Clay Nash 4 Read online

  “Right! Quick as you can so I can do something to stop your bleeding. Try not to cut me up too much but don’t worry about a few nicks ...”

  He squirmed around and heard her moans as she rolled a little towards him. He thrust out with his hands and drew them back swiftly as he felt the knife blade, but then maneuvered so that the cold steel slid between his wrists above the rawhide.

  “That’s it,” he said, panting a little himself now. “Near as I can get.”

  She didn’t speak, but he felt the knife blade begin to saw back and forth and he bared his teeth. She was so weak that there was little pressure against the rawhide. It would take hours to cut through the strands this way and he knew Katerina Morales didn’t have all that time.

  He was surprised to feel a strand part with an almost silent snap. The knife blade was a lot sharper than he had thought and he moved his numbing arms, pressing the rawhide upwards as Trina pushed weakly down with the knife. Another strand parted. He pressed up again, timing the movement to match the downward sawing action of the blade and a third strip of rawhide was severed.

  In another five minutes, his hands were free and he was massaging the wrists, trying to get the circulation working again. The girl lay back, gasping, and he snatched up the knife as soon as he could feel his fingers and slashed the rawhide around his ankles. Then he crawled to her side, knelt and moved her around slightly so that he could see the wound better in the little light that filtered through the window. He ripped the burlap aside and gray half-light filled the kitchen, allowing him to see more clearly.

  He winced when he saw the vast area of bloodstained blouse and skirt, lifted the blouse edge carefully and sucked in a sharp breath. The knife had slid up between her ribs and gone deep; he knew she wouldn't make it and when he looked into her pale face the big, dark eyes looking back at him, told him that she knew it was the end, too.

  “I’m sorry, Trina,” he whispered. “I can only try to stop the bleeding a little ...”

  He started to look around for some cloth but she clutched at his arm weakly and he was surprised at how cold her flesh felt. She shook her head slowly.

  “Don’t waste your time, Matt,” she gasped. “It is—useless. I—know ... Go now ... Perhaps you can—save the—muchachos.”

  He held her hand firmly between his own and looked down into her dim face. “We’ll save ’em, Trina. There’d be no hope except for you ...” He paused and spoke only half aloud. “Feel a sight better if I could get my hands on a gun.” Her grip tightened slightly, though it was still very weak. Her mouth moved and he had to lean down to hear what she was saying.

  “I—I know where,” she gasped, her voice so weak now it was barely a whisper. Nash waited, gripping her hand tightly, almost willing her not to die on him yet. “The grain bin ... three ... Aah! Matt!” Her body arched and her breath came raggedly, shuddering. “Cox left it—there ... Didn’t—trust—Zachary ... Three—bin ...”

  Her grip almost crushed his hand as she half rose, eyes wide, lips pulled back so tightly against her teeth in the rictus of the moment of death that they were almost bloodless. Then she fell back and the movement sent the last breath out of her with a rushing, rattling sound and her hand slid out of Nash’s fingers. He folded her arms across her chest and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  Then he stood up, taking the bloody kitchen knife with him and went to the back door. It was only latched and he was out in the yard, washed by the light from a half moon, in a few seconds. The grain bin would be in the barn and Magee had his bunk above it but that would be a chance he would have to take.

  There was no sound at all inside the shack now and he watched a cloud crawling across the sky. He pressed back into the shadow of the doorway and waited impatiently for the cloud to reach the moon and block out its light briefly. As soon as the cloud’s shadow touched the yard, Nash ran across to the big barn and slid in through the sagging door that was permanently ajar because of a broken hinge. He smelled the hay and neatsfoot oil and leather, mixed with horse sweat and the mustiness of old saddle blankets. Holding the knife in his right hand he looked around and saw light slanting into the barn in a dozen places through cracks in the walls. The line of feed-bins was over to his left and he eased across that way, sliding a foot forward and feeling about carefully before moving his other foot. He didn’t want to step onto any pitchforks or kick any tools together. He couldn’t hear Magee above and didn’t know just what part of the barn the man was sleeping in. He had taken it for granted that it would be somewhere up in the loft but it might not necessarily be so. Magee could have a bunk set up in a corner at ground level.

