by Brett Waring
A campfire! And he would bet it was the straw-haired outlaw’s. It had to be! The man was using the mist to disguise his fire but because Nash was above the mist layer, he could see the smoke plainly.
He took his bearings and dropped to the ground, picking up rifle, saddlebags and canteen swiftly and starting down the steep slope into the valley below.
By the time he reached the valley, the mists were dispersing and rays of the early sun were probing through the timber. But there were still tendrils of mist around the trunks of trees and he seemed to be walking through clouds. The ground mist hid the ground from him so that his pace was slowed while he felt around for a firm footing as he drew closer to where he figured the campfire was.
He could smell wood smoke now, and frying bacon, coffee brewing. The man must have been supremely confident that he had shaken Nash, to delay so long and cook breakfast. Nash slowed his pace, got a firmer grip on his rifle, crouched as he made his way warily through the trees. He could hear water running, too, and figured his man was camped beside one of the many mountain streams.
Then the timber thinned out ahead and he could see the campsite. That was his man, all right. There was the jaded, lathered chestnut mount, standing with drooping head, ground-hitched, cropping sweet grass. The man crouched by the fire, stirring something in the skillet, both hands occupied. His hat was tilted to the back of his head and the sunlight shone on yellow hair combed thickly about his ears and neck. His clothes were faded, nondescript range clothes and he wore a single six-gun low on his right thigh.
Nash figured he would never have a better time to move in and, cocking the hammer of his rifle back slow and easy without noise, he stepped out of the timber.
“All right, mister!” he snapped. “Grab air!”
Chapter Six – Prisoner
Clay Nash walked slowly towards him, covering him with the rifle. He gestured for the man to get to his feet and he did so slowly, staring at Nash with cold, angry blue eyes. He brushed the long hair out of his eyes and Nash noticed the bleached stubble around his jaw line, the aquiline nose. He did not seem to be wounded but Nash made him turn around then shoved him towards a tree. Here he made him encircle the trunk with his arms and then snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists while he searched him thoroughly. He noticed that there was a pale band around one of his fingers the flesh white against the tan.
“Listen, I got no money!” the yellow-haired man gasped. “You’re wastin’ your time ...”
“Think so?” Nash said, satisfied that the man had no hidden weapons. He looked at his boots but couldn’t see any bulge or lump as Roarin’ Dick Magee had described and the man hadn’t walked with any noticeable limp when he had been shoving him towards the tree.
“Who are you, mister?” the yellow-haired man asked. “Some kinda lawman?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“The handcuffs. Ordinary rannies don’t carry them, I guess. But if you think I’ve done anything wrong ...”
“That’s what I think. What’s your name?”
“Brad Burns, but ...”
“Where you from?”
“Talbot, Minnesota.”
“Recently!”
“Oh—all over. I’m just kinda ridin’ around, looking at the frontier, gathering material to write a book about it. Used to work for an illustrated paper in Talbot. I haven’t done anythin’ wrong, mister, and you still haven’t said who you are.”
“Clay Nash, Wells Fargo. And don’t waste your hogwash on me, Burns. I’ve got you dead to rights.” He gestured towards the jaded horse. “That’s the horse you used when you tried to hold up the Knife Edge stage.”
Burns blinked at him. “You’re loco! I haven’t held up any stage!”
“There’s the Blackwood-Meredith Springs stage, too. You got several killings against you, kid.”
Burns was pale under his tan now and he frowned at Nash, shaking his head swiftly. “Hell, man, you’re wrong! I haven’t done anythin’ like that! And that’s not even my horse.”
Nash arched his eyebrows and hunkered down to roll a smoke, looking at the prisoner coldly. “S’pose you tell me about it, Burns.”
“Sure. That’s all I want to do ... Look, I’ve been on the trail for a week ...”
“Comin’ from where?” Nash interrupted, lighting his cigarette. “I want all the details.”
“Okay, you’ll get ’em. I’d been working around a place called Cloud Mesa, with some sheepherders. They got into a war with the local cattlemen and I got run out. I went to a town and bought a horse and outfit and there I heard about there being a gold rush up in the hills near Blackwood so I decided that would be another aspect of frontier life I should get to know about so I set out for here ...”
