by Brett Waring
Nash shoved him hard back into his chair and held him there, glancing towards Hume, who nodded slowly.
“Get him up to the prison, Clay. Judge Glenn will be presiding by the end of the week.” He flicked his steely gaze to Burns’ pale face. “You’ve got until then to tell us what you’ve done with the gold.”
Nash hauled Burns to his feet and shoved him roughly out of the office.
~*~
Warden Bronson was a tough man in a tough job. Some of his guards were little better than the criminals held in the prison and he had to be tougher and harder than the worst of them to hold down his position and to get any co-operation out of the convicts. He was big, brutal-looking and had massive fists. He balled these and leaned them on the edge of his desk as he ran his bleak eyes over Burns, but he spoke to Nash.
“Any—special treatment for this hombre?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Nash said curtly. “He goes before Judge Glenn at the end of the week—just as he is. I don’t want to see any fresh wounds, Warden.”
Bronson and Nash locked gazes briefly and the big warden nodded slightly. He grinned suddenly at Burns. “Judge Orville Glenn, in case you don’t know, is also called the Executioner. He takes rooms in the Holly House that overlook the public gallows so he can see his sentences carried out right to the end. Takes his job serious.”
Burns swallowed but said nothing.
“He’s officially in your care now, Warden,” Nash said.
Bronson sat down and picked up a short, round stick. He used it as a ruler, but it had other uses, too. He smiled crookedly and slapped the stick into the palm of his other hand. “All right, Nash, you can leave him with me. We’ll take good care of him.”
Nash hesitated briefly, glanced once more at the tight faced Burns and started out of the office. He paused at the door as Bronson said:
“Couple more of your prisoners due to come up before Judge Glenn, too, Nash ... Cade and Bryant.” He gestured towards Burns. “Your friend here’ll be bunkin’ with ’em in the ‘waiting’ section. Pity he didn’t know ’em before they arrived. He’d see a big difference in ’em now. Big difference!”
Bronson guffawed and Nash tightened his mouth and went on out. The warden was a man who enjoyed his job, he thought bitterly. And the marks of his efforts to reduce his convicts to a common denominator of blind obedience didn’t always show up as bruises and cuts on the flesh. Sometimes it was a man’s mind that bore the scars of the encounter.
He wondered how Brad Burns would make out.
Chapter Seven – Backtrack
Roarin’ Dick Magee was sitting up in his bed in the infirmary when Nash came into his room. The oldster was plaiting and braiding a leather whip handle and he looked up, his seamed face creasing up even further when he saw Nash. They shook hands briefly.
“You old mule,” Nash said affectionately. “Glad to see the operation was a success!”
“Well, hell, Clay, what’d you expect? And I had that new-fangled stuff that knocks you out cold so you don’t feel the surgeon diggin’ and gougin’ away with his knife.”
“Chloroform,” Nash said.
“That’s it. Gives you a worse hangover than a jug of corn-mash, but I reckon it was worth it, I can wiggle my toes, bend my legs. Be walkin’ by week’s end.”
“Glad to hear it. And talkin’ about week’s end, I brought in the hombre who shot you. He goes before the Executioner at the end of the week.”
Magee’s face sobered. “So you got the rooster. Thanks, Clay. Much obliged. If he’s facin’ the judge, I guess he’s still walkin’ about with a whole skin?”
Nash told him briefly of the capture and the manhunt leading up to it. He also told Magee of Burns’ claim that he wasn’t the bandit.
“But he has to be the one. Played it smart with that story, even got rid of the silver ring, but there was a white band left around the third finger of his right hand where it had been. ’Course he claimed the hombre who held him up took the ring when he was unconscious ... What’s wrong?”
Magee was frowning deeply, scratching at his stubbled chin with a horny finger. He looked levelly at Nash. “Clay, you sure it’s his right hand?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Mmmm ... And you say he don’t have any bulge on the toe of his boot, don’t walk with a limp?”
“No, but remember you were semi-conscious, Dick, with a bullet near-paralyzing you and ...”
“Didn’t affect my eyesight!” Magee said curtly. “Nope, Clay, that hombre who shot me was wearin’ a silver ring on his left hand, the one he didn’t carry his gun in. And he did have a bump near his big toe on his right boot. Those things are for sure, Clay. I’ll swear to ’em with my dyin’ breath.”
Nash held his gaze a spell and frowned. “You must’ve been mistaken, Dick.”
Magee merely looked at him steadily and Nash's frown deepened.
~*~
James Hume sat back in his chair and tapped a penholder lightly against his teeth as he stared at his top undercover operative seated across from him.
Nash was deadly serious, worried-looking.
“I think he’s lying all down the line, Clay,” Hume said quietly. “I got off some telegraphs while you were getting him admitted to prison and seeing Roarin’ Dick Magee. Took no time at all to get a reply from Talbot. Burns was right: the Illustrated Weekly have nothing good to say about him. They reckon he’s not even a good journalist.”
