Clay Nash 12 Read online

  The freighter smiled smugly; it had been a smooth job and went off with a minimum of trouble and killing.

  “It was a good haul,” Burman couldn’t help saying. “Got us five thousand apiece.”

  “Chicken feed,” Tibbs said abruptly and Burman’s smile faded. “I got news of a train that’s gonna be carryin’ over a hundred thousand in gold pieces.”

  He let it sink in and felt his chest swell when he saw how the news rocked them. They all looked incredulous.

  “A hundred grand?”

  “Hogwash. Someone’s foolin’.”

  “If it is gospel, they’ll have the whole goddamn army guardin’ it.”

  “They’d never ship that much on a single train.”

  Tibbs grinned. “Go ahead, gents. Get it off your chests. But I can back it up ... it’s gospel and I got me a lot more details yet.”

  They fell silent and gave the Wells Fargo man their full attention.

  “Ready for it? Okay ... this is what I know. The Denver mint’s just turned out the first hundred thousand in gold pieces; twenty dollars right through to ones. But that money ain’t goin’ into general circulation. Washington’s got some sort of deal goin’ with one of them foreign countries, France, I think, but it makes no never mind. The only thing we’re interested in is that Wells Fargo’s got the contract to ship that gold by express car to Washington by the end of the month. Come hell or high water.”

  “Which is exactly what I’m sayin’,” spoke up Hayden. “Hell or high water—which means they’ll have all the help they need to see it gets through. It’s too big a job for us, I say.”

  “Now, hold up, there, Sheriff,” Mohawk Brown said, making the lawman’s title sound like a dirty word. “You ain’t just five or six hombres, remember. You got my boys, too, and we’re experienced in holdin’ up trains. In case you forgot.”

  Hayden colored at the outlaw’s tone and his mouth, pulled into a tight line.

  “I ain’t forgot one single thing about you, Mohawk.”

  “Good idea, Sheriff,” the outlaw chuckled, but there was a chill edge to his laughter.

  “Look, let’s hear Tibbs out,” Sam Castle said. “I didn’t ride all this way just to hear you hombres snipe at each other. Go ahead, Tibbs—give us the rest.”

  The Wells Fargo man nodded and made himself more comfortable.

  “Okay ... like I say, it’s got to get to Washington by the end of the month and, as I savvy things now, Wells Fargo’ve been workin’ on it for a couple of weeks already. And we got the best up against us: Jim Hume and Clay Nash.” His mouth pulled into a bitter line. “Nash killed a couple of fellers I was sendin’ to stay up here to join Mohawk’s bunch and the Ghost Riders. Good men, but Nash got ’em both.”

  “We all know Nash,” growled Tod Burman.

  “Well, you can bet he’ll be ridin’ shotgun on that gold shipment,” Sam Castle said. “They’ll have to give it their best. What other details you got, Tibbs?”

  “Near as I can find out, there’s gonna be at least a troop of cavalry “

  “Cavalry?” interrupted Burman.

  Tibbs nodded.

  “Gonna be a special car for their hosses. I hear there might be a Gatling gun on board someplace, too, and no passenger cars at all. There’ll be guards inside the express car, of course, but I dunno how many. They’re covering the car in steel plate in Denver right now.”

  Hayden threw up his hands.

  “See? Told you there’d be no chance of gettin’ anywheres near that gold. We might as well forget the whole damn thing right now.”

  “Hell, don’t be in such a hurry to throw away your share of the hundred grand,” Mohawk Brown said and jumped from the bar. “Trains are my specialty. Told you that.”

  “Not trains like this one’s gonna be,” Hayden said. “You heard Tibbs—they’re platin’ the express car with steel. No bullet will go through that and you can’t blast your way in.”

  Mohawk pursed his lip and wagged a forefinger in the general direction of the crooked lawman.

  “You’re runnin’ off at the mouth again, Sheriff. You gotta look into these things before you say go ahead or forget it. And I don’t aim to forget a chance at a hundred thousand just on your say so.”

  Hayden didn’t like Mohawk talking to him like that and his hand hovered above his gun butt. The outlaw leader grinned.

