Clay Nash 4

by Brett Waring

  He had enough powder to blow down the heavy cell door but that wasn’t his plan. Even if he got out of the cell, he couldn’t escape from the stone building. He had to make his break when he was on the rock-pile. So he packed the black powder into the old pipe tobacco can that had cost him three days’ rations to get, fed in this homemade fuse and cracked a piece of flint out of the floor of the cell.

  Next day, on the pile, it wasn’t to be a blasting day, but they were working on a high pyramid of broken rock within easy throwing distance of the powder store, which was under heavy double-guard at all times. Other prisoners knew of his plan and they made a lot more dust than usual, throwing spadefuls around, creating a thick yellow pall that covered Dundee’s movements while he slipped out his homemade bomb and struck at the piece of flint with the iron bolt. Sparks flew as he knelt and hurriedly aimed them at the end of the fuse. It spluttered, died away. He cursed, struck a veritable shower of sparks and the fuse began to smolder. Hearing a guard yelling about all the dust, Matt Dundee crawled to the top of the rock-pile and threw the tobacco tin bomb over the outer wall of the powder store. A thin trail of blue smoke arced across the sky. One of the powder house guards turned at the clatter the tin made when it landed and started through the special gate into me inner section of the magazine.

  Dundee thought he heard one frightened bleat from the man when he realized what he was looking at and then there was a great thump like someone dropping a flatiron on a deal table. Almost instantaneously, this was followed by a gigantic explosion and a sheet of flame that spewed clear across the yard, flattening the cell building and the superintendent’s office block, blowing out a section of stockade wall and sending the guards on top of it to eternity. The rock-pile protected the prisoners working there ... and the men guarding them.

  But the guards were caught unawares and the men launched themselves at them, hammering and smashing at them with sledges and rocks and fists.

  But not Matt Dundee.

  He wasn’t interested in revenge. Escape was the only thing that interested him and while prisoners paused to grapple with guards who had treated them brutally, and a new troop of armed men ran out of the undamaged guardhouse across the yard, Dundee went over the rock-pile and made his way around the huge, smoking crater in the middle of the compound. Smoke and dust were thickest here and he tore a Winchester and a Colt from the belt on a bloody, gutted body, fired at a rearing shape and saw the man go down screaming, then made a dash for the sagging section of stockade. All was pandemonium. There were shouts and yells, gunfire and flames, smoke and choking dust, running men, blindly charging about, all sense of direction lost in the general chaos.

  Dundee wasn’t interested in anyone’s welfare but his own and he knew the officers’ horses were taken down to the river at this time each day for exercise and a swim. The man who took them was on his way back now, running towards the prison yard, snatching at the gun in his belt. He spotted Dundee running along the wall and snapped a shot at the convict. Dundee whirled, the rifle butt braced into his hip. He levered fast and triggered, again and again. The man threw up his arms and spun onto his face. A bullet tore into the ground inches in front of Dundee and he jerked his head and rifle up, saw the guard in the tower atop the trembling wall of the remaining section of stockade and got off two fast shots, missing each time. But the guard ducked and then the wall collapsed and Dundee threw himself down the slope, rolling over and over, timing it right so that he came up onto his feet at the foot of the slope and, cradling the rifle, pounded across the flat to the edge of the arroyo that led to the river and the now abandoned horses.

  He could take his time now, select a couple of fast horses and in minutes be safely on his way to the border. They would never catch him. Not alive, anyway.

  ~*~

  The trail herd bedded down on the holding grounds outside of the border town of Ojo Medina and Brad Burns drew his time from the trailboss, a grizzled professional who had spent more time in the saddle than standing upright on God’s green earth. His name was Longhorn Tommy Loveless and he was a living legend of the Texas trails, right up there alongside Goodnight and Loving and Jim Stinson and John Chisholm himself.

  He looked at the tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed young man before him with the golden stubble fringing his iron jaw, and squinted up one eye.

  “Sure you want to go?” he asked. “You’re a good man, Burns. I could use you again.”

