Spur: Nevada Hussy

by Dirk Fletcher

  The two cars had broken apart and lay some distance from each other. He saw the treasure car next. It had hit boulders on the ravine floor and split open. The wood and metal box car had shattered, leaving the steel gold and silver vault, but it also had split. He heard voices as he worked closer.

  Then the voice of Tony Giardello came through clearly.

  "That's right. Pass out the gold bars first, put six of them in the canvas bags on each side of the pack horses, and move up the trail. The faster you work right now, the more money you'll make."

  Spur wished he had a rifle. He couldn't see Giardello, but he could seal up the treasure vault until morning. Now he would need different tactics. He was sure all of the men up there were armed. He heard four or five other voices.

  Without making a sound, Spur moved up and watched. If he started a fire fight, he could easily get pinned down and they would go on with their work. He had to wait and watch and find out what they were going to do with the gold. Where would it go? To a hidden cave somewhere?

  He wondered how long it would take the train people to learn about the wreck? Did they have a hand car that checked the track every morning? He hoped so.

  He worked ahead closer to the wreck, found a tree and stood behind it as he listened. The men were swearing at the weight of the heavy gold bars.

  A short time later he heard Tony's voice again. "You're loaded. Just follow my directions and you won't have any trouble. As soon as you unload get back here. We've got to work fast to get it all before daylight."

  Spur listened to the horses, figured they were moving upstream, back toward town! Why would they take the gold back to Virginia City?

  Now he was as interested in finding out where the gold was to be taken as he was in stopping them. He had to do both.

  Spur circled around the wreck. A few moments later he came to what had once been a camp. It could have been the point where the men waited for the train to come by. He was almost through the area when he saw a body at one side. He checked it and found two more corpses, one a naked woman. In the dim light she looked part Chinese. He hurried on, walking carefully on his damaged knee. He should have no trouble keeping up with heavily laden pack animals. If they went all the way to town he would find out where they were going and get a horse for his return trip.

  It took nearly a half hour for the pack horses to climb the trail toward town. They were still a half mile away when Spur sensed someone behind him. He moved in back of a boulder and waited. A few minutes later a second five horse pack string came along led by a tall man with red hair.

  Spur drew his gun and stood up.

  "Going somewhere, badass?" Spur asked. Red from Wyoming drew his .44 but Spur's Colt spoke first. The man grunted, tried to lift his gun again, then tipped off the horse and fell to the ground dead. Quickly Spur moved the string of pack animals off the trail into a spot of brush and tied them. He dragged the body out of the trail and hid it, then mounted the saddle horse and rode as quickly as he could up the trail toward town. He caught up with the pack string just as it wound through the near side of town and stopped at the back door of the office of the Consolidated California Mine.

  Spur waited out of sight as he saw Rush Sommers in the light at the doorway. Then the unloading began as the pack horses came to the door and the gold was quickly transferred inside. Only Sommers and the pack train rider did the work. Unusual. But not unusual for secrecy, especially when Sommers was stealing his own gold and that of the rest of the mine owners.

  McCoy led his horse out of hearing, mounted and rode for the sheriff's office.

  Clete Gilpin was still up, waiting for any word of trouble.

  Spur told about the wreck. "Warn the railroad people not to let any trains move on the tracks," Spur said. "Then send about twenty deputies down to the wreck as soon as it gets light. Not much we can do until then. We might even wind up shooting each other."

  He did not tell the sheriff about the pack trains. He wanted to take care of that little problem himself.

  Now he rode for the crash. He was half way along the trail when he met the third string coming uphill.

  Spur rode up to the man and pulled out his .45.

  "You want to live more than twenty seconds, lift your hands and don't make a sound."

  The man did as told. Spur pulled the pistol from his belt, and ordered the man to untie the pack train and ride with him. Spur relaxed for a second, and the man drew and fired. He missed and Spur's reaction shot killed him. Then the agent led the pack train into the timbered section, just as the first pack train man came down the hill looking for a new load.