“You’re takin’ a long time to get to the part I’m interested in,” Nash said shortly.
“You said you wanted details,” Burns replied in a pained voice. “Well, I got lost in the hills here. I can’t read maps any too well and they aren’t exactly accurate. Anyway, yesterday about mid-afternoon, I was floundering through a valley to the south and I’d dismounted to spread my map out on a flat rock when this man rode out of the brush, forking that chestnut you see yonder. He had a gun and he told me to put my hands up. He said he wanted my horse and outfit and he took the map, too. He left me his beat-up horse, hit me with his gun barrel and, I suppose, rode off.”
Nash looked at the man in open disbelief, drew on his cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. “Where’d he gun whip you?”
“Across the back of the head. I didn’t go right out to it, but almost.”
Nash stood and went behind the prisoner, parting the thick yellow hair, feeling the scalp. There was a slight bump there. “Not much of a lump, mister. Wouldn’t have put me out, even halfway. You could’ve done that on a tree branch ridin’ past.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t!” snapped Burns.
Nash walked around the tree and examined the finger with the white band around it. He looked Burns squarely in the eye. “Man I’m looking for has straw-colored hair, blue eyes and wears a silver ring on his hand. This here mark’s where you’ve worn a ring till recently.”
“Don’t I know it! He must’ve taken it after he gun-whipped me. It was gone when I came to. And I had my hat on and my hair’s thick at the back there. It would have cushioned the blow. That’s why there’s not much of a lump showing.”
Nash smiled faintly, crookedly. “You sure got a good line of talk, mister. Want to describe this hombre for me? The one you say took your bronc and outfit?”
“Sure. As well as I can, anyway. He was fairly tall, about your size ...”
“And yours?” Nash cut in.
“Well ... yeah, guess so. Yellow hair, like me, blue eyes, very cold blue eyes. Thin nose and he was wearing a silver ring, too. I—I think he might’ve been wounded. He seemed to favor his left side. Oh, yeah, he had on one of those long dustcoats like I’ve seen the stagecoach drivers wearing ...”
“You’ve described yourself pretty well, mister,” Nash pointed out.
“I’ve described the man who held me up and took my horse!” Burns snapped. “I’m no road-agent! I’m a roving journalist!”
“Got any papers to prove it?”
He shook his head. “Of course not! All my notes and everything were in my saddlebags and the man you want took them.”
Nash shook his head in grudging admiration. “You sure tell a good tale, Josh. Might be you could’ve been a journalist at some time or other, I guess.”
“Hell almighty! Look, I don’t know how I’m gonna convince you that I’m not the man you want ... !”
“You ain’t,” Nash told him flatly. “You’re the hombre who held up the Blackwood stage, killed three men and crippled Roarin’ Dick Magee. You tried to hold up the Knife Edge stage, too, and you killed the driver and shotgun guard on that. And I almost forgot. You killed your pards who’d sided you on the Blackwood stage job, Missouri Aimes and Th
ree-fingered Con Stuart.”
Burns was haggard by now and there was a hint of desperation in his wild eyes. He fought to get free of the handcuffs. “Hell’s flames! You can’t fit me for those things! I swear I’ve never been near Blackwood in my life and I’ve never held up any stagecoaches! Look, man, you’ve got to believe me! I was held up and robbed! That’s gospel!”
Nash looked bleakly at the man as he walked slowly around the tree. “It might have happened that way, I guess, except for a couple of things.”
“You’re making one helluva mistake!”
Nash shook his head, grim-faced. “You made the mistake, Burns. A big one.”
Brad Burns stared, clearly puzzled.
“This hombre I’m chasin’ is a killer. He don’t leave witnesses. He’s left a trail of dead men clear across the State. Yet here you are, alive and unharmed. That’s the mistake you made. He just wouldn’t have let you live to tell the story you have.”
Burns thought about that. “Well, I’m pretty sure he was going to kill me. Yeah, I remember now, his eyes went sort of flat and cold and he started to turn his gun squarely on me but then he suddenly stopped, stared at me for a long time, then walked over and hit me across the back of the head. Yeah, he was going to kill me, all right!”
