by Brett Waring
Skene coughed harshly and his lips pulled into a tight line. “Hell, man, it was only—forty bucks! I figured Wells Fargo wouldn’t—worry none about—that much!”
Nash shook his head slowly.
“Ain’t the amount, Skene. Lot of fellers’ve made that mistake. It’s just the act of robbin’ one of our coaches, see? We can’t let anyone get away with that kinda thing. You can see why. So, while it might’ve cost Wells Fargo a couple hundred bucks just to run you down, they have to do it. You savvy?”
Skene stared and shook his head slowly. “I’ll be—damned!” he breathed.
Nash had been examining the wounds and now stared into Skene’s face. “You know, you’re gonna be damned expensive to the company, Skene. I figure you’re gonna live. That means the cost of a trial and all. But Jim Hume’ll push it through. He’ll get as much publicity as he can, just to let others know that Wells Fargo don’t give up, whether it’s forty bucks or forty thousand that’s stolen. Yeah, wouldn’t be surprised if he makes an example out of you, Skene.”
Skene had begun to show signs of real worry at the first mention of Jim Hume’s name. He knew how tough the Wells Fargo Chief of Detectives could be, how relentless and ruthless. Now he reached out a blood-stained hand and gripped Nash’s wrist.
“H—how you mean? An example?”
Nash shrugged as he stood slowly.
“Reckon he’ll push for a hanging.”
“Hell! I never killed no one!”
“Old lady on that stage died of a heart attack.”
Skene blinked. “I recollect an’ old gal faintin’ but I never thought...”
“Yeah. Her heart gave out. Be easy enough to prove you holdin’-up that stage induced it. Yeah. Looks like a hemp necktie for you, Skene.”
“Judas, Nash! No! It ain’t right!”
“Country’ll be better off without the likes of you, Skene,” Nash told him coldly. “I’ll doctor you some an’ I’ll keep you alive till we get back to Signal. Medic there can take over an’ if you ain’t well enough to travel to the County Seat for trial, I reckon you can sweat it out in Signal till a Circuit Judge gets there. Either way, you’re headed for the gallows.”
Two – Signal, Colorado
There were half-a-dozen hardcases in Sundance’s bunch.
Not counting the kid.
Larry Holbrook made seven, apart from Sundance himself. There were the two breed brothers, Chickasaw and Monte; a broken-toothed killer named Waco whose picture on wanted dodgers decorated trees all the way from Texas to the Oregon Trail; Mitch Emerson, a quiet-spoken young man who shaved every day no matter what, as if under some strange compulsion to keep his jowls hair-free; mean-eyed Rudy Jenkins who couldn’t disguise his native Kentucky twang, and a laughing, smiling gunfighter with a queer look in his eyes called, simply, Idaho.
They had drifted in one by one to the rendezvous camp where Sundance had taken Larry after the youth had decided to ride along. He had buried his dead father right there in the cabin, digging a grave in the earthen floor and covering it with some slabs of stone taken from the fireplace. He had done that while he and Sundance had waited for the rains to cease. But they hadn’t stopped.
Leastways, not for long. It had been raining ever since, a steady, drenching downpour that turned the countryside into a quagmire, muddied swollen rivers and creeks, and caused floods in the river bottoms and low country.
It didn’t matter too much, Sundance said. They were keeping to the high country, meeting in the mountains above Signal. Their tracks would be washed away and that was important; if not so much right now, it sure would be after they had pulled ‘the job’ in Signal.
“Job?” Larry had echoed, a tight, knotty feeling in his belly. “Judas priest, Sundance, what job?”
Sundance had grinned. “Just a small chore my pards an’ me’ve been plannin’ for a spell. You can help out, kid. Fact is, I reckon it’ll go a damn’ sight smoother with you along. And you get equal shares with the rest of us, and I don’t care that you’re not much more’n a button. You do a man’s job, you get a man’s share in my book.”
Larry had licked his healing lips. “Listen, I dunno that I want to—stick around with you on this, Sundance.”
“Sure you do. Nothin’ to it. It’ll be a foolproof job or we wouldn’t be attemptin’ it at all.”
“Smacks of breakin’ the law to me.”
