Last Train to Bannock [Clayburn 02]

by Marvin H. Albert

  Clayburn came to life in the same instant, drawing the knife out of his sleeve and throwing it in the same motion as he lunged to his feet.

  Pollock whipped around, trying to shoot Clayburn and dodge the flung knife at the same time. He succeeded in neither. The knifeblade plunged into his chest, cutting off his scream as it started. He squeezed the trigger automatically as he fell forward. The gun boomed within the confines of the small room, the slug chopping into the adobe wall.

  Clayburn reached Pollock as his body hit the dirt floor. Snatching his own Colt from the dead man's belt, he straightened beside the window, ready to fire through it at Wilks.

  But the redhead had reacted fast to the sound of Pollock's gun inside the shack. By the time Clayburn reached the window Wilks was holding one of the passengers between him and the shack, using the man as a shield. When he spotted Clayburn he instantly began backing toward the barn, dragging his terrified shield along with him. He saw no sense in running the risk of trying to shoot it out. His mission was accomplished; he'd get paid. Now he was concentrating on getting away.

  But Ryle, halfway between the barn and the shack, spotted Clayburn too, and decided he could get him. He snapped up his rifle, taking aim at the window. As he fired, Clayburn took a step backward into deeper shadow. The rifle bullet slashed past his ear as he fired his own aimed Colt. The distance wasn't good. The slug got Ryle in the hip, staggering him, but he didn't go down.

  Clayburn was taking aim again when another shot sounded from next to the stagecoach. The plump station manager had gone down on one knee and seized the rifle dropped by the dead shotgun rider. It was his shot that killed Ryle.

  While the rifle shot still echoed, Wilks fired from behind his human shield. The station manager fell back with a scream of pain, clutching his bullet-broken shoulder. Wilks continued backing toward the barn, one hand gripping the back of his prisoner's coat, too well hidden behind the other man for Clayburn to try a shot at him.

  Leaving the window, he moved swiftly to the door. He slid his Colt back in its holster, crouched low, and dodged out toward the rifle the moaning station manager had dropped. Wilks(bullet kicked dirt against his leg as he reached and grabbed it. Clayburn dodged back to the protection of the corner of the adobe shack.

  "Anybody tries to stop me," Wilks yelled, "and I shoot this pilgrim in the head!"

  Clayburn levered a fresh shell into the rifle's fire chamber and took aim, hoping the man being used as a shield would have the sense to drop and give him a safe shot at the redhead's face. But it was a lost hope. The man's face was blank with shock and terror. His big figure continued to block Wilks from view the rest of the way to the barn.

  Clayburn stayed where he was, waiting to get a shot at Wilks when he emerged. Two shots sounded inside the barn. Seconds later two horses raced out of the other end of the barn, headed for the hills to the north. Wilks was riding one and leading the other. And he had his hostage up on the first horse clinging to his back, still shielding him.

  With a soft, vicious curse, Clayburn sprinted to the barn. Inside he found what he'd expected. The two horses left behind were dead.

  Coming out of the barn, he watched Wilks riding fast up the nearest hill. At the top, without stopping the red-haired killer turned in his saddle and clubbed his gun against his hostage's head. The man fell backward from the horse and rolled part way down the slope. Before Clayburn could fire, Wilks and his two horses disappeared down the other side of the hill.

  Clayburn lowered his rifle and glanced toward the stage and the shack. The station manager leaned against the wall, and the remaining passenger had begun trying to do what he could for the plump man's shoulder wound. Clayburn was surprised to see the stage driver sitting on the ground with Farnell's head on his lap.

  Hurrying to them, he saw that Farnell was not yet dead-though he was getting closer to it by the second. His blood-smeared chest was heaving weakly and his eyes were glazed. Pink froth bubbled between his white lips as he tried to speak.

  "What's he saying?" Clayburn asked the stage driver.

  "Can't make it out. Something about hired killers is all I got so far."

  Clayburn knelt over the dying man. "Who hired them?"

  Farnell made an effort to answer. Broken sounds came out of him, but nothing intelligible.

  Clayburn bent closer. "Who hired those men to kill you? Do you know?"