“Well, he predicted that.”
Hume shrugged, “Not hard to predict something you know just has to happen. The Cattlemen’s Association at Cloud Peak claim they’ve never heard of him and they haven’t had any sheepmen’s wars in over a year.”
Nash raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s possible they wouldn’t want it to get out about the war, especially if they’ve been burnin’ out the sheepherders and stringin’ ’em up.”
“I’d go along with that. As a possibility. But there are too many other things against this man, Clay. Why, you said yourself, he didn’t even have a decent-sized bump on the back of his head. What was there could’ve been done by banging his head on any low-hanging tree branch.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been thinkin’ since I’ve seen Dick Magee and during that fight I had with Burns, I bounced the coffee pot off his skull and I expected him to go down, but he kept right on comin’. He’s got a pretty tough skull, Jim, and when I looked at him after I got the manacles on him again, there wasn’t much of a bump where the pot had hit him.”
Hume pursed his lips, studying Nash’s face. “You’re having second thoughts about his story, Clay?”
Nash looked uncertain. “I dunno, Jim. Dick’s so damn sure the silver ring was on that ranny’s left hand and he did have that bump on his boot toe ...”
“You didn’t see the bump on the toe of the boot of the hombre who held up the Knife Edge stage. And you didn’t notice any limp.”
“Well, I was concentrating more on getting that hideaway gun out and I was interested in his eyes. He seemed a mite thrown by somethin’ when that stage crashed to a halt and we all got out. Almost as if he was expectin’ help that never came ... I dunno. It’s hard to explain. Just an attitude, I guess.”
Hume frowned deeply. “You didn’t mention that before, Clay. We figure, by the way, it was the road-agent himself who tipped off the railroad there was going to be an attempt to get at the express car. By a big gang, he said.”
“Why would he do that?”
“So we’d do what we did: send the gold by stage. You know how much easier it is to hold up a stagecoach than to try to bust into the express car of a train. He was smart enough to figure we’d use the alternative and set up the train as a decoy. After killing his two accomplices from the Blackwood deal, I guess he had to have something he could pull off alone.”
Nash stood up suddenly. “By hell, Jim! That’s it! That’s why he looked a mite uncertain on that hold-up! He was expecting help and it didn’t come!”
>
“Help? Who from?”
“One of the passengers!” Nash said, warming to his idea. “He kept looking them over and into the coach. He was expecting one of them to pull a gun and step up beside him but it didn’t happen, because the back-up wasn’t there.”
Hume sighed. “All right, Clay. You’ve got a few days before the preliminary hearing. We’ve got a list of the passengers who travelled on that stage to Knife Edge. You go check ’em out. If you find the one who was s’posed to help Burns, bring him back. There’s nothing we can charge him with seeing as he didn’t side Burns, but we might be able to scare him into making a positive identification. That should settle it one way or another.”
Nash agreed and hurried out.
~*~
Brad Burns gagged as the end of Warden Bronson’s round stick drove into his mid-section, just under the arch of the ribs. He coughed and moaned as he stumbled back into one of the big prison guards. The man slammed him off viciously with an uplifted knee, sending Burns stumbling halfway across the room to cannon into another guard. This man, dark and swarthy, with a huge paunch, twisted his fingers in Burns’ yellow hair and pulled the man upright. Burns’ face was contorted with agony and the paunchy guard suddenly clapped both hands violently against Burns’ ears.
The yellow-haired man’s eyes rolled upwards and his knees buckled and he fell onto the stone-flagged floor. The swarthy man bared his teeth and stepped forward, one boot drawn back. But Warden Bronson lunged forward with his round stick and drove the end of it against the man’s great paunch, sending him staggering back. He slammed into the wall of the small room and rubbed at the sore spot on his belly as he glared at the Warden.
“Don’t mark him up, you damn fool!” Bronson growled. He signed to the other big guard. “Get him on his feet, Mitch.”
The guard lumbered forward and dragged Burns upright, supporting him easily with one hand in the back of his belt, the other under the man’s left arm. He shook him violently and Burns’ head snapped back and forth on his neck. He opened his glazed eyes and stared at Bronson as the Warden leaned close to him.
“See, Burns?” he growled with a tight, mirthless grin. “We don’t have to leave a lot of bruises and cuts on you that show. But we can make you hurt mighty bad, mister ...”
He stomped down abruptly onto Burns’ instep and the yellow-haired man moaned, instinctively leaned down to grab at his foot. The butt end of Bronson’s rod hit him at the base of the skull and he stumbled forward, off-balance, into the Warden, his arms automatically going around the man’s big hips. Bronson grinned.
“You fellers see this?” he said to his guards. “A prisoner attacking me!”
