Clay Nash 17

by Brett Waring

  The raiders were already swinging wider still, obviously intending to cut off any retreat that Loco might try for, swinging off to one side or the other. All he could do now was either stop dead and try to turn the team and get the stage going back the way it had come before the bandits were on it, or charge straight ahead and hope to barge through the line of guns.

  Loco Larrabee chose the second course, stood in the seat and laid into the frightened team with the bullwhip, adding a string of curses so salty that Cassidy actually paused in getting his shotgun up to his shoulder to look, gap-mouthed, at the man beside him.

  The stage lurched forward as the running team hit the harness collars. Cassidy’s aim was thrown as he squeezed the triggers and the blast of buckshot whistled over the heads of the two raiders he had tried for. A bullet clipped the brim of his hat and dust flew as he dropped down into the leg well, beaded a man and let fly with the Ithaca’s second barrel.

  A horse squealed and went down, its forelegs folding under it, throwing the rider heavily. Six-guns were barking from the body of the stage as the three passengers added their firepower. Loco concentrated on his driving, hauling on the reins first this way, then that, sending the swaying, rocking Concord zigzagging across the trail, confusing the aim of the road agents.

  They came sweeping in again, changing direction as Loco weaved the ungainly stage all over the countryside, reluctantly admiring the wild driver’s skills. Moss Dooley swore bitterly and reloaded his Winchester as he rode, having emptied a magazine to no avail. He had seen a couple of his bullets spraying splinters from the coach body, but that was all. The damn passengers were shooting out the windows and the shotgun guard was lifting a rifle from under the seat now, discarding his shotgun.

  As Dooley hauled rein, the guard got the Winchester to his shoulder and began firing. The man whose horse had been gunned down was picked off in mid-stride, his body spinning, skidding, lifting a cloud of dust as he somersaulted and then lay still. Dooley had his rifle loaded now and he rode in fast, shouting abuse, the gun hammering.

  Danby, the passenger with the high falsetto, was leaning far out the window, beading a raider, holding his Colt in both hands. The wood of the door on which he leaned splintered and he jarred back a little, bending at the midriff. He let out a high-pitched woman-like scream and the sound brought Ralls spinning around, startled. The cattle buyer, Case Ritchie, paused in his shooting and looked back over his shoulder, startled too.

  Danby was coughing a ribbon of blood and he sagged down over the door. The weight of his body was too much and another of Dooley’s slugs smashed into him. The door swung open on its leather hinges and, for a few yards, Danby’s body hung in the window frame and then his trailing boots hit the trail and he was torn loose and his body thudded to the ground, rolling over and over.

  The door swung back and forth, banging and jolting open again. The ground raced past and Ralls and Ritchie turned back to their windows, shooting at the racing bandits.

  Matt Cassidy beaded a man and fired and saw his target lurch, slide sideways in the saddle but manage to snatch at the horn and lay still on horseback. Then splinters were gouged out of the footrest in front of him and stung his face. He reared back, momentarily blinded. He heard a dry grunt and shaking his head, glanced up in time to see Loco Larrabee lurch up to his toes, clawing at his blood-spouting chest.

  Cassidy swore and tried to grab the man but Loco’s body was already spilling over the side. The guard lunged for the rein ends, but he was too late.

  Momentarily, Loco had a death grip on the reins and he still had hold of them when his body struck the trail. He was dragged a couple of yards by the flying team and then the leather tore loose from his nerveless fingers and the reins flew wild over the side where Matt Cassidy could not reach them.

  The trail swung around Hangman’s Spur now and he caught a glimpse of the river below and hoped the stage would make the bend. If they went over there they would all be finished ...

  Ralls saw Ritchie jerk back, one arm bleeding. He lunged for the swinging door as it banged into a rock and then his eyes widened as he saw only the narrow strip of trail between the stage and the edge of the drop into the river.

  A hail of bullets cut through the passengers’ section, ripping out plywood lining and tearing the leather seats. Case Ritchie moaned and his body jerked as lead slammed into it. He fell down between the seats, blood spurting from several wounds. He slammed into Ralls and the man’s eyes widened and he yelled as the impact hurled him through the open doorway and he caught a glimpse of the brush at the edge of the broken trail and the rushing, coffee-colored river far below ...

