Clay Nash 10

by Brett Waring

  He wanted to show up with saddlebags bulging with dinero, to prove to them that he was a success at his calling, as big a success as his Uncle Jud, one of the most wanted road-agents in the Mormon State.

  Finding Doane and Matthews was a stroke of luck, he figured, especially when he discovered that they still had a few hundred left between them.

  “Well, hell, I reckon this calls for some kinda celebration,” Benedict told them. “Our trails must’ve been meant to cross, I was lookin’ for a coupla fellers to help me grab a decent grubstake. You two hombres’ll fill the bill nicely.”

  Matthews looked dubious.

  “What kinda grubstake can we grab us out here, Chip?” he asked. “Jeff and me had to run—after four-flushin’ a coupla hardcases in Pegasus Springs; that’s the only reason we’re in this godforsaken neck-of-the-woods.”

  “Sure. Like I said, we was meant to meet up again.”

  “What you got in mind, Chip?” Jeff Doane asked. “I’m gettin’ down and wouldn’t mind an easy stake again.”

  “Well, I ain’t sure whether it’s gonna be easy or not,” Benedict admitted. “I don’t even know what the job’ll be, but I reckon the three of us can find somethin’ that’ll pay well.”

  “Have to be better than that Reddings deal,” growled Matthews.

  Benedict’s eyes slitted. His hands dropped casually to his gun butts and Matthews stiffened in alarm.

  “Don’t ride me about that, Cotton.”

  “Hell, Chip, I wasn’t meanin’—I didn’t—”

  “Okay,” Benedict cut in irritably. “Look, Hawkins Flats is just over yonder knoll. Let’s go have a few drinks and keep our ears open. Might hear somethin’ we can use. If not, then we can move along. Some bigger towns to the north where we’ll be sure to find a bank just waitin’ to make us rich.”

  He laughed and the others joined in, mounted again, and rode over the knoll into the hamlet of Hawkins Flats.

  It was a dozen scattered buildings on the slope above a dogleg creek that soon lost itself amid the red dust of the flats that gave the settlement its name. They passed a preacher on his way out and he looked at them curiously, hastily made a ‘blessing’ sign as their hard eyes regarded him suspiciously.

  “Think he recognized us?” Matthews asked anxiously. Benedict was scrubbing a hand over his jaw.

  “Just might be he recognized me. I think he was chaplain in Canyon City for a spell.”

  Doane unsnapped his rifle and made to hip in the saddle but Benedict put out a hand and stopped him, shaking his head.

  “No. Don’t go killin’ any preachers, Jeff. That’s the one thing I believe does bring a man bad luck. Seen it happen before.”

  Doane looked surprised at this admission from Benedict but shrugged, eased down the rifle’s hammer and slid the weapon back into the scabbard. The preacher rode on slowly, his packhorse following behind, and did not look back.

  The three outlaws made their way in among the buildings and headed directly for the saloon. It was a low-fronted, rambling building with shingled roof and split log walls. A couple of locals lounging on the porch looked away uneasily as the outlaws stepped from their dusty mounts and palmed open the weathered batwings.

  There were half a dozen men in the bar and conversation ceased as all eyes turned to the strangers. Benedict ordered a bottle of redeye and took it with three glasses to a rear table. They drank silently, raking their eyes around the room. Then Benedict spotted a movement behind a curtained doorway. He walked across, using a gun barrel to ease back the cloth. A slow smile spread across his face and he looked towards his companions and jerked his head for them to join him.

  When they did so, he yanked the curtain aside and revealed about a dozen men seated quietly at two tables in a room that was thick with cigarette smoke. They were playing poker in two separate games—with obvious professional gamblers presiding. The men looked up and stared at the intruders.

  “Well, now, I reckon you gents won’t have no objections to me and my pards settin’ in on a game, eh?” Benedict said with a tight grin.

  One of the gamblers stood up, a narrow-faced man with hairline moustache and his frockcoat pushed back behind the butt of the gun slung low on his right thigh.

  “You’ll have to wait, friend,” he said easily.

  Benedict shook his head.