  Burns smiled wearily. “Reckon I’ve got enough material to write a half-dozen books now about cattle-driving, Mr. Loveless.” He rubbed at his backside. “After so long in the saddle, I figure I’ll be eatin’ like a horse for a month ... standin’ up!”

  Loveless nodded, not smiling. He sighed and wrote out a pay-chit with a thick pencil stub, his tongue stuck out as he formed the words laboriously. He handed the greasy piece of paper to Burns. “Take that into the Cattleman’s Bank in Ojo Medina. They’ll give you the cash. And listen, boy, anytime you want a job trailherdin’ again, you look me up. I mean it, any time at all ...”

  Burns shook hands with the grizzled old trail driver. “Thanks, Mr. Loveless,” he said soberly, pleased at the old man’s words. “Appreciate all you’ve done for me. I’ll send you a copy of my book when it’s published.”

  “Better had!” Loveless said. “Want to read about myself—so long as it’s good! Well, good luck, mister.”

  “Same to you.” Burns turned and picked up his warbag and saddle-rig. He saddled his claybank and tied his warbag on behind, then walked across to where a gray was ground-hitched, already saddled with a warbag draped over the leather. He made sure the lashings were tight, picked up the reins and led it over to stand by the claybank. By that time, the rest of the trail hands had assembled and awkwardly said their farewells. Brad Burns had proved to be popular on the long trail drive. He climbed aboard the claybank and, leading the gray, turned with a casual salute, and rode out of the trail camp, heading across the flats towards the distant town.

  He wasn’t looking forward to what was awaiting him in that town of Ojo Medina. There was a girl there, a school-ma’am named Ellen Bray, and he was on his way in to tell her that her brother was dead.

  There were many other chores he would have preferred to do, but someone had to do it, and he had elected himself, way back at the Pecos River just after the night-long stampede that had taken Larry Bray’s life. Burns was still green enough to figure that the ‘Code of the West’ bound him over to break the bad news to Bray’s kin, seeing that he had been Larry’s sidekick when it happened.

  Or maybe it was the romantic in him, the ‘writer’ part, that simply wanted to believe that this sort of camaraderie really existed between Westerners when, in fact, it was more accurately ‘every man for himself.’

  Be that as it may, what Brad Burns believed really didn’t matter because, as he had told Longhorn Tommy Loveless, he had sufficient material now to begin writing his book about trail-driving in the Old West and he aimed to stop over a spell in Ojo Medina to get things started.

  Strangely enough, Brad Burns had had a very tough introduction to the West, a case of mistaken identity that had almost cost him his life. He had sworn to kill the man who had done it to him, a Wells Fargo undercover agent named Clay Nash. If ever they met again, it would have to be over smoking guns.

  That was part of Burns’ ‘Code’, too.

  Chapter Two

  Duly Elected

  Clay Nash was a big man, tall, lithe, keen-eyed, and it was hard to tell whether he was young or old. He was actually somewhere around thirty but he had lived hard. There was a healthy air of fitness about him that showed in the way he moved. He had the appearance of a man who could spring into violent action in a split-second ... and walk away from it.

  As he swung down the boardwalk in El Paso, he carried a Winchester ’73 rifle, and one side of the blued-steel receiver was engraved with the words: Presented to Clay Nash by a grateful Wells Fargo Express Co. for duty well done. A
similar legend was engraved in the brass back strap of the Colt Peacemaker that hung in the cutaway gunfighter’s holster on his right thigh. Passersby gave him barely a second glance for he was dressed like any cowpoke of that day and age, in tough work clothes and, apart from his icy gray eyes, he looked just like any cowboy in town for a spree.

  He turned into the Wells Fargo office, made a couple of enquiries and identified himself before being shown through to the rear office where his boss, Jim Hume, Chief of Detectives for the Wells Fargo Company, waited. They shook hands and Hume introduced Nash to the Ranger captain sitting beside his desk, a leather-faced man in his fifties, named Hammond.

  They seated themselves again and Hume passed around the cheroots. When the office air was tinged with a blue haze of tobacco smoke, the Chief of Detectives spoke, looking at Nash.