“So? You got somethin’ agin that? The law somethin’ special to you? It takes care of you, huh? See you always got a full belly, warm clothes, roof over your head? Huh?”
Larry had felt his ears ringing and his cheeks burning as he lowered his gaze and shifted uncomfortably in his old saddle.
“Well, no-o, I reckon not, but...”
“Look,” Sundance cut in, “you told me your old man got throwed in jail from time to time for breakin’ the law with that still, right? You run off several times an’ to live, you stole.”
“Only what I needed!” protested Larry hotly. “I only took enough grub to fill my belly, an’ clothes that I needed!”
Sundance had smiled crookedly, eyes boring into the youth. “Sure, we all just take what we need. But, tell me, Larry; you reckon if you’d gone to some sheriff and explained to him that you only took grub ’cause you was hungry, stole clothes ’cause you was cold or near-naked, that he’d have listened an’ said, ‘Well, boy, that’s all right, long as you only take what you need?’ Or you figure he might’ve grabbed you by the throat an’ kicked your butt all the way into the nearest cell an’, after he had you locked up, he’d say, ‘you took grub an’ you took clothes. Don’t matter a spit why, boy, fact is you took ’em an’ that’s stealin’. You is for the high-jump, boy!’ Huh? Now which you reckon the sheriff might’ve said to you, Larry?”
The kid rode for some time in silence and then sighed and nodded slowly.
“You’re right, Sundance,” he had said finally. “Stealin’ is stealin’, no matter the reason, good or otherwise.”
Sundance had merely grinned and winked ...
But when he had seen Waco arrive—the first of the wild bunch—Larry had wondered if this was going to be the harmless kind of adventure he had all-but convinced himself it was going to be.
The killer hadn’t even acknowledged the introduction but Larry had nodded jerkily, almost at once recognizing Waco from the wanted dodgers. The man was edgy, paced around the campfire with a Colt in his hands for a spell until Sundance had managed to get him to set and take it easy.
“Trouble on your back trail, I guess,” Sundance said conversationally as he poked at the fire and didn’t seem perturbed at the sharp, hatred-filled look that Waco threw him.
“Kind of,” the killer finally admitted, boring his black, gun barrel-like eyes into Larry. “There was a posse.”
“Posse!” exclaimed Sundance and for the first time Larry saw genuine hot anger blazing in the man’s green eyes. “Goddammit-to-hell, Waco! What you gone an’ done! I told you no stirrin’-up trouble!”
Waco seemed a mite uneasy now though he tried to cover it with a casual shrug and bluster.
“Lousy damn’ whore! Happened to be the sheriff’s fancy woman. I mean, how in hell was I to know? She was available and took my money all right, but soon as I started to get what was due to me, my way, she started hollerin’ an’ screamin’. I had to shut her up. Guess I busted her jaw. Beat the sheriff’s lead over the balcony an’ hightailed it into the Rockies. Had to kill two an’ drop a landslide down into their camp before I could shake em’.”
Larry looked away, frowning. Sundance bored his eyes into Waco.
“You better had shook ’em!”
“Aw, hell yeah, Sundance. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of ’em for a week.”
“That why you’re pacin’ like a mountain lion trapped in a cave? You ain’t sure you’ve shook ’em. So we move camp come sunup to the second meetin’ place.”
Larry admired the forethought of Sundance for having made these kin
d of arrangements and before sundown of that second day the others had drifted in, the breed brothers together, but the others on their own.
As soon as they had gathered, Sundance moved camp again. They rode through the heavy rain across the face of the mountains, horses slipping and sliding on the muddy slopes. They holed-up in a large cave above a ledge that jutted out like a big platform, above a sea of rain-misted hills and looking towards the distant town of Signal.
From the cave mouth, Larry could see the smudge of wood smoke from the chimneys of the town’s buildings. He could even make out the raw wood of the cedar that had been used to construct the buildings, a golden splash against the dark, misted green.