“Then why did he change his mind?” Nash asked skeptically.
“I don’t know, but ... hang on. I know why he didn’t kill me! It’s because I do resemble him!”
“Come again?” exclaimed Nash.
“Well, he saw a chance to use me as a decoy ... Can’t you see?”
The Wells Fargo man dropped his cigarette stub and ground it into the soil with his boot. He looked levelly at Nash.
“What I see is the killer and robber I’ve been hunting. And you’re my prisoner, mister. I’m taking you back to Fort Laramie.”
“But you can’t! I’m not ... Look. Suppose I take you to the place where he held me up? I—I think I can find it again. There should be tracks of some sort. You ought to be able to read them if you’re any sort of a manhunter.”
Nash thought about it. “How far?”
Burns frowned. “Oh, it’d be several miles, I guess.” Nash made his decision. “Nope, I ain’t going to waste time, Burns. I tell you, mister, I figure you’re a liar. And I got no notion to be traipsin’ through these valleys with you on some wild goose chase.”
“Good God, Nash! Give me a break! Look, you’re talking about multiple murder! Hanging crimes! You’ve got to give me a chance to prove my story!”
“Far as I’m concerned, you can have as much chance as you gave the drivers or guards on them stages you held up,” Nash said coldly. “Now don’t try anything, or I’ll blow you apart.”
He held his six-gun in one hand while he unlocked the handcuffs with the other and made Burns keep his hands there around the tree trunk with the cuffs dangling from his left wrist until he had stepped back. “All right, ease your arms down slow and put your hands behind your back,” the agent ordered.
Brad Burns, mouth stretched into a tight, thin line, his eyes dangerous, slowly eased his arms around the trunk. “Can I at least stretch a bit before you cuff me again?” he asked, moving his shoulders stiffly.
“Do it easy,” Nash ordered.
Burns nodded and began flexing his arms and shoulders, starting to swing his arms a little up over his head. Abruptly he caught a low branch of the tree and swung up his long legs. Nash leapt back but not quite fast enough. Burns’ boots caught the barrel of his Colt and the gun tilted up, blasting, and falling from Nash’s grip. Burns let go the branch so that his whole body flew forward with the momentum of his swing and his boots drove into Nash’s chest and knocked the Wells Fargo man down. Burns fell on top of him and started hammering at his face and head, trying to use the heavy iron cuff to batter Nash’s face.
Clay Nash threw up his arms and took the heavy, numbing blows on his forearms and he hooked an elbow up and it took Burns just under the ribs. The man gagged and straightened and Nash heaved him aside, scrabbling to get to his feet. Burns was nimble and he lunged across, swinging his fist with the cuffs attached. The iron caught Nash on the side of the head and he went down with head ringing, rolling instinctively away and landing in the campfire. Burns threw himself bodily after him and Nash grabbed the hissing coffee pot and flung it at him. It bounced off Burns’ head and he fell with a thud, but reared up to his knees, blinking and shaking his head. He sure had a hard skull, thought Nash, as he drove in and brought up a knee into Burns’ face, sending the man slamming over backwards.
Nash lunged for him and Burns got his boots up, drove them against Nash’s chest and sent him staggering. The yellow-haired man staggered to his feet and looked around for some kind of weapon, spotting his own Colt and making a dive for it. Nash got his legs under him, hurled himself forward and kicked the gun out of reach. Then for good measure, he stomped on Burns’ hand and the man yelled in agony. Nash kicked him in the head and while he lay there dazed, and moaning, he rolled the man onto his face and locked the handcuffs on his wrists behind his back. He dragged Burns to a sitting position and shook him, glaring down into his bloodied face.
“You’re comin’ with me to Fort Laramie, Burns!” he panted, forcing the words through slitted lips. “And I guarantee to find you a place on the gallows there! Savvy?”
Brad Burns looked at him through the blood and dirt, his eyes blazing, then whispered, “You miserable scum! I’ll kill you for this! You’ve got the wrong man, goddamn you! The wrong man!”