  Up top, Cassidy had given up trying for the reins of the team. The horses were wild-eyed, had the bits between their teeth, but he figured they weren’t suicidal. They would follow the trail if they could. It was the out-of-control stage that bothered him. It might not make the bends.

  He flopped back on the driver’s seat and kicked at the brake bar, having to ignore the outlaw bullets that whispered past his face. If he didn’t slow the stage, they would all go over the edge. It was slowly seeping into his consciousness that there was no longer any shooting from the passenger compartment, and he brought up his rifle as he strained at the brake bar, having to turn and shoot back over the roof of the stage; the narrowness of the trail had forced the bandits to drop back.

  He jerked as bullets ripped long lines of splinters across the roof. He emptied the Winchester and dropped it into the leg well, palming up his six-shooter.

  Cassidy held the gun in both hands, rested the butt on the luggage rail surrounding the roof and started to bead the lead horseman.

  Then he felt the coach tilting.

  Wide-eyed, Matt Cassidy spun back and saw that, miraculously they had gotten around the trail bend above the river and were now careering down the grade on the far side of the Spur.

  The team was running free and wild.

  The offside front wheel smashed into a head-sized rock on the trail, and the stage started to flip. He instinctively clutched at the low brass rail and his Colt flew from his grasp as he felt the floorboards slam up against his feet, the seat smash into his spine, and he knew they were going over.

  There was nothing he could do about it and it all seemed to be happening in slow-motion so that he saw the details of the rugged, eroded rocks on Hangman’s Spur, the hot blue of the sky, an eagle riding an air-current, a glimpse of the pursuing bandits, already hauling rein as they saw there was about to be a crash.

  Then things speeded up and the world spun and tilted crazily, whirling wildly, and he had a sensation of flying through the air as his ears filled with a shattering of wood and the ringing of metal, mingled with the terrified whickering of the horses as they were pulled off their feet by the cartwheeling coach.

  The Concord hit and rolled and bounced and tore loose from the harness shaft, bouncing off the side of the bluff, landing on the roof, skidding several yards this way, and then bouncing end over end for a further twenty yards before landing on its side, three wheels shattered, the fourth spinning with a creaking, humming sound, the body of the coach reduced to matchwood, from which projected the bloody, crushed hand of Case Ritchie.

  Matt Cassidy’s body was far back down the trail, wedged between a rock and some brush, bloody clothes ripped, unmoving …

  Out of the dust and gunsmoke, rode Matt Dooley and his remaining outlaws, holstering their guns when they saw the wreckage and the two horses of the team that were still alive. One of the other downed animals whickered pitifully, impaled on the broken harness shaft.

  Dooley shot it casually through the head and, as the sound of the gunshot died away, turned to his men.

  “Okay. Let’s get what we came for and vamoose. And remember to wipe out your tracks!”

  They rode in towards the remains of the stage.

  Two – Posse

  Nash stood at the edge of town, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun, starin
g out towards the hills.

  He consulted his pocket watch, frowning as he flicked open the silver cover and saw the time. Three o’clock. The stage was just under an hour behind schedule and that was late enough for Clay Nash.

  The Wells Fargo man turned and strode purposefully back down Main towards the law office. Sheriff McGinnis was already on the porch and, when he saw Nash coming, he turned and locked the door, picked up the rifle he had rested against the wall and stepped down off the porch to meet the Wells Fargo agent.

  “Better get the posse, Wes,” Nash told him. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  The lawman nodded. “It sure don’t look good. Meet you at the livery.”

  “Ten minutes,” Nash said crisply.

  He was sitting his hired dun, loaded Winchester checked and in saddle scabbard, outside the livery stables ten minutes later when the sheriff came hurrying down the street with a bunch of half a dozen men crowding around him. McGinnis started the introductions but Nash held up an impatient hand.

  “No offence, fellers, but I’ll get to know your names along the trail,” he said. “I’d as leif get ridin’ right now.”

