Clay Nash 17

by Brett Waring

  It did and once he worked himself into a better position he was able to make good progress, using knees and boots and elbows, even his head pressed against the walls at one stage to support his weight while he maneuvered his hands towards a crack that would give him purchase for the next thrust upwards.

  He lost some skin and ripped his trousers, shaved an elbow, cut a cheek. A couple of fingers started bleeding and one nail bent back almost double so that he had to clamp his teeth down hard on the yell that wanted to burst from him. The shooting was still heavy below and the cabin inmates were picking their time and targets now. It told him that likely they didn’t have a hell of a lot of ammunition for a siege.

  Not that they were going to need it, once he reached the top ...

  He was there before he realized it. His fingers groped on ahead and above and he found only air and then the canyon rim itself. He jerked his head up and back, so that his vision cleared the broad brim and he smelled as well as saw the sotol brush. In a few moments, he was rolling onto the rim and under the first brush. He lay there, getting his breath, and pulled himself back to the edge again.

  Five yards to his right and there was the cabin, hugging the base of the cliff, straight down, seventy feet.

  Nash saw one of the posse men under the trees suddenly jerk upright and then flounder backwards. It was time to act. He pulled out his rifle from his belt, lay it on the ground and then drew his curved-blade Buffalo Skinner hunting knife from its sheath. He started cutting the sotol brush, not bothering with the tough base stalks, but choosing branches that were little more than the thickness of his thumb at the base.

  He hacked and slashed and had a pile he couldn’t reach over with upstretched arms in minutes. He sheathed the knife, swiftly jammed the dry branches in crisscross pattern so that the pile was all interlocked and formed a crude sphere. Then he pushed it to the edge directly above the cabin and struck a vesta.

  Sotol is one of the most inflammable of bushes in the West. The flame of the vesta touched only one area and in seconds the whole huge ball was a blazing mass. Nash picked up a dead sapling he had noticed earlier, swiftly shaking off a centipede that ran across the back of his hand and pushed the flaming ball to the rim. He poked and prodded as the heat smashed at him and then, just as his eyebrows singed, the blazing mass rolled off the canyon rim and plummeted down towards the cabin below.

  He looked over the edge coughing in the trail of smoke. Showers of sparks rained down into the canyon. Smaller branches broke off and wavered downwards. But the main mass plummeted with a roaring whoosh and left a trail like a meteor plunging out of the skies.

  It smashed into the shingle roof of the cabin and burst apart like a bomb. The majority of it stayed on the flat roof and burned fiercely. Some dangled over the edge and this made the split-wood shingles catch fire the faster. In thirty seconds, the cabin was a mass of flames, the roof blazing, fire leaping yards up the cliff face.

  The posse held its fire. Nash got his rifle, lay prone and waited, out of the line of rolling smoke, although some sparks rained down in front of him.

  Then the first outlaw broke out and made his run for the corrals. He didn’t make ten feet before the posse cut him down in mid-tracks. But then three others burst out, back to back, guns blazing before they even cleared the door. They fought their way across the yard and Nash nailed one man even as he reached the corrals and made a dive for the rails. The other two weren’t anywhere near the horses when they went down under a hail of lead.

  During the fracas, a fifth man dived out a side window and made a run for some rocks. Nash worked his rifle lever, beaded the man from above and brought him down with a single shot. The roiling smoke had hidden the man’s flight from the posse. He went down spinning and rolling and brought up short against the rocks.

  There didn’t seem to be any sign of a sixth man. Nash waited. The posse waited. The cabin blazed up fiercely. The heat spiral was so intense Nash couldn’t look over the edge. It blew off his hat, forced him to squint. He thought there was a vague movement behind the cabin, between the log wall and the cliff. He couldn’t be sure, but he threw the rifle to his shoulder and poured down three fast shots. He thought he heard a yell, but there was so much noise from the roaring flames and collapsing, blazing timbers that he couldn’t be sure.

  In any case, the posse was moving in now, rifles at the ready. Nash figured he could climb back down and he found a trail of sorts that allowed him to skid and slide down to the canyon floor again. By that time, the cabin had been reduced to an oblong of charred, smoldering timbers, some flames still leaping in a dozen places. To all effects, the cabin had been destroyed.

