Clay Nash 20

by Brett Waring

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  A mysterious gang of cutthroats hit the Wells Fargo way-station at the Pueblo River Crossing and stole a valuable cargo before vanishing back into the night. That was bad enough. But among the dead men they left behind them was an old friend of Clay Nash … and for Clay, Wells Fargo’s top operative, that made it personal.

  But the stolen shipment had belonged to the Army, so retrieving it and dealing with the outlaws was deemed to be Army business. Clay was told to keep his nose out of it.

  Anyone who knew him knew he’d take no notice of that. He felt obligated to settle things with the men who’d murdered his friend, so working freelance, he tracked them right into the heart of Indian Territory to bring justice to that lawless land.

  Trouble was, Clay Nash himself was being tracked as well, all the way to a mystery destination known only as Shiloh …

  CLAY NASH 20: NOON AT SHILOH

  By Brett Waring

  First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd

  Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  First Digital Edition: February 2020

  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 – Pueblo River Crossing

  In the west part of Texas, most of the Wells Fargo way stations were adobe structures. Adobe promoted coolness and was protection against the chubasco wind, the blistering blast that burned up out of Mexico; and the thick walls offered good barricades against occasional marauding bands of renegade Apaches which still terrorized the country from time to time.

  The gates, of heavy weathered timber, swung on hand-hammered wrought-iron hinges and had two solid hickory drop bars in the slots. There was a low tower in the building that served two purposes; as a lookout perch and for making lead shot, the molten metal being dropped from the top and cooling into spherical globules by the time it reached the wooden vat dug into the ground below.

  Shutters were dropped over the windows and there was a line of embrasures atop the walls. The places were solid, most having been built originally as forts by the Spanish when Texas belonged to Mexico. Wells Fargo had taken them over, confident they would offer the best in protection for its passengers and valuable freight.

  One such way station had been built on a rise just above the Pueblo River Crossing. If there had been a lookout in the tower this summer night who took his job seriously enough to stay awake instead of dozing off in a corner with a smuggled-in flask of tequila, the raiders might not have gotten close enough to do any more damage than pock the thick walls with a few bullets.

  And if there hadn’t been a traitor inside the station, they would never have gotten past the big gates.

  The horsemen came across the Pueblo River shallows and hardly paused as they rode straight up the rise and through the widening gap in the gates as they were swung open. There were six of them; the traitor, a half-breed who would sell his mother for a gold peso, grunted in surprise as the leader leaned from his saddle and swept his broad-bladed Bowie knife in a murderous arc, the edge severing the breed’s jugular vein.

  As the breed thrashed out his life, the raiders dispersed in a planned pattern. One man made for the lookout tower, entered it and began climbing the ladder fixed to the inside of the wall. Two more men, bandanna masks covering the lower halves of their faces, six-shooters in their hands, made for the main building where the passengers were housed for the night. Another headed for the stable area where, Indian-fashion, he cut the hamstrings of the horses. Their squealing aroused the guard in the tower. He was just coming out of his drunken daze as the raider’s head and shoulders appeared through the trapdoor. He brought his rifle around and triggered, one-handed. It was a lucky shot that took the raider through the middle of the face. The man got out one strangled scream and then fell to the ground. The guard in the tower looked down and saw the other raiders going about their business.

  The leader, astride a jet-black horse, was a wide-shouldered man wearing a concha-studded hatband. He lifted a sawn-off shotgun and cut loose with both barrels. Adobe erupted from the guard’s embrasure in a white cloud and the charge of shot blew the man’s head off.

  Now, with gunfire arousing everyone in the way station, there was no need for further stealth. The raiders let out wild yells and shot at everything that moved, the roar of their guns drowning out the agonized screams of the horses. The leader slung his sawn-off shotgun on his saddlehorn, brought out a bundle of dynamite from a saddlebag and spurred his horse towards the old building.

  As he rode in he fumbled out a match, reined down, snapped the match into flame on his thumbnail and touched it to the fuse. He dropped the dynamite at the base of the storehouse door and yelled for his men to scatter.

  Now there was ragged gunfire coming at the outlaws. They returned it in deadly volleys. Then the night was torn apart by the explosion of the dynamite and splintering timber and crushed adobe.

  The raiders rode through the fog of dust towards the storeroom as the agent appeared on the porch, bringing a shotgun to his shoulder. The outlaw leader calmly shot him with his six-gun, pumping three bullets into his body.

  A woman screamed and ran to crouch by the dead agent. The leader shot her, then hipped around in the saddle to roar orders to his men who were moving into the storeroom. A window shattered as a passenger smashed window panes with a rifle barrel and shot at the mounted leader. Lead burned past his face close enough to tug at his masking bandanna. He ducked and spurred away, spinning his mount back and riding it onto the porch. He ran the horse along the boards and triggered the last two shots from his Colt through the broken window into the rifleman.

  He jumped the horse down into the yard, reloaded and began shooting into the main building, forcing the defenders to keep their heads down.

  “We got ’em, Brazos!” yelled a man from the storeroom.

