Clay Nash 17

by Brett Waring

  Six – Dooley

  Well, Nash figured, he was finished with Lang Jarvess now, that seemed sure. There was no friendship remaining.

  He dropped wearily onto his bed in the dingy hotel room and tugged at a tooth that felt loose in his swollen jaw. He couldn’t decide if it was loose or not, decided not to worry about it unless it gave him undue pain. He took out tobacco and papers and began to build a cigarette.

  Whatever friendship there had been between himself and Lang Jarvess was now over. When the depot manager had come round, he wouldn’t shake hands or even speak civilly to Nash. He had been beaten, in front of his own staff, and that galled him, filled his craw with gravel. The staff were already worried sick over what he would do to them. Nash had never seen such a subjugated lot.

  Jarvess had merely told Nash to get out, but Nash had insisted that he be allowed to go over the Company records pertaining to the shipment of the money and Jarvess had been unable to find reason enough for refusing this request. But he had left the office and hadn’t returned while Nash was there.

  Cutler had been involved in the arrangements, but, when Nash had questioned him, the trembling man swore he had told no one about the fifty thousand dollars.

  “That was one thing I made a point of not mentioning, Mr. Nash,” he said emphatically. “The very thing I was so careful to keep to myself.”

  Nash had told the man to calm down, that he believed him; this questioning was merely routine.

  He questioned the others and was tolerably certain that there had not been any leakage about the money from the office clerks.

  Now, back in his hotel room, he began to write out a wire to send down to Hume in Spanish Creek, suggesting that he return and take up the investigation again from that end.

  Nash walked down to the telegraph office attached to the Wells Fargo Depot, but saw no sign of Jarvess. After sending the message, he went to a cafe for a meal, then to the saloon for a couple of whiskies. He smoked a cigarette on the saloon porch, watching night settle over the town, then, on his way back to the hotel room, stopped off at the telegraph office to see if there was a reply from Hume.

  There was. Hume agreed that he should return to Spanish Creek, but wanted him to bring copies of all arrangements made for the shipping of the fifty thousand and the names of all the clerks involved and their statements. Nash had anticipated that and had asked Cutler to make copies for him.

  The man was still working on the papers in his office when Nash looked in. Cutler jumped almost out of his chair when the door opened.

  “Hey, take it easy, man! You keep jumpin’ thataway, you’ll give yourself a heart attack!”

  “I—I thought it was Mr. Jarvess come back for—something,” Cutler said. “He—he’s annoyed that you gave me this job to do, Mr. Nash.”

  “You leave him to me. That order came direct from Jim Hume and here’s the message itself.” He handed Cutler the telegram form. “You show that to Jarvess if he complains.”

  Cutler’s hand trembled violently as he took the message. Nash had never seen anyone so nervous. By quiet questioning, he learned that Cutler had an ailing wife and a frail child. He was terrified of losing his job—and Jarvess had recognized this fear and taken advantage of it.

  Nash handed Cutler a gold twenty dollar piece and the man stared with his mouth sagging. “Wh-what’s this for, sir?”

  “Overtime,” Nash told him with a wink.

  “Oh, but, Mr. Nash, I couldn’t take all that money! It’s more than I earn in a week ...”

  “Special bonus. A personal one from me. Now don’t refuse it, Cutler, or I’ll be mighty offended.”

  Cutler looked down at the large gleaming coin in his quivering palm and then gave Nash a faint, crooked smile.

  “Thank you, Mr. Nash. I—I won’t forget this kindness.”

  Nash waved to the papers Cutler had been working on. “You earned it. Now pack up and go on home to your wife. And thanks again for staying back.”

  Nash waited for Cutler and walked downstairs with him. They went their separate ways on the loading platform, Cutler hurrying towards his rented shack on the outskirts of town, Nash making for his hotel room.

  Halfway along the block, as he crossed an alley mouth, the papers now tucked inside his shirtfront, a gun crashed and a bullet ripped his hat from his head.

  Nash reacted instinctively, dropping to the street and rolling away from the alley mouth, twisting in mid-air so that he was facing the alley even as he palmed up his six-gun. The ambusher’s gun blasted again and Nash triggered at the gun flash. It was towards the far end of the alley, coming from behind a pile of crates. He heard his lead shatter through the flimsy woodwork, but had no idea where the killer’s lead went.

