Clay Nash 14

by Brett Waring

  “You weren’t on duty when he checked-out, right?” Hume cut in, harshly.

  “I came on at ten, sir. As I explained earlier.”

  “Don’t get sassy with me, sonny, or I’ll push your register through the middle of your face.”

  The clerk paled, gulping nervously.

  “Now, where do I find the clerk who was on duty when Nash checked-out?”

  “Uh—with a little luck he’ll still be having coffee and biscuits in the hotel kitchen, sir. It isn’t long since I relieved him.”

  “Get him.”

  Hume waited impatiently, tapping his thick fingers against the edge of the desk, until the two clerks came back. The night clerk looked weary and red-eyed and surly. He seemed to be coming reluctantly, urged on by the nervous man Hume had threatened.

  The chief of detectives nodded curtly to the man, placed his finger on the line in the register that recorded that Nash had checked-out. He turned the book around towards the clerk. “That one. You here when he left? Paid his bill and so on?” The man was bald and ran a hand over his shining scalp, frowning down at the register.

  “Come on, come on! You must know if you were here or not!”

  The man nodded, not looking at Hume. “Yeah. I was on duty.”

  “Well? Did Nash walk out with all his gear? Was he alone? Did he leave of his own free will?”

  The night clerk looked swiftly at the day clerk but there was no help for him there; the latter had had the starch scared out of him by Hume and he didn’t aim to buy into this again if he could help it.

  “Uh—I dunno, to be honest, Mr. Hume.”

  Hume’s eyes narrowed. “Honest is the way I want you to be, amigo, but I want to know why you can’t say. You suddenly blind or something?”

  The night clerk shook his head vigorously. “I was—dozin’ at the desk. Around eight, I guess. It’d been a long, slow night.” He paused and looked at the day clerk. “And I was doin’ a couple extra hours to give Seth here some more time with his gal ...” The day clerk flushed but nodded at Hume’s enquiring look. The night man cleared his throat and continued.

  “Red Morgan was suddenly standin’ at the counter. I dunno where he came from. I felt a hand shakin’ my shoulder and there he was.”

  Hume nodded. “He could’ve come in from the street, then, or from behind you through the kitchen—or down the stairs from the floor above?”

  “Uh—guess so. Anyways, he had a near-full bottle of bourbon with him, the genuine stuff, bottled in Kentucky. He said he wanted to ask me a few questions about the fire up on the hill last night and if I’d seen Lucy Parrish down town earlier in the evenin’ and so on. He said we could talk best over a couple of drinks, so we went out into the kitchen and talked. He didn’t stay long and went out the other door into the side street. When I got back to the counter, Nash’s money was on the desk with his bill. We give our guests a bill each day, totaling up as we go along. Nash’s was paid in full and with a tip.”

  “You never mentioned that!” snapped the day man.

  “Hell, I figured I was entitled to it all!” the night clerk said. “I was standin’ in for you.”

  “Forget that stuff. Bicker among yourselves later,” broke in Hume. “You never heard Nash coming down the stairs or leaving?”

  “No, sir. Uh—it was mighty good whisky. I was sorry he took the bottle with him.”

  “What did Morgan want to know about the fire?”

  The man frowned. “Funny thing that, he hardly mentioned it. Just asked if I’d seen it, said it was one helluva blaze. I figured he’d just been lookin’ for an excuse for a drink and a talk.”

  “Morgan’s not exactly noted for his conversation from what I hear,” Hume said tightly.

  “That’s right, Will,” the day man pointed out. “He hardly ever speaks unless it’s needful.”

  The night clerk frowned and looked genuinely puzzled. “Well, I told you gospel, Mr. Hume. It’s just what happened.”

  Hume nodded. “I believe you. And thanks.”

  He flicked a golden eagle onto the counter and the night man lunged for it but the day clerk beat him by a whisker, bared his teeth in a tight grin as he scooped it up and dropped it into his pocket.

  “You’ve had your tip,” he said. “Besides, it’s against regulations to drink on duty.”

  “That’s the last time I do you a favor, you son of a bitch!” growled the night man as Hume went out into the street.

