Clay Nash 8

by Brett Waring

  Liz fought and kicked but he had a good grip on her leg and she struggled to keep him from hitting her with the rifle. Then she changed her grip and fumbled to get her hand around the Winchester, working her fingers through the wide guard and squeezing desperately on his gnarled finger over the trigger. Mantell didn’t realize at first what she was doing and he only started to resist when the trigger had already started to depress. It was just too late; it went past the point of hold on the sear and the rifle exploded deafeningly near her head. She released her hold on the barrel as the burning gases heated the metal and the gun jumped free of her hands. Mantell kept his hold with one hand and backhanded her across the face with the other. She screamed as she was knocked sprawling, but, even as she tasted blood and her ears rang, she smiled faintly in triumph. The echo of the gunshot was crashing through the hills and would easily carry to the pursuers down the trail.

  Mantell knew this, too, and he cursed loudly as he staggered upright, grabbed her buckskin vest and hauled her roughly to her feet. He shook her violently.

  “You cheap little bitch. You’re diggin’ your own stupid grave tryin’ tricks like that. Now, get your fool self up and move on. Keep ahead, girlie—and remember you’re in front, if any shots get aimed at me.”

  White-faced, dazed, her mouth swollen and bleeding, Liz staggered away as he threw her down behind a rock and then crouched behind her, his knees ramming against her kidneys and pinning her. She heard the rifle lever work another shell into the breech and then looked down the trail. The dust cloud was thicker now, and moving up the slope fast.

  Mantell was still muttering and cursing to himself as he casually slammed her across the back of the head when she moved to get more comfortable on the stones. He didn’t take his eyes off the trail as it wound up above the layer of mist and climbed the mountain side.

  She could see shadowy movement down there through the thinner mist layers and a few moments later she saw Trace Hollis urging his mount out into the wan sunlight of early morning. Clay Nash was only a few feet behind.

  Mantell threw his rifle to his shoulder. Liz ducked and covered her ears with her hands as it roared. Hollis and Nash reined aside. Nash yelled something and spurred his mount on. Hollis rammed home his spurs, too, and, together, they raced up the trail. Mantell was hopping mad for he had planned they would go to ground, too. He levered fast and the girl threw herself back against his weight so that his shot went wild. He swore and hit her hard, knocking the breath from her body. She lay there gagging, as he levered again and threw the rifle to his shoulder. But Nash and Hollis were a lot closer now and had him spotted. They veered away from each other and Mantell was forced to choose which target presented the better shot. By the time he had decided, both men had leapt from their saddles and were hunting cover. Mantell’s third shot went wild.

  He ducked as lead ricocheted from the rock in front of him. He reached for the girl and hauled her upright in front of him. He shook her then stood up and held his rifle at the ready.

  “I’ve got the gal,” he roared.

  Nash and Hollis ceased fire instantly.

  Mantell laughed. “That’s better. She’s my ace. My pass out of here, Nash. Throw down your guns and walk out with your hands up.”

  “Don’t be loco, Mantell,” Nash called. “You can’t make it. Lew Hackett took a dozen men and rode around the range. He’s been goin’ hell-for-leather all night. He’ll be comin’ up the far side. You can’t get off this mountain.”

  “You watch me,” Mantell shouted. “Long as I’ve got the gal, I can go anyplace. You law johnnies won’t take a chance on anythin’ happenin’ to her.”

  “Don’t try it, Mantell. Why the hell did you bust out? All you had was a robbery charge. Now you got murder agin you.”

  Mantell laughed harshly.

  “You forgettin’ Squirrel Creek?”

  “So you did it, then?”

  “Yeah, I pulled the Squirrel Creek deal, but it weren’t meant to go the way it turned out. Crazy Catlow tossed my bottle of nitro. He killed all them folk. I don’t aim to hang on account of somethin’ that idjut did.”

  “It’s too late, Mantell. Like I been tellin’ you, this mountain is ...”

  Nash broke off as he heard a rifle shot.