  He heard running boots and thrust to his feet, pounding down the alley as folk spilled out into the night streets, roused by the gunfire. Nash caught a glimpse of a shadow dashing around a corner. He fired. His bullet whined off a building wall. He skidded around the corner, and a gun blasted almost in his face.

  The powder flash scorched his cheek and he reared back with a violent jerk, almost as if he had been hit. In the instant before the gun had gone off in his face, deafening him momentarily, he had been sure he could still hear the killer running away. Obviously he had been wrong and he had acted like a rank amateur, charging blindly around the corner that way. He was lucky he was still alive ...

  These thoughts flashed through his mind even as he was stumbling backwards and going down as his heel caught on some trash in the alley. He saw the killer step out, gun coming up for the killing shot.

  Nash spun onto his belly, dragging his Colt around through the dust, the barrel arcing up and jarring with the smash of the shot. The first, hasty shot chewed splinters from the edge of the building beside the killer and the man screamed as he reared back, slivers of wood protruding from his contorted face. It threw off his own aim and his gun fired high. As he started to bring it down and around again, Nash lunged to one knee, beaded swiftly and thumbed his hammer twice in two very fast shots, so close together they sounded almost as one.

  At that range he couldn’t miss. The lead struck with the force of a mule kick. The man jerked violently, slammed back off his feet. His arms flailed. He hit a stack of crates, spread-eagled, and that was the way he went down, timber splintering, crates tumbling on top of his body. His legs jerked a little, but that was all.

  Nash stood, went forward and kicked the dropped six-gun away, used his left hand to heave broken crates aside, Colt hammer thumbed back to full cock in his right hand, pointing at the ambusher. He could hear the man’s ragged, harsh, gulping breathing and knew he was still alive.

  Just how close to death the man was he didn’t know until he had heaved aside the last crate and someone ran up with a lantern, held it high. The light washed over the killer. His chest was smashed in by Nash’s lead. Blood bubbled bright pink on his lips and a dark stream flowed sluggishly from the lower corner of his partly open mouth. The eyes were open, pain-filled, glazing, not focused.

  Nash turned his face uppermost so that he could see. He swore softly.

  “Hell, it’s Buzz Belden,” the man with the lantern said. “Does a few odd-jobs around town. Hard case generally. They say he rolls drunks ... I’ve heard he used to hire out his gun, but he’s never used it around here before tonight ...”

  Nash was kneeling beside Belden now. “Old score to settle,” he said quietly. “I killed his father in a shoot-out when he tried to hold up a Wells Fargo stage. Buzz swore he’d nail me one day.”

  “I guess today was the day he made his try,” the townsman said, and then a man with a star pushed through the crowd. It was the local sheriff and he recognized Nash, nodded slowly and put away the gun he had been holding.

  As he squatted beside Belden he thumbed back his hat and shook his head slowly. “Ain’t worth wakin’ the sawbones, I’d say. You have any scores to settle with Buzz, Nash?”

  “One. He nearly go
t me, too. I’ll have a powder burn on my face for a spell.”

  “Well, Buzz Belden’s no loss, so don’t lose any sleep over it. Fact is, I warned him out of town only yest’y. I’d heard rumors he’d been runnin’ with Dooley’s bunch and told him to git. Thought he’d vamoosed.”

  “Dooley’s bunch?” Nash echoed. He turned back to the fatally wounded man, gripped his bloody chin and shook him a little. “Buzz … Buzz Belden. It’s Nash. You never even touched me, but you’re for the long drop. No use my sayin’ different.”

  Belden stirred a little and tried to focus his eyes. His blood-flecked lips moved silently.

  “Moss Dooley,” Nash said. “Know where I can find him? ... C’mon, Buzz. No use you holdin’ out now, amigo. You’ve only got a few minutes.”

  Belden stared at him in the lantern light and then closed his eyes, his head lolling to one side. Nash sighed, lips tightening in regret and then Belden said one word, harshly, almost unintelligible ...

  “M-m-morrrnn’sss ...” The word faded into a series of guttural grunts and then the man’s whole body slumped and he was dead.

  Nash, frowning, turned to the sheriff. “You catch it?”