  The Wells Fargo chief of detectives strode swiftly to the livery but as soon as he found the stable hand he knew he would get nothing out of him. The man was sprawled on the hay, snoring in a drunken stupor, an empty bottle under one out-flung arm. Hume looked through the stalls and the corrals out back.

  Nash’s black horse was missing and so was his saddle. Cursing, his hunch running wild now that Nash was in real danger, Hume started out of the livery and checked abruptly as he passed the stall where the stable hand was passed-out cold. On impulse he stepped inside and lifted the man’s arm. The man grunted and snorted and rolled over onto his side, drawing up his knees, but he did not wake up. Hume wasn’t interested in him.

  He was more interested in the empty whisky bottle. It was bourbon and the contents had been bottled in Kentucky.

  Mighty rich stuff for a stable hand to be drinking.

  Red Morgan glared at Hume and then continued to build his cigarette, the gnarled, steel hard fingers steady and expert as he twisted up the paper, licked it and stuck the cigarette in one corner of his mouth. He snapped a vesta into flame on his thumb nail and dipped the end of the cigarette into it.

  The deputy blew a gust of blue smoke. Hume waved it aside irritably.

  “You gonna answer me or not?” he growled.

  Morgan flicked the dead vesta so that it hit Hume in the chest and fell to the scarred desk in the law office.

  “Yeah. I drink bourbon.”

  “But you don’t know if that’s the bottle or not?” Hume asked, indicating the bottle he had brought from the livery and which now stood on an end of the desk.

  Morgan shrugged. “You can buy that anywhere. They don’t mark the bottles with your name.”

  “Mighty expensive stuff, though. Specially for a stable hand to be drinking. Or even to share with a night clerk at the Gold Nugget Hotel.”

  Morgan’s face did not change expression as he smoked slowly.

  After a pause, he said, “Dunno what in hell you’re talkin’ about.”

  Hume leaned forward across the desk, face grim. “Clay Nash. I want to know where he is.”

  “Nash? He’s gone.”

  Hume tensed. “Where?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Seen him ride out earlier, not long after I’d been to the Gold Nugget.”

  Hume frowned. “Riding? Which way?”

  “South.”

  “What sort of horse?”

  “Black.”

  “Alone?”

  Morgan nodded.

  Hume straightened slowly, staring down at the man. “I hesitate to call you a liar, Morgan—”

  “Don’t push it then, mister,” Morgan told him flatly, his blue eyes cold.

  Hume nodded tensely. “All right. But listen to this. Something’s happened to Nash and I aim to find out what. He’s too good an agent to just quit or leave town without leaving some sort of word.”

  Morgan stood slowly. “You sayin’ Nash still worked for Wells Fargo?”

  Hume smiled crookedly. “I reckon you’d figured that.”

  Morgan shrugged again, pointed to the street door. “Finished? I’m busy.”

  Then he promptly sat down, swung his boots up onto a corner of the desk and tilted his hat forward over his eyes, folding his big hands across his chest.

  Hume remained in control of himself and glanced towards Hollander’s empty chair. “I’ll be back, Morgan. Tell your sheriff that. I aim to find Nash and I’d better find him alive and unharmed.”

  Morgan made a loud snoring sound a
nd Hume smothered a curse, swung on his heel and stomped out into the street.

  So far they had him buffaloed, but with what he had, and the way his hunch was nagging at him, he figured he would work it out eventually.

  Only thing was, he hoped it would be in time to save Clay Nash from whatever trouble he was in.

  Rough hands grabbed Nash and hurled him the length of the narrow cell so that he slammed violently into the barred door, hands going up feebly to protect his face and head. He felt blood spurt warmly from his nostrils. His head banged against the iron bars. Stars and exploding rockets burst behind his eyes.

  He hung there, legs weak and rubbery, body sore and throbbing from the beating he had already taken at the hands of the other convicts. Blinking through a clearing amber haze he saw the dull khaki uniform of a guard just the other side of the bars. He reached through with clawed fingers.

  “They’re killin’ me!” he rasped.