  The outlaw came with his pistol out, and fired at Spur before McCoy was sure the man was there. Spur traded shots, then dropped off his horse and ran quickly from tree to tree, moving up on the gunman without letting him know his location. The rider was watching for the movement of another horse.

  In two minutes Spur was within range. He stepped from behind a tree and leveled his pistol at the rider.

  "Raise your hands and live," Spur barked.

  The man dove off his saddle away from Spur, digging for his gun.

  Spur had seen this done before. He waited until the man hit the ground on the other side of his horse. Spur shot under the horse, hitting the man in the shoulder where he lay on the ground. When McCoy saw the man lift his six-gun, the Secret Agent put two more slugs into the outlaw, ending his brief career.

  Spur hid the body, moved the horses and pack animals over with the others, then rode quietly down the trail. Three pack trains were out of business. Were there any more?

  He found out as he neared the wreck. Spur stopped, left his horse tied near the trail and waited behind a big ponderosa pine. He heard the clop of horses' hooves on the rocky trail long before he saw them.

  The man leading them was on foot, the line around his left hand, a Winchester across his back and a pistol in his hand. Through the gloom of the half-moon night, Spur had not seen the man until he was within twenty feet.

  "Hold it right there or I'll cut you in half!" Spur shouted. The man dove for the ground with the first word. Spur blasted three shots at the rolling figure. He stopped moving. When Spur came up to him and rolled him over with his toe, he saw that one of his rounds had taken the outlaw through the forehead.

  Tony and anyone else at the wreck must have heard the shots. Now he had to move in and clean up. He had settled with four men, was there more than one more? Tony was out there.

  Spur McCoy moved up slowly, every sense alert, his eyes probing the darkness as far as possible. He heard nothing as he stepped gingerly forward, not making a sound, not stepping on a dry twig. How many more men were around the wreck with Tony?

  McCOY STOPPED AND listened. He heard something not too far away. There was the flare of a match, then all darkness again ahead of him. In the total silence, saddle leather creaked, as if a man had just sat his horse.

  Now the telltale sounds of hooves on hard rocks came through the quiet, slightly moist night air. Spur knew the sounds. They were made by another pack string and a rider leading them. He waited.

  After a minute it was plain to Spur that the sounds had become fainter and now were gone all together. The rider had taken his pack train away from Virginia City, down the slope. Where was he going? It was more than twenty miles by trail to Carson City.

  Spur ran lightly along the trail. When he came to the wreck site he paused to look at it. Twisted, tortured steel, splintered wood, and still a smell of hot metal and steam and water-soaked wood and fabric of the passenger car.

  He picked up the trail and looked up at the stars. It was nearing two a.m. according to the Big Dipper in its nightly trip around the North Star. Lots of time to daylight.

  He listened, but could hear nothing. The trail was still well defined even after five years of the railroad's installation. Few horses came over this trail anymore. It was faster and a lot easier to ride the rails.

  McCoy did not think about hi
s hurt knee as he jogged ahead. He was moving faster than the horses, and should catch up with them soon. A quarter of a mile downstream he came to a small offshoot canyon, not more than twenty yards wide, that angled back into the mountains. Tony and his helpers, if any, could be moving the rest of the gold to another spot.

  Why? Stealing it from Sommers? Could be. Spur ran into the mouth of the small arroyo and saw fresh horse droppings. The five horse pack train had gone this way. He moved carefully now. There was no margin for error here. He wanted the advantage of surprise.

  Tony Giardello had no thought that anyone was tracking him. He had put seventy bars of solid gold on the pack train, then hurried the mounts downstream to the first good hiding place he could find. He did not know the country.

  This side valley looked possible. But now he was not so sure. He wanted to find a cave of some kind, or some big rocks where he could hide the gold bars between and then cover them with dirt and rocks. Each one of those ten pound bars of gold was worth three thousand, three hundred dollars!

