by Brett Waring
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
The yellow-haired bandit was as cold as ice water. To prove it, he shot his partners down in cold blood after the stage robbery was over. Worse than that, in the eyes of Wells Fargo detective Clay Nash, he shot and came close to killing or crippling Nash’s friend, Roarin’ Dick Magee. Clay wanted to catch the outlaw before he killed again, but the trail ahead of him had more twists and turns than an angry snake. Even when he finally brought the killer to justice, he was by no means sure he’d caught the right man …
It was Clay’s toughest assignment yet, and one he was by no means sure he’d survive.
CLAY NASH 2: A GUN IS WAITING
By Brett Waring
First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd
Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
First Smashwords Edition: February 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.
Chapter One – Stage from Blackwood
Pulling out of Blackwood, Montana, was likely the best thing the Wells Fargo stage to Meredith Springs had ever done, figured most of the passengers as the coach lumbered and jolted over the trail leading up and over the Sierras. Blackwood wasn’t the quietest town in the State. Gold had been discovered there nine months back and the rush was still on. The rivers and canyons and wash-soil were giving up nuggets that ranged in size from a man’s clenched fist to that of a pea and, occasionally, smaller. But gold was being found in such quantities that most old hands tossed away anything smaller than a pinhead.
There would come a time when men would go nearly blind, straining to see the glint of even the tiniest fleck of gold in the tailings of their wash-pans, but that time was a long way off yet and the stagecoach carried a chest filled with gold nuggets and alluvial washings, bolted to the floor. The chest was of heavy oak planks and painted green, with the legend ‘Wells Fargo Express Company’ worked on it with a hot poker.
There were seven passengers, three women, four men, including a travelling padre, a middle-aged storekeeper and his wife, an unhappy man on his way south to his wife’s deathbed, a young widow and two miners heading for the bright lights after having struck it rich: their gold was stashed in the big wooden chest on which they rested their muddy boots.
Up top, the driver, a wild-eyed, mustachioed character in dustcoat and Texas sombrero was known the length and breadth of the stage line trails as Roarin’ Dick Magee. He was one of Wells Fargo’s finest drivers and, though the coaches he drove often appeared to be wildly out of control, he knew exactly where he could make them go and the limits of their performance at all times. When the company had a hard trail for their vehicles to travel, Roarin’ Dick Magee was the man they gave the reins to. He always got through, come fire, flood, Indians or road agents. Passengers on other stages might get shot or drowned or burned, but they never came to any harm if they stayed with Magee. He could always find a way through any disaster.
Beside Magee sat the shotgun guard, a hard-bitten man who chewed tobacco and his beard stubble was stained brown from nicotine. His face was seamed and leathery and he had had many years of service with the company, as was attested by the engraved silver watch in his vest pocket, slung on a square-linked, heavy silver chain; his Colt Peacemaker with the backstrap engraved with his name, ‘Lew Anders’, and the Wells Fargo company insignia as well. His double-barreled, twelve-gauge shotgun also had his name on it and that of the company etched into the side-plates. His pants belt-buckle was of bronze, depicting a stage at full run, pursued by horsemen waving guns and with the bannered legend of ‘Wells Fargo & Co.’ beneath.
Wells Fargo had built its reputation on its guarantee to get the money through for its clients. If it was stolen along the way, Wells Fargo made good the loss, acting as its own insurance company. So, if one of its employees fought off bandits and saved the cash, then he was rewarded, sometimes with weapons, sometimes with a watch, silver or gold, and sometimes with cash.
The Blackwood stage that day was carrying upwards of thirty thousand dollars in pure gold and double-eagles on their way down to the army post at Meredith Springs.
Another stage line might have weighed down its coach with armed guards to deter road agents, thereby drawing attention to the fact that they were carrying a larger than normal payload. But Wells Fargo took the more conservative action of picking its top men and placing only the normal complement on the stage.
Roarin’ Dick Magee let out a stream of cusses as he coaxed the straining team up the winding, narrow trail. Firs and pinons dotted the slopes in thick, dark green patches clear up to snowline, and Lew Anders squirted tobacco juice over the side, squinted and adjusted the wide brim of his hat as he raked his searching gaze over the deep shadows in the timber. This was a good place for road agents, he figured: the stage was slowed down, the team laboring, the driver fully occupied and the passengers hanging on and thinking only of their own safety, perhaps praying that the stage wouldn’t go over the right hand edge and end up in the rock-studded canyon two hundred feet below. The guard was normally hanging on pretty tightly to his rail with one hand, too, on this stretch, leaving only one hand for his shotgun. Those seconds it would take him to get a grip on the weapon with both hands could well make the difference between the success of a stick-up and failure. They could also decide whether the guard lived or died.
But Lew Anders had had leather straps nailed to the footboard so he could slip his boots through on the steep patches, holding himself steady and firm, while he had both hands free to use his gun if necessary. He also had looped his pants belt through the iron side rail and he figured he was ready for anything that might be thrown at him.