  Mantell jerked back from the screaming Garrett girl, blood spurting from his neck all over her. His head was hanging grotesquely as he convulsed in a macabre dance of death—slowly wilting to the ground. Liz covered her agonized face with her hands as she felt the man’s blood soaking through her clothes. She looked up at the sound of pounding boots. It was Clay Nash, his gun covering the outlaw in his last seconds of life.

  “You all right, Liz?”

  She nodded and collapsed against him. He slid an arm about her waist and supported her fainting body. Trace Hollis appeared carrying a smoking rifle in his hand. He nudged Mantell’s body roughly with his boot.

  “He’s finished.”

  “By hell, that was a risky shot,” Nash snapped. “I was dealin’ with him so you shouldn’t’ve tried. You had to shoot past the girl to get him. If she’d moved only an inch ...”

  “She didn’t, though, did she? And I got him. Hume ought to be impressed.”

  Nash frowned at him. “After the chance you took? You’re loco, Trace, plumb loco.”

  Hollis flushed, his mouth tightening angrily. “Judas, you were doin’ nothin’ but talkin’. And hogwash at that. Hackett ain’t got any posse goin’ round the mountain.”

  “So what? Idea was to hold Mantell’s attention; get him worried, while I figured it.”

  “Well, this time I figured it,” Hollis snapped belligerently.

  Nash looked at him steadily and nodded. “You sure did.”

  ~*~

  Liz Garrett was very quiet as she sat looking across the desk at Jim Hume. He was bruised and cut and there was tape on one cheek and above an eye.

  “You weren’t just foolish, Miss Garrett,” he growled. “You were plain stupid. I’m still thinking you might be charged for aiding an escaping man. You’ve cost one man his life. Two, if you count Mantell.”

  “He was bound for the hangman, anyways, Jim,” Nash said.

  Hume looked at him coldly. “Mebbe. Don’t make no never mind now, I guess.” He sighed. “Reckon I upset Trace some by sending him back to the depot that way. Could tell he was lookin’ to be congratulated.”

  Nash shrugged. “He took too big a chance. I told him so.”

  Hume nodded. “It’s the kind of thing that kept him from bein’ an agent.” He glanced at the girl. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Liz nodded. She was very depressed now. “I guess that doesn’t matter too much, now. Mantell lied about the mail sack. He didn’t rob the depot, so no one knows where it is, and my brother’ll rot in prison.”

  “We’ll find it when we get whoever pulled the depot robbery,” Nash said. He looked across at Hume. “Looks like we start all over again on that.”

  Hume pursed his lips, glanced at the girl, started to speak, then changed his mind. He tapped his fingers on the desk and suddenly made up his mind.

  “I’ve been doin’ some figurin’ and some askin’ around town,” Hume said. “Tex Harmer kinda over-reacted to my questions. If he’d gotten hot under the collar and left it at that, I mightn’t’ve thought much more about it. But he had me beaten and thrown down the stairs. That seemed to be goin’ a mite too far to me. So, I got talkin’ to Lew Hackett. He’s a man who’s deathly afraid he won’t make his retirement and get his pension. That’s why he makes it his business to know everythin’ about everyone in town, figuring that some time the information might just be useful in helping to keep him in office. Sure, a little blackmail’s not beyond him, I guess.”

  Hume had Nash’s and the girl’s attention now.

  “And no one’s sacred: Lew wants that pension, hell or high water.” He paused and looked briefly at some notes. “Amongst a lot of other things, I found the most interesti
ng to be this item.” He handed Nash the sheet of notepaper and the agent read it swiftly and snapped his head up. Hume smiled faintly. “Yeah. Kind of puts a different light on things, don’t it?”

  “Sure as hell does. But how did he get to owe this much to Harmer? Tex don’t strike me as the kind of man who’d let gambling debts run this high.”

  “Like Lew Hackett, he could’ve been using it as a kind of insurance. He must’ve known that sooner or later the Wells Fargo safe would be bustin’ at the seams with money or gold. And then all he has to do is put on the pressure for what’s owing to him.”

  The girl was bewildered but rapidly forming the picture of what was going on. “You’re saying someone owed Harmer a lot of money—and I suspect you mean Trace Hollis—and he made Hollis rob his own safe?”