Signal was a mountain town, a special one, for the railroad had reached it, the highest point in the Rockies at that time, terminating at Signal, though this was only temporary. The railroad company, The Sierra and Prairie Line, aimed to drive on through the mountain in a gigantic tunnel, just as soon as the Government gave approval to the engineering scheme, and link up this remote section of Colorado with towns on the far side of the Rockies, and, of course, other states, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. It was an ambitious scheme and it would be a costly one. Already a big bunch of engineers and gangers was starting preliminary work, so confident were The Sierra and Prairie Line about the Government approving—and—backing—the scheme.
And, as Larry Holbrook was about to find out, a small Wells Fargo stage depot in Signal was to play an important part in this development.
And his own fumbling part in Sundance’s scheme would cost many lives.
But that lay in the future.
For now, there was the plan; it had to be discussed and each man had to know what part he had to play and just what was required of him. It didn’t take Larry Holbrook long to realize that all of these men were willing—even eager—to kill if necessary.
So again, he began to wonder if he had done the right thing. But, of course, there was always The Debt.
He owed Sundance his life, he could never forget that. If the gunfighter hadn’t showed at that old cabin when he did, pa would have killed him, and the youth knew he couldn’t turn his back on the man who had saved his life—no matter what he wanted of him.
“If this goddam rain don’t ease off soon ...” Clay Nash growled as he led his horse warily along the high, narrow trail across the face of the mountain.
The second horse, carrying Skene, slicker-clad and roped to the saddle, plodded along behind Nash’s mount, head down, steamy tendrils rising from its hide. The wounded outlaw said nothing. Nash glimpsed his face between the dripping hat brim and the turned-up coarse slicker collar. It was gray and stubbled, deep-etched with pain lines. His eyes were closed and he swayed with the motion of the horse.
Clay Nash frowned, headed for an overhang of rock and stopped there, leaving his bronc’s reins trail while he stood on a rock and lifted Skene’s lolling head. The man was unconscious again. Nash lifted one of the eyelids and the bloodshot orb stared blankly back at him, the pupil dilated. He swore softly, opened the slicker and took a look at the crude bandages he had placed over the wounds three days earlier.
Both showed signs of fresh blood and one was fetid.
He stepped down and leaned back against the rock, thumbing back his hat, rolling a smoke thoughtfully, as he gazed at the slumped outlaw.
Skene would be lucky if he made it, alive, to Signal. Nash was willing to bet that one of those wounds was turning septic. Well, it wouldn’t matter, in the end. He was going to die one way or the other: either from blood poisoning or from hanging. Jim Hume would be disappointed if Nash didn’t get him back in one piece for a trial and hanging, but the main thing was that once again Wells Fargo had shown the world that no one robbed their stages and got away with it.
They were willing to spend hundreds of dollars to nail the hombre who stole forty bucks from one of their express boxes, just to get their message across.
Still Nash felt a mite sorry for Skene. The man had led him a good chase and had shown a lot of ingenuity in eluding him. He had Nash’s respect, to a degree, and because of that Nash would rather the man died swiftly, at the end of a rope, instead of lingering through the fevers and agonies of blood poisoning.
But there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.
He decided to camp under the overhang and moved on again the next day at first light, which came much later than usual with the swollen clouds and the unceasing rain. Muddy trickles poured down the mountainside, burst into cascades over some rocks, eroded the soil, even washed away some of the smaller bushes.
It was heavy, unseasonal rain and it was waterlogging the whole damn country.
It slowed Nash’s progress and he knew that if it hadn’t been raining so hard he might have reached Signal in time to get some medical help for Skene.
As it was, he woke on the second day to find the outlaw dead in his sodden blankets.
Nash emptied the man’s pockets of his few pitiful possessions and caved in a cutbank on him. He didn’t bother marking the grave. He could find the place again if he had to, but he knew there would be no need. Skene had been a loner; no one would mourn his passing.
Then, unencumbered by the wounded man, Nash mounted up and, leading Skene’s riderless horse, topped a ridge and looked down on the distant town of Signal.
Larry Holbrook didn’t like the job he had been given, but he was determined to do it to the best of his ability. Deep down, he knew there was some fear behind his determination, too, for if he didn’t play his part properly, the whole deal would blow up in their faces.
And he had no notion to go through the rest of his life wondering when Waco would step out of the shadows and put a bullet in him ...