  “Me and my pards don’t want to wait none.”

  The gambler stiffened. A couple of players threw down their hands and eased back their chairs.

  “You’ll have to,” the man repeated.

  Benedict grinned coldly and shot him through the heart. The man spun backwards, cannoned off the wall and dropped to his knees before spreading out on his face. There was sudden movement as men hastily dived for cover and the rear door. The second gambler reached for a hideaway gun under his jacket but Jeff Doane nailed him through the middle of the face.

  “Rest of you stay put,” Benedict roared—and all movement ceased in the room. Matthews stepped back into the barroom and held his gun on the drinkers who were starting to break for the batwings.

  “Set you down again, gents,” he said quietly.

  Benedict raked his eyes around at the card players.

  We’re sittin’ in right now, gents. ’Fact, you might say we’re gonna set right in on this entire dump—for a spell, leastways.”

  “You—you mean—take over the town?” asked one man hesitantly.

  “Town?” guffawed Benedict. “Dump I called it and dump is what it is. But, yeah, we’re takin’ over. No one’ll get hurt if you do what we say. And the first thing we say is to bring us some grub—and some women.”

  “Wh-what?” stammered the man. “We—we don’t have no saloon gals in Hawkins Flats, mister. Some pass through but they never stay, ’cause—”

  He broke off as Benedict rammed his reeking gun muzzle against his ear. The outlaw’s deadly eyes were only inches away. The man swallowed nervously.

  “We didn’t say nothin’ about saloon gals. We just said ‘women’. And that’s what we mean. Now you go round some up, pronto, mister, or we start shootin’ these here gents through the head one by one. Savvy?”

  The players cringed against the walls as the man nodded jerkily and began to sidle out, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Better go with him, Jeff,” Benedict ordered Doane. The killer nodded and hurried after the trembling townsman. The outlaw boss grinned bleakly at the others. “You fellers see we’re kept happy and there ain’t likely to be any trouble hereabouts. Now—someone go fetch a new deck of cards and let’s all set down friendly-like and have us a game of poker.”

  The preacher had recognized Chip Benedict and, being a travelling man, he knew the outlaw was wanted in connection with a robbery and some killings at a Wells Fargo way-station. He rode like the wind away from Hawkins Flats after seeing Benedict, afraid the killer might come after him.

  He forced the pace so much that he had to abandon his packhorse, and his mount only just made it to the main street of the town up the trail. It wasn’t a very large town and he didn’t even know its name when he rode in, but it had a sheriff.

  The lawman blanched at the name of Benedict and suddenly remembered that he had a chore to do—elsewhere. But, before he left, he told the astonished preacher that he was welcome to use the telegraph and send a message to Wells Fargo.

  Having no other course open to him, the preacher did this and before he had completed composing the message, the sheriff rode hell-for-leather out of town for the hills, in the opposite direction to Hawkins Flats.

  The telegraph wire landed on Jim Hume’s desk in Denver soon after and he sent the news on to Clay Nash in Pegasus Springs.

  Nash happened to be in the depot at the time the message came through. It was better than he had hoped: Benedict himself had been sighted and the town—or hamlet—was only a half-day’s ride off. Nash hired a fresh horse, stocked up on food and ammunition and rode out along the trail to Hawkins Flats.
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br />   He only hoped that Benedict—and his pards, whoever they were—were still there when he arrived. For he had an idea the hardcases who had been seen with the outlaw leader were the men involved in the Reddings massacre.

  Which suited him fine.

  An Indian tracker had been working at the way-station and his opinion was that there had been five, possibly six men involved, as near as he was able to tell. Like Nash, he had had trouble separating the hoof prints.

  With Stern already dead and three more in Hawkins Flats, it would only leave Short to complete the murdering bunch of raiders. Already, Nash’s trigger finger had an itch in the first joint.

  Hawkins Flats had never known a time like it, nor was it likely to again.