  The posse men were examining the bodies of the outlaws.

  “We got us two still breathin’,” McGinnis said, panting some, wiping sweat and soot from his face. He smiled at Nash. “Man, that was some helluva strategy! They come a’bustin’ out an’ we hit ’em like shootin’ fish in a barrel!”

  “Moss Dooley amongst ’em?” Nash asked, his voice raspy from the smoke, throat raw, eyes stinging.

  McGinnis’ face straightened. He shook his head. “Not so far. Guess mebbe he’s still in there.” He gestured to the remains of the blazing cabin.

  Nash said nothing. He ran to what had been the rear of the cabin where he thought he had spotted a movement between the log walls and the cliff. By searching through the still hot and burning timbers, he found a small tunnel, no more than eight feet long, coming from inside the cabin and going under the rear wall to emerge in the narrow space between the logs and the cliff.

  His mouth set in a hard line. Seemed like Moss Dooley had had his own little escape route all planned and, while his men made their desperate run out front and kept the posse busy, he slipped out this small tunnel and went—where?

  Nash found the escape path all right. There was an overhang in the cliff face. Dooley must have run bent double, along here, and then swung around a corner, pushed through a pile of brush and come out into a hidden clearing. There was sign that a horse had been tethered here. Judging by the piles of dung, it had been kept here for some time, in readiness for a getaway.

  But what interested Nash most was that there were spots of blood all the way from behind the cabin to where the sign showed that the outlaw had swung into the saddle of his getaway mount. Moss Dooley was toting lead in him and bleeding like a stuck hog.

  Four – Accused

  The two outlaws who still lived were Poley Schreck and Munsden. Both had bad wounds and needed expert medical attention.

  All they got from the posse was some rough handling and the crudest treatment of their bleeding wounds. Nash walked back and told McGinnis about what he had found, and then he strolled over to where Poley Schreck was laid out with his legs under the corral rails. He had been shot in the chest and the back and looked pale and waxy. It was obvious he wouldn’t last long. Munsden was halfway between the house and the corrals and Nash recognized him as the first man to bust out of the blazing cabin.

  The Wells Fargo man knelt on one knee beside Schreck, leaning on his Winchester. The outlaw looked up at him with glazing eyes, his breath rattling harshly in the back of his throat.

  “Dooley ran out on you, mister,” Nash told him, He gestured to the smoking remains of the cabin. “Had himself a little tunnel under the back wall, a saddled horse in a hidden clearing. Left you hombres to keep the posse busy while he slipped away.”

  Poley Schreck looked surprised, his eyes widening. His blood-flecked mouth curled some in disbelief. He rolled his head in a negative shake.

  “Gospel, Poley,” McGinnis said, backing Nash. “He quit. Likely took the money with him.”

  “The whole fifty thousand,” Nash said, a little tensely.

  Schreck had been curling his lips derisively, but now his pain-eroded face straightened abruptly and he blinked at Nash. There was no doubt that the surprise was genuine and Nash felt his hopes sink.

  “F-f-f-fif ...?” stammered Sc
hreck. He coughed, shook his head. “Loco!”

  “You tell me how much then,” Nash said tightly.

  Schreck took his time. “Mebbe—five—mebbe—less... All he—had on—him ...”

  McGinnis and Nash exchanged glances.

  “All who had on him?”

  “Ritchie!” Schreck almost yelled, convulsing with a spasm of pain. “Cattle—buyer—w-w-we heard he—he was on the—stage ... An’...”

  He went into a fit of coughing from which he never recovered. The coughing abruptly stopped and his body sagged and he was dead.

  Nash stood up slowly, thumbing back his hat, mouth tight as he stared down at the dead outlaw. Without a word, he walked across to where Curly Lipscombe was working over Munsden.

  “How’s he?” Nash asked, kneeling, seeing the blood on Munsden’s chest. One arm was shattered by a bullet just below the shoulder. He had a crease across his neck that was bleeding profusely.

  “He might make it if he gets to a sawbones,” Curly told Nash, dabbing at the neck wound with a kerchief.

  Nash looked down into Munsden’s grayish face.

  “Hear that, mister? You got a chance. Depends on how fast we can get you to a sawbones.”