  “Guess you know why I pulled you off that assignment up in Kansas?”

  Nash shrugged. “I can guess. The Alamogordo train robbery?”

  Hume nodded. “I won’t go over the details. You know ’em and, to get right down to it, we don’t have a lot of time to waste.” He gestured to the Ranger. “Captain Hammond here has had his men workin’ on that robbery ever since it happened, cooperating with the New Mexico people and us, too. It’s the third such robbery and a lot of men died each time.”

  “No idea which gang it is?” Nash asked.

  “We suspect a couple of brothers named Forrester,” Hammond told him, “but we don’t have a speck of proof. I’ve had undercover men on the job for quite a spell, but they’ve all turned up dead one way or another. Sometimes it looked like an accident, others, they were just found with the backs of their heads shot off.”

  Nash pursed his lips. “Tough bunch.”

  Hume nodded. “And the last undercover Ranger was gunned down in Ojo Medina only a few days ago. Shot by the local sheriff, of all people.”

  Nash looked at Hume sharply. “How come?”

  Hume glanced towards Hammond, and the Ranger sighed. “Too good a cover, I guess. He was playin’ the role of a hardcase and apparently stepped out of line and the local law had to draw on him. He wasn’t fast enough, either with talk or gun, I guess.”

  “How about the law? Was that sheriff put up to it by the Forresters, you figure?” Nash asked.

  Hammond looked dubious. “Not likely. Man named Luke Bray is sheriff in Ojo Medina. Man about my age. Knew him years ago. He was a square shooter then.”

  “Men can change in a few years, specially along the border,” Nash pointed out quietly.

  Hammond’s eyes bored into him. “I know. But not Bray. I’d bet on it. Point is, last word I had from my man was that he was getting onto a lead down there. He didn’t say what, but he was convinced he was starting in the right place.”

  ‘‘Now he’s planted there, permanent.”

  Hammond merely stared at Nash with hard eyes. ‘‘That’s the way it goes, Clay, you know that,” Hume said, getting Nash’s attention again. ‘‘But some of our own men have got hints that around Ojo Medina is the place to start. Nothing that you could file a report on, but hunches, impressions, you know how it is when you kind of get a ‘feel’ for these things.”

  Nash knew. His hunches and ‘feel’ for a situation had saved his life on several occasions and yet, afterwards, he had been unable to say just exactly what had dictated his course of action. Instinct, self-preservation ... maybe.

  ‘‘Now, Clay, we’ve hardly anything else to go on, except this vague idea that Ojo Medina is somehow involved,” Hume went on. ‘‘The way this gang operates is to block the line on a section of track where the engineer will see the barricade in plenty of time to stop. Now, don’t ask me why, but whenever there’s a barricade across the tracks, every engineer will edge his locomotive right up to it before stopping completely. That gives a good starting-point for anyone wanting to measure a distance back along the track. If they know how many cars back the express van is, all they’ve got to do is pace it out, plant the dynamite and they know damn well that van’s gonna stop right smack on top of the explosive.”

  ‘‘Then ... ‘boom’! The guards are out of commission and the van’s blown apart all in one hit,” Nash added, mouth grim. ‘‘Cold-blooded, but smart.”

  ‘‘Yeah. I’ve recommended that the company stop painting up the express cars in their own colors so they can be picked out so easily. I want ’em painted the same color as other cars on the train, even rigged to look like passenger cars if possible. But that’ll come later. Thing is, all the robberies were done in the same way and ...” He paused and looked levelly at Nash. ‘‘Not one speck of the gold bullion has ever appeared again!”

  “Which makes it kinda hard for us to track down the men who pulled those robberies,” Hammond said, unnecessarily.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Nash said slowly. “Nowhere to start back-tracking.” His frown deepened and he looked from the Ranger to his chief. “What d’you reckon’s happening to the gold, Jim? Smuggled out of the country?”

  Hume glanced at Hammond. “That’s Captain Hammond’s theory. Figures it could be getting hustled across the Rio to finance the bandits and rebels down that way.”