It was simple enough; all he had to do was decoy the Wells Fargo agent in the small depot at the northern end of town.
The part he didn’t like was knowing that while he held the man’s attention, Sundance and the others were going to come in. Larry wasn’t all that certain that the man wouldn’t be killed outright and it was this thought that put the icy knot in his belly.
He wanted no part of murder ...
It was night and Larry waited until the depot was empty except for the agent, a man named Potter. He seemed a pleasant type of hombre from what Larry had seen during the afternoon when he had made a few excursions past the depot, observing Potter and his treatment of passengers and townsmen. He figured then that he would be easy enough to approach, but it made him feel bad when he knew what was going to happen.
But the job had to be done and so now, with a final glance around the dark streets, hearing the distant noise and honky-tonk from the saloon, Larry Holbrook stepped into the warm glow of the depot. Coming in out of the night like that, in his ragged clothes and with a nervousness that was really no act at all, Larry looked kind of pathetic and this was exactly the impression he wanted to convey.
He saw the agent glance up from his books, jam his pipe between his teeth, and frown towards him, squinting a little. Potter was a man in his forties with children of his own, and he looked at Larry paternally as the youth shuffled up to the counter.
“’Evenin’, young feller. Do somethin’ for you?”
“Yes, sir. Leastways, I sure hope you can.”
Larry paused, shuffling his bare feet a mite awkwardly, holding his battered and grimy hat in front of him. Potter waited and when the kid said no more he puffed on his pipe and leaned forward, smiling encouragingly.
“And what is it you’re hopin’ I can do for you, boy?”
“Well, sir, I got to get on down to Julesburg.”
“Not much of a problem there. Wells Fargo takes in Julesburg on the Denver run. Be there in three days and I reckon ...” He paused as he leaned over the counter and looked Larry up and down. “Well, I reckon I could stretch things a mite and get you through on a child’s ticket.” He winked heavily. “Half rates, and won’t charge you nothin’ for totin’ that there gunnysack restin’ again
st your legs if it’s the only luggage you got.”
“Oh, it’s all I got, sir, but thing is—I don’t have no money.”
Potter’s face straightened and then he pursed his lips and put his pipe stem back into his mouth.
“Well, now, that is kinda a problem.”
Larry stepped closer, his voice trembling as he spoke. “Please, mister. My ma’s dyin’ in Julesburg and’ my pa’s dead only a week. I just gotta get on down there an’ see her before she—passes over! I’ll work my way. Help change the teams at the way-stations, rub down the horses, clean out the stage ... anythin’.”
Potter was frowning deeply now. He looked compassionate, yet reluctant to make a decision. “Boy, I’d sure like to be able to say right out it’ll be all right. But I don’t really have that authority. I mean Wells Fargo’s in the business of makin’ a livin’ an’ it’s not just a matter of me handin’ you a ticket an’ sayin’ okay. I’d have to put in the money for it out of my own pocket an’ ...”
Larry started hopping from one foot to the other, his face contorted.
“What’s wrong?” Potter asked sharply.
“I—gotta go, mister! Sorry. Just so nervous about comin’ in here, I guess ... You got an outhouse ...?”
Potter was already lifting the flap in the counter. “Here. Come on through here. Judas, boy, hurry! Don’t you go wettin’ my floor now!”
Larry hurried after the agent as he led the way through a short passage to the rear of the building. Here he paused at the heavy door, shot back the bolt and turned the key in the latch, swinging the door open, urging Larry out into the dark yard.
“Outhouse is to the left, about five yards. But if you can’t make it, go anywheres in the weeds an’...”
Potter broke off abruptly. Out of the darkness, stepped Sundance, Waco and Chickasaw. They all had guns in their hands as they crowded in, forcing the agent to back up along the passage, as far as the office.
Potter turned sharply as the street door opened and closed and he paled as three other men came in; Monte, Mitch Emerson and Rudy Jenkins. Larry, coming along the passage from the yard, glanced at the men and figured Idaho must be waiting outside with the horses. The kid looked apprehensively at Sundance and he felt a lurch in his chest as he realized none of them was wearing masks. This likely meant that they wouldn’t leave Potter behind as a witness ...