  He had seventy of the gold bars! ...That was over two hundred and thirty thousand dollars! More than a quarter of a million! And he wasn't going to share this with Rush Sommers or anyone. He paused and looked into the darkness behind him. Had he heard something? He had been jittery all night.

  Tony turned and moved his pack string deeper into the little valley. It petered out fifty yards ahead where the side ridges closed in and the ground climbed sharply into jagged, dry pinnacles. There had to be a spot here.

  Then he saw it through the night gloom. It was an old white barked pine that had grown with two tops where they split off about forty feet off the ground. At the base was a jumble of boulders and rocks that had fallen from the desert dry upper slopes and been stopped by the sturdy trunk. He could rearrange the smaller rocks, clear out between the two larger ones, and have a perfect spot for the gold.

  Tony had not done this much physical exercise in years, but the thought of that quarter of a million dollars on his horses spurred him on. He selected the spot and began throwing out the rocks. It was hard work and would take some time. He had to be finished shortly after dawn, because by then the place would be swarming with army and railroad men and deputy sheriffs.

  Sommers should be happy with his share of the loot, even though they didn't get all of it. Tony still couldn't figure out why the pack train men didn't return after their first trip. Could they have tried a little rob the robber on their own? No, most of them were too stupid for that.

  He wiped sweat from his forehead, then went back to pitching out rocks. Suddenly he stopped. One of the rocks he had thrown out came back into the pit. He reached for the pistol pushed in his pants belt.

  "Don't move your hand any farther, Giardello or you'll turn into a corpse, a rich corpse, but dead as you can get."

  "Who the hell.. .McCoy?"

  "Good gamble, Giardello, nice guess. Looks like you're digging out your own grave."

  Tony eased to a sitting position on the rocks, and kept his hands in front of him.

  "Look, McCoy, let's talk business here. I'm a businessman. True I was once a banker, but that's a business. What do we have? We have a little over a quarter of a million dollars worth of gold. Raw, ten pound bars of solid gold."

  "Which doesn't belong to you, Giardello."

  "No, but half of it could. What I suggest is that we go partners, an even split right down the middle. You take thirty-five of the gold bars and I'll grab the other thirty-five. Nobody will ever be the wiser. And let Rush Sommers fry in hell wondering about it. He should have gotten his share by now."

  "So Rush did set up the whole caper."

  "Of course! That's the beauty of it! We steal from the master criminal, so it's really no theft at all. Isn't that ingenious?"

  "From one point of view, Tony, it all makes good sense."

  "Come closer so I can see you. I know we can work this out. You have the gun and I don't, so why don't we say you get sixty percent of the gold and I'll be happy with forty."

  Spur shook his head as he came nearer. He watched Tony closely to be sure he wasn't up to any trickery.

  "Now, that's better, I can see your face. Never like doing business with a man when I can't see his face. Oh, may I pick up a small stone from the pile here? Nervous habit, I like to have something in my hands. A tactile problem I guess. So, what do you think about the sixty-forty proposition?"

  Spur stared at him.

  "True, true, you could kill me where I sit and take the whole thing, but you're not that kind of a man. You would never shoot me down in cold blood, you'd need a reason. I want to give you a better reason, over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars! Think what you could do with that much money!"

  Spur laughed. "Not a chance, Giardello. I'm going to enjoy too much turning you in and watching you hang for murder, conspiracy and robbery from a railroad train. I'll have a drink and watch you hang until you stop twitching."

  "Too bad. You would have enjoyed the money, Spur. In that case no reason I should warn you about the rattlesnake coiled just below your feet. He's a big one well within striking distance."

  For a second Spur McCoy felt the old revulsion billow up. Being an Eastern man born and educated, he had never been able to completely beat down his fear of the slimy killers. He shivered and laughed to cover his sudden anxiety.

  "That's the oldest trick in the western book, Giardello. I'm surprised you would try something as dumb as that."

  "All right, I warned you. Can I stand up?"

  Giardello began to stand up as soon as he asked, Spur nodded and the tavern owner flipped the rock back on the pile. It hit and bounced down toward the ground, striking the rattlesnake which lay there, coiled two feet from Spur's boots.

