town for everything it’s worth, and use it as a stepping-stone to even greater power. Unless somebody stops him. And who’s that going to be if it’s not us?”

  John Henry said, “The law.”

  “Law?” Farnham repeated. A harsh laugh came from him. “What law? Dav is the law in Chico. Duly elected, as he likes to brag. And with that weasel of a newspaperman blowing his horn, the whole territory’s going to know about it soon.”

  “Dav’s not the only law in the territory,” John Henry insisted. “Not hardly. The federal marshals have jurisdiction here, too.”

  “Federal marshals, huh? You happen to know where we could find us one of those?”

  “As a matter of fact,” John Henry said, “I do.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “I don’t believe it,” Farnham insisted a few minutes later.

  “It’s the truth,” John Henry said.

  “Then where’s your badge? All I’ve ever seen you wearing is that tin star Dav pinned on you.”

  “You don’t think he would have hired me if he knew I was really a deputy United States marshal named John Henry Sixkiller instead of a killer and gunfighter named Cobb, do you?”

  Farnham had come closer, emerging from the shadows at the edge of the barn, and John Henry’s eyes had gotten more accustomed to the darkness. John Henry could see the massive blacksmith now, standing a few feet away with the shotgun still pointed at him. A few rays of starlight that came through cracks between the boards even gleamed off the weapon’s twin barrels.