  Farnell's lips twisted as he tried to get the words out. The only ones that could be understood were: "… bastard… said… he'd stop me…"

  "Who?" Clayburn repeated insistently.

  But this time there was no answer of any kind. Farnell stopped making the effort. His head rolled against the stage driver's knee and was still. He'd finished his dying.

  Clayburn stood up and began trudging out to the unconscious man on the side of the hill.

  THREE

  The stagecoach took six hours to reach Parrish. On the way Clayburn rode up beside the driver and learned what he knew about Harry Farnell. Clayburn's interest was strictly personal. The red-haired killer had robbed him of his stake and his winnings. And pistol-whipped him into the bargain. These were things for which due retribution would be extracted. About such matters Clayburn had the persistence and patience of an Apache. And he figured the best method of finding the redhead was through whoever had hired him to do the killing.

  According to the stage driver, Farnell had run a freight line out of Parrish. He'd hit a string of bad luck and been close to going out of business when he'd acquired a new partner recently who'd injected fresh money into his firm. The reason Farnell hadn't been able to weather his business losses on his own was that he'd sunk all the profits of his previous successful years into a big spread up north. That was where Farnell had been coming back from on the stage; his wife and children lived on the spread.

  The stage driver couldn't think of anyone with a reason to hire killers to murder Farnell.

  "How about this new partner of his?"

  The driver shook his head. "Remember when he was try in' to tell us who hired them? He said the bastard hired 'em. Never heard anybody call a woman a bastard. Some get called a lot of other things. But not that."

  "Farnell's partner is a woman?"

  "Uh-huh. Don't know much about her except she's mighty good-looking. Makes you sweat just to look at her. That kind. She ain't from anywhere around here. Name's Cora Sorel."

  The name brought back a memory. Clayburn leaned back on the hard, jouncing seat, gazing thoughtfully past the pulling horses, across the flat distances to the southern horizon.

  He didn't know much about Coral Sorel either. But he knew more than the stage driver.

  It was dark when they got into Parrish, a big boomtown sprawled across the railroad tracks that cut through the Jemson Valley. Clayburn knew the place only from what he'd heard about it. Parrish had sprung up when the railroad first began pushing through the Valley, and for a couple years it had been the worst hell-spot in the Territory. But its lawless stage was past, ended by a town-taming marshal named Kavanaugh.

  Parrish was still a wild enough place, with a flourishing red-light district. But now Marshal Kavanaugh, his tough-reputation deputies and a sheriff strong enough to handle the surrounding county kept the wildness under rigid control, confining the red-light goings on to an allotted section of town.

  Within minutes of reaching Parrish, Clayburn had met the marshal and the sheriff. Both lived up to their reputations for efficiency. The wounded station manager was immediately turned over to a doctor, the bodies of the shotgun rider and Harry Farnell to the undertaker. The two passengers-one with a sizeable lump on his head-were questioned and allowed to register into the hotel. Twenty minutes after the stage came in, the sheriff rode out with a posse of six picked men to hunt down the red-haired killer.

  Clayburn didn't think much of their chances. They wouldn't be able to start tracking the redhead till dawn. He wouldn't even have to concentrate on losing his trail so he co
uldn't be followed. With that much head start, and two horses for speed, he could get beyond the sheriffs jurisdiction before the posse got anywhere near him. If he wanted to do it that way. He'd been heading northwest the last Clayburn had seen of him. That way lay Indian territory and land that still had no law. All he had to do was keep going.

  While Marshal Kavanaugh went off to talk to Farnell's partner, one of his deputies took Clayburn and the stage driver to the jailhouse office. They looked at the pictures on a stack of wanted posters that had come in from all over the southwest during the past couple of years.

  They finished going through the stack, without spotting any picture or description that fitted the red-haired killer, by the time Marshal Kavanaugh returned. He was a big, raw-boned man with a florid face dominated by the kind of eyes to be expected in a man who'd tamed four hell-towns in succession over the past ten years.

  "Any luck?" he asked in a friendly, businesslike voice that didn't go with his eyes.

  His deputy shook his head. "Cora Sorel have any notion who the redhead is?"