  The lawman shrugged. “Sounded like ‘Morn’s’ ... I dunno.”

  Nash nodded, turned to the man holding the lantern.

  “How’d you read it?”

  The man shrugged, a little surprised at being drawn into the conversation. “Uh—I reckon he could’ve meant mebbe ‘Moran’s Landing’, Sheriff.”

  “By hell, you could be right, Link!” the sheriff said, clicking his fingers and looking at Nash. “Moran’s Landing. Out on Spanish Creek, ten miles down from Hangman’s Spur. Lots of timber and rocks, close to the foothills and canyons. Moran runs a shanty saloon there. We know damn well he puts up men on the run long as they can pay, but we’ve never been able to catch him at it. If Dooley was wounded after that shoot-out in the hills, he just might make for there to rest up. Moran’s Indian wife has taken the bullet out of many an owlhoot.”

  Nash nodded. “Thanks, gents,” he said, reloading his gun. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Want me to come along?” the lawman asked.

  Nash shook his head. “No. I’ll work it better alone. They won’t know me.” He handed the sheriff a ten dollar piece and gestured to the dead outlaw. “See he gets a decent burial. There’re a lot worse than Buzz Belden around.” Then he pushed another coin into the shirt pocket of the man holding the lantern, winked at him, and faded through the crowd in the alley into the night.

  As soon as he found Moran’s Landing, Nash saw how it would be a favored stop-over for men on the dodge.

  It was in a perfect position. Backing up into timber, a river ford in front, with deepwater and a landing a few yards upstream where a couple of punts were moored. The timber rose into foothills that dwindled away into a series of tortuous canyons and arroyos, knifing deep into the heart of unknown territory.

  He had ridden for two days and let his stubble grow. He hadn’t changed his clothes since leaving Sesame Ridge and they looked suitably trail-stained and stank of sweat and horses and wood smoke like clothes should on a man who kept to the wild trails. The hired horse had no real distinguishing brands: he had changed hands so often and been traded around so that folk had simply given up venting the old brands to change to new ones. His flanks were a mass of scar tissue and if anyone wanted to look for a particular brand amongst that jumble he had better be prepared to spend a couple of hours doing it.

  Nash swung around the ridge in a long arc and when he rode down towards the ramshackle shanty-saloon of Moran, he came in from a direction a man on the run would use. He didn’t ride up directly: he came in in a series of short bursts, dashing from tree clump to tree clump to pile of rocks. He spent some time in a stand of timber, watching carefully, before he finally rode in and looped his horse’s reins loosely over the end of the hitch rail where they could be slapped away in a hurry. Nash looked around him, hand on gun butt, eyes going to the river and a few horses in a crude corral over to one side.

  Then he stepped up onto the porch, hand still on gun butt, treading carefully so as to dodge any loose boards, and stopped to look over the tops of the battered batwings. The room beyond was dim, resembled almost any wayside inn or town saloon bar for the matter of that. But the counter was a couple of planks supported by empty beer kegs. The booze came from a series of casks and unlabelled stone jugs on a deal wood bench behind the bar, where a broken-nosed man wearing a filthy flour sack apron stood, leaning on the planks with both big, broken-knuckled hands.

  There was a big Colt Peacemaker holstered on a belt that snaked under his ample belly, the holster on the left hip, gun butt forward. He was chewing on a half-smoked cigar, one eye squinting up against the smoke. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

  “C’mon in,” the big man invited Nash. “You been pussy-footin’ around out there long enough. Makin’ me nervous.”

  Nash stepped through the batwings, moving swiftly to one side, getting a wall at this back, eyes darting into the deeper shadows of the room’s corners. The man behind the bar smiled crookedly, knowingly.

  “You Moran?” Nash asked, eyes still darting around the big, low-ceilinged room.

  “I’m Moran. Name your poison, stranger.”

  For the first time Nash looked directly at the man.

  “Nothin’ to drink. I don’t have cash to spare.”

  Moran’s face straightened some. “Then I’d say it ain’t much use you hangin’ round these parts, amigo. Cash on the barrelhead’s the way I do business. If you’re broke—light a shuck.”

  “I didn’t say I was broke. Just said I didn’t have any extra to throw around. I heard you might let a man—stick around for a spell. If he had to—rest-up a while.”

