Clay Nash 5 Page 7

  “Clay, it’s rather foolish us going on like this, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. I meant to explain before, Mary. Just too tuckered out after roundin’-up them horses, I guess.”

  She sat down beside him. “I feel a fool, letting a silly little thing like Susan Garth make me mad!” She laughed. “Especially as I have no real claim on you, Clay.”

  He looked at her directly. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve thought of you a lot since Iron Ridge, Mary.”

  Before he could say any more, Mary jumped to her feet, pointing. “Look!”

  Nash leapt up as he saw a figure staggering into view along the stage trail in the moonlight. Nash’s gun was in his hand as he flung away his cigarette. He pushed Mary towards the door.

  “Go inside and tell Jed to cover me with his shotgun,” he said quietly. “Could be a set-up.”

  Mary, remembering that rider who had watched that afternoon, nodded and hurried back into the station building to warn her father. Nash stepped back into the deep shadow of the porch, moving his gaze from the staggering, stumbling figure, looking around at the countryside as the moon came clear of the clouds. There was no other movement that he could see, but, if this was some kind of a trap, they wouldn’t show themselves or move in until they were certain sure his attention had been taken by the person stumbling along the trail. The oncomer fell to hands and knees, stayed down for a spell, and Nash thought he heard a faint cry on the breeze, but he didn’t move. He waited and watched and slowly the figure pushed to hands and knees, staggered upright, and then came weaving on. Nash didn’t aim to go out to meet that apparently injured man: he wasn’t going to make a target of himself in that bright moonlight.

  The lone figure fell again and this time he heard a distinct cry for help. He frowned. It was a thin voice, high-pitched, almost like a woman’s ... He squinted, as the figure lurched to hands and knees again and began crawling towards the relay station.

  “Please—help me!”

  By hell, it was a woman’s voice! But still Nash hesitated. He could see the figure was wearing a dress.

  He whirled, gun coming up into line, as the porch door opened. Mary called out, “It’s all right, Clay. It’s only me ... Clay, that’s a woman out there!”

  He nodded. “Yeah—but there’s nothin’ to say the enemy has to wear pants, Mary! It could still be a set-up. I don’t aim to show myself. You take care, too.”

  Mary frowned and nodded, her eyes on the figure out there. “She—she sounds hurt, Clay!”

  “I know, damn it!” Nash snapped. “But we can’t take the chance, Mary! Not with these killers! If that woman out there is genuine, she’ll get here, all right. Or close enough for us to make up our minds about her ...”

  Mary stood close to him as they watched the figure come gradually closer. The woman was sobbing and crying continually for help but Nash didn’t move and he wouldn’t allow Mary to move, either. It took the woman more than half an hour to reach the yard and she collapsed down by the corrals. Mary started forward but Nash yanked her back and signed for her to wait.

  It was twenty minutes before the woman continued her journey, somehow getting her legs under her, staggering like a drunk towards the porch. The moonlight washed over her white face, her disheveled hair, her torn and ragged clothes, filthy with dirt and burrs and twigs.

  “My God!” Mary breathed. “That’s Ellen McLean! The widow-woman! She was one of the passengers on the stage to Shiloh!”

  Nash relaxed his grip on her arm and was too late to grab her again as she lunged across the porch and down into the yard. He went after her fast, eyes scanning the yard and beyond but he knew deep down that this was no set-up for an ambush. As soon as he got closer and saw the woman’s genuine distress he cursed himself for having let her go through the past hour of suffering, then lifted her in his arms and carried her back into the relay station ...

  He waited impatiently while Mary worked on Widow McLean, tapping his fingers against the long table in the empty dining room. Jed Summers came in with a bottle of whisky and some glasses, poured them both a drink and they lifted the glasses silently, tossed down the liquor.

  “She’s near-hysterical, Mary says,” he told Nash “Badly shocked. Might be mornin’ before we get anythin’ out of her.”

  Nash exclaimed, “Is Mary sure she was on that stage?”

  “Certain sure. So’m I. She was on her way down to Shiloh to see her son.”

