The Road Agent

by Clyde Barker

  There was no menace in the question; both of the men had open and good-natured expressions on their faces and as he stared at them, it dawned on Clancy that he knew these two scamps. They were brothers and he had come across them from time to time. The older was called Jake, but he could not offhand recollect the name of the other. However, that did not signify because a moment later the man who had hollered out his name followed it up by shouting, ‘Surely you remember us? Jake and Seb?’

  Seb! That was it. He wondered that he could have forgotten the fellow’s name, for the three of them had once worked together in a crooked poker game and rooked a couple of businessmen of a considerable sum of money. The only question that now needed to be answered was what those two boys were about and why they had been following him. He removed the pistol from where it was tucked negligently in his belt, cocked it with his thumb and rode forward. The cheerful greetings that they began to speak died on their lips when Jake and Seb Booker saw that Clancy was drawing down on them and looked ready to start a deadly contest, should need arise.

  ‘Jesus, man,’ cried Jake, ‘What are you about? Thought we was old friends.’

  ‘Why are you following me? What are you after?’

  ‘That’s soon told,’ said Seb, ‘Only put up your weapon. It makes me nervous to talk under such conditions.’

  It was true that in as far as people in their line of business could be friends, Jake and Seb Booker fell into that category and Clancy had no real cause to suspect the brothers of wishing to harm him. He lowered the hammer carefully and returned the Navy Colt to its usual position about his person. He said, ‘Well then, what’s the game?’

  Both the brothers chuckled in the most good-natured and boyish fashion imaginable. Jake said, ‘We were hoping to take down that stage. Got there just a mite too late. Watched you from the hill. Thought you’d blown your head off when that scattergun fired!’

  ‘I hope you ain’t trying for to cut yourselves in on the spoils?’ said Brent Clancy, ‘I took that stage fair and square.’

  ‘Lord a mercy, Clancy,’ said Seb. ‘You never used to be so mistrustful and that’s a fact. What ails you?’

  The other man’s open demeanour and pained look made Clancy feel momentarily ashamed and he covered this by saying wryly, ‘You boys know how it is. You get so you don’t trust nobody, not even other thieves.’

  This sally elicited a whoop of laughter from the brothers and the tension was immediately dissipated. The three of them dismounted, led their horses into the trees, so that they would all be out of sight of casual travellers or unfriendly, prying eyes, and they sat down to take counsel together. The most remarkable thing about the Booker brothers was that they always seemed to be in a good humour. From the look of them right now, Clancy guessed that they were going through a pretty lean time, but their eyes were still sparkling with mischief and they were as good company as he recollected they had been when their paths had in the past crossed with his.

  ‘Well, what’s to do, lads?’ asked Clancy. ‘If you’re not hoping to steal my pickings from holding up of that stage, why were you so keen to catch me up now?’

  ‘Truth is,’ said Jake Booker, ‘Me and Seb ain’t having the best time of it lately. Damn near got ourselves hanged just last week, when a bunch o’ vigilance men came after us.’

  ‘Hoo boy,’ chipped in Seb, ‘Was that something? I made sure we was going to get our necks stretched. Didn’t get a cent out of the business neither. Robbing a bank in some piss-ant, little berg and a citizen had to intervene.’

  ‘Yeah,’ added Jake, ‘Like it was his money or something. Well anyways, he got shot and we hightailed it out o’ there and next thing they raise a posse to come look for us.’

  Clancy shook his head sympathetically. Much the same thing had befallen him in the past. He said, ‘They still on your track?’

  ‘No, I reckon we’s free of the toils, as it says in scripture.’

  Patiently, Brent Clancy said, ‘Listen you fellows, this is all very interesting and you got my sympathy, but you ain’t yet condescended to tell me why you were in such an all-fired hurry to speak with me today.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jake, ‘Me and Seb, we got a plan. Only thing is, we need another body to help it along. Could make us a mint. You want in?’