  The three outlaws had literally taken over the town, and were holding it to ransom. At all times, they kept a couple of the town’s women with them—abusing them time and again. The father of one of the girls—both in their late teens—had died trying to rescue his daughter. Doane had shot him without a word. The other girl’s father had been long dead and when the tearful mother had pleaded for her release, Benedict had ripped her clothes from her and made her parade naked down the main street.

  They had been through the houses and stores, collecting guns. They didn’t get them all but they were relying on terror tactics to keep the townsfolk cowed.

  The store was burned to the ground on the first night.

  Two houses met the same fate. Some people had been wounded; the killers were enjoying this new sense of power and strutted about arrogantly, almost permanently drunk.

  One night, however, the townsfolk figured things had gone too far when Cotton Matthews burst into the bedroom of a young couple who were trying to get started in the bakery business, shot the man where he lay and then attacked the woman while her husband coughed out his life beside her.

  There were six men who were willing to tackle the three killers. Hidden guns were brought to light and distributed. Messages were passed on to the girl hostages. By some ticklish timing, it was arranged that both girls would be away from the outlaws at the same time. It would only be for a few seconds as they passed in a doorway—one returning as the other made her way out—and then the men would make their attack. The girls were to make a break for it at the first shot.

  It worked well enough. The girls got away but the townsmen weren’t cold-blooded enough. They should have shot the outlaws in the saloon’s back room—but, instead, merely called on them to surrender.

  Benedict hit the floor beneath a table, his twin guns in his hands blazing wildly at a window where he had seen the face of one of the threatening townsmen. Glass shattered and wood splintered as the man screamed in pain.

  Jeff Doane cut loose with his rifle and nailed a man coming in the door. Cotton Matthews had a shotgun and the double charge blasted out a huge section of clapboard wall, bringing down two men in a bloody flurry.

  The remaining men ran, and the outlaws, their blood up, began to cut loose—their weapons seeking out any movement as they stalked the street, blasting away at house windows and doors.

  Clay Nash rode in over the knoll. One of the men who had tried to jump the outlaws was running scared, eyes bulging, legs pumping, hands empty and concentrating only on getting away. Nash leaned from the saddle and grabbed him. The man’s weight almost pulled him off the horse, but he managed to stay aboard and shook the frightened man roughly.

  “What in hell’s all that shootin’? Is it Benedict?”

  The man’s eyes came into focus and he nodded vigorously.

  “Yeah. Benedict and Matthews and Doane. They took over our town and we—we tried to take it back.” He began to sob and covered his face with his hands. “We tried—goddamn it, we tried. We’re peaceful folk, though, not gunslingers—”

  Nash was already riding up and over the knoll, rifle unsheathed. He saw the three outlaws, drunk—as much with power as with liquor—staggering down the doglegged street, shooting indiscriminately. They spotted him and he threw up his rifle and hammered out a shot that took Jeff Doane in the neck. He thrashed in the dust, blood spurting from his jugular vein as if it were jetting from a hose.

  Cotton Matthews blinked at the sight, but Benedict recognized Nash and ran back towards the saloon. Clay levered in a fresh shell and ducked as Matthews finally shook himself and brought up his shotgun. The weapon thundered but the outlaw was still shaken by the sight of Doane’s gory death and the charge went high. Nash leaned under the arch of the flying horse’s neck. He fired the rifle one-handed and Matthews staggered, his legs folding slowly. Nash straightened, levered in another shell and shot the man again.

  Before Matthews had stretched out in the dust, Clay Nash rode his mount onto the boardwalk outside the saloon, ducked, and crashed the animal through the batwings. He caught a glimpse of Chip Benedict running for the rear room. The outlaw turned at the crashing entrance and fired with his rifle.

  Nash launched himself from the saddle onto the bar and dropped behind the counter. He lost the rifle in the process but he palmed his six-gun and blasted a shot into the rear room as he heard Benedict overturning a table for protection. Nash sprawled full length, then swiftly rolled towards the wall at the side of the doorway, rolled onto his belly and fired with his gun angled upwards. The lead took Benedict high in the shoulder. He was slammed against the wall and his rifle fell, but he palmed one of his guns and hammered off two shots that made Nash quickly hunt for cover.