  “Aw, don’t be stupid, Sheriff.”

  He gestured briefly to one of the empty windows at the side of the saloon. A man stood there with a shotgun cradled in his arms. Mohawk, still grinning crookedly, indicated another window and the batwings. Outlaws, armed with rifles, stood at each.

  “We’re guardin’ you fellers, but my men are also guardin’ me. Just a precaution,” Mohawk said, and there was something in his eyes that had Hayden backing down fast. It seemed to him that the outlaw chief was just aching to kill him ...

  “Now, like I said,” Mohawk continued, with considerably more confidence than earlier, “let’s go into this deal a lot more before we throw it out. You fellers agree?”

  He raked his eyes around the group one by one and they nodded slowly. He let his gaze rest on the crooked sheriff and Pres Hayden finally nodded, almost imperceptibly. Mohawk grinned without mirth.

  “Now, that’s better. We got together to make a profit, didn’t we? Well, Tibbs here has come up with a tough one, but I reckon we’ll find a way around it. There’s always a way—if you know how to look for it. I reckon I’ll be able to get into that express car. Once I work that out, we got no problems other than how to stop the train and keep the cavalry from disturbin’ us while we’re packin’ away the loot.”

  Sam Castle sniggered. “Mohawk, you are sure one mighty big optimist. That’s all we gotta do, huh?”

  Mohawk made an expansive gesture. “That’s all. Like I said, there’s always some way. It’s the biggest job we’ve ever tackled but I got a feelin’ we can do it.”

  “Even if we can,” Tod Burman said slowly, “how are we gonna get rid of the coins? They’ll be brand new—and recognized too easy.”

  “Melt them down,” Grant Tibbs said. “We can get the gold value for them. Fact, we can get us a premium with a feller I happen to know in Mexico. Seems there’s a man down there who ain’t anxious for this Washington deal to go through. He’s willing to pay big to stop it. I hear he’ll buy that gold from anyone who can get their hands on it—and pay a bonus.”

  “Then we just have to find a way to stop that train and bust into the express car,” said Sam Castle. “With a ready market waitin’, I don’t see that we can pass up the chance without givin’ it a deal of thought first.” He turned to the Wells Fargo agent. “How long we got, Tibbs?”

  “Well, if it has to be in Washington by the end of the month, it’ll have to leave Denver three days before at the earliest—depending on the route they choose.”

  “Be the shortest, wouldn’t it?” Hayden asked, sounding a little sullen.

  “Not necessarily,” Tibbs said pompously. “Wells Fargo pick the safest, not the fastest route in cases like this. They won’t have any transfers or changes of trains once it gets underway, but they’ll use all the most populated tracks—which could add a couple of days to the travelin’ time. For all I know, they might even have soldiers linin’ the tracks clear across the country from Colorado to Washington D.C.”

  The others started to look dubious again.

  “They won’t ...” All eyes turned back to Mohawk Brown as he spoke up confidently. “I’ve tangled enough times with Wells Fargo—and Hume and Nash in particular—to know they will make things as ordinary as they can. They’ll rig things like it was a freight train with the usual express car. They won’t draw any more attention to it than necessary.”

  “If they don’t, then they’ll be mighty damn sure no one can get at that gold,” Hayden said tightly.

  Mohawk grinned at him.

  “You don’t seem to savvy, Sheriff.” The outlaw waved a hand a
round the group. “This here’s the Ghost Riders. We’re about to tangle with Wells Fargo for the first time. We got to show we can do it.” Then his smile disappeared. “An’ we got to show ourselves we can do it, too. We pull this one off, and there’ll be no stoppin’ us. Folk’ll run inside and close their doors every time someone mentions the name.”

  He walked across and, with stiffened forefinger, poked gently and repeatedly at Hayden’s chest.

  “This is the deal that’s gonna give us the toughest reputation ever, Sheriff, and we just got to grab it. Our whole damn future could depend on it. Not to mention that it could make us all rich. Now, you shut down, and quit throwin’ cold water over every idea that comes up or I’m gonna have to tip a signal to my man with the shotgun and make sure you shut up permanent. You savvy that—Sheriff?”

