Free Death Rides the Night by Brett Halliday

who had stopped right behind him, “We better wait a minute tuh be shore John an’ Pete are ready.”
    Winters nodded his head. He held the shotgun down in front of him with one hand clutching the double muzzles and the other with a finger crooked about the triggers. He seemed completely cool, and Sam Sloan marveled at the storekeeper’s composure. A man would think, by golly, that he was in the habit of engineering a jail break every night. It just went to show that you never could tell about a man until the pressure was on. Take Pat now.
    But Sam put the thought of Pat away from him angrily. Thinking about the way Pat had run out on Ezra brought sharp pain. It was something he didn’t dare let himself think about. Later he knew he would have to think about Pat, and he dreaded that time. Right now, it was enough to think about Ezra, probably sound asleep right now inside the jail.
    Ezra had always been one to make the best of any bad circumstances. He could settle down and go to sleep ’most anywhere, and it wasn’t the first jail Ezra had been in either. He’d probably be sore and cuss them out, Sam thought indulgently, when they unlocked the door and woke him up to take him out.
    â€œThey ought to be at the door by now,” Winters whispered, and he stepped past Sam toward the lighted window.
    Sam unholstered his gun and followed him. They crept along in the shadow of the wall, stooping beneath the Window ledge that was at about the height of Sam’s shoulders.
    The heavy night silence persisted unbroken. Not a sound came from inside the lighted office, and there was nothing to indicate that two other armed men were waiting in front of the door of the office on the other side.
    Sam couldn’t wait any longer. Every fiber in his tough frame craved for action. He nudged Winters with his left elbow, straightened up and smashed the single square pane of glass with his gun-barrel.
    Winters came erect simultaneously, and as the broken glass clattered inward noisily he thrust the short muzzle of the shotgun through the aperture and warned loudly, “Put up your hands quick.”
    He and Sam stood in the full glare of a lantern hanging from the ceiling inside and blinked stupidly at the interior of the office before their eyes focused so they could see clearly.
    Then Sam muttered, “I’ll be damned. Do you see what I think I see?”
    Winters chuckled at his tone and said, “We can’t both be seeing things, Sam.”
    They were staring in through the unglassed window at an unexpected and curious scene. The two deputies lay on the floor with bandanna gags tied over their mouths and their hands bound behind them.
    The door was flung open as Winters and Sam stared at them, and Pete and John Boyd stood on the threshold brandishing their guns. Their mouths hung open as they saw the helpless deputies on the floor, and the two pair of would-be jail-breakers stared at each other in utter incomprehension from opposite sides of the building.
    With a disgusted grunt, Sam stepped back from the window and hurried around to the door. By the time he got there, Boyd and Pete were jerking the gags from the mouths of the VX riders who had been deputized to guard Ezra.
    They sat up, sputtering incoherently, and the story tumbled from their lips while Boyd cut their hands free.
    They hadn’t more than settled down to guard the jail, they told the amused Dutch Springs deputation, before a masked man walked in the door and covered them with a .45 before either of them could go for his guns.
    He disarmed them and then bound and gagged them securely, got the key to the jail from them and left them lying there while he went around and freed the prisoner they were supposed to be guarding. Both of them bitterly averred that Dutch Springs was one hell of a town, and being a deputy was one hell of a job. They couldn’t tell what the masked man looked like except he was tall and dressed