  Munsden nodded jerkily, his eyes pleading.

  “Not so fast,” Nash said. “We need information first. You gonna help us?”

  Munsden started to rise, but sagged back, eyes starting out of his head. “D-dyin’...!” he protested, his voice a screech.

  Nash nodded casually. “Yeah. Unless we get you to a sawbones pronto. So, sooner you help us, sooner we can help you. Savvy?”

  Munsden stared at Nash in disbelief. McGinnis shuffled his feet a mite uneasily.

  “Listen, Nash, mebbe we better get him into town. We can question him after Doc patches him up.”

  Nash shook his head, not taking his cold eyes off the wounded man’s face.

  “He’ll be more inclined to talk here.”

  “Hell, I don’t hold with this kind of deal!” the sheriff protested. “I mean, a dyin’ man ...”

  “Go for a walk, sheriff,” Nash said and gave his attention to Munsden again. “Well, mister?”

  The outlaw looked past Nash to the sheriff, but McGinnis was turning away in disgust. Curly Lipscombe kept his face carefully blank. Other posse members were digging a communal grave for the dead outlaws. Munsden looked terrified as he swung his gaze back to Nash.

  “Why’d you hit that Spanish Creek stage?” the Wells Fargo man snapped.

  “Uh—Case Ritchie ... We got word he’d picked up five thousand in cash at the Sesame Ridge bank an’ was—carryin’ it on a—money belt ...” Munsden answered, the words tumbling from him, obviously wanting to get this over and done with.

  Nash sat back on his heels, looking thoughtful. “Case Ritchie. The cattle-agent?”

  Munsden nodded vigorously, moaning at a surge of pain.

  “We got a tip-off from a—a bank clerk who’s a—a friend of Dooley’s ...”

  “That was all you were after? Ritchie’s money belt?”

  Munsden frowned, realizing Nash wanted to know more than he could tell him.

  “Well, we cleaned out the pockets of those fellers we could find ...”

  “Anyone go near the stage wreck?” cut in Nash, “Dooley, for instance?”

  Munsden frowned. “Well—yeah, guess he did look it over, after we dragged Ritchie out from under. Me an’ Tim Kelly got the money belt off him an’—yeah! Dooley was lookin’ round ... Why?”

  Nash slowly got to his feet. It was possible Dooley had come across the burst-open secret compartment under the driver’s seat and seen the money inside, although it had been in leather satchels and wasn’t likely to have been strewn round. Still, the fact that anything in a satchel had been hidden under the seat would rouse his curiosity ...

  But he couldn’t have gotten those satchels—there were four of them—out from the compartment and past his men without their seeing.

  And Nash was willing to bet his life that Poley Schreck’s surprise when he had mentioned the fifty thousand dollars had been genuine ...

  Nash turned back to Munsden suddenly. “Then I’d say Dooley got away with the whole fifty thousand dollars when he ran out on you and the others just now.”

  Munsden closed his eyes, recoiled a little as if he had been struck in the face, opened his eyes again and frowned deeply as he stared back at Nash and slowly shook his head.

  “I swear—I swear I dunno what in hell you’re talkin’ about, Nash! If you’re tryin’ to fit me with some other robbery, forget it. We ain’t pulled a job in months—this was the first big one since winter. Ritchie, the cattle-agent, was the hombre we was after ... We’d been told he was gonna ride down alone, but he must’ve changed his mind and grabbed the stage. Otherwise we wouldn’t’ve hit your goddamn stagecoach! You think we wanted to go up agin’ Wells Fargo for a few hundred bucks? Which was all the share we’d’ve gotten out of Ritchie’s belt, not even a thousand a piece. You figure we wanted to risk our necks for that? But we had no choice. Ritchie grabbed the stage an’ so, if we wanted his cash, we had to stop it. We took all we could, including the strongbox, but there weren’t much in that... Sure no fifty thousand, Nash. An’ that’s—gospel.” He half-rose on one elbow. “You figure I’d hold anythin’ back now? At this stage? Man, I want to—to get in to that sawbones quick as I can an’...”

  Nash walked away and was aware of the hard glare McGinnis was giving him. Then the sheriff turned to Curly Lipscombe.

  “Get that man comfortable for the ride back to Spanish Creek and get him to medical attention soon as you can.”