  "Nope. Nor who hired him. She says."

  "Somebody," Clayburn said quietly, "must have some ideas about it."

  Marshal Kavanaugh eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, sizing him up. "Sure, people've got suspicions. Lots of 'em, all going in different directions and not worth a damn. I got a couple myself. Both of which are probably wrong."

  "I'd like to hear them, anyway."

  The marshal shook his head. "Suspicions aren't proof. Making accusing statements without proofs against the law."

  The stage driver spoke up. "Can I go now, marshal? I ain't needed a drink so bad in a long time."

  Marshal Kavanaugh nodded. The driver unbuckled his gunbelt and left it on the desk. As he hurried out, the marshal turned to Clayburn.

  "I'll take yours, too. Only lawmen are allowed to carry weapons in Parrish."

  "You must have a real peaceful town."

  Kavanaugh grunted. "Ain't had a quiet night in Parrish since I came here. Men got a right to let off steam, long as they do it in the right part of town. I don't care what they do to each other with their fists, boots or anything else they can get hold of-long as it doesn't start a riot or break up too much property. But weapons mean killing. And killing usually means the city has to pay for burial. Taxpayers don't like that."

  Clayburn took off his gun belt, put it with his carbine on the marshal's desk.

  Kavanaugh went on eying him. "The rule includes concealed knives, Clayburn."

  His tone was deliberately quiet and not intended to give offense. His past ten years testified to his readiness to stand up against all kinds of men. But it also testified to his ability to judge men. He'd already decided that Clayburn was not the kind of man he'd care to tangle with, unless forced to it.

  "Those men that were after Farnell thought they'd disarmed you," he went on quietly. "But you came up with a knife from someplace."

  "I hope," Clayburn said just as quietly, "that you're this careful about everybody that comes into your city."

  Marshal Kavanaugh nodded. "I got a collection of derringers and knives in that closet to prove it. Nobody fancies thirty days in the quarry digging rock for the new town hall. And that's the penalty for carrying any concealed weapon inside city limits. Penalty for using one is hanging."

  "Hung many?"

  "Some. None lately, though."

  A suggestion of a smile touched the corners of Clayburn's mouth. He pulled up the left sleeve of his frock coat, unbuttoned and rolled up his shirt sleeve.

  The marshal looked at the knife strapped in its sheath to the inside of Clayburn's forearm, hilt toward his wrist, "So that's where you had it."

  Clayburn unstrapped the knife and put it down beside his holstered Colt. "I may be back for the guns. If I find somebody that'll pay me enough for them to last me through a few hands of poker. That redhead just about cleaned me out."

  "You want to eat meanwhile," Marshal Kavanaugh said, "you can get a meal at Henry's Diner, around the corner. Tell 'em I said to put it on my bill. I figure you earned it, out there at the stage station."

  "Thanks. Where can I find Cora Sorel?"

  "Princess Hotel. Up the street." Marshal Kavanaugh indicated the direction with his thumb. He asked no questions about why Clayburn wanted to know. But his eyes were thoughtful again as they followed him out of the jail-house and up the street.

  The Princess Hotel was the best in prosperous Parrish, and its carpeted lobby showed it. Learning that Cora Sorel had just gone into the hotel dining room, Clayburn went in and spotted her alone at one of the corner tables, studying the menu.

  She was exactly as he remembered her. Though he'd only seen her once before, and that time briefly, Cora Sorel was not a woman a man could forget easily. She was dark-haired, with bold, beautiful lips and a knowing, sensuous kind of loveliness. There was slim strength in the assured way in which she held herself and moved. Only her dress was different from the last time he'd seen her. It looked like a French import. It was cut modestly enough, but the material, its darkness matching her hair, clung softly to her curves, flaunting them. She had a figure that didn't need much help at flaunting itself.

  Cora Sorel looked up as he approached her table. Lustrous dark eyes took his measure, found him interesting.

  Clayburn took off his black hat, "Good evening, Miss Sorel. My name's Clayburn. I was around when your partner got himself killed."

  Her interest in him became more definite. "The marshal told me about you. That was quite a thing you did. Won't you join me for dinner?"

  "I'm broke."