  Then he withdrew his arm with a sharp cry of pain as the guard smashed at him with his nightstick. The man grinned crookedly at Nash.

  “You’re new here, Nash, or I’d have busted your arm good,” the guard said. “There’s a coupla rules you should know about. One is never to try to grab at a guard under any circumstances.” He looked past the sweating, bleeding Nash to the group of four animal-like convicts deep in the cell. “Surprised you fellers never told Mr. Nash. You ought to set him straight so he don’t go gettin’ himself into trouble while he’s with us.”

  He saluted Nash mockingly with his stick and then laughed as he strolled away.

  Nash spun drunkenly, back against the bars, facing the four men. Two he had put in prison himself, long ago, Harney and Magill, murderers who were lucky they had not had their necks stretched by a hempen rope. One of the others was Skinner’s brother, Lon, and the fourth man was a prisoner who had been brought in by Mitch Parrish. His name was Fish and he seemed reluctant to join in the beating of Nash.

  But he had put in the boot and smashed Nash in the face along with the others just the same, likely too scared not to join in. But it was something to remember, if he ever got a chance to exploit the knowledge that Fish was a weak link in this chain of vengeance.

  He put up his hands feebly for protection, near exhausted by the beating he had been taking for over an hour. They knew just how far to go, how to keep him on the edge of consciousness and hurting plenty, never allowing him to slip into the peace of oblivion even for a few seconds.

  The four of them started forward and he had enough sense left even now to note that Fish was the last one to move.

  They advanced on him, cussing him, calling him every obscenity they could lay their tongues to. They had a lot of hate bottled-up in them for Nash and obviously they had been told to unleash it, that there would be no retribution.

  Nash pressed back, feeling the hard, cold iron of the bars cutting into his aching muscles. He warded off the first blow but knew by its force that they were only playing with him again. Then a hard bunch of fives from Magill ripped into his ribs. Harney hit him behind the ear. Skinner kicked his shins. Fish slammed a fist down on his neck but the blow lacked force.

  Nash fell to his knees and knew it was the worst possible position, except for being stretched out on the floor. He fought to get up. They closed around him. Bony knees snapped into his face, slammed his head back against the bars. Boot toes hacked at his ribcage and belly. A heel stomped on his hand.

  Then there was an ear-splitting clatter and he felt vibration through the bars and suddenly the men moved back. He flopped forward onto hands and knees, shook his head, stared and tried to see through the red haze that had clouded his vision almost since he had been thrown in here. The guard was standing at the door and he was opening it.

  “Sorry to break into your playtime, gents, but the governor figures Nash needs some discipline. I mean, you don’t want a troublemaker like him in your cell, do you? ’Course not. Best place for him is down in the Hellhole. Wouldn’t be surprised if we sort of lost the key, neither.”

  He laughed harshly with the others and dragged Nash out into the passage by the hair.

  Drifting down through the aching roar in his head, Clay Nash heard Harney snarl:

  “So long, Nash, you lousy bastard! You’re finished, And we can serve out the rest of our sentences a helluva lot easier now we’ve had our cut at you.”

  The door clanged closed and Nash lay there, huddled in his pain, semi-conscious, waiting for the guard to kick him to his feet and beat him down the slimy stone steps into the darkness of the Hellhole.

  Chapter Nine – Bullets Win

  The woman was about thirty and once she had had natural dark hair. Now the roots showed around the parting through the bleached curls that were tousled from hard-riding. She wore faded denim shirt and corduroy trousers, had a small six-gun strapped to her right hip and looked like she wouldn’t stand any nonsense.

  Hume backed-off a little as she charged into the office he was using above the depot but before he could protest, she stopped him dead with:

  “I’m Marnie Blake and I was Mitch Parrish’s mistress.” She stormed forward and leaned small, tanned hands on the edge of the startled Hume’s desk and looked down at him with cool, yet smoldering eyes. “And I want the man who killed him lying dead at my feet before I quit this lousy town.”

  Hume managed to get his breath and held up a hand. “Whoa, there, ma’am. You’re moving like a Texas twister. One thing at a time!”