  “Sounds fair,” one man named Bonney said and the others nodded agreement, hurried into the big stables, followed by the sheriff.

  A few minutes later, the posse cleared Spanish Creek, watched by a few curious folk. Most of them knew where the posse was headed: half the town set its clocks by the arrivals and departures of the Wells Fargo stages. They knew damn well something had gone wrong with the stage from Sesame Ridge ...

  Crawling through the hills, the long shadows started across the land, throwing the hint of a chill into the late afternoon as the posse climbed the high trail, Nash’s mouth tightening when he didn’t find any fresh wheel ruts in the dust.

  “What’ve we got on the far side?” he asked McGinnis beside him.

  “More hills. Chief landmark is Hangman’s Spur, and then there’s flats and plains clear back to Sesame Ridge, with a few river crossin’s and some forest country throwed in for luck ’bout ten miles this side of the Ridge.”

  Nash nodded. “Best place for a hold-up?” he asked.

  McGinnis pursed his thickish lips. “Arlo’s Ford’d be one good place: thick timber right to the river’s edge. Only thing is it ain’t too far out of Sesame Ridge. Anyone who got away would be back in an hour with a posse.”

  Nash shook his head. “Have to be a better place than that. Only an amateur would make his try that close to a town with law and I’ve got a hunch if anyone at all hit that stage for the fifty thousand, they’d be professionals and know what they’re about.”

  “Then that leaves Hangman’s Spur,” the sheriff said flatly, hipping in saddle to speak to the man slightly behind him. “What do you reckon, Curly? You know this neck of the woods better’n the rest of us.”

  Curly Lipscombe was a lanky character with a long face and a harelip. He wore patched clothes and his coat was too tight where he buttoned it around his chest. He put his mount up alongside McGinnis and Nash.

  “Hangman’s Spur’s the place,” he agreed. “Good cover for the road agents, and they can fade back into the hills pronto.”

  “Plenty of hideouts in the hills?” asked Nash.

  Curly lifted his hat and scratched at his totally bald skull. “I should smile there is. Moss Dooley’s been operatin’ out of these here hills for nigh on five years now and no one yet managed to find his hole-in-the-wall.”

  Nash had stiffened at mention of Dooley.

  “I didn’t know Dooley was from this neck of the woods.”

  “Dunno where he’s from, but he hangs out in these here hills,” Curly Lipscombe assured him. “We been comin’ up against the sonuver on and off for years, ain’t we, Wes?”

  Nash swore softly, as McGinnis confirmed Curly’s remarks.

  “Dooley don’t have any love for Wells Fargo. He’s got an inside line we’ve been trying to break for years, too,” Nash told them. “It’s possible he’s got wind of that fifty thousand ...”

  “Sheriff!” another of the posse called suddenly. He had ridden on ahead a ways, topping a rise ahead of the others. He was pointing over the crown. “There’s a rider down there and he don’t look in any too good a shape!”

  Nash spurred his mount forward and was up beside the posse man in a flash, already reaching for the field glasses in his saddlebags. He got the glasses up to his eyes and focused swiftly on the rider far below, making his slow way along the meandering trail.

  “Someone who’s been hurt,” Nash opined, adjusting the focus a little finer. “Clothes are half ripped off; one arm dangling like a shirt on a line. Blood on his face too.”

  He slipped the field glasses away and started riding swiftly down the trail, McGinnis and the posse men following. Nash slid his rifle free of the scabbard as he got lower down the slope and when he rounded a bend and the grade eased off some, he ran his mount at a fast clip.

  The posse followed, strung out, their own rifles unsheathed now.

  The rider coming towards them didn’t raise his head. He seemed to be concentrating on staying in the saddle. Then Nash noticed something he should have noticed before: there was no saddle.

  The man was forking a horse that had part of a harness on it but no provision for a saddle. Even as the rider started to slip from the animal’s back, Nash spurred forward, realizing that the horse was one of a team that had been pulling a wagon—or a Concord stagecoach—not long ago ...

  The rider turned as he fell and landed on his back in the dust. The weary horse plodded on a few feet and stopped, head hanging. As Nash skidded his dun to a stop and quit leather, still holding his rifle, he saw the unmistakable Wells Fargo brand on the other horse’s flank.