But the steep climb was negotiated and there was no attempt at a hold-up, no sign of any strange horsemen dodging about the timber, up-slope. As the stage topped the steep trail and came onto a reasonably level stretch, everyone relaxed. The passengers sat back with sighs and fleeting, embarrassed smiles. Roarin’ Dick let his cussing tail off, sheathed his whip and bunched the reins together. Lew Anders relaxed, too, placing the butt of his shotgun between his boots and reaching for his chawing tobacco.
It was unlikely that he heard the whiplash of the rifle shot that sent a bullet crashing through his heart. The fatal shot came, not from halfway up the slope but from the top. Lew Anders jerked as the lead struck home. He dropped his chawing tobacco and fell sideways, but his belt passing through the iron rail held him in his seat so that he flopped with dangling hands, blood dripping to the seat.
Roarin’ Dick reacted instantly. He lifted the reins and opened his mouth to let out possibly his most magnificent stream of cusses yet, but a second shot hammered and Magee flipped back onto the coach top and then rolled off and thudded to the trail. One of the women passengers saw the body drop past the window and screamed, before fainting away. The team slammed forward in the traces and started to bolt. But, coldly, mercilessly, four more shots rang out and the two lead horses went down thrashing and spraying blood from head wounds. The other horses piled into them and the coach slewed dangerously near the trail’s edge, bringing fresh screams from the women. T
he coach shuddered, teetered on two wheels and then thudded back with a jolt, throwing the passengers into a wild tangle.
Three masked men rode down from the timber, putting their mounts expertly down the slope, rifles in hands, coming down fast to where the stage had stopped. The two miners disentangled themselves from the flailing heap on the floor and one kicked a passenger door clear off its hinges as he leapt out, gun in hand, prepared to fight to protect his share of the gold in that green chest bolted to the floor. His pard was only a step or two behind, and he had two guns in his hands, hammers cocked.
They dropped to the ground and instantly began shooting at the road agents. The masked men threw their rifles to their shoulders, scattering, firing with deadly accuracy. The first miner's head snapped back with a bubbling hole in the centre of his forehead. The second man’s jacket sleeve burst open just above his left bicep and he grimaced, swearing, as blood flowed. The force of the bullet spun him about so that the second slug missed his head by a scant inch. He fell sideways, rolled under the coach, and blazed away at the racing outlaws.
The leader was a slim man and the thin mountain sunlight glinted briefly from a silver ring on his left hand as he leaned down under his mount’s neck and fired his rifle one-handed. The lead kicked stones into the miner’s face and he clawed at his eyes. The outlaw leader quit leather with a leap and hardly paused at all when his boots hit the ground. He continued on down the slope and ran right up to the miner who was blinking and starting to bring his smoking gun around. The outlaw thrust his rifle barrel to within three inches of the man’s wide-eyed face and squeezed trigger. The miner slammed back, thrown clear to the other side of the stage to flop in a heap near the unmoving form of Roarin’ Dick Magee.
The outlaw leader waved impatiently to his two companions and, though masked with neckerchiefs, it was easy to see that one of the men was a Negro, a big buck whose massive shoulders strained the seams of his homespun shirt. The third man’s identifying feature was a maimed hand. Only two fingers and a thumb remained on his left hand. The stumps of the missing fingers were calloused with old scar tissue.
The three wasted no time and few words. The leader reached inside the coach and violently yanked out the first person he grabbed—the young widow. She screamed as her dress ripped, but he changed his grip to her arm and flung her savagely to the ground. The Negro pushed his rifle barrel against her head, reached down and ripped off her wedding ring and the jewelry she was wearing. The outlaw leader’s hat fell off as he hauled out the storekeeper, and long straw-colored hair was revealed, like a shock of gold with the sunlight behind his head. He swore into his masking bandanna, heaved out the storekeeper’s wife and sent her sprawling in the dirt. The padre began to protest, holding a crucifix in front of him. The straw-haired man gun-whipped the man until he was half-conscious. He flung him out, wrenching the crucifix from around his neck on its silver chain as he did so. The woman who had fainted lay sprawled across the Wells Fargo chest and the leader kicked open the passenger door on the far side of the coach and heaved her out. If he noticed that she fell over the edge of the trail and rolled and flailed down the slope towards the sheer drop into the canyon, he gave no sign of it. He was too busy examining the heavy padlock on the chest.
“Jed!” he bawled and the big Negro poked his head into the coach where the leader pointed at the padlock.
“Biggest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen! Bullets’ll just bounce off that!”
The Negro was examining the lock and nodded slowly. “It’s big, but that’s their mistake. I’ll show you.”
He pulled six forty-five cartridges from his belt loops, wrenched out the lead bullets with his big white teeth and held the padlock horizontal. He poured the powder from the cartridges into the large keyhole, tapping it down so that it was good and tight-packed.