  Nash was at the bins now, big wooden ones, five in all. He could see that one wall of the barn had been divided up into stalls for a dozen horses. He saw the dark shapes of horses in a half-dozen of the stalls and what looked like the smaller outline of a burro or mule farther down. He reached the third grain bin and felt for the lid. It was wooden and heavy and he eased it up and back, freezing when it slipped off its frame at the rear of the bin with a rumbling sound. But he managed to support its weight and lower it carefully to the ground.

  He crouched down by the bin for several minutes, knife gripped tightly, ears straining. One of the horses stomped irritably. The mule snorted. Rats rustled somewhere to his right. But there was no sound from above or anywhere else in the barn that gave any indication the noise had disturbed Magee.

  Nash eased up, feeling about with his left hand in the grain. He had to half stand, looking about the barn constantly at the deep shadows, thrusting his left arm down into the moving dusty grain. He moved around the big bin, leaning far in now, and swore, stifling the urge to cough in the dust he was making. But he couldn’t feel any gun rig. He knew he had counted right: the third bin, Trina had said. There were only five, so it didn’t matter from which end he started.

  Then his fingers found something, hard and stiff. He strained to reach down farther, groping, touched cartridge loops on a belt and a stiff leather edge. Sweating, gusting a sigh of relief, he thrust down, grabbed the belt in his hand and yanked violently. Grain erupted from the bin and pattered around his feet as he pulled out a complete gun rig, the weapon itself wrapped about in a piece of calico to keep dust and grain out of the mechanism.

  Nash pulled the gun out of the holster, unwrapped the calico and saw that it was the Peacemaker Colt with a seven-and-a-half inch barrel, which suited him fine. He laid it across a corner of the bin while he buckled the rig around him. He had to slide the belt tongue clear out to the end hole but it fitted well enough, a mite uncomfortable, but nothing he couldn’t put up with. He kicked the knife under the bin and picked up the Colt, spinning the cylinder. It had been well oiled and he could feel a patina of oil on the metal frame, too. He felt for the chambers and poked the end of his little finger in far enough to confirm that each held a cartridge.

  Then, as he dropped the gun into the holster, the barn seemed to explode as two shots hammered at him only feet away and he lurched sideways as lead slammed into his left side, his body spinning, the motion throwing him down to hands and knees. The gun blasted again and a bullet kicked straw and dirt into his face. Red-hot pain seared through him and his vision momentarily blurred as he flung himself in against the bins, right hand palming up the strange Peacemaker, left hand pressed against the wound in his side.

  He triggered at the gun-flash, heard his lead clang off some tool. The horses squealed and stomped in fright. One began kicking at the stall wall, or maybe it was the mule, which was braying in terror. Nash dropped flat as the gun blasted at him once more and he heard the grain bin splinter as the lead slammed into it. He rolled away from the bins as he saw a shadow leap lip on top of the bins and run along, light glinting from the gun that was angling down, the muzzle seeking him.

  Nash rolled onto his back, snapped the Peacemaker up and fired, thumbing back the hammer and letting it drop a second time. He heard the bullets thud into flesh and then Mage
e was screaming as the impact flung him from the bins and he crashed down into the barn. He threshed about, his screaming dying away gradually. Nash leapt up, ran lopsidedly, hugging his wound, towards the stalls and threw himself across the back of a horse that had just kicked its way out, timber splintering and flying. The animal spooked and twisted its head, teeth snapping as its eyes rolled wildly. He slid a leg over its back, sobbing in agony, twisted bloody fingers in the flying mane and yelled for the animal to ‘Go!’ The horse lunged for the barn doors. It ran down the aisle as Magee made a last effort to get to hands and knees. The animal cannoned straight into him and he had time only for one choked yell before the hoofs finished the job that Nash’s lead had started.

