by Brett Waring
“I’ll break every bone in your body if I have to,” Dodd snarled. “One more time: what happened to Nash?”
“Jumped,” Harlan said, spitting blood and a broken tooth. “Way back.”
Dodd swore and glanced at his men; they all knew the doctor spoke the truth. There was nothing else that could have happened to Nash.
“Okay,” Dodd gritted. “Only thing now is where?”
He grabbed the medic’s hair and yanked his head back, pushing his Colt’s barrel against the man’s right eye.
“And I’m fast runnin’ out of patience, mister,” Dodd gritted.
Nash knew the heavy statue was going to slow him down, the satchel swinging and banging against his leg as he stumbled on through the trees.
Being afoot, he knew he likely wouldn’t be able to outrun Dodd and his men by the time they came back searching for his trail, but, unencumbered, he might be able to hide out long enough for Santa Fe to send some help down the trail when the stage either didn’t turn up on schedule or Harlan or Jack managed to stagger into some ranch and raise the alarm.
There was only one thing to do, he decided, and that was to bury the eagle.
It would have to be done carefully and he would have to take exact bearings so that it could be found again. He chuckled briefly as he thought of the hell that would be raised if he were unable to locate the spot again. Hell, he would have achieved just what Dodd was trying to do, if that happened: make Wells Fargo the laughing stock of the country.
It was a grim sort of joke but it could happen and so, staggering through the trees, aware that the gunfire had faded completely, he stumbled into a clearing and looked around. There was a creek tumbling down the hillside over a small rocky drop comprising rounded stones and turf with a few old branches and twigs jammed up among it. The water frothed and gurgled and when he knelt and plunged his face into it, it was cold enough to snatch his breath. Face tingling, he sat back on his hands and looked around for somewhere to stash the eagle.
There were stumps of trees that had long ago been blown down; boulders in clumps; the soft earth of the creek bank; even a ready-made water-rat’s hole. But the places were mighty obvious to anyone who was looking for a cache in the general area and he knew he had to find something better.
He scooped up another cupped handful of water and drank. Then he looked at the cascade. The water tumbled over a flat rock almost as big as the satchel and dropped into a frothing pool, before boiling over and continuing on its drop into the stream proper. He knelt and looked in under the big flat rock.
Nash grinned, not noticing the brief pain as one of the cuts split open and a bead of blood dribbled onto his chin. There was a good dark hollow in the wet turf and he grabbed one of the waterlogged sticks jammed between the rocks and poked about. It was a ready-made hiding place.
He hurriedly opened the satchel and unlocked the central compartment with the special keys, taking out the eagle wrapped in its velvet and oilcloth. He rammed it back under the flat rock, pushing it hard into the yielding dampness of the turf. Then he reached down into the frothing pool and brought up three fist-sized rocks from the bottom and jammed them in front of the statue, sealing off the hollow. He wedged a little turf in between the rocks and, drenched to the shoulders, he sat back, satisfied with his work.
Nash placed a rounded rock in the central compartment of the satchel and relocked it. It was nowhere near as heavy as the statue, but if the pursuit got close enough to see him still carrying the satchel, they wouldn’t get any ideas about him having disposed of the eagle. He looked around for landmarks but realized he didn’t need any. It was the only cascade in that stretch of creek and if he lined it up with the bald-headed rock and the trail above, he would have no trouble finding it again.
Suddenly, Moran came out of the trees, a rifle in his hand. “Freeze, Nash,” he snapped, walking his mount slowly forward. He bared his teeth in a tight grin, the lines of pain obvious on his grayish face. “Ain’t no use lookin’ behind me. The others ain’t here. Which makes you lucky. Mebbe. All I want is the satchel. But first you drop your gun.”
Clay Nash hesitated and the rifle barrel moved threateningly. He swore silently and eased the Colt out of its holster and let it drop to the creek bank.
“Step away from it,” Moran ordered as he swayed in the saddle. Nash saw the blood on his side and knew the man was close to passing out.