  “Why? It’s simple enough, isn’t it? I run a ranch way out the back of nowhere at a place called Hockaday and word’s only just got through to me about Mitch’s death. I’ve got money of my own, Mr. Hume, and a few contacts. I sent a couple of telegraphs on ahead to some friends of mine here and by the time I arrived, they had it all laid out for me, all the details.”

  “Well, now, that’s mighty interesting,” Hume allowed. “Sit down, Miss Blake.”

  “I’m fine standin’. You want to hear it? I got nothin’ to lose. You can throw the book at me if you want to but if what they say about you is only halfway true, I reckon you’ll give me a fair shake.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good enough. I’ll stick to the things that concern us both, which means recent happenings. How Mitch and I met and got together is another story and don’t matter now. Fact is, he helped rig Wells Fargo robberies for Race Hollander and Red Morgan. Mitch and a couple of other fellers, Claybourne and Shaw. They used my place sometimes to change horses and dump their getaway mounts. Thing is, I guess Mitch had outlived his usefulness, like the others, and Hollander had him killed. So I want him nailed to the wall.”

  “That’s what I’m aimin’ at, too, but ...”

  The girl continued as if Hume hadn’t spoken. “There was another feller in on it too. Grab your chair arms, mister. It was the governor of the Virginia City penitentiary.”

  “What!”

  “It’s gospel. He actually hides outlaws in the prison for a price. He was mixed-up with Hollander on the Wells Fargo deal in the first place because he knew Chuck Claybourne had served time and lied about it to get a job with your company. They blackmailed him into working for them and he talked Shaw and Mitch around. He tried a couple of other stagecoach guards first and they wouldn’t listen so they were killed. They’ve been rigging robberies for close on a year, stacking up the loot, bringing in a little every so often with a dead outlaw so you wouldn’t get suspicious. But they were building up to another, bigger job.”

  Hume stood up. “Hold it, ma’am. I’ve got something to do, urgently. My top operative’s life may depend on it.”

  Marnie Blake looked puzzled as Hume strode across the room and went through to the outer office. He didn’t come back for a few minutes and she was twitching with impatience by then.

  “Sorry. Had to arrange a few things. I won’t have an answer for a spell, so I’d be obliged if you’d continue, Miss Blake.”

  “My pleasure. You know t
here hasn’t been a circuit judge through here for months?”

  Hume nodded, frowning.

  “Lot of outlaws are waiting trial in Virginia City pen. Some of them, quite a number of them, were caught and the loot recovered with them. That loot’s now stored in the vaults right under your feet, Mr. Hume, down in your cellars.”

  Jim Hume stiffened. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Oh, yes I am! The bank didn’t want the responsibility. It had to be held for evidence at the trials. Wells Fargo’s manager here was approached and it was agreed the money and gold would be stored in your vaults. You can easily check with your manager.” Hume would, as soon as possible. There had been no reason why he should know about it. It was a deal that had been arranged by the Virginia City depot manager as his prerogative. It would mean a guaranteed State fee for the company and the longer it was stored, the bigger that fee. And, likely, the more lax its protection would become.

  It was a human frailty that familiarity bred contempt and with the loot around for so long the guards would be inclined to view it almost as a fixture and tend to relax their vigilance. It was something that shouldn’t happen but Hume knew it had in other cases.

  “Well, what about this big pile of valuables, ma’am?” Hume asked the girl.

  “Hollander wants it. He wanted Mitch to help him get it but Mitch thought it was too big a job, too risky, and as he almost had enough for us to move East, he said he wouldn’t touch it. Hollander was afraid he would talk or might talk, I guess, so he killed him.”

  “And the other two? Claybourne and Shaw?”

  The girl shrugged. “It’s always been Hollander’s way to close all outlets, at once. I guess he figured they might decide Mitch had been killed to shut his mouth and they could be next. So ...” She shrugged again.

  Hume shook his head in wonderment. “As simple as that. I’m obliged you came in and told me, ma’am, and I just don’t have the time or the inclination to make any trouble for you. If you’ll stay here or at least someplace in town I can reach you afterwards, I’d like a lot more details, need a lot more.”