  Nash was almost thrown from the horse’s back as they tore through the doors and his shoulder brushed the sagging timber. He held on, fighting for balance as the animal raced across the yard. Lester and Forrester were running out of the shack in their underwear, guns in hands.

  Lester triggered wildly on the run but Forrester dropped to one knee, took time to aim and got off four evenly spaced shots. Nash pressed flat against the horse’s back but he felt it break its stride and it gave a squeal, before resuming its wild run. He figured a bullet had burned across its hide some place and then he was firmly astride again, kicking his heels into the flanks, letting the chill night wind tear at his face and senses, driving some of the webs of pain away.

  He pressed his left elbow hard into the wound in his side and could feel the blood soaking through his clothes already. He wondered how long he would be able to stay on the horse as bullets whizzed past him as he raced on into the night. Forrester and Lester wouldn’t just stand there and let him ride away.

  Within minutes, they would be saddled up and ready to hunt him down.

  Chapter Eight

  The Reckoning

  The horse had been hit worse than he had thought. He found this out only a few miles from the adobe shack when he paused for precious moments. Blood was soaking the flank. Nash scrambled aboard again and kicked the horse on.

  He had heard a Winchester whiplashing back there once when he had topped a ridge and likely had been sky-lined against the moon as it sank down in the east, but none of the bullets came close. Luckily, he had known in which direction the Mexican village lay and he had veered away from the trail that led there. He wouldn’t be surprised if Forrester sent Lester there to get a dozen men out looking for him. For it was important that Forrester keep him from reaching Ojo Medina and warning Burns about the planned train hold-up. Forrester would pull out all stops to run him down.

  For a while there Nash had had hopes that he might actually make it. But then he felt the horse slowing and it would not respond to his kicking, and then he had been aware of the broken rhythm, and knew he had real trouble. His wound was pulsing blood and weakening him, but he had figured if he could just manage to hang on and head towards Ojo Medina, there might be a chance. Once he realized the horse was weakening, he knew it was hopeless.

  The best he could do now was to try and stay alive.

  If he could do that, and get to the bridge across the Rimrock Canyon, he might yet be able to pick off the Forrester gang before they blew that train to kingdom come. If he had to die, it would be as good a way to go as any, he figured ...

  The horse was lifting up into the hills when it stumbled and almost fell. He pulled it at an angle across the face of the slope and down again. On, the downgrade, the animal managed to pick up speed but it was only a burst and it began to falter as he put it between the hills, up a small valley.

  Halfway along the valley, he heard the zipp! of a bullet and, an instant later, heard the whiplash of the rifle. Nash turned his head, teeth bared against the pain of his own wound, and caught a glimpse of a rider silhouetted against the stars on the ridge behind. They had made up lost time! Several other horsemen ranged up alongside the rifleman as Nash looked back and the Winchester spat again. He heard the bullet thunk into the ground to his left and then he rode into a pool of deep shadow and there came a ragged volley of rifle fire behind him as they fired wildly.

  At the other end of the valley was the river, a tributary of the Rio known locally as Lariat Creek. It was deep-flowing as it passed between the narrow walls of this valley and Nash doubted if the horse could make it across, fighting the current, but there was no choice. He didn’t have to look behind to know the night riders would be pouring over that ridge and down into the valley, hard on his trail.

  The horse was staggering now, shaking its head, making heaving, grunting sounds, rear legs wobbling and throwing Nash around, bringing a groan of pain to his lips. He almost lost his grip on the mane and the agony knifed through his side with the jolting of the animal. The moonlight—what was left of it—glinted on the water ahead and he could hear the roar of the stream. The horse didn’t want to go into the water and Nash kicked savagely with his heels, hearing, above the sounds of the water, the thunder of hoofs back down the valley as the nightriders rode fast to hunt him down.

  But he was too late. The horse just couldn’t help him anymore. Gallantly enough, it took the plunge off the bank but its rear legs folded and threw it onto its side and there was a single whinny, swiftly drowned as the muzzle plunged under the chill waters, a great fan of spray, and then Nash yelled as the river closed around him, its iciness snatching his breath.