“I reckon I’ll take the statue and never mind the satchel. You get it out, real slow, mister, and bring it across and put it in my saddlebag. I’ll have this here rifle trained on you all the time.”
“Listen, that’s bound for the governor himself,” Nash protested. “You’re makin’ one hell of a heap of trouble for yourself.”
Moran laughed. “You reckon? Dodd’s gonna get the blame for it, not me. Now, get it out. Careful.”
But the outlaw forced himself upright and jerked the rifle barrel again.
Nash hesitated then knelt beside the satchel unlocking it. He dropped the keys and as he reached to pick them up he slid his hand in through the slit in the outside compartment and wrenched the derringer from its clip. He hurled himself backwards as it came free, snapping it up and triggering the first barrel. The sharp crack of the little gun was lost in the whiplash of Moran’s rifle. The satchel jerked as the lead punched through it and Moran swayed in the saddle.
Nash swiveled the barrel and triggered again as the wounded outlaw tried to lever his rifle. The second shot took Moran through the head and he rolled back over the rump of his plunging horse, dropping his rifle. Nash leapt up and lunged for the animal’s flying reins, just managing to grab them. He was pulled off his feet but he hung on and his weight hauled the terrified animal to a halt.
He pulled himself upright hand over hand and gripped the bit close to the animal’s mouth, speaking quietly and soothingly to it as he looked at Moran’s body. The man would give him no more trouble, but that rifle shot would have been heard by the other outlaws. In fact, its echoes were still sounding through the ranges.
Nash picked up the rifle and slid it into its scabbard, led the horse over to the satchel and scooped it up. He hung it from the saddlehorn: as long as he kept it with him, the outlaws would pursue him, convinced that he was still carrying the statue. He grabbed his Colt, rammed it into his holster and swung into leather.
Glancing towards the high trail he caught a glimpse of dust rising. Yes, they had heard the gunfire, all right, and were coming to investigate. In no time at all, they would find the broken brush and the swathe his body had cut through it during his wild fall.
Nash spun the animal, jammed in his heels and ran it for the narrowest part of the creek, downstream from the cascade. As the horse stretched out and leapt across the creek, Nash glanced towards the cascade. It looked completely natural.
Anyway, his tracks were plain and these were all that Dodd would look for. He would have no reason to stop by the cascade but would come straight across the creek in hot pursuit, intent on running Nash to ground.
Eight – “Ride Him Down!”
Dixie had managed to cut one of the team mounts free from the tangled harness. The animal gave him considerable trouble because it was badly frightened, but he cuffed and fought it and managed to straddle it and wasn’t far behind Dodd and the others when they rode away from the wreckage of the stagecoach.
Harlan was still alive and so was Jack the driver, though both men still marveled that they were. They had been beaten and cut up pretty badly by Dodd who had finally become enraged to the point where he was notching back his gun hammer to kill the driver when the shots had sounded in the valley. The first two were like whip cracks but could have been the report of a light caliber gun. There had been no mistaking the rifle shot. It had been enough for Dodd. With a final double-lashing out with his gun barrel, knocking both men sprawling, he had ordered the others to mount.
Jack, blinded by blood from his injuries, crawled across to where Harlan was si
tting up against the overturned coach, holding to his wounded side. His face was scarred and misshapen.
“You—okay?” Jack gasped.
Harlan nodded: “Will be. Lucky they went—when they did—”
“Yeah—”
“Think they’ll—be—back?”
“Dunno—but we better not be here if they do come back. Reckon you could set a hoss?”
Harlan looked towards the tangle of the team and saw one was pinned by two others and struggling to get free. But there was a wound on the animal’s shoulder.
“We got—one?” he asked.
“Yeah—that one’ll be okay when we get the two dead’uns off him. Can you lend a hand? Not right away, but—soon?”
Harlan managed a smile.
“Soon. Mebbe.”
Jack flicked a smile back at him.
“We can cut over the range seein’ as we don’t have to haul a coach after us now. With some luck, we’ll come up with a ranch tomorrow, or maybe even find a telegraph station, where we can get word to Santa Fe.”