  The snake rattled.

  Spur lunged forward, pulling down his pistol to fire at the snake.

  Giardello jerked his own six-gun from his belt and snapped a quick shot at Spur. The round hit Spur in the outside of the thigh, and jolted him backward away from the snake.

  Giardello scurried a dozen feet up the ravine, behind his pack horses. He fired once more at Spur who had escaped from the snake but was bleeding heavily from his thigh.

  Spur had cover now behind one of the boulders Giardello intended to use for his private bank.

  "No way out, Tony. That's almost a box canyon up there. I could pick you off in two shots if you tried to climb those cliffs."

  Giardello did not reply. He had put the five horses in motion, moving them toward Spur. The saloon owner bent over, hiding behind the horses. Spur sighted in on the closest pack horse and shot it in the head. It went down with a scream of protest and died, Stopping the other pack horses which were all tied together.

  Giardello ran now with only his saddle horse as protection, trying to keep his own legs near the legs of the moving horse. Spur lifted up and fired twice. The second round hit Giardello just above the ankle and broke his lower leg bone. He went down in a bellowing rage as the frightened horse charged ahead into a gallop, dragging Tony for a few feet before he let go of the reins.

  Tony laughed through his pain.

  "Bastard McCoy, I've got you again. Now I'm downstream, and you have nowhere to go. You couldn't ride for help now if you wanted to. First you would have to catch my horse. You also need to get past me and I have twenty-four shots left for my pistol. How many you have?"

  It would have been good to put Giardello on trial, especially if he would testify against Sommers. It wouldn't work out that way. Spur reloaded his sixgun, pushing out the used rounds, filling all six chambers. Then he stood up, spotted Giardello twenty yards away and fired all six rounds. Three of them struck Giardello. The gambler, saloon owner, ex-banker, and current robber, died there in the Nevada dust and rocks with his quarter of a million dollars. One of his dreams had always been to die rich.

  Spur McCoy tore up his shirt and tied strips of cloth together to make a bandage. He put a thick compress over the bullet w
ound and then wrapped it so tightly he could hardly walk. He struggled to the nearest pack horse, cut the traces from it with his knife and hoisted himself on the animal's back only after he walked the bay to a large rock.

  It was almost four a.m. when he had the pack horse back at he wreck. He tied up the mount near his other horse, and investigated the wreck of the passenger car. It lay on its roof. All fifteen army troopers inside were dead.

  Spur came out shaking his head. He had used a tightly wrapped handful of dry weeds to make a torch to check out the troopers. Now he made one more, lit it and looked inside the steel box where the gold and silver had been stored.

  The box was crushed, the locking devices of no value since the whole end of the box where they had been placed, had sprung open, popping one side of the box outward. There was still over half of the gold and silver left in the vault.

  He would have to wait for the sheriff to arrive. McCoy did not know for sure if he could ride back up the trail. He felt lightheaded and wanted some water. The bullet in his leg had not come out, but he had stopped the bleeding. He found a stick to use as a crutch and walked back to the camp the robbers had set up He found two canteens and a ten gallon can of fresh water. Eagerly he drank, filled a canteen and took it with him.

  He would try to get up the hill.

  Spur remembered getting to his horse, mounting from a wheel of the engine, and then riding up the trail. Somewhere along the line the horse stopped because the man was not guiding her. The sorrel lowered her head to chomp on some grass and Spur McCoy fell off over her neck and lay without moving in the trail.

  Sheriff Gilpin had left Virginia City an hour before dawn, and ridden as fast as he thought practical. He had forty men and twenty pack animals. The only way that gold and silver could be protected was to bring it out by horse or mule to the nearest mine and store it there under maximum security guard until it could be shipped again by train.

  He had sent one man ahead as a scout, to ride three hundred yards forward to look for any signs of life, any trouble and especially for Spur McCoy. The scout came racing up the trail when they had gone what Gilpin figured was a mile and a half.