  The leader watched as his men staggered out of the storeroom with two oblong boxes and several smaller boxes. He raised his six-gun and triggered four shots. Then, as he reloaded again, a buckboard came rattling through the wide-open gates, one man driving expertly, another cradling a shotgun in his arms. The vehicle sped to the storehouse and skidded to a stop in a boiling dust cloud. The boxes were thrown into the back and someone yelled, “Get goin’!” Almost without pause, the buckboard made its run back to the gates.

  Guns hammered from the main building and Brazos and his men poured lead at the flashes and headed for the gates in the wake of the buckboard.

  Brazos paused long enough to take a second bundle from a saddlebag, light the fuse and toss the dynamite onto the porch.

  They were outside the adobe way station and riding hard down the slope towards the river crossing before the dynamite blew. The shattering explosion sent blocks of adobe and splintered timber hurtling high, jetting flames briefly turning the night into day.

  It had been a much larger bundle than the one used to blow in the storeroom door. By the time the raiders were across the Pueblo River, the way station was burning out of control.

  Brazos tugged down his bandanna, revealing a dirt-smudged, stubbled, wolfish face. He grinned in satisfa
ction, hipped around in the saddle and waved his men on. They surrounded the buckboard and rode into the West Texas night.

  “What the hell do you mean we’re gonna stay right out of it?”

  The clerks working in the outer office of the Wells Fargo depot in Big Springs, closest town to the Pueblo River Crossing, looked up from their ledgers and ticket lists towards the door that led to the inner office. The word “Manager” was emblazoned on the door but they knew their boss was not in his office. His job had been taken over temporarily by James Hume, Chief of Detectives for Wells Fargo, who had rushed down from Denver as soon as word had reached him about the raid on the way station at Pueblo River.

  He had been joined by a tall, wolf-lean, taciturn man with faded straw-colored hair and chill gray eyes who answered to the name of Clay Nash. Nash was a walking legend, a famous detective for the Company, scourge of outlaws and renegades loco enough to think they could get away with stealing from Wells Fargo.

  It was inevitable that a man of Nash’s caliber would be called in on this chore, and it was his deep voice the clerks heard through the door now. The three clerks figured his words had something to do with the wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, hard eyed army officer who was also in the office with Hume and Nash—Captain Joshua McAllister. The captain’s sun-brown face tagged him as a field man, not a desk-bound officer, a man who had done his share of fighting.

  The clerks looked disappointed when the only other words that came through the partly open door were crisply spoken by Jim Hume:

  “Keep your voice down, Clay!”

  Then the conversation in the inner office dropped to incoherent murmuring and two of the clerks went back to their work. The third moved closer to the office, however, ear to the wall.

  Inside the office, Clay Nash, standing tall as he rolled a cigarette by the window, looked across at his boss seated behind the battered desk. Jim Hume was a blocky man, almost as wide as he was tall, giving him a short appearance though he was actually not much under six feet tall. He wore a drooping moustache and his thinning hair was plastered across his scalp. He looked uncomfortable in his starched collar and ribbon tie.

  The army man, McAllister, was about Nash’s age, in his early thirties, and he looked as tough as whipcord. He moved with lithe grace and would be considered handsome by many women, Nash thought, but he could read cruelty in the officer’s face. He had slicked-back black hair, sideburns, and there was the suggestion of beard stubble beneath his swarthy skin. He carried a leather holster on his left hip in the army fashion, the flap buttoned over the forward-facing butt of his service-issue Remington .44. He placed one hand on the holster flap now as he looked at Nash.

  “Surely it’s understandable, Nash?” he asked. “Army property was stolen. We’ve got men investigating, in fact I’m in charge of the detail, and we also have federal marshals on the job. In addition your Texas Rangers are standin’ by to help out, but I don’t think we’ll need ’em.”

  “Do you have a line on the raiders?” Nash asked.

  McAllister’s eyes narrowed a trifle. “Maybe. Why?”

  Nash shrugged, lit his cigarette, and flicked the dead match out the window. “Well, the thing is, Wells Fargo is responsible for those boxes so the Company should be allowed to investigate.”

  Hume held up a hand as he saw anger simmering behind his big operative’s eyes. “Easy, Clay. The captain’s just obeyin’ orders. I don’t like it any better than you do bein’ kept out of this, but we can’t buck the army.”

  McAllister nodded. “You’re talkin’ sense, Mr. Hume. But I think the army made a mistake in the first place givin’ Wells Fargo the job of carryin’ those weapons. If they’d sent ’em out with a full escort we’d have ’em now, and they wouldn’t be in the hands of some renegades who’ll either use ’em to nail my men or sell ’em to the Injuns.”

  “We were contracted to carry them in the interests of secrecy,” Hume said sharply. “I can assure you there’s been no leak at our end. As far as the stage driver and guard knew, those boxes held drive shafts and axles for the stamp mill operating down in Odessa. Someone in the know must’ve let slip what they really contained. And it had to be at your end.”

  McAllister’s face colored at the flat accusation. His lips clamped and then he replied hotly, “All right! There’s one hombre I’ve got in mind who just might’ve let slip about it, or even sold the information. Feller by the name of Buck Tanner. He was dishonorably discharged two weeks before the guns were shipped out, but he could’ve picked up word about the shipment before then.”