Harlan nodded, too weak to speak. Jack sagged back, too, aching—and wondering if they would get to help in time to send someone after Clay Nash before Dodd and his bunch caught up with the agent.
Will Dodd and his men found the place where Nash had jumped from the stage without trouble. They could see plainly the swathe through the brush made by Nash’s tumbling body.
The outlaws put their mounts down the steep slope, sliding and skidding and crashing through the brush. Dixie had a time of it fighting his stage team mount down and he had to cling tightly to the mane, but he made it only a few yards behind the others. Nash’s tracks were easy enough to follow. Not long after they found Moran’s body in the clearing by the creek. The sign was easy to read and, just as Nash had assumed, Dodd didn’t even stop. He saw the horse tracks leading to the creek and beyond and hurriedly urged his men to get going.
Only Dixie paused, mainly because the horse was fighting him, but also to allow the animal to drink at the little cascade. He slid off its back, knelt and scooped up a handful of water. He noticed some marks in the turf: it was wet and spongy and there were a couple of depressions that hadn’t yet quite filled but they might well have been made by a man kneeling. Dixie frowned and thought about it, staring at the cascade as his horse continued to drink.
Slowly, he turned his head and looked downstream and then back upstream. The little frothing pool was fairly clear while the horse drank thirstily, reducing the flow of the cascade. Dixie could see three small ovals where mud seemed to be floating in suspension among the rocks at the bottom. He saw the places where Nash had removed the stones to ram in beneath the flat rock under the tumbling water, but they didn’t register with him.
He decided that this was the most likely place for a man to drink at the creek and that Nash had been drinking there when Moran had ridden in.
Then Dixie vaulted onto the back of the horse, yanked its head up by the mane and put the animal across the creek after the others.
The horse stepped on the flat rock and the stone tipped and sagged, ripping out some turf from around the edges, changing the cascade to a muddy froth. As they moved off, the water changed course and began eating into the turf and earth, washing it away and starting to tunnel under the flat rock—into the cavity where Nash had stashed the golden eagle.
Clay Nash knew he had a good start and he had every hope of being able to hold it. For one thing, the horse he had taken from Moran was fresher than the pursuing mounts. For another, Nash was at home in the woods and, although his ammunition was depleted and limited, he figured he had enough to hold Dodd and his men at bay.
And that was the part he was thinking about as he rode the horse in a weaving trail through the timber, heading up towards the top of the range.
He found himself a jutting rock and rested the mount, leaving it blowing, with trailing reins, while he climbed on the rock and scanned the country below. He eased to the edge and looked down. It took him several minutes to spot the outlaws following his trail through the thickly timbered slope.
Nash counted five outlaws; easily recognizing Dodd in the lead. The identity of the others he wasn’t sure about, but it made little difference: all he had wanted to do was to find out just how many men were pursuing him.
He eased back from the edge and sat on the rock in the warmth of the sun, scrubbing a hand gently around his swollen, begrimed jaw. The Wells Fargo man figured he ought to be able to handle five of them if he picked his spot. He could just keep running and hope to outdistance them, but the odds of five to one out in the open didn’t appeal to him and he knew that over the range there were badlands fronting the mesa that led to Santa Fe.
In thick timber and range country, he felt he could handle them so it was the logical time and place to do it. Leave it until the chase got down to a dead run across the open country and he could well be finished. All it would need would be for his horse to stumble and throw him and then they could close in and pick him off at their leisure.
Nash reckoned he wouldn’t be able to get all of them, but even if he nailed a couple, it would reduce the odds when he reached the badlands. He stood and went to the patient horse, swinging easily into the saddle and urging it forward and up through the trees. By his reckoning, he was still a good forty minutes, maybe even an hour, ahead of Dodd. He hid his tracks in parts, but he figured he was actually losing time by dismounting and doing this, for Dodd knew that he would have to go up and over the ridge if he wanted to reach Santa Fe.
And the ridge was the place Nash had decided on for his ambush.