  He swung away after Nash, caught up with him as the Wells Fargo man stood looking at the smoldering cabin wreckage.

  “You’re sure a hard sonuver, Nash! That man could die!”

  Nash looked coldly at the sheriff. “Now, or later on the end of a rope after his trial, what’s it matter to him?”

  McGinnis flushed, “Matters to me, to see a wounded man treated like that!”

  Nash stared at him for a spell. “Someone got that fifty thousand, and it doesn’t seem as if it was Moss Dooley or any of his bunch.”

  The sheriff frowned. “What’re you sayin’ now?”

  “Nothin’,” Nash replied and turned away. “Let’s saddle-up and head back to Spanish Creek.”

  “Not goin’ after Dooley?”

  “Plain enough he had his escape long-planned. He’ll be a long ways from here by now. We’d spend a week lookin’ for him in here and never find him. But he’s bleedin’ bad. My guess is he’ll have to light someplace for help. That’s when we’ll move in.”

  “And if he’s got your fifty thousand, meantime he’ll stash it someplace.”

  Nash looked at the sheriff steadily. “Oh, whoever’s got it has stashed it already. There were four bulging leather satchels. Hard to conceal, get past folks without them bein’ noticed. Dooley’s men claim they never saw him with them. Whether he had time to hide them or not at Hangman’s Spur, I dunno, but if he did find ’em in that wreckage, he didn’t tote ’em out of there.” He paused and added, “And, of course, when we found Cassidy, he didn’t have any such thing with him, either.”

  McGinnis looked startled at what Nash was implying, but the Wells Fargo man was already moving back towards the rocks where he had left his mount. The sheriff scrubbed a hand around his jowls and tugged thoughtfully at his ragged moustache.

  Jim Hume, Wells Fargo’s Chief of Detectives, was waiting in Spanish Creek when Nash and the posse returned. Munsden was taken to the doctor’s right away. He had deteriorated on the rough trail back from the hidden canyon. He died later that night, still denying that he knew anything about the fifty thousand dollars that had been hidden beneath the stagecoach driver’s seat.

  Matt Cassidy had a blank look on his face when Nash looked in on him again. He recognized the Wells Fargo agent, but claimed to have only a vague recollection of the robbery. Nash wo
uld ask him something and Cassidy would look blank, usually saying:

  “Well, if that’s what I told you when you first found me, Mr. Nash, then I guess that’s what happened.”

  “What was under the driver’s seat?” Nash asked suddenly.

  Cassidy gave him a blank look that stayed on his face for a long time, and then his face lit up.

  “Hell, I know! My rifle and spare boxes of ammo! I dumped the shotgun and grabbed the rifle, figurin’ I could defend us better that way ...”

  He trailed off when he saw Nash’s face.

  “Oh. That ain’t what you wanted to hear?”

  “It’s okay, Matt. Take it easy,” Nash said and went out. He went over to the doctor. “Doc, he seemed clear enough about that robbery when we picked him up. Now he’s hazy as a hungover Injun. You go along with that?”

  The medic was a crusty old fellow in his sixties, overweight, overworked, underpaid, and given to tippling. It is possible he took exception to Nash’s reference to ‘hungover Injuns’ for there was a touch of Indian blood in the doctor’s veins, evident only in a certain swarthiness and an aquiline nose. But he glared over his half-moon spectacles at the Wells Fargo man.

  “Go along with it?” he thundered. “Go along? Are you askin’ me, mister, if that young hombre’s fakin’?”

  “I guess I am, Doc.”

  “Then the answer is no! Far as I can see, he’s acting perfectly natural for a man in his condition with such a bad concussion. Truth is, it’s lucky he can even recall his own name. He took one helluva bump on the head, mister, and I believe, in the execution of his duty. I think that’s somethin’ you ought to take into consideration instead of harassin’ my patient the way you are! And he doesn’t move from his bed till I give my say-so!”

  Nash was a mite surprised at the medic’s reaction but merely nodded and asked, “Will he regain his full memory?”

  “How the hell would I know? With the facilities I have—or don’t have—it’s lucky he’s alive at all. I couldn’t save that other man you brought in ... You’re a man who seems to have a lot of death around him, Nash.”