Nash hauled him roughly to his feet and shoved him across the campsite towards where the horse stood, ground-hitched.
“The hangman’s rope won’t know the difference,” Nash told him, still in a cold rage from Burns’ attempt to escape. “But you’re the one I want, all right, Burns, and I’ll prove it before they drop the trap from under you.”
~*~
The Fort Laramie Penitentiary was considered, by men who should know, to be virtually escape-proof. The stone walls had been built up by successive gangs of prisoners over the years. They were eleven feet high and topped with rows of broken bottles set in cement. The cell-blocks were in the main building, also built of the local granite, and divided into sections. The felons serving their sentences were in a separate part to those awaiting trial or execution. Those destined for the chain-gang and rock pile were housed in heavy log barracks, in another section of the yard. There were guard towers at each corner and on a platform over the main gate. There was open country for a mile all around the walls, completely devoid of cover of any kind. Once those heavy barred gates closed behind a man committed to Fort Laramie Penitentiary, he could make up his mind that only the end of his sentence or death would release him.
Brad Burns knew all about the prison. He claimed he had read about it and been told by ex-convicts. Clay Nash figured it possible that he might even have served some time there in the past but Burns denied this. He had made several attempts to escape custody on the trail down from Montana but none of them had had any real hope of success. He had long given up trying to convince Nash that the agent had made a mistake, but Nash was convinced he had the right man.
Chief of Detectives Jim Hume heard out Burns when Nash brought him in and then asked Nash for his side of the story. He sat back in his chair, rolling a cigar between his fingers but making no attempt to light it. At last he said:
“Too much going against you, Burns, but we’ll play fair. While you’re waiting for the preliminary hearing, we’ll look into your story, check a few facts. Even if they’re true, it still puts you in the vicinity of that last hold-up attempt at the right time and I find it hard to swallow that there are two yellow-haired hombres who look so much alike, wandering around the same neck of the woods.”
Burns sighed. “Look, I know it sounds far-fetched, Mr. Hume, but it’s true!” He turned to Nash. “You said you thought you wounded your man. Well I don’t have any bullet wounds on me. Examine me if you want to.�
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“Said I thought I winged him. Likely my lead only flicked his dustcoat. Which is likely why you got rid of it somewhere. Bullet-holes in your clothes are a mite hard to explain.”
Burns’ eyes narrowed as he glared at Nash. “I promised to get you, Nash, and I will!” he whispered. “You’re railroadin’ me to make yourself look good!”
Nash said nothing.
“Which illustrated paper did you work for?” Hume asked abruptly.
“Uh? Oh, you wouldn’t know it. Small-time publication. Talbot ain’t all that big.” Burns seemed evasive.
“Ought to make it that much easier to check out, then,” Hume said, pencil poised over a notebook. “What name?”
Burns seemed reluctant but finally said, “Just the Talbot Illustrated Weekly. But you won’t hear anything good about me from the editor! I—I cut him out with a girl and we had a fight. To make me look bad, he planted some stolen money on me and the manager fired me.”
Hume looked at him levelly, deadpan. “Your life’s just one long stretch of bad luck, isn’t it, son? Wrongly accused of crimes you didn’t commit.”
Burns flushed. “All right. Think what you like! Check it out! It’s true! The girl’s name was Ettie Fineberg, if you want to know.”
Hume made brief notes. “One thing we’re going to have to know, Burns,” he said, glancing up, sounding almost casual but Nash could detect the underlying edge of steel in his voice. “Where’s the gold you stole from the Blackwood-Meredith Springs stage?”
Burns’ lips clamped together and he glared at both men but said nothing.
“We had to pay out all that money,” Hume continued. “We can’t let it slide without taking some steps to recover it. You think about it for a spell. I’ll give you a couple of days. After that—well, I’ll have to tell Warden Bronson we need some information out of you. He’s always gotten us what we need in the past and we don’t enquire too deeply into his methods.”
Burns glared hotly, lips peeling back slowly from his gritted teeth. “Bastards!” He jumped to his feet and Nash moved in fast. “How the hell can I tell you where your goddamn money is when I didn’t goddamn steal it?”