This range of hills was low enough to have timber growing to the top and the slopes were studded with egg-shaped boulders of great age, scabbed with lichen, and scarred with deep cracks and fissures. The horse was tiring and blowing hard from the steep climb. Nash urged it up the last part of the grade and came to the crest of the ridge. There was enough timber there to give him cover if he wanted to ride the line of the ridge and this he did for a spell, glancing downslope occasionally and seeing the first of Dodd’s men weaving his way through the timber.
Nash yanked the reins hard left and jumped the horse across the ridge and over the crest. But he hauled back as soon as he had dropped below the skyline again, and put the animal along the face of the slope, picking his way through the fallen trees and scattered boulders. He didn’t want to start shooting while Dodd’s men were in timber, so he rode along just below the ridge looking for a suitable spot. Above, right on the crest, he saw the ideal place, a nest of rocks of all shapes and sizes, black against the sky. He rode towards them and dismounted then weighed the horse’s reins with a stone. Nash worked his way across to where he could see down the slope to the outlaws.
They were reaching into the thinner timber. There was a cleared patch on the face of the slope they would have to cross. It would be ideal for what he had in mind. Rocks and tree trunks littered the slope, but there were no tall trees within easy reach.
Clay took the rifle from the scabbard and hurriedly checked through the saddlebags, swearing when he didn’t find any spare boxes of bullets. He loaded his six-gun, took shells from his belt loops and thumbed them into the Winchester’s tubular magazine.
He was one short of filling it.
That meant he had only sixteen shots: six in the Colt, and ten in the rifle. He would have to place them carefully. He picked his spot, wedging himself between two needle-like boulders, able to stretch out on a flat rock that slanted upwards and gave him protection. He edged up, keeping the rifle down at his side, and looked over warily.
The horsemen were traversing the cleared patch on the slope below but, because they were strung out, the leader, Dodd, would be across before the last man had cleared the trees. Nash cursed but there was no helping it; he had to make the most of things as they were. He dragged the rifle up and settled himself, elbows jammed into the rock as he brought the butt to his shoulder and sighted along the barrel,
beading on Will Dodd.
Then his luck turned sour.
As it happened, the sunlight was slanted at an angle to one side, giving depth to the hillside and its hollows and secret places, outlining every blade of grass, and highlighting rocks and the wrinkled bark of trees. It also flashed along the blued steel of the rifle barrel like ball lightning, as Nash settled the weapon snugly for his aim.
At that instant, Will Dodd chose to glance up at the ridge, gauging the distance he and his men had yet to travel, knowing that Nash would make a swift run down the other side for the badlands’ crossing.
Dodd saw the strike of light from metal and, being an old hand at the game of manhunting, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t worry about trying to turn the horse or yelling a warning to the others. Dodd merely kicked his boots free of the stirrup and hauled himself headlong—dragging one of his six-guns and using his free hand to cushion his fall somewhat. He struck hard but rolled; his leg muscles snapping and propelling him behind a fallen tree. His men just had time to wonder what was going on when Nash’s first shot whip cracked over the hills.
Dodd’s horse reared and whickered as the bullet seared its neck, then it plunged away downslope. Dodd’s gun blasted four swift shots, the big man having already spotted the rocks where Nash lay prone. The bullets ricocheted like berserk wasps from the needle boulders and the Wells Fargo man kept his head down, cursing that he had missed. The lead whined and buzzed off the rocks.
Nash lifted his rifle again knowing he had to be fast if he wanted to get any of the scattering outlaws. They were running their horses all over the clearing, some trying to make it back to the timber, others, like Dodd, quitting leather with wild leaps, and hunting cover on the slope.
He beaded a man riding a horse without a saddle and figured it was one of the stage team, which meant it had crashed. His lips tightened into a thin line as he squeezed the trigger and Dixie spilled from the back of the running mount. He bounced and rolled but wasn’t fatally hit. His legs pumped as he pushed upright and made a staggering run for some rocks. Nash led him by a foot and squeezed off another shot. Dixie was blasted off his feet and his boots continued to pound in mid-air for a second or two before he crashed to the ground and started to slide and roll and bounce down the slope like a bundle of dirty laundry, his limbs flopping limply.