  He was free of the threshing, dying horse, and being rapidly carried downstream. Surging green river water filled his mouth and nostrils and he choked and retched, was flung to the surface momentarily, then tumbled and wrenched and tugged under again. Rocks slammed against his body and he had enough sense to grab hold of his Colt’s butt and ram it tightly into the holster. Pain was a living, writhing thing in him as his body was twisted and battered by the river, ripping open the bullet wound in his side. Sunken logs and branches tore at his clothes. He was tossed to the surface, sucked down a grateful breath and for thirty yards was swept along at a fast clip on the surface.

  He saw the riders on the bank, thundering along, trying to keep pace with him. Pinpoints of light ripped the darkness as they poured lead into the river, searching him out. Nash dived under of his own accord this time, slammed into a hidden boulder, cannoned off, and was flung head over heels several times. He was disorientated, didn’t know which way was up or down. He fought rising panic as his lungs burned with the desire to breathe. His throat was on fire.

  His eyes were starting out of his head but he could see nothing but redness and knew it was the blood pounding through his eyeballs. His legs jarred into something and the shock passed clear through his body. Before he could get a direction, he was somersaulted again. He felt as if he were going to burst, and yet an invisible clamp on his chest was crushing his lungs. He could hear his straining heart beating through his neck arteries. Arms flailed uselessly. He spun like a top. Hidden objects smashed and tore at him and his body was tumbled this way and that, twisted like a corkscrew, straightened, hammered, punched, grazed, slammed.

  And suddenly he was in still water. Not only still but shallow. He was on his hands and knees barely aware of the great shuddering breaths he was dragging down into his lungs. He coughed and retched water and sand, floundered forward and collapsed half in and half out of the backwater where the current had flung him. He rolled onto his back, flopping exhaustedly and lifted an arm towards his head. He was surprised when it knocked against moist earth and grass roots ... above him! He blinked open his eyes, started to rise but banged his head.

  Nash flopped back again and slowly the realization of where he was came to him. The river had swept him under a cutbank. The riders could be right over his head at that very moment, separated from him by maybe as little as three feet of earth, but they would never know of his existence. It was a great gash made in the bank, undermined by the surging river waters as they raced down through the narrow confines of the valley and hit the next bend past the whitewater rapids he had somehow managed to survive.
The water had, over the years, like the Rio in Rimrock Canyon, carved a deep, undermining cave in the bank and that was where he was now.

  He had no idea how far back from the actual river he was or whether he shared the cutbank’s sanctuary with animals or reptiles but, right now, he didn’t care. He was too plumb tuckered and he sagged back, let his arm flop across his wounded side and passed out.

  ~*~

  Brad Burns wasn’t sure that he hadn’t bitten off more than he could handle when he helped Ellen Bray get the dozen or so schoolchildren on board the Juarez train as it stood panting hollowly at the siding, some distance from town. The children were bursting with excitement and devilment, the boys giving the girls a bad time of it as usual, pulling pigtails, undoing ribbons, lifting frilly skirts to look at young ankles encased in thick black cotton stockings, and giggling about it. Some girls were reduced to tears before the train pulled out and Ellen had a job comforting them. One girl turned out to be well able to take care of herself. She looked the prettiest and most angelic there. But when a freckle-faced buck-toothed little red-haired terror in three-quarter knickerbockers and striped shirt ran up and pulled out the ribbon of her lace-trimmed bonnet, she balled up a tiny fist, called the boy by name, and, as he paused to give her a cheeky grin of triumph over his shoulder, she hauled off and let him have a hefty swipe fair on the nose. Blood spurted and the shocked boy blinked for a moment, tears of pain welling down from his eyes to mix with the scarlet trickling from his nostrils, and then he let out a wail that had the engineer in his cab looking out to see what poor dumb animal had been caught beneath the wheels.

  When Ellen demanded to know what had happened no one spoke but all the kids looked at Burns and he shrugged. “Guess he must’ve fallen over. That right, boy? You fall over and give yourself a bloody nose?”