  “That’s the way it seems,” Hume said. “He set it up to look like Nitro Mantell had pulled the job but all along somethin’ struck me as wrong with that setup and I only just realized what it was an hour ago, that safe hadn’t been blown with nitro.”

  Nash frowned. “But we never found a trace of a fuse or detonator caps from dynamite, Jim. And there’re always pieces of copper and fabric scattered around.”

  “Because nitro wasn’t used,” Hume told him. “The safe was opened with the key. Yeah, yeah, I know it was hanging by one hinge and the rivet heads around the lock plate had been chiseled off. That was Mantell’s trademark, so that’s why it was done. The ‘blast’ marks, or what looked like them in the safe and on the door, were made simply by burning small quantities of black powder, likely from a shot shell or cartridge. I found some of the grains in the seams. That was what had been bothering me all along. The blast marks—they went in all directions, but some were inside the safe. The lock plate had been mangled to make it look like the nitro had jarred it loose but there’s a heavy steel plate behind it that couldn’t have let any of the blast inside. And there were no parts scattered around the office, like there should’ve been if it had been blown.”

  “So it was Trace all along,” Nash said quietly.

  Hume held up a hand. “Seems that way, Clay, but it’s only my theory right now. No real proof. That’ll only come from Harmer. Trace won’t break; I know that from his detective training.”

  Liz Garrett’s face suddenly looked animated, and there was a flash of hope in her eyes. “Then—there’s still a chance that mailbag might be found?”

  “A chance. That’s all,” Hume said kindly. He sighed, toying with the paper on his desk. “There’s something else you should know, Miss Garrett.”

  His tone made Liz look sharply at him. Nash frowned. Hume gazed straight into the girl’s eyes. “I guess maybe your brother got a mite tired of waiting. He broke out of Julesburg Prison last night.”

  Her jaw sagged open and Nash threw her a swift glance. She was pale, her eyes looking sunken, her mouth pulled down at the corners. Her hands twisted together in her lap as she stared back at Hume, shaking her head very slowly and murmuring, almost inaudibly, “No. No. He—couldn’t be so—foolish ...”

  “Sorry, Miss Garrett,” Hume said. He handed her a yellow dog-eared Western Union form. “There’s the official wire from Julesburg. Lew Hackett gave it to me.”

  She took it with shaking hands and read slowly. “It—it says here he’s with two other convicts—both serving time for robbery and murder.”

  She was talking to herself, out loud. Nash stood, hitching his gunbelt.

  “We might still be able to put things right if we can get our hands on that mailbag,” he told the girl quietly, then turned to Hume. “I’ll go see Harmer.”

  “Watch the goons—Rocky and Finch.”

  Halfway across the street, Nash figured he would bypass Harmer and see Hollis first. He swung towards the Wells Fargo depot where workmen were still repairing some of the damage inside. One of the clerks told him that Hollis had gone to the Palace—in a raging mood.

  Nash cursed. Likely Hollis’ bad mood was brought on by Hume chewing him out instead of praising him for shooting Mantell. Suddenly, there was a gunshot from the Palace and Nash broke into a run; his Colt sliding into his hand.

  Men started to pour out of the batwings as Nash jostled his way in, grabbing one man. There were more gunshots from upstairs.

  “What's happened?” he demanded.

  “Gunfight,” the man panted. “Hollis went in on the prod. Don’t do it, mister. The leads a’flyin’.”

  Nash crashed through the batwings into the big empty bar and ran for the stairs. At the top, he saw Rocky backing onto the landing, gun blazing in his fist. He turned, saw Nash and fired as the Wells Fargo man triggered and threw himself to one side. Rocky jerked up onto his toes and yelled, grasping at the rail. It trembled and creaked and Nash shot him again. He smashed clear through the rail without a sound and plummeted down into the saloon behind the bar.

  In the passage another man yelled and there was a dull thud. Then there was the pounding of running boots and Nash leapt up the stairs two at a time. At the top he saw Tex Harmer, holding a bleeding side, running in a staggering movement down the passage. He started to lift his gun but Hollis appeared in the office doorway and fired twice from the hip. The bullets ripped into Harmer’s back and his mouth opened in a soundless scream as he was driven to his knees then slowly spread out on his face. Along the passage, Finch lay sprawled in a pool of his own blood. Hollis was about to duck back into the office when he spotted Nash.

