Clay Nash 23 Page 2

  Their six-guns thundered, raking the rim with lead and forcing Nash to duck as fountains of mud and sodden earth sprayed over him. Then Nash got up and snapped the rifle to his shoulder. The men were running for their mounts. Nash brought one of the men down—then ducked as a bullet ripped his hat from his head. He landed on a stump of brush and the jagged wood ripped through his corn sack and into his side. He grunted as he felt the splinters break off in his flesh. By the time he got to his knees, the remaining outlaw was mounted and making his run down the draw.

  The man whipped a sawn-off shotgun from a special holster on his saddle and Nash dropped as a charge of buckshot chewed into the mud. Spitting grit and clawing mud out of his eyes, he lunged to one knee and loosed off his remaining three shots. He saw the outlaw sway in the saddle, but the man didn’t fall as the racing mount disappeared around a bend.

  Nash swore as he stood up slowly and saw that the fleeing killer had also run off the rest of the mounts. He reloaded his rifle, then sat on a deadfall by the fire and examined the wound in his side. He bared his teeth as he pulled out a sliver of jagged wood.

  He might have nailed that fourth son of a bitch if he hadn’t fallen onto that stump ...

  Well, three out of four wasn’t a bad score—and he had recovered the strongbox. With a little luck, the bag of money and jewelry would be in a saddlebag on one of the horses. He would have to try to catch them come morning, he mused.

  But, although Nash ran down all three of the dead outlaws’ mounts, he couldn’t find the passengers’ valuables. It looked like the escaped bandit had them ...

  It took him a full day to find his way out of the hills and back to the canyon country.

  When he rode into the town of Twin Rivers two days later, he went straight to the telegraph office and sent off a wire to his boss, Jim Hume, Chief of Detectives for the stage line, telling him what happened.

  While he waited for a reply, Nash went to a sawbones and had his wound treated, for it had become infected. He bathed in the public bath house and went to the barbers for a shave and a haircut. After a meal, he began to prepare to track down the last of the gang. Wells Fargo didn’t give up: they recovered everything that was stolen from their express cars and returned passengers’ valuables to them whenever possible.

  That was why Nash was so surprised when Hume’s wire came and ordered him to quit the case and get to Spanish Springs post haste. Nash raised his eyebrows at the telegraph operator. The man nodded to the message form.

  “I’d say there’s somethin’ mighty important waitin’ for you in Spanish Springs, Clay.”

  “Must be. Heard of anythin’ happening down that way while I’ve been out in the wilds, Jack?”

  “Nary a thing. But Hume ain’t the kind to call you off a job like this for nothin’.”

  “Hmmm,” Nash said thoughtfully. “Train out of here tonight, Jack?”

  “Yeah, but it’ll only take you as far as Flatrock.”

  “Connectin’ stage down to Spanish Springs from there. Might be lucky to arrive in time to catch it. Wire on ahead, Jack, and ask ’em to hold it till the train gets in, will you? My authority. Use Hume’s name if you have to.”

  “Will do, Clay. Better oil your guns. This has to be a big one.”

  Nash nodded, but, as he left, he wondered why no one had heard of anything big happening in the remote town of Spanish Springs.

  It was very strange indeed.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Nash stared after the words exploded from him, studying Jim Hume’s blocky frame as the big Detective Chief stood in the cramped office at the rear of the Depot in Spanish Springs.

  Hume’s face was deadly serious and his heavy moustache seemed to bristle slightly as he regarded Nash. The big trouble shooter was dusty and obviously weary from his long journey. He had gone straight to the office the moment the stage had pulled into the depot, expecting to be told about some vitally important job that required his special talents.

  Instead, Hume had handed him the file on the stage hold-up at Gray Dog Crossing.