  “There’ll be no sleep for any of us tonight,” said Clay Nash, but he must have dozed off at the table for the next thing he knew, a hand was clutching his shoulder. Instinctively, he reached for his gun.

  “Clay!”

  Then he realized that Mary was standing there in the gray light of dawn.

  “It’s Ellen McLean, Clay. She’s lucid now, and asking for you by name.”

  Nash frowned as he stood up and shook his head to clear it. “By name?”

  Mary nodded and led him to the room where the widow woman was on a bed. She looked very white against the pillow, her hair damp with perspiration though neatly combed now. Her eyes were sunken deep in her head and Nash knew the look of terror in them would haunt him for many a night. He forced a faint smile and picked up one of her limp hands. The flesh was very cold.

  “I’m Clay Nash, Mrs. McLean. You wanted to see me?” She stared at him a long moment before nodding slowly. He had to lean close to hear what she was saying. Her voice was hoarse and quavering.

  “He told me to—to speak to you ...” she said.

  “Who did?”

  “The man with the scar ... I—I think he was the leader of the men who attacked the stage ...” She started to cry and, between sobs, told them about the attack on the stage.

  Nash was rigid, his mouth a grim line as he squeezed the woman’s hand. “Mrs. McLean, what did the man ask you to tell me? After he sent Mr. Garth and Susan away. What did he say to tell me?”

  Her sunken eyes stared up into his face for a long moment and her lower lip began to tremble. “He—he said to tell you that if Wells Fargo didn’t close down the—the stage-run to Shiloh within two days, he would start—start sending back one of Miss Garth’s fingers for each day of delay. And—and after a week, he …” she began to sob “... after a week he would—would send back her—her head!”

  Mary exclaimed in horror and recoiled from the look that had come over Nash’s face. She saw death there, a hunger for revenge.

  Seven – Gunsmoke Trail

  By the time it was full daylight, Jim Hume had arrived with a half-dozen soldiers under a tobacco-chewing sergeant named Larch.

  “When the stage didn’t show, and with the Garths as passengers, we couldn’t afford to wait and see what had happened,” the Chief of Detectives told Nash and the Summers’ in the big dining room of the station. The soldiers were busy wolfing the breakfast Mary had whipped up for them. “We found the stage and the dead folk out in the foothills. Buried ’em, got the rest of the company under Lieutenant Masters on the search and then came on here. Didn’t think you’d know about it.”

  “They left Mrs. McLean alive to bring back the ultimatum,” Nash said grimly. “Either we close down or the Garths get killed off. Slowly. You’ve got two days, Jim.”

  “I’ll recommend complete closure, of course,” Hume said without hesitation. “But I figure we should use those two days scouting the hills for whatever sign we can pick up.”

  “It’s dangerous, with an army of men crawling all over the place,” Nash pointed out. “If the troops get anywhere near to where the Garths are being held the outlaws will kill ’em.”

  “That’s a risk we’ll have to take, Clay,” Hume said, staring at him levelly. “I can’t see the Garths being turned loose, whatever we do, but we have to at least go through the motions of complying with the outlaws’ demands to give them as long as possible.”

  “One man in there could do more than a platoon of soldiers, Jim,” Nash insisted.

  Hu
me smiled crookedly. “You mean yourself, of course.”

  Nash nodded. “I’m pretty sure that where I picked up old Sourdough Donner is somewhere close to their hideout, whoever these hombres are. They spotted him, or their guard did, and they shot him off the cliff without warning ... I aim to start in that area.”

  “We can all start in that area,” Hume suggested and frowned when Nash shook his head vigorously.

  He got slowly to his feet. “No, Jim. I know where it is, you don’t, and I don’t aim to tell you.”

  “Clay ...” Hume said warningly.

  “No, damn it! I’m doing this my way! I like the Garths.” He flicked his eyes to Mary’s face. “Both of ’em. They were good to me down in Texas. I don’t mind riskin’ my neck to try and save them, but I’m not goin’ in there at the head of a whole damn army.”