  “You get Rocky?”

  “Yeah. Now it’s your turn, Trace.”

  Hollis stiffened. Obviously, he had been going to try to bluff it out, but he now realized the game was up. His jaw hardened.

  “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  Nash didn’t move from the top step, but he was alert and ready for action. “Hume’s figured it out. You owed Harmer a lot of dinero. He made you rob the depot safe to pay him back. You arranged with Ruby to drug my drink so I’d be out of the way. I guess you hadn’t been expectin’ me to show as shotgun on that stage run.”

  “Damn right I didn’t,” Hollis admitted. “I was expectin’ the usual guard. He’d have been no trouble. But you were somethin’ else again. Had to make sure you were out of action.”

  “I might’ve helped you, Trace, ’cept you killed Ruby. Tramp or not, she didn’t deserve to die like that. Why’d you do it?”

  Hollis shrugged, pulling his mouth into an ugly line. “She didn’t want to quit town. Said she loved me. Can you figure it? A lousy whore sayin’ that! Hell, I couldn’t shake her. She got riled and said she’d blow the deal. Bring you around and tell you what was goin’ on. So I had to stop her. Like I had to stop Harmer; he wouldn’t gimme my share.”

  Nash looked at him coldly. “You’re a goddamn fool. Years ago you weren’t as loco as this.”

  Hollis’ face hardened even more. “Years ago? Hell, I could’ve been a top agent like you. If only Hume had given me a chance. But you were his favorite. You scored highest, always! You beat me at everythin’.”

  “Because I was better at the job,” Nash said flatly. “You were too hot-headed, Trace. Didn’t stop to think things out. Like the way you shot Mantell—and almost killed the girl.”

  “I got him, didn’t I? No one else was hurt.”

  “But you can’t get by takin’ risks like that. You had a good job here. You were going places in the company, Trace.”

  “Keep that kinda hogwash to yourself. You were the one goin’ places. I was stuck here, in Red Rapids. What could I have hoped for? Maybe a move to Denver or Santa Fe. Maybe. While you had all the action, got all the—glory.”

  Nash shook his head slowly and started to lift his gun. “Tell it to Hume, Trace, I ain’t interested. I’m takin’ you in.”

  Hollis fired even as he leapt back. Nash threw himself into the passage, triggering. His lead chipped a handful of splinters from the doorjamb as Hollis lunged back into the office. Nash rolled against the far wall and Hollis snapped a shot at him. T
he lead tore up the worn carpet and some more wood. Nash spun onto his belly and triggered fast. Hollis ducked from sight and Clay leapt up. He raced down the passage, slamming against the wall as he flattened and eased along to the door. He heard the window sash thrown up inside and jumped into the doorway, crouching, gun braced into his hip.

  Hollis whirled, gun blasting in three very fast shots.

  Nash winced as splinters sprayed his cheeks but kept braced and fired twice. Hollis threw up his arms and flailed backwards. He smashed into the window, shattering the glass and splintering the wooden frame as he hurtled into the street. Nash heard his body rolling and flailing across the porch awning—then the dull thud as it dropped into the street. He walked across the room, dabbing at his bleeding face. He glanced down at the gathering crowd. Lew Hackett looked up at him.

  “Boothill,” he said expressively. Nash threw him a casual salute, holstered his gun and turned back into the office.

  The safe door stood open and he thumbed back his hat, shaking his head slowly. The stolen payroll and ledgers and the water-stained mailbag from the sunken riverboat had been jammed into Harmer’s safe all along. He dragged out the mail sack and walked slowly out of the office.

  This would cheer Liz Garrett. And damned if he mightn’t help her track down her brother before he did anything stupid that would put him in prison for the rest of his life. Yeah, he had some leave from Wells Fargo coming.

  He would gladly spend it with Liz Garrett, searching for Ben. He had an idea she would be happy to have him along.

  Find out what happens to Clay, Liz and Ben Garrett in

  CLAY NASH 9: RIDE FOR TEXAS

  coming in April 2018!

  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.