  “Against that,” Hammond spoke up candidly, “is the fact that we’ve tightened up searches the full length of the border. Every border town lawman along the Rio and all States bordering Mexico have had the word: search every man, woman and child, animal or vehicle that crosses into Mexico, and search ’em damn good! We’ve offered an incentive reward if anything’s detected but so far nothing from those three robberies has turned up.”

  Nash shook his head slowly. “Must be getting rid of it here somehow, then.”

  “Damn it, they have to be!” Hammond said edgily. “They sure ain’t going to sit on that much gold after the trouble they took to get hold of it. But we’ve had the word out and there’s nothin’ come back. Unless we can get a sniff of the gold itself, I don’t see us breaking this case easy.”

  “It’s never easy,” Nash pointed out quietly. “But it can be done. Might take a spell, but sooner or later it can be done.”

  “This one’s got to be sooner, Clay,” Hume told his top operative. “And it’ll have to be done undercover. We need a man to get into that gang.”

  Nash met his gaze levelly. “Me?”

  “You. Now, Captain ...” Hume gestured to the Ranger to have his say and Nash watched as the big Ranger crushed out his cheroot in an ashtray on Hume’s desk.

  “Ever heard of a fellow named Matt Dundee?” he asked Nash.

  “Sure have. I put him in San Angelo Penitentiary. He was blowing Wells Fargo safes clear across the country.”

  “He busted out a week ago.”

  Nash straightened. “Hadn’t caught up with that. You figure he’s in with this gang? He sure knows explosives.”

  Before Nash had finished speaking, Hammond was shaking his head and lifting a hand to stop Nash going on. “Nothin’ like that, but I guess he’s the kind of hombre a gang that operates the way they do could use. And the reason you didn’t know he’d busted out of San Angelo is because we didn’t publicize it.”

  Nash frowned, eyebrows raised.

  “He blew up the powder magazine and brought down most of the stockade,” Hammond continued. “Some other convicts tried to get away but they were caught or shot. Dundee made it down to Del Rio, a few miles north of the border. No doubt he was headed for Mexico.”

  Nash waited as Hammond paused. “What happened after Del Rio?”

  The Ranger captain looked at him squarely. “We gunned him down. Last night. Outside of town. In a lonely place.”

  Nash frowned, puzzled. “Well, fine. That’s the end of Dundee and I can’t say he’ll be missed. But what’s it got to do with this gang of train robbers and getting the gold back?”

  “Only a half-dozen people know that Dundee’s dead, Clay,” Hume answered. “And like Captain Hammond said, he was the kind of hombre who’d be welcomed by this gang with
open arms.”

  Nash nodded slowly. “I get it. You want me to take Dundee’s identity and hightail it to Ojo Medina? That it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Only thing is, I don’t look anything like Matt Dundee.” Hammond took a wanted dodger from his pocket and handed it across to Nash silently. The agent took it, unfolded it and read. He looked up sharply at the other men then returned to the dodger.

  “Well, it sure sounds like me and that sketch could be me with a couple of days’ beard. Ink’s fresh, too.”

  Hume smiled crookedly. “Only an hour since it came off the press. There’s a hundred of ’em already bein’ distributed along the border. You’re wanted for escape from prison, but it’s the other things that should interest the gang: blowing safes, blasting express vans on trains, murder and so on. You’ve got a ready-made reputation, Clay. And you’re tough enough to live up to it.”

  “I’d better be!” Nash said with a faint grin. He laid his Winchester and Peacemaker on the desk. “Can’t use these if I’m going undercover ... that engraving’s a dead giveaway.”

  Hume nodded as he took the weapons and locked them in a wall cupboard. He took out a new Peacemaker Colt and a ’76 Winchester rifle, and handed them to Nash.

  “Both just in from the gunsmith. You’ll find they’re finely-tuned, Clay, accurate as all get-out. I’ve had the triggers set the way you like ’em.”

  Nash nodded examining the weapons closely. “And when do I start out for Ojo Medina?”

  “You’ve got time for lunch,” Hume told him soberly.