  Hume’s face darkened. He stood, too, fists clenched against the table edge, his weight on his arms, glaring. “Clay, you are still under my orders. And you know how important the Garths are. He’s a director of Wells Fargo, and a rising politician. If we don’t make an all-out effort to save him, the whole company could topple. In the light of that, I’m ordering you to tell me where you found Sourdough Donner.”

  The room was very quiet and all eyes were turned to Nash as he stood there defiantly. “Can’t do it, Jim. I appreciate your position, but I’m convinced my way’s the best way. We’ve got two days. Give me that time. If I’m not back by then or haven’t found a good lead by that time, you can move in.”

  Hume snapped, “And how’ll we know where?”

  Nash smiled faintly. “Ask Sourdough.”

  “I could ask him now,” Hume said.

  “You could. And he wouldn’t tell you. Soon as I saw you comin’ in with the soldiers I knew what you’d want. Sourdough and I have got a deal. He’ll do anythin’ for me, seein’ as I saved his life.”

  Hume’s fingers tapped against the table edge. His eyes were cold as they looked into Nash’s grim face. “You’ve got me hogtied. All right, Clay, I admit I can see the sense in what you say. You’ve got the two days. But I wouldn’t waste any of ’em, if I was you.”

  “Don’t aim to,” Nash said, turning to Mary. “Will you fix me some supplies?”

  She nodded and hurried out to the kitchen. Nash strode from the room, to ready his horse. Hume looked at Jed Summers.

  “You’d better start packing to move out, Jed. They’ll have a man watching to see if there are any signs of closing down this place.”

  “They’ve had one up in the hills for days. We were wonderin’ what he was waitin’ for. I guess this is it. He knew of the plan to grab the Garths and now he’s there to see if we’re gonna do what they want.”

  “Now there’s an interesting thought,” Hume said, frowning. “How did they know the Garths were going to be on that coach ahead of time? They must have someone high up to pass them the information.”

  He sat down, looking very thoughtful ...

  Mary handed Nash his packed saddlebags and looked up into his eyes. “You’re taking a very big risk, Clay. I know why. As you said, the Garths were kind to you.” She smiled fleetingly. “I’m not jealous of Susan. That was stupid of me. But I feel so terribly afraid for her, Clay! She’s very young and must be going through sheer hell. I—I wish you every kind of good luck. And—safe return.”

  She kissed him and he put his arms around her before she could pull away, hugged her close. She clung to him desperately and there was fear in her eyes.

  He rode out a few minutes later. They watched him go in silence.

  Up in the hills, a man with a telescope watched him and, as soon as he was sure of Nash’s direction, he closed up the instrument, went back to where his horse was hidden, mounted, and rode over the range to where there was a ledge jutting out like a platform above a thousand foot drop down into a heavily timbered valley. A faint wisp of blue campfire, smoke drifted up from down there.

  The man took a mirror from his saddlebags, dismounted and walked to the very edge of the rock platform. He placed his feet on a spot marked with a charcoal circle, faced in the direction of a painted arrowhead, then held out the mirror and moved it around until it caught the sun’s rays. It flashed brilliantly, its reflection directed down into the valley ...

  Down there, sitting over their small campfire, nursing cups of coffee in chilled hands, two bearded men in dark gray shirts and black whipcord trousers snapped up their heads as they caught the flashes from the signal mirror. They stood and watched in silence as a series of further flashes sparkled way up there on the ridge. When they stopped, one of the men lifted a similar mirror, walked out to where sunlight washed across the valley floor and gave the acknowledgement signal in return.

  Then he and his companion put out the campfire, checked their guns, and rode out.

  The man who had signaled from the ledge went back to his position above the Longknife and settled down with his telescope to watch the activity around the relay station.

  Sourdough Donner had given Nash directions that would allow him to reach the cliff trail from the canyon pocket where the Wells Fargo man had found the old prospector. It wasn’t an easy trail but Nash didn’t expect anything about this chore to be easy ...

  He put the palomino through the brush behind the pocket in the canyon, forcing a passage, speaking quietly to the horse as it tried to veer aside from the clawing branches. He pushed on and found the shale slope the old sourdough had told him about. He reined in the palomino and tilted his head back to look up. There had been landslides in the past and it would be possible to climb up there from the canyon, as long as a man was three-parts mountain goat, Nash thought grimly. But it was the only way up. He could reach the cliff trail by another route, but only by going miles around the foothills and he didn’t have the time for that.