  Moran worked the cigar across his mouth. “Yeah? Where you hear that?”

  “North. In the Superstition Hills, matter of fact.”

  “Ain’t that innerestin’? Superstitions must stretch for what? Hunnerd miles? More ...?”

  Nash smiled faintly. “At Williwaw, then. Man name of Smitty told me.”

  Moran scowled. “Smitty? I dunno no Smitty.”

  Nash shrugged. “Dunno that he knows you. He heard it from someplace else. That if a man needed somewheres to lay low, you was the man to see around these here parts. Provided a man could pay his way.”

  Moran’s eyes narrowed. “He’d sure have to be able to do that. You sayin’ you can?”

  “If it ain’t too steep.”

  The man was silent a long time, finally spat out the cigar into the tub of scummy water he used for washing his glasses. As it hissed out he picked a fleck of tobacco off his lower lip.

  “How long were you figurin’ on—stayin’?”

  Nash shrugged. “How long’ll two hundred bucks give me?”

  He saw Moran’s eyes glint greedily at mention of the money. “Cash money? I mean, gold or silver, not paper stuff.”

  “Cash money,” Nash assured him.

  Moran ran his eyes over Nash, shrewdly assessing the man.

  “What ails you, amigo?”

  “Huh?” Nash played it dumb.

  The other made an impatient gesture. “What’s ridin’ your tail? Sheriff? Kin of someone you gunned down? Rangers? Federal Marshal ...?”

  “Wells Fargo,” Nash said, muttering the words and looking around swiftly. “Tucson stage got hit. Passenger stepped in the way of a bullet. Damn guard claims it was mine. But he did it, not lookin’ where he was shootin’.”

  “Sure,” Moran smiled thinly. He rubbed at his jowls. “Well, in that case, I reckon the two hunnerd’ll buy you a room here, a nice quiet room, for—say a week?”

  “Say two and that includes grub!”

  Moran scoffed. “This ain’t no hotel, mister. I make the rates and you pay or move along. I don’t deal.”

  “You’ll deal with me,” Nash said and the man stiffened, moved his right hand a little c
loser to his belly, ready to streak for the forward-facing gun butt.

  “Says who?”

  Nash walked forward slowly, hand riding his own gun butt. He stopped across the bar from Moran and looked the man straight in the eye.

  “You didn’t charge Moss Dooley that much and he was wounded,” he said abruptly, hoping to catch the greedy Moran off-guard while the man was concentrating on how much he could milk Nash for: it was the time a man like this could get careless with his talk.

  And Moran fell for it.

  His mouth twisted. “Dooley paid a lot more than two hundred, mister, so whoever told you that was talkin’ through his hat!”

  Nash smiled crookedly. “I’d like to ask Dooley about that myself.”

  It was too much. Moran wouldn’t be caught a second time with his guard down. He stepped back suddenly, right hand moving with astonishing speed across his belly towards his gun butt. At the same time he yelled, brought up his right leg and kicked over the crude counter.

  “Dooley!”

  Nash jumped back and hesitated momentarily with his draw. Moran had his gun out and blazing and Nash spun away as lead burned across his upper left arm. The Wells Fargo man kicked planks off his legs as he fell, his own gun coming up and blasting as Moran got off his second shot. The bullet thudded into the floor near Nash’s head and he rolled onto his belly, elbows planted firm as he brought his gun up and lined it on Moran when the big man lunged for a side door.

  Moran turned to snap a shot back at Nash and the Wells Fargo man’s gun hammered once. The bullet caught Moran high in the chest and he went backwards through the partly open door, his body smashing it all the way open, dragging it off one hinge.

  Nash caught a glimpse of a man out there running from the direction of a root cellar that had its door swinging, lunging for the corrals. The Wells Fargo man leapt over Moran’s sagging body and skidded out into the yard.

  Moss Dooley had a sawn-off shotgun and was shirtless, his upper torso crisscrossed with stained and grubby bandages. He spun to fire and Nash dived for the shelter of the outhouse. The shotgun thundered. The outhouse trembled and the door fell off. Nash rolled in a somersault, biting back the pain that knifed through his bleeding arm, came up on one knee with the Colt in both hands.