  Maggie Hardcastle could scarcely believe her good fortune. The pleasant gentleman who had been so concerned about her having no money and nowhere to stay had taken it upon himself to book her a room in the better of Indian Falls’ two hotels. He was so courteous and deferential to her that Maggie was quite overcome. She was a shrewd soul and could generally sense when a fellow was hoping to take advantage of her, but she had no such apprehension about Mr Delaney. He was all solicitude and good manners.

  After seeing that she was comfortably established in the Metropole, the man who had introduced himself to Maggie as Nathaniel Delaney asked diffidently if she would care to join him for a bite to eat. She was ravenously hungry and had already been wondering where her next meal would be coming from.

  ‘I’ll give you time to freshen up,’ said Delaney, ‘Perhaps if I knocked on your door in a half hour.’ He looked remorseful and said hurriedly, ‘Unless that strikes you as being improper, Miss Hardcastle? I shouldn’t, of course, dream of actually entering a lone lady’s room.’

  Enchanted at such delicacy, especially after the goings on in the hurdy house in which she had been employed, Maggie giggled and replied, ‘Oh, Mr Delaney, I wouldn’t suspect a gentleman like you of improper suggestions! Please do call for me. And I hope that your head isn’t too sore from that blow you took?’

  ‘I had worse than that in the past.’

  About five and twenty minutes after this conversation, there was a discreet tap on the door of Maggie Hardcastle’s room. She opened it and was instantly bowled over as Nathaniel Delaney crashed into the door with his shoulder, causing it to swing open and strike her on the forehead, dazing her. Before she had recovered her senses, the man was in the room, locking the door behind him. His face was transformed; she wondered how her instincts could have played her so false. This was anything but a gentle, kind-natured man in his middle years. His face was that of a killer. It took Maggie only a second to come to this conclusion, but before she was able to scream for help, Delaney was upon her. He clamped his hand over her mouth and from somewhere produced a cravat or scarf. This he used to gag her, forcing open her mouth and then tying the thing behind her head, so that her jaws were held painfully open. The terrified girl expected to be taken advantage of, but instead, Delaney took a length of thin, supple rope from his jacket pocket and bound her hands behind her back.

  Maggie Hardcastle was making frightened mewing noises through the scarf, sounding a little like a trapped animal. Delaney soothed her, saying, ‘Just answer my questions, child, and you’ll not be hurt. Try and fox with me though, and I promise you it’ll go hard with you. You understand me?’

  The girl searched Delaney’s eyes, desperately trying to find some clue that would enable her to figure out the play. More importantly, she wanted to work out if this man was going to free her if she did as asked. Maggie had heard tales of men who enjoyed inflicting pain on helpless young women, sometimes to the point that their victims died. Was the man who held her at his mercy such a one as that? And he had seemed such a gentleman until a minute or so earlier!

  For a slightly built man, there was a good deal of strength in the man calling himself Nathaniel Delaney. He stooped to the carpeted floor and swept up Maggie with as little effort as if she had been a kitten. Having laid her on the bed, he fetched a chair from the dressing table and set it down nearby. Following which he sat down, took out a gunmetal cigar case and carefully selected a cheroot. Being of base metal, Brent Clancy had not been bothered about the cigar case.

  After striking a Lucifer and playing the flame delicately over the tip of his smoke until it glowed red, Delaney inhaled deeply and then expelled the smoke in twin jets from his no
strils. He puffed once more on the cheroot, before taking it from his lips, leaning over to the helpless girl and touching the red-hot tip against her hand. She squealed in pain and terror, but the gag made it unlikely that anybody else in the hotel, even in the corridor without, would have been able to hear a thing.

  ‘I’m going to loosen the scarf, so that you can speak, but before God, if you cry out or scream for help, I’ll burn up your face so bad that your own mother won’t recognize you. Do we understand each other?’