  “Jim, what the hell you playin’ at?” Nash demanded. “This is a minor hold-up. A gold tooth, for God’s sake, among about seventy bucks stolen. Even the express box had less than a thousand in it. I know Wells Fargo treats every robbery the same, but I was hot on the trail for four killers who got away with more than twenty thousand. Nailed three and recovered the express box, but one’s still on the loose with about five thousand dollars. I reckon bringin’ him to heel is a mite more important than this—tin-pot farce.”

  Hume sat down heavily and took a cigar from his vest pocket. As he went through the motions of piercing it and lighting up, he waved Nash to the only chair in the room. But Nash was too angry to sit. He flung the file onto the desk, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw.

  “Reno Franklin’ll take over from you on the other job, Clay. He’s going through your files up at Twin Rivers right now. He’s a good man.”

  “Sure,” Nash agreed tautly. “But he’s goin’ to lose time catchin’ up with my reports. And they’re mighty skimpy, Jim. I only had time to scratch down the bare facts before the train pulled out for Flatrock. I might’ve had that fourth man nailed by now.”

  “You did a mighty fine job,” Hume said placatingly, “but I wish to hell you’d sit down.”

  Nash shrugged, toed out the chair and dropped into it with a weary sigh. “Damn it, Jim, I’m savage about this. I put in two months on that other case. Three more days and I’d’ve had it wound-up. Clean. Complete. I don’t mind bein’ pulled off a job for something more important, but this ...” He gestured to the file and shook his head slowly.

  “Doesn’t sound much, I know.”

  “That’s because it isn’t much.”

  “Maybe. Then maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

  “Something in the express box that’s ...?”

  “No, just the money and bonds and a few samples of gold dust.”

  “Then what the hell, Jim? It’s straight-forward apart from that. Three masked men jumped the stage at the crossing. They took the strongbox, lined up the passengers and robbed ’em—gunnin’ down some Mex who tried to get a gun out of his valise,” Nash said.

  “Uh huh,” Hume said with a nod. “Three men, masked, wearing coats over their clothes. No description except that about the feller who took his hat off to collect the valuables. He’s likely a cowboy or maybe a professional owlhoot. Nothing to go on. And they were mighty good at covering their tracks. Asa went after them. They shot him.”

  Nash snapped up his head. “That wasn’t in the file.”

  “No. Just haven’t added it in yet. He must’ve found some sign of them. They bushwhacked him in a gulch and left him for dead. Posse found him next day.”

  “Alive?”

  “Barely. All he could say was he’d climbed to the top of a ridge and seen them riding north. That’s all we got out of him, but there are no tracks. Not north, south, east or west. They disappeared like ghosts. Without trace.”

  “What’s to the north?”

  “Cowtown. Cougar Bluffs.”

  “Yeah. I know it.”

  “There’s no way out of Cougar Bluffs worth a damn. No fast escape.”

  “So you reckon they didn’t go there?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “Well, what ...?”

  “Hold up a minute, Clay. Look, I called you in on this because I figure it needs your talents, your particular touch. I might not have hauled you off the other deal if you hadn’t already nailed three of the four outlaws and recovered the strongbox. But I figured it could be safely left to Reno to finish. Now, as to why I hauled you down here for this one, I have to admit I don’t have a concrete reason ... but you know me: I play my hunches. Well, I’ve got a mighty strong hunch that something’s haywire here.”

  “I still don’t see what’s stickin’ in your craw, Jim. It was a professional job. Ruthless, maybe, but the best
professionals are.”

  “That’s exactly my point, Clay. True professionals would’ve known all along just how much was in that strongbox and how much they could hope to get from the passengers. These were all poor folk: a busted cowpoke, a padre on the bottle and about to be defrocked, an old maid with almost nothing valuable, and a half breed Mexican on his way to Austin with a valise full of papers. He had no money on him at all and aimed to stay with relatives once he got to Austin.”

  “A long journey. What was he goin’ there for?”

  “I don’t know. His daughter didn’t say. But she was certain he wasn’t carrying a gun of any sort.”

  “Seems you’ve settled on the Mex for the reason behind the hold-up, Jim. That right?”