  Nash kneed the palomino forward and set it up the shale slope. The hoofs slipped and the horse stumbled, snorting in protest, but Nash kept talking to it, rode it as far as he could, and, when he came to a steeper part, he dismounted. He walked on ahead, hauling the reins, leaning right back, almost literally dragging the palomino a few feet higher. Then he scrambled to his feet, walked as far as the reins would allow him, and lay back again, heaving and sweating and cussing, digging in his heels, urging the horse up the slope. The shale slid out from under both of them and they skidded downwards several yards and he had to start over again.

  The horse was resigned by now to the fact that the only way to go was up. It tried to cooperate but the rocks and earth kept sliding away from under its hoofs and it stumbled frequently. Nash persevered, and he looked down once and hoped like hell they didn’t slip again. If they did, they would slide and roll clear to the bottom and, with the loose scree at this height they would likely bring a landslide down on top of them.

  But finally they reached the lip of the narrow cliff trail and Nash fell to his knees as he made one final effort and threw his weight back on the reins; the palomino heaved and grunted and scrambled over the edge onto the comparative flatness of the trail. Panting, Nash used the reins to help himself to his feet and he stood leaning against the sweating palomino’s damp hide, gasping, wiping his eyes.

  Then the first shot rang out and a bullet kicked rock dust into his face, the bits of stone stinging his cheek and drawing tiny beads of blood. The palomino reared and whickered and Nash instinctively threw his weight on the reins, pulling the horse back before its hoofs went over the edge. He somehow got the animal facing downtrail and slapped its rump with his hat, letting out a yell as he snatched his rifle from the scabbard.

  Two more shots slapped out and he heard one bullet buzz angrily as it zipped in ricochet off the running horse’s saddle cantle. The second bullet clipped his hat brim and dust puffed an instant before the same slug slammed into the wall and showered him with rock dust again. He crouched, looking around for cover, and there was only one place he could go: back over the edge of the trail onto the shale slide. W
asting no time, lead whining off the rock around his boots, Nash leapt over the edge and dug his boots deep into the loose scree, throwing himself flat, feeling his body begin to slide. His free hand grabbed at anything he could grip and he released his hold immediately when he felt the rock he had grabbed moving under his fingers. He snatched again and again before he found a solid rock and he hung there with loose scree falling down on and round him, choking him with dust, half a ton of shale and earth sliding away below him, raising a massive, boiling dust cloud.

  Nash figured to use that cloud. The drygulchers were still shooting and their lead was chewing rock off the edge of the trail; but they were shooting blind now. Dust boiling up in thick gray clouds screened him effectively and, anyway, he was below their level of sight now. He felt around with his boots, lying full length on the slope, eased out one leg and the hand holding the rifle. Digging in with knees, elbows and toes, Nash heaved himself a full three feet across the slope. Dust still eddied around him, causing him to choke and cough, his nostrils filling with fine shale powder. His face dragged across a jagged rock and he felt the skin scrape loose. He heaved himself bodily across the face of the slope for another three feet, and fell four feet down.

  But he managed to get a grip on a ribbon of shale that ran in a zigzag line clear across the face and the sudden jar as he stopped sliding brought the breath barking into the back of his parched throat. Nash felt his way across, seeing the dust cloud beginning to thin out now. He heard the guns firing, still, but didn’t see where the lead was going. The ribbon of shale seemed to rise at an angle and he worked his way across fast, looked up through the thinning dust pall, and saw jagged rocks lining the trail edge.

  That had to be his shelter, he figured. There would be room to hunker down there and only the shale fall would be at his back. Once he had the drygulchers’ position pinpointed he would be able to concentrate on flushing them out with rifle fire. He began the slow, precarious crawl up, on his belly, using elbows and knees to heave himself higher, inch by inch. Seemed his hunch had paid off, too; looked like this trail ran close to the outlaw hangout or whatever it was they didn’t want folk to see ...