by Brett Waring
He lifted his head and let out a hoarse, animal-like scream.
Nash heard the sound. He couldn’t quite identify it.
The Wells Fargo man unshipped his rifle and urged the horse up the slope to where the whitish mists swirled and broke at snowline.
By the time he was past the timber, the mists had cleared and he saw the dark shape of a riderless horse fifty feet above him. Beyond the horse, half-hidden behind a mound of snow, he saw Barrett moving about. He seemed to be dragging something out of a hole and placing it gently on the snow. Nash’s jaws clamped together as he saw it was a fur-wrapped human body. As he watched. Barrett took a smaller bundle away from the larger one and clasped it to him.
The Wells Fargo man felt a hollowness inside him. He had seen enough frozen bodies to realize at once what had happened. He felt sorry for the woman and child, but he was coldly dispassionate towards Dan Barrett.
Nash lifted the rifle to his shoulder, sighted and fired. The lead plunked into the snow a foot away from Barrett. The man spun, hand streaking instinctively towards his hip, but he stopped as he saw Nash sitting his horse down slope, holding the smoking rifle. There was a strange death-like look on Barrett’s snow-encrusted face.
“You’d be Nash,” he called.
“Reckon so. Dan Barrett?”
The killer nodded and Nash levered in another shell with deliberate movements.
“Just wanted to make sure I was killin’ the right man.”
“Yeah, you are. I was at Reddings. I nailed your woman. Now you’ve killed mine.” Barrett’s voice broke. “I—I won’t say we’re even. I—I only done it for her—and Crissy. Now it’s—all for—nothin’—”
“You’re scum, Barrett.” Nash told him. “A killer who don’t deserve to walk this earth. You didn’t deserve to have a family. But they’re gone now and I hope you feel as bad about it as I did when I found my Mary all shot to death.” He jerked the rifle barrel a little. “You gonna drag that gun the rest of the way? Or do I just put a bullet through your hide right now?”
Barrett hesitated, looking despondently at Nash.
Suddenly, he gave a strangled cry.
“You killed ’em,” and palmed his gun, despite the numbness in his hand.
Nash threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired, levered and fired again. Dan Barrett’s big body jerked and crashed sideways. He started to get up, his blood spraying onto the snow. Nash shot him a third time and the man collapsed beside the bodies of his wife and child.
Nash sat there a spell staring at the three bodies. He glanced at the peak. Another storm was gathering. They would be buried under a mountain of snow by nightfall.
He sheathed the rifle, turned his mount awkwardly on the slope, and rode slowly towards the valley far below.
About the Author
Keith Hetherington
aka Kirk Hamilton, Brett Waring and Hank J. Kirby
Australian writer Keith has worked as television scriptwriter on such Australian TV shows as Homicide, Matlock Police, Division 4, Solo One, The Box, The Spoiler and Chopper Squad.
“I always liked writing little vignettes, trying to describe the action sequences I saw in a film or the Saturday Afternoon Serial at local cinemas,” remembers Keith Hetherington, better-known to Piccadilly Publishing readers as Hank J. Kirby, author of the Bronco Madigan series.
Keith went on to pen hundreds of westerns (the figure varies between 600 and 1000) under the names Kirk Hamilton (including the legendary Bannerman the Enforcer series) and Clay Nash as Brett Waring. Keith also worked as a journalist for the Queensland Health Education Council, writing weekly articles for newspapers on health subjects and radio plays dramatizing same.
More on Keith Hetherington
The Clay Nash Series by Brett Waring
Undercover Gun
A Gun Is Waiting
Long Trail to Yuma
Reckoning at Rimrock
Last Stage to Shiloh
Slaughter Trail
Sundown in Socorro
The Fargo Code
Ride for Texas
Bullet By Bullet
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More on Brett Waring
i An adventure recounted in Clay Nash 1: Undercover Gun.