  The girl nodded eagerly. The last thing she had in mind was making this man angry. She wanted only to be freed. There were, she had discovered, worse things in this world than being penniless and alone in a strange town. Seemingly persuaded of her intention to cooperate, the man leaned forward and fiddled with the knot at back of her head. The relief of having her jaws freed from the pressure was exquisite. He gave her a minute to recover and then said quietly, ‘I know that you are acquainted with that young fellow who knocked over the stage today. What’s his name?’

  ‘Clancy.’

  ‘Given name or last name?’

  ‘Last. His Christian name’s Brent.’

  ‘Good. This shouldn’t take much longer. How do you come to know him?’

  Maggie gave a brief account of the circumstances under which she had made Clancy’s acquaintance. The man sitting before her listened carefully and then asked, ‘Mark well, this is the most urgent consideration of all. Where was that boy headed?’

  ‘He said something about the Indian Nations. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to Kansas City or minded to head through the territories. Will you set me free now?’

  ‘All in good time, my precious. Did this fellow mention any special route he would take. Think carefully now.’

  The relief at the prospect of being released made Maggie Hardcastle feel a little faint. She said, ‘All I can recollect is that he mentioned somebody called Abbot.’

  ‘Joe Abbot would that be?’

  ‘He didn’t say. Just said he might drop by Abbot’s place. Can I go now?’

  Delaney said reassuringly, ‘Yes, of course you can. But I’m going to have to put this scarf back before I leave. You see how I’m fixed, if you started hollering as soon as I leave, there might be unpleasantness. Don’t fret though, I’ll send somebody up from the lobby on a pretext and they’ll free you. By then, I’ll be long gone.’

  So it was that Maggie didn’t struggle or resist when the man about whom she had been so cruelly mistaken forced the scarf back into her mouth and tied it up again, although not so tight as before. She had been so scared, but now that the ordeal was over, a little extra discomfort like this meant nothing.

  Once the scarf was securely in place, the man Maggie knew as Nathaniel Delaney wasted no more time. He lunged forward and placed both his powerful hands around the girl’s throat, squeezing with all his strength. At first, Maggie’s face went purple and suffused with blood and she wriggled back and forth, trying to alleviate the pressure, but it was all to no avail. It took a little under five minutes to kill the girl and by the end of the exercise, his hands were aching with cramp.

  Frank Mason stood up and stretched his arms above his head in an effort to ease the pain from gripping the wretched young woman’s neck for so long. Then he walked over to the window and gazed down to the street below. On the whole, he was moderately satisfied with what he had accomplished. He’d a good idea where that whelp was heading with his belongings and there was at least a strong chance anyway that the contents of the vanity case had not interested the robber. Mind, no chances could be taken with the Great Enterprise reaching its climax in just a few days.

  Turning back to the bed, he observed with disgust that in her death throes, that cheap wench’s bladder must have emptied, for there was a large and dark stain all across the counterpane. He lit another cheroot and then left the room.

  Explaining the scheme that he and his brother had dreamed up, Jake Booker sounded to Clancy like some snake oil salesman. As Jake set out the case, the new railroad running through the Indian Nations would be an easy target for robbery. They could halt it at night by the simple expedient of swinging a red lamp as a signal of danger and then loot the passengers at will. Having heard the idea, Brent Clancy reserved judgement, saying merely, ‘Well, I’ll think on it. I’m guessing that you fellows are heading now into the territories, so our paths are like to run side by side for a while, whatever we decide.’

  ‘You got plans of your own, Clancy?’ asked Seb, ‘Or you just drifting, same like usual?’

  ‘Truth to tell, I’m getting kind o’ tired of this way of life,’ said Clancy slowly. He hadn’t spoken to anybody about his feelings on this matter before; he was not in general much of a one for sharing his innermost thoughts with others. He continued, ‘I was already after moving south, so we can keep company for a spell. If you’re going for to hit that railroad, I suppose that you’ll be stopping off at Abbot’s place for vittles?’

  ‘That was the idea, yeah.’