  "My treat, then. Or would a woman buying you a meal offend your manliness?"

  "I don't know about my manliness, but my stomach wouldn't mind at all."

  As he seated himself across the table from her, a waiter came over. Cora Sorel ordered and passed the menu to Clayburn. She studied him as he ordered. When the waiter was gone she said, "Marshal Kavanaugh thinks you're a gambler. Are you?"

  He nodded. "And how have the cards been running for you, lately?"

  She leaned back a little in her chair, surprised. "You know me from some place?"

  "I saw you once a couple of years back in a gambling house in San Francisco. Bucking the biggest poker game in the place." He smiled at her. "As I recall, you were winning pretty steadily."

  Her beautifully curved lips quirked. "I usually manage to win more than I lose."

  "Uh-huh. A good-looking woman is a natural draw for the big-money suckers."

  She smiled at him more fully. "So we're both in the same line of business. How nice."

  "I heard you'd changed your line. Gone into freighting."

  "That's strictly a one-time thing. Harry Farnell made me a proposition too good to pass up." Her face clouded as she named her dead partner. "I've got almost every cent I've saved invested in a shipment coming in by train from St. Louis tomorrow. That was our deal. My money and Farnell's wagons, mule-teams and knowhow. Equal shares in the profits."

  "How does the deal stand with Farnell dead?" Clayburn asked softly.

  "The same. Except that it's going to be harder without him."

  "And the profits?"

  She stiffened just a bit. "I was to get half. That hasn't changed. Only now Farnell's share will be going to his family."

  Clayburn was silent, his greenish eyes on her face.

  She met his gaze directly. "That's one thing I never cheat on, Clayburn. I always pay what I owe."

  The waiter brought their food. Over the meal she told Clayburn about how she'd met Harry Farnell in St. Louis. He'd gone there to try buying a big shipment on credit, without success. A mutual acquaintance, a big cattle buyer who didn't seem to mind having lost a considerable amount to her over the poker table, introduced them. Farnell loosened up with her more than he might have with a man. He'd told her of the plan he had for recouping his business losses, if he could only get his hands on a big shipment of supplies.

&nb
sp; Farnell had just come from Bannock, up in the mountains some fifteen days riding northwest of Parrish. Shortly before he'd left there'd been a big gold strike there. Miners were pouring into Bannock by the hundreds-and the place was very short of supplies. It was already beginning to snow up there. In another few weeks, more or less, Bannock would be snowed in and it would no longer be possible to get freight wagons through to it.

  Anybody getting there with supplies before the big snows blocked the way would make a fortune. Every item brought in would bring twenty times its worth-in gold. With that kind of payoff as a reward, Farnell hadn't had to do much persuading to get Cora Sorel to sink her money into the venture as his partner. Outside of his cash shortage, he apparently had no troubles with anyone.

  "He had trouble, ail right," Clayburn said. "Trouble worth killing over."

  "Not that he told me about."

  "He could have been afraid to. Afraid you'd pull out of your deal with him."

  "If so, he misjudged me. I've played in some risky games before. For smaller profits. I'd have stuck, no matter what."

  Clayburn guessed that she would have. There was steel in her, under that soft, provocative exterior.

  "Without Farnell, who're you planning to have take your freight wagons through to Bannock for you?"

  "I'm taking them through myself. With men I'll hire to follow my orders."

  "That's a rough trail for a woman," Clayburn told her. "First a stretch of desert. Then Bad Lands that won't be any picnic either; I've been up that way. And those mountains are usually crawling with Apache war parties."

  "I know all about that. I'm going. Just as I intended to from the start."

  "Even when Farnell was alive to take the wagons up?"

  "That's right. Farnell seemed a decent enough sort. But I don't trust anyone that much. Those supplies are going to trade for an awful lot of gold. I intend to be there to keep count when the gold is paid over."

  They were finishing the meal when a man entered the dining room, glanced around, and then walked straight toward their table. He was a stocky, well-dressed, cold-eyed man in his early forties, with thinning gray hair and a strong-featured, handsome face. Clayburn remembered seeing him among the first of the crowd that had gathered when the stage pulled into Parrish.