  Hume stood and walked across to the smeared window, puffing on his cigar. “I don’t like the Company being used to help cover-up a murder, Clay.”

  “How d’you mean ‘cover-up’?”

  “I reckon the whole thing was staged just to kill that Mex. The rest was nothing but a smoke screen.”

  Three – Trail Herd

  Merida Gomez was a looker. She was in her twenties, slim, dark, but not Indian-dark, with flashing eyes and black shining hair flowing down to her tiny waist.

  She gave Nash a cool look as she stood, dressed in black. They were in the small parlor of the Gomez house on a side street in Spanish Springs.

  “Sorry to have to intrude at this time, Señorita Gomez,” the Wells Fargo man said. “But I need to ask a few questions to help me track down the men responsible for your father’s death.”

  “I understand, Mr. Nash,” she said, without any trace of accent. “And I’d as leave you called me Miss Gomez or Merida, not señorita. My mother was Texas-born. So was my grandmother on my father’s side. We don’t have very strong ties with Mexico.”

  “Whatever you like—huh—Miss Gomez. I won’t take up much of your time. Can you tell me what sort of papers your father was taking to Austin?”

  “No. All I can say is that over the last few months my father suddenly became very interested in our ancestors who were some of the original settlers in Texas, when it belonged to Mexico. He was going through an old trunk of his father’s, looking for some trinket, a medal, I think, and he found a bundle of old letters. He was intrigued with the old style of Spanish writing, and was amazed that he couldn’t read it. So he studied the papers and translated them to modern Spanish. It was just something to fill in his evenings.”

  “And these were the papers he took with him to Austin?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea. All he said was that he wanted to see his old uncle—and then to see the Governor.”

  “The Governor,” Nash frowned. “Maybe Jim’s right. Your father’s valise was taken with all the papers it contained. Would there be duplicates?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. But perhaps the original letters, written in old Spanish, are still here ...?”

  “Would you mind looking?”

  It took the girl almost an hour to locate the papers. The old script ran together and looked more like Arabic than anything else, or some writings of an ancient civilization. Certainly, he couldn’t read it, although he knew Spanish well enough.

  “You mind if I take these with me, Miss Gomez? Hume could have someone try to translate them while I get on the trail of your father’s killers.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Take them, please. If they’ll help track down the murderers, then you’re welcome to them.”

  “Thanks. We’ll let you know soon as we come up with anything.”

  At the Depot, Hume agreed with Nash that likely there was something in the papers that could possibly explain the mystery.

  “While you get up to Cougar Bluffs, I’ll get a man onto translating these,” Hume said.

  “Hadn’t I better wait till you get something out of them?” Nash asked.

  “No. You get on north. We’ve had word that a trail herd under Largo Dunn assembled at the Bluffs—and pulled out a couple of days after the hold-up. There’s a good chance our three killers joined it and headed north. It’d be a perfect cover.”

  “Timing seems pretty convenient.”

  “See what you can come up with, Clay. Join up with Dunn’s crew if you have to. I’ve a feeling you’ll find the three killers eating trail dust with his crew.”

  Cougar Bluffs was a ramshackle town, sprawling all over the countryside with streets fifty yards wide and meandering along the original path of the old wagon trail that had dodged rocks and clumps of trees now long gone. There were two saloons and a whorehouse among the usual business places.

  Nash checked them out.

  He knew that if the legendary trail boss, Largo Dunn assembled one of his big herds there that he, too, would check out the saloons and cat house for men who were willing to face the hardships and boredom of a long, gut-busting cattle drive far to the north to the market railhead.

  Nash asked particularly about three men together—riding a paint, a black gelding and a buckskin, but no one remembered any such trio even arriving in town.

  The livery didn’t have any new horses that fitted the description Nash gave, although there were animals of the same general markings and colors in the corrals. The stable man swore he hadn’t grained or groomed animals such as Nash was after.