  ‘How would it be then if the three of us rode south into the Indian Nations and then went as far as Abbot’s and saw then how the scheme represented itself to us? I could do with company and three travelling together would make a group such as a lone operator might think twice about molesting or robbing. What do you boys say?’

  It was plain from the look on their faces that the Booker brothers had hoped for something a little more definite than this and that what they really wanted was a firm commitment on Clancy’s part to throw in his lot with them and embark upon what seemed to him, on the face of it, a mad and hazardous endeavour. He had no intention though of making a snap decision on something of that nature. Not only did many railroad trains have armed guards, Pinkerton men and so forth, there was always a risk from passengers who were heeled. No, such a venture would need the most careful consideration.

  Seeking to soften his reluctance to agree at once to join in with the Booker brothers’ plans, Clancy said cheerfully, ‘Well boys, at the very least we’ll get to ride together for a spell and catch up on old times. That’s got to be worth something, hey?’

  The native optimism of the Bookers returned to the fore and they smilingly agreed that catching up with an old friend was something to be valued, no matter how events panned out in the future.

  Chapter 3

  When, on 22 December 1865, Nathan Bedford Forrest, one-time general in the army of the Confederacy, had set out the bare bones of the scheme that would lead to the restoration of Southern Rights, he had left out certain vital details. Those living in the defeated South had had ample evidence of where a previous assassination of a president had led – to the oppressive military regime under which they all currently suffered. Things had been far worse for them after Lincoln’s untimely death than they had been before. What was to hinder another set of assassinations from ending in an even harsher military government of the southern states? Seven of the nine men seated around the table in the room above that saloon in Tennessee had pressed General Forrest most forcibly and vociferously on this very point, but he had refused to be drawn. He simply asked if they trusted him as implicitly now as they had done during the late war; which of course, they did.

  The only one whose voice had not been heard questioning the general that night had been Frank Mason. This was because, unknown to the others, Mason was the architect of the Great Enterprise and it would triumph or fail upon what he had been able to achieve. Mason knew also something of which none of the others, apart from General Forrest, had the least inkling. This was that there was a traitor at the very heart of the federal government in Washington and that the whole, entire scheme upon which they were staking their hopes, and perhaps even their very lives, would depend upon the successful treachery of this individual.

  When the stage on which he had been travelling had been intercepted by a robber earlier that day, Frank Mason had been on his way to Indian Falls to meet up with a band of men who were part of the pla
n to restore the Confederacy to its rightful place among the nations of the world. The plan had been that they would immediately head north to Illinois, where President Johnson was due to make an unprecedented appeal to ordinary people as he battled to avoid impeachment. Everything was ready for the execution of one of the most audacious schemes ever seen, which would see the supposedly defeated southern states seize back control of their destiny from the Yankee oppressors. And now all these weighty matters had been cast into hazard by some young scoundrel who had made off with the only set of papers in existence that might, if correctly interpreted, enable a shrewd man to fathom out the whole enterprise! Well, there was only one remedy and that was to head south into the Indian Nations, find the boy, kill him and recover the documents.

  Of course, it was a thousand to one against anybody being able to make any sort of sense of the various sketches, maps and plans that Mason had been carrying in his vanity case, but when a nation’s destiny was at stake and with the finishing line so close, it would be absurd to take any chances. After strangling Maggie Hardcastle and smoking a final cheroot, Frank Mason went off to find his comrades and apprise them of the unfortunate circumstances that had arisen. He’d little doubt that before twenty-four hours had passed, they would have dealt efficiently with this trifling setback.

  It was coming on towards late afternoon by the time that Brent Clancy and the Booker brothers had come to a tentative agreement on their next course of action; that is to say making their way together to Abbot’s place in the territories. All else apart, they needed to put a little distance between the scene of the stagecoach robbery and their own selves, just on the remote off-chance that somebody in Indian Falls might take it into his head to put together a posse and ride out after the culprit. So it was that the three men set off after their meeting at a smart pace, heading south towards the Indian Nations.