  Hayden swallowed and said nothing. The others were silent, but Sam Castle frowned deeply.

  He didn’t like the way Mohawk Brown was tending to take over things.

  The next thing he might try to take over could well be the gold itself.

  Chapter Four – Plans

  It had been a grueling couple of weeks for Clay Nash and Jim Hume.

  For the first week, neither of them had left Denver, in fact, for three days, neither even left the office. They rigged bunks in a spare room of the Wells Fargo offices and slept there. Hume’s normally orderly office was a mess of papers and maps pinned to the walls, even a couple of models of the express car and the route the train would take.

  The car had been sheathed in thick steel plates and the doors had been fitted with heavy bolts and locks—inside and out. There were firing vents let into the walls, but not simply normal slits: most of them were T-shaped, which allowed the men inside to swing their rifles in a wide arc either side. Two were movable turrets that swept an arc of one hundred and fifty degrees.

  Once the gold was placed inside and the guards locked in, nothing could open that van until it reached its destination and the special keys were used on the locks. For, though the doors could be opened from inside, the outside locks could only be released by the federal agents waiting in Washington. The locks had been made there and the keys were kept in the Capital. Once the locks were snapped closed, they could not be opened between Denver and Washington.

  Nash and Hume considered that the express car was about as impregnable as technology of the day could make it.

  The main problem was still the transfer of the gold from Denver to Washington. Moving the gold coins from the mint on Currency Street would take place only minutes before the train was due to leave, and it would be done with the aid of a full battalion of soldiers, lining the whole route. The streets would be cleared of people and traffic. It was to be a massive operation, but Hume felt it was the only way to accomplish it.

  He still occasionally cursed the bureaucratic bungling that had sited the mint so far from the railroad, with the only route down to the depot through the heaviest traffic.

  “This damn route is makin’ me lose sleep and weight, too,” Hume said in the middle of the third week, pushing a pile of papers and maps aside. “The weight won’t do me any harm, but my brain feels like I’ve got a head full of scrambled eggs. Can’t think clearly, damn it.”

  Nash straightened and wiped sweat from his brow.

  “Jim, the only way is for us to take a ride along the route ourselves.”

  “We don’t have time for that.”

  “Not all the way.” They were irritable and had been tending to snap at each other for days. They knew it was the pressure getting them down but that still didn’t stop the rancor coming through. “I mean within the state. We’ve got a lot of rugged mountains to pass through. This is the kind of country that gives good cover to robbers; lets ’em set up an ambush. Once clear of Colorado and movin’ out across the high plains of Kansas, they ain’t gonna have a hell of a lot of a chance to get within spittin’ distance of the train. The army and the cavalry’ll be patrolling all the way, in any case. But there are a lot of remote regions through the Rockies where we can’t get men on station. Any of ’em could be used for an ambush attempt.” Hume sighed and took a cigar from his humidor. He offered the jar to Nash but the investigator shook his head and pulled out his makings. He started to build a cigarette as Hume lit his cigar.

  “If anyone is gonna be loco enough to try to grab that gold, they’re gonna do it here. Kansas we can virtually forget about, though there are some rough hombres on the loose over there and if they’ve gotten word about the coins, they might still make their bid. I know dozens of men who’d risk their necks for a hundred thousand.”

  “Well, I think if anyone’s going to try, it’ll be in the Rockies. Ideal for ’em. Gives ’em plenty of cover to run to and lose themselves. And they’ll figure we won’t be expecting an attempt so soon.”

  Hume puffed on his cigar.

  “Seems there’s nothin’ else for it. You and me’ll have to check the tracks first thing in the morning.” He searched among the papers on his desk and cursed as half a dozen maps slid to the floor. Then he found what he wanted, a calendar. He stabbed at it with a stiffened finger. “We’ve got ten days—twenty-third’s the shipping date, confirmed by Washington. In that time, we’ve got to survey the tracks through the mountains and arrange for all the spur tracks that we need switched in the right direction, so that there’s no chance of delays of the gold train.” He glanced at Nash quizzically. “Reckon we can be back here in a week?”