  For a while, Nash began to wonder if he and Hume had guessed wrongly. Maybe the three killers hadn’t ridden into Cougar Bluffs after all. They might have turned west or east or even swung completely around to the south again. Somehow, he didn’t think it was likely, but all he had to go on were his instincts. He was riding a hunch like Hume.

  He was giving it all he had. He’d been infected by Hume’s suspicions and maybe, he admitted to himself, after seeing Merida Gomez, he wanted to get to the bottom of her father’s murder and bring the killers to justice. Anyway, it really didn’t matter how he felt about it: the chore was his to do and that meant getting it done as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Once he started a job, he never gave up. That was why he was Wells Fargo’s top trouble shooter and had been top of the ladder for so long.

  All his enquiries convinced him of was that Largo Dunn had picked most of his trail crew from men who were in Cougar Bluffs a week ago. He’d started the drive with more than three thousand head of steers soon after he had all he required.

  They’d been on the trail for five days, but Nash figured he could overtake them. They wouldn’t cover more than ten, fifteen miles a day through the type of country north of Cougar Bluffs. He figured he ought to arrive in their camp in a couple of days.

  With a fresh mount, and saddlebags bulging with supplies Nash rode out of Cougar Bluffs a few hours after arriving—hard on the trail of the big herd.

  The first night out, he camped by a waterhole, obviously recently used by a big bunch of cattle. It was while he was cooking his supper that the shot rang out. The bullet passed so close to him that it ripped the collar half off his shirt.

  With the booming crash of the hidden rifle filling the camp with thunder, Nash hurled himself backwards. He kicked the coffee pot into the small fire, rolled several yards away and started blasting.

  He triggered at the rifle’s muzzle flashes, slightly above the camp in a clump of rocks. Nash heard his lead ricocheting and spun away to find a new position as the rifle raked the area where he’d been.

  The Wells Fargo man bounded to his knees, brought the Colt over—then held his fire. The rifle was silent and he figured the man was reloading. If he began shooting, all he would do would be to give his position away. His heart was thudding but above it, as he fought to control his breathing, he heard the clash of the rifle lever in the dark and knew the man had a full magazine again and had just jacked a shell into the breech.

  But it was a half minute before the rifle opened up again from a new position. The man had moved, circling to the left.

  Nash moved right, not answering the withering fire that raked across the whole campsite in a
deadly arc. He tried to count the shots but wasn’t sure because the man fired in bursts. Sometimes it was a single shot, then it might be followed by a volley of three or four or two.

  Nash figured the man might have one bullet left as he made his way over the soft sand around the edge of the waterhole. Then he moved into the rocks and clambered over them, careful not to make a sound or let his hardware scrape across the rough surface.

  He paused, balanced on three rocks, listening intently. A man sniffed, a little below him and to his right. Nash was surprised to find he was above the man, and he turned towards the small sound, notching back his gun hammer.

  The rifle blasted almost in his face and he knew the bushwhacker had heard him and thrust the weapon up at arm’s length. He felt the burn of the powder flash and his left ear was deafened by the explosion, so much so that he didn’t hear his own gun roaring as the bushwhacker slammed back by the strike of lead.

  Suddenly, there was silence—except for the massive ringing in his ears.

  He climbed down warily, then knelt and straddled the quivering body, ramming the Colt under the man’s ear.

  He heard the bubbling, wheezing breath as it whistled through the bullet holes in the killer’s chest.

  “You got ten seconds to talk, mister, before I make your passin’ one screamin’ nightmare for you.”

  He saw a slight widening of the man’s eyes as he rammed hard with the gun barrel.

  “You savvy me?”

  The dying man nodded, his breath gargling horribly, and his blood running down his chin.

  “All right,” Nash said harshly. “Who paid you to come after me?”

  The man’s ragged breathing was the only sound for a short time, then he began to speak.

  “Dunno. Guess he just ... looked me up. Fifty bucks. Said if ... if any ... one come askin’ for ... for three men ... ridin’ ... paint ... b ...”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,” Nash said impatiently, afraid the man would die before he got it all out.