  Clay Nash knelt beside the bloody-faced man who was moaning, his useless arm half pinned under his body. He cried out loud as Nash eased the broken limb out from under him and placed it gently across the torn and blood-spotted chest showing through the shredded shirt. There was a deep gash in the man’s head above the hairline and the blood on his face came from this.

  “Know him?” panted McGinnis as he dismounted and puffed up, dropping to one knee.

  “Do now that I’m this close,” Nash said grimly. “Name of Matt Cassidy. New man with the company. Showed promise, so Hume gave him this run.”

  “He know about the fifty thousand?”

  Nash shook his head. Then he looked at the lawman steadily. “Leastways, not that we know of.” He turned back to the injured man as one of the posse man brought up a canteen of water. He wet a bandanna, cleaned blood and dirt out of the man’s eyes, moistened his lips.

  Cassidy coughed and his body convulsed. He moaned and bared his teeth in a grimace of pain. It served to bring him back to consciousness and he stared at Nash with momentarily frightened eyes, and then he frowned in puzzlement.

  “Wh-who’re you?”

  “Name’s Clay Nash. Wells Fargo.”

  Cassidy nodded slightly. “Heard tell of you ... Well, Nash, we got—troubles ... Road agents. Waylaid us at—at Hangman’s Spur ... Shot the hell outa the—passengers—killed the—driver ... Stage crashed. I was throwed clear.”

  “Didn’t land on a feather mattress, I’d allow!” quipped Curly Lipscombe.

  Cassidy’s split lips moved slightly in a faint acknowledgment of the man’s attempt at humor.

  “Nope. Came round. Two hosses still alive, others dead. Passenger named Ritchie lyin’ in the middle of the trail, most of his clothes ripped off... I had me a prize bang on the head. Couldn’t think straight for a spell. Then I managed to unhook one of the hosses, climb aboard. Hoped I was headed down to Spanish Crick ... sure glad to see you fellers ...”

  “They take the strongbox?” Nash asked, mouth tight, eyes hard as he bored his gaze into Cassidy’s face.

  Cassidy stared at him and frowned through the blood. “Y’know—Nash—I—I never looked. You credit that? I must’ve been so—dazed I never—even
thought of it...”

  Nash nodded, his face expressionless. “Don’t worry about it.” He stood up and looked at McGinnis and then the others of the posse. “Lloyd, you told me you used to be a riverboat captain, so I guess you had to patch up many a man. Can I leave you with Cassidy here while the rest of us ride on and try to find the stage?”

  “Sure, Mr. Nash,” the man called Lloyd said. He was a huge hombre with a gray-streaked beard and he wore a small cloth cap with a stiff, shiny peak. “I’ll splint that arm for him and get the cuts cleaned up. You want me to take him back to town?”

  “Not—yet,” Nash said and looked away swiftly when he saw the puzzled frown Cassidy gave him. He walked away before the injured man could question him, then turned and called, “How far back would you say, Cassidy?”

  “Well, they hit us the far side of the Spur and we lost a passenger as we come round the high bend by the river—Ralls, I think his name was—stage crashed as we started on the downgrade. Sorry—got no idea how far I’ve traveled ...”

  “It’s only a few miles back,” McGinnis said.

  Nash and the others mounted and rode out, leaving Lloyd to care for the wounded man ...

  They found the wreckage of the stage without any trouble, lying scattered as it was all along fifty yards of trail. A man’s body lay in the dust, his shirt ripped half off his back. He was dead and there was splintered section of stage wood that speared through his chest that also showed bullet holes. Marks led to the main stage wreckage to where Case Ritchie’s body lay, as if he had been dragged out from there.

  McGinnis and a couple of men rode back down the trail around the spur and Nash slowly dismounted and walked around the front section of the Concord coach which seemed to be the only part still virtually intact. Nash figured maybe it was because of the extra strengthening that had been used for the secret compartment in which to transport the fifty thousand in cash ...

  He clambered through the splintered timbers, ordered the remainder of the posse to scout around for tracks, then began to examine the driving seat area of the stage ...