  When he finally peered into the room, he saw the outlaw staggering up the street. The rear door was swinging wide and Nash lunged across the room and went through the doorway in a headlong dive, doing a shoulder roll as a bullet kicked up gravel beside him.

  He came up and over onto one knee—his Colt already gripped rock-steady in both hands with the hammer notched back. He slip-fired twice and Benedict went down untidily and violently, as if jerked by some invisible wire. He floundered in the dust, tried to bring his gun up as he coughed a ribbon of blood from his mouth.

  Nash ran forward and stamped on the gun hand, grinding the man’s wrist into the gravel.

  Panting, Nash knelt on one knee and rammed the hot muzzle of his six-gun against Benedict’s forehead. But he eased down the hammer. There was nothing he could do to make this man tell him anything he didn’t want to: he was too close to death—and Benedict knew it. One hand clawed into the pulsing wound in his chest as blood trickled in a thick, dark, endless stream from a corner of his mouth.

  And yet there was a strange triumph in his glazing eyes as he stared up at Nash.

  “Where’s Short?” Nash asked anyway, hoping the man might tell him.

  Then he started in shock as Benedict began to laugh.

  It was more of a strangled sort of croak but the intention was clear enough.

  “Short’s dead,” coughed Benedict. “I killed him.”

  “Then that makes all of you,” Nash said with relief. “It happened a lot faster than I’d hoped but I’ve nailed you all now and those folk you murdered at Reddings are avenged—”

  His words trailed off as Benedict’s blood-smeared teeth bared in a tight grin. The man rolled his head from side to side.

  “No,” he rasped. “You’re—wrong, Nash. There’s—another. The one killed—your gal—shot her three—times. B-but you’ll never find him. No—no record—you’ll n-never—”

  He went into a fit of coughing and blood sprayed over Nash’s jacket. But, stunned, he grabbed the dying man’s jacket and shook him.

  “Who? Who is it, damn it?” Nash shouted. “Benedict, don’t you die on me yet. Who the hell is it?”

  He stopped abruptly as Benedict’s coughing ceased and the man’s head lolled loosely on his neck.

  The killer was dead and he had taken his secret with him.

  Chapter Seven

  New Trails

  Dan Barrett was whistling as he walked into the saloon in Sage Bend. He thumbed back his hat and nodded to the folk drinking in the big room
as he sauntered to the bar and slapped a ten dollar piece on the zinc top.

  “Gimme a whisky and a beer, Luke. And a bottle of raspberry sody-pop for Crissy.”

  The bartender moved to obey, setting out the whisky first then drawing the beer.

  “Got the whole family in town, Dan?”

  “Yep. Come in for some stores and to buy Eadie a new dress. Might pick me up a couple new tools and another horse, too.”

  Luke set the foaming glass on the counter and pursed his lips.

  “You sure did clean-up in that poker game, Dan. But I’m glad. Whole town is. Folk are pleasured that you’re startin’ to get ahead at last. Here you are. One bottle raspberry sody-pop. Tell Crissy she can get a penny back on the empty bottle.”

  Barrett nodded, tossed down the whisky and drank a gulp of beer, looking at the small stone bottle of carbonated soft drink, with its complicated loop of wire around the neck, holding down the porcelain stopper. He smiled faintly as he imagined the way Crissy’s face would light up when she saw it.

  “Want to see a Denver paper?” Luke asked suddenly. Barrett looked at him quizzically. “Few come in this mornin’ on the Overland Stage. I managed to get my hands on one. Been hell to pay about that Reddings way-station massacre few weeks back.”

  Barrett kept his face sober as he reached for the folded paper that Luke offered.

  “Yeah. Mean sort of crew who done that. What’s happened?”

  He began to unfold the Denver Post as he spoke and halfway down the front page he found a heading in bold type which momentarily stopped his heart:

  WELLS FARGO AGENT GETS HIS MEN—FIVE BANDITS DIE BY GUN.

  Barrett shook the paper to get some of the creases out of it but also in an effort to cover the trembling that was suddenly in his big hands. He read slowly, his lips moving as he spelled out the words.