  “What’s so special about the guns?” Nash asked. “All I know so far is that two boxes of experimental rifles, their firing pins, and ammunition were stolen at the Wells Fargo way station at Pueblo River Crossing. It was unusual for Wells Fargo to be carryin’ the guns, but other guns have been stolen without all this fuss.”

  Hume exchanged a look with the army captain, obviously passing the buck to McAllister.

  The soldier studied Nash for a long moment before speaking. “All right, Nash. You’ve got a right to know, I guess, and your rep is good enough so I know it won’t go any further. The guns were made by the Chase River Armory here in Texas. They’re Springfields, which have been the Army’s standby since just after the Civil War. We tried Winchester repeaters and a lot of the men actually bought Winchesters out of their own pockets because of their firepower, but they take too long to reload under battle conditions, thumbing in one shell at a time down a tube that takes between seven and eleven. A man fumbles a lot in the heat of a gunfight and drops too many cartridges that are never retrieved. So, with economy in mind as much as the speed of reloading, the army and Chase River got together and came up with this modification of the Springfield Trapdoor single-shot. We call the rifle the Spartan and it works from a rectangular clip that holds ten cartridges. Spring-loaded, it feeds a new shell into the breech and ejects the used one each time the hammer is pulled back to cock it.”

  “You still cock the hammer for every shot?” Nash asked.

  “Sure. The action of it, through linking rods, works the ejector and slides back the plate to allow the next shell in the clip to slide up into the breech, which is cut away to allow this to happen.”

  Nash looked dubious. “Sounds to me like there’s a chance of the breech blowin’ up in your face. Cuttin’ that much out of it had to weaken it unless you’ve cut down on the loads.”

  McAllister shook his head. “No. We’re usin’ ordinary .44-40 caliber. The same cartridge will fit our issue Remingtons, so we’re standardizin’ on ammunition. Reloadin’ will be done in seconds; it only takes removin’ the empty clip and snappin’ in a full one. Each man will be issued with ten clips when on patrol. We figure to increase our firepower a helluva lot. Each man has to bring in his empty clips for reloadin’ after an action. If he loses any clips, the cost is deducted from his pay. They’ll soon learn to be careful with ’em.”

  “Provided the rifle works,” Nash said. Then, as McAllister frowned, he added, “I still figure you’re gonna have trouble with that breech. Cutaways never work well. If they don’t blow up, they get overheated and either jam the shell or set it off. Sharps found that out, and so did Dufor when he made his crazy contraption with an endless chain of cartridges—took a man all his time to tote it around, let alone fire the damn thing and hit what he was shootin’ at.”

  “Well, that doesn’t concern you, Nash,” the captain said stiffly. “As I said, it’s an experimental weapon. The breech may or may not be a weakness. The point is, fifty of the rifles, the only ones produced so far, have been stolen and could be killin’ people soon if we don’t act. I tell you, Nash, I’ve seen these rifles demonstrated. Their firepower is greater than the old Henrys and Winchesters because a man can reload in less than a second. Admittedly, I haven’t seen them operate under battle conditions where there would be sustained shootin’, but I’ve seen enough to know I wouldn’t want any of my men to go up against ’em w
ith only single-shot Trapdoors. If Apaches get their hands on those guns, they’ll wipe out every army patrol we send after them till new guns are manufactured by Chase River.”

  Nash flicked his cigarette stub out the window and turned to face Hume and the Captain. “All right. Seems to me that it’s mighty urgent to get those guns back as soon as possible. Which means you should throw in everything you’ve got, and that includes Wells Fargo. We’re not exactly amateurs, McAllister, and we do have a stake in this.”

  Hume held up a hand at Nash’s hard-edged tone. “I’ve been through all this with the captain and his superiors, Clay. They simply don’t want us mixin’ in it.” Hume’s mouth took on a bitter twist. “Seems to me they think we were incompetent in losin’ the rifles, so they want nothing more to do with us.”

  “Not strictly true, Hume,” McAllister said.

  “Bad advertisement for the Company,” Nash said quietly.

  “Of course it is,” Hume agreed. “But our hands are tied, Clay. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Nash frowned. He didn’t like his—or Wells Fargo’s—competency challenged in this way. He glared at the army man.

  “I reckon there’s a helluva lot we could do, given the chance.”

  McAllister shook his head emphatically. “No, Nash. My orders are to tell Wells Fargo to stay out of this.”

  “Wells Fargo men died in that raid,” Nash pointed out. “The guard in the tower, matter of fact, was a friend of mine, old Jeb Burnley. We shared many a camp together. I don’t aim to let his death go without doin’ somethin’ about it.”

  The captain looked sharply at Hume. “Can’t you get it across to him that he’s to stay out of this?”

  Jim Hume sighed. “It’s official, Clay. We have to go along with it.”

  “Damned if I do!” Nash said, adjusting his flat-crowned hat and pulling the rawhide tight beneath his chin. “I’m gonna try to find out who killed Jeb Burnley.”