“Bigger they are, more powder they hold,” he told the leader. “Just stand back and we’ll have this here box open in no time at all.”
He took a short length of fuse from his pocket, cut off about six inches with a clasp knife and thrust it through the padlock’s keyhole, deep into the packed gunpowder. Then he took a small ball of clay-and-bear-grease from his other pocket, unwrapped it from its oilcloth, and pinched off enough to fill in the open keyhole. The leader was standing outside the coach now, idly watching the efforts of the terrified young woman down the slope as she tried to get away from the sheer drop above which she had regained consciousness.
The Negro snapped a vesta into flame on his thumbnail, touched it to the fuse and backed hurriedly out of the stage. He shoved the passengers roughly to the ground and motioned to the three-fingered man to step back. The straw-haired man was already moving casually around the coach. The remaining two team horses jumped and squealed in their harness as the coach rocked to the dull explosion inside.
Coughing in the smoke, the Negro and the leader used their hats to fan the smoke away, then stared at the mangled remains of the padlock dangling loosely from the chest’s hasp. The Negro wrenched it off and the leader yanked the lid back hard. They both stared at the neatly stacked chamois bags and canvas envelopes, each bearing the title, Wells Fargo and Company.
Their neck-scarves masked the lower halves of their faces but their eyes crinkled up in triumph.
“How’s it feel to be a rich man, Jed?” the leader asked happily.
“Damn fine, man! Damn fine!” the Negro replied, lifting out the first of the sacks of gold.
~*~
There was only one way he was going to get that bunch of road-agents out of that clapboard shack down in the hollow, Clay Nash figured, as he ducked back behind the sandstone boulder, face stinging with grit kicked up by the rifle bullet. He had been peppering the shack for the best part of an hour now and it looked as if he wasn’t going to get any help from the rest of the posse. God knew where they had gotten to, but he figured they should have been able to hear the gunfire. In fact, that was why he had opened up on the shack in the first place.
Nash, as an undercover investigator for Wells Fargo, had trailed this wild bunch under Tyler Cade and Alex Bryant for close on two months. He knew their hideout was some place close to the town of Timberline, Colorado, and he had called on the lawman of that place to lend a hand and organize a posse of townsmen. The Cade-Bryant bunch had managed to rob seven Wells Fargo stages before they bungled a job and left one of their men alive long enough to give Nash the start he needed. Given a free hand by Chief of Detectives Jim Hume, Nash had set out on his long trail to bring the road-agents in. Some of the Timberline townsmen had lost money on those stages and it hadn’t been difficult to get a posse together to search the hills around the town, but they had become separated in a canyon with many trails radiating from it and Nash had found himself alone when he spotted the shack.
Wondering if he should risk going back for the rest of the posse, the decision was made for him when he was spotted as he sky lined himself briefly, and the Cade-Bryant bunch pinned him down with a fusillade of fire. His hope had been that the sound of the shots would bring the posse, but likely it would be difficult to pinpoint the origin of the gunfire in a canyon with so many side trails. He knew he had accounted for two of the outlaws. One man had made a run for the horses, likely hoping to get up above and behind him, and Nash had shot him in mid-run.
The second man he brought down had exposed himself for an instant at the front window as he reached for a fresh pack of cartridges. Nash’s Winchester ’73, presented to him on the completion of his first assignment for Hume, had whiplashed in a single shot that had smashed in the window frame and taken the outlaw through the temple. By Nash’s reckoning, there should only be three left now, including Cade and Bryant.
He knew they wouldn’t give up easily but it was getting dark and he had to get them out of there or finish the siege quickly. Once the sun dropped behind the canyon wall, they could make good their escape in this twisted, rugged country that they knew like the backs of their hands.
There wasn’t a tree or bush within a quarter mile of that shack only scattered boulders, and the slopes around the hillsides were also bare, nothing but sun blasted rock and barren earth. The outlaws had chosen their hideout well, for it would be hard for anyone to approach the shack undetected. At the same time, it meant that they had to travel out into the hills for wood for their fire. And, to cart this back, they used a buckboard which was now standing only a few feet from the front of the shack, piled high with dead brush and small logs.
Nash worked his way down the slope, crouching as he ran from boulder to boulder, and was within thirty feet of the shack’s approaches before he was spotted. The three guns inside swung towards him instantly and began firing. Before he dropped flat behind some low rocks, he tossed the copper powder flask in a high arc and heard it thud down into the buckboard’s load of dry brush. Now, all he had to hope for was that it had landed where he could see it. Crawling on his belly, he squirmed along behind his protecting rocks, calculating his position, then abruptly reared up to his knees, throwing the Winchester to his shoulder. The sun’s rays reflected redly from the copper flask lying on top of the brush in the buckboard and Nash forced himself to take swift and steady aim as lead whined past his ears. The foresight blade centered in the rear buckhorn sight, silhouetted perfectly by the red glow of the sun-emblazoned powder flask. He would never get a better hold than this, he figured, and squeezed the trigger.