  “Reckon we’ll have to be. We’ll need those three days here for final checks.”

  “Then let’s go get cleaned up and grab some sleep. We’ll head out first thing in the morning.”

  “Train for Deertrail and Riverbend leaves at six. We could ride it down and hire mounts in Riverbend.”

  “Good idea. Save time.” Hume shook his head as he made for the door. “What worries me is that there’s no chance we can keep this thing secret. Too many folk have to be brought into it to make it go off smoothly.”

  “Only way we’ve got a chance of gettin’ the gold through safely, Jim,” Nash pointed out as he followed Hume into the passage.

  “Yes. But I wish we didn’t have to rely on so many other people. Human error is what usually breaks up the best plans.”

  The two weary men made their way back to their hotel rooms, looking forward to hot baths and early beds.

  Mohawk Brown’s men were distributed throughout the ghost town on their usual guard duty. They were up on the roofs of any building that would support them and there were others out on the trails leading into town.

  In the saloon, there was another meeting of the Ghost Riders. The men were tense and excited as they gave their attention to Grant Tibbs. This time they were seated around an old card table and Tibbs had some papers spread out before him.

  He glanced around at the hard, eager faces.

  “This cost me five hundred bucks—which I want to get back out of the robbery proceeds. Everyone agreed on that?”

  There were mutterings, impatient, curt, growling. Mohawk blew a stream of smoke from his cigarillo into Tibbs’ face.

  “You’ll get your lousy five hundred.” He grinned crookedly. “What would you’ve done if someone had said they didn’t agree? Packed your papers and walked out? Or tried to?”

  Tibbs colored.

  “Enough of this proddin’ and snipin’ at each other,” Sam Castle growled. “We got us a job to do. Forget the personalities. Let’s get on with the plan for stoppin’ that damn gold train.”

  Burman and Hayden nodded agreement and Tibbs looked levelly at Mohawk, accusingly.

  The outlaw leader gave Castle a hard look but said nothing. He knew he had all the aces; if things got nasty, really nasty, he only had to snap his fingers and his men would come running.

  The others realized it, too, and wouldn’t push him too hard. He figured he could afford to let them get away with the censure this time, but he wouldn’t forget Sam Castle—the old ranc
her was coming down just a mite too hard for Mohawk’s liking. Tibbs shuffled some of the papers.

  “Okay. The date is the twenty-third. That’s final. There’ll be no changes and I’ve checked around—the army’s on full-scale alert that day. We’ve got no chance of getting to that gold between the mint and the depot. I don’t know just when they’re moving it, but it’ll probably be just on daylight and all traffic is gonna be cleared between Currency and Elliott Streets. They got troops all along the way.”

  Castle muttered a curse.

  “Damn! I’d been thinkin’ that mebbe it’d be better to try to get the coins before they were loaded but don’t sound like there’s much chance of that.”

  “None,” Tibbs said. “The railroad route ain’t been confirmed but we’ve only got two real alternatives before they hit Kansas and I reckon we can cover them.”

  “We can each watch the spur tracks in our own areas,” said Pres Hayden. “Some of ’em’ll have to have alterations made so they can run onto the main line. Soon as we see any activity, we’ll know which way they’re gonna go.”

  “Or which way they want us to think they’re gonna go,” cautioned Tod Burman.

  Castle nodded. “Yeah. Don’t forget we’re dealin’ with Wells Fargo and their top men at that. They’ve had years of experience. They know all the tricks. We’ll have to watch we ain’t suckered.”

  “Well, whichever route they pick, they’re gonna have to go through or over the mountains,” Tibbs continued. “We know the Rockies backwards and we can easily pick us a fast trail to get us back here. Then we scatter while the coins are melted down.” He glanced at Mohawk a little uneasily. “Your men got that stuff set up we sent in?”

  Mohawk nodded. “See for yourself before you go. We put it in the old blacksmith’s forge, figuring that was best. It’s got the bellows for the fire and there are even old gantries we can use for melting pots.”