He swept his stick down and it whacked across Burns’ kidneys, driving him to his knees with an involuntary gasp of pain. Both guards moved in and yanked Burns upright, slamming him back into the wall, driving the breath out of him. They held him there as Bronson stepped forward, hefting his stick, grinning crookedly.
“Now we can leave a few marks on you, Burns, seein’ as you attacked me! I’ve got to defend myself now, ain’t I?”
The stick swept around in a short arc and thwacked across Burns’ ribs. It came back and hit his ribs on the other side, again and again. Then Bronson, breathing only a little faster than usual, paused, grabbed Burns’ hair and yanked his head up, looking down into his pain-ravaged face.
“You got them marks resistin’. This you got when you fell down the stairs of the cell-block.”
The stick swept up and down and Burns jerked as he felt his nose break and blood gushed into the back of his throat, lights bursting dizzily behind his eyes.
Bronson stood back, his brutal face ugly as he gestured to the two guards. “Toss him back in the cell with Cade and Bryant. He ought to be about ready to tell us where he’s buried that gold next time we bring him up.”
The guards nodded and hauled Burns across to the small room’s door, his boot toes dragging across the flags and leaving twin trails in the dirt and grime there.
The cell Burns shared with Cade and Bryant and several other prisoners awaiting trial, was about twelve feet long and six feet wide. There were no bunks, only the wooden floor and some threadbare gray blankets were tossed through the barred door at sundown each night. When Burns was dragged back to the cell, no more than semi-conscious and blood all down his shirtfront, the man called Mitch drew his .45 and waved it at the group of prisoners.
“Get back, you scum!” he snarled and they shuffled to the rear of the narrow cell while he unlocked the door and nodded to his companion.
The paunchy man heaved Burns inside and the yellow haired man crashed to the floor, rolled a few feet and lay still, moaning. The door crashed shut and Mitch glared through the bars at the men inside.
“He was loco enough to attack the Warden, then he fell down a flight of stairs. Remember that, should anyone ask!”
He gave them a final raking glare, then walked away down the passage with the paunchy man. In the cell, Cade and Bryant watched as Burns struggled to a sitting position, fumbled out a kerchief and held it to his broken and swelling nose. One of the other prisoners approached to see if he could help but Burns told him in a muffled voice to get the hell out of it.
“You really loco enough to take a swing at the Warden?” Cade asked.
Burns’ eyes blazed at him over the top of the kerchief as he threw his head back in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. Cade walked across, Bryant following. They stood over Burns as he looked from one man to the other.
“Tell ’em where you left that gold?” Cade asked.
Burns slowly took the kerchief away from his swollen nostrils. He spat on the floor. “I dunno what you’re talkin' about,” he growled. “I’m sick of tellin’ you all that! I never robbed any stage or killed anyone! But, by God, there are a couple of men I’d like to kill! That lousy warden ... and Clay Nash!”
Cade glanced at Bryant and the man nodded slowly, dropped a big hand across Burns’ shoulder. The yellow haired man shrugged loose irritably. “We got a few things to square with Nash, too. But he’s on the outside and we’re in here.”
Burns looked up at him, eyes bleak. “I’ll find a way to get to him. I’ll find some way!”
Again Cade and Bryant exchanged glances and Cade jerked his head to his pard. They moved away to a corner by themselves.
“Could be we’ll be able to use that hombre, Alex. He sure hates Nash’s guts. And, after a couple more sessions with Bronson he’ll hate him even more. If we work things right, Burns could be our ticket out of here.”
He gently rubbed his own broken nose, a legacy of his capture by Nash in that blazing shack. Bryant unconsciously massaged his own damaged wrist, which had been broken when Nash had burst in like a runaway bull buffalo. Yes, both men would sure like to get their hands on Nash before they kept their final appointment with the hangman.
~*~
Knife Edge wasn’t as big a town as Nash had thought and it wasn’t such a hard chore tracking down the passengers who had ridden on the stage from Blackwood with him. The Wells Fargo agent, a man named Burrows, was a big help, and Nash made enquiries around town about each of the people on the list. They all seemed innocent enough and had had legitimate reasons for being on that stage. Some had been booked for a couple of weeks ahead of time, so it looked like he had drawn a blank with his idea that one of them could have been an accomplice of Burns’ but had been too dazed by the sudden stopping of the coach to play his part.
After checking out the last man, Nash turned into a saloon, ordered a beer and a meal and, when it came, carried it to a rear table and sat down to eat. He glanced at the table next to his and saw Burrows just finishing his supper. He caught the agent’s eye and Burrows drained his beer glass and came over, sitting down opposite as Nash began to eat.
“Like another beer?” he asked.
“Thanks,” Nash said, draining his glass and Burrows took it with his own to the bar. Nash ate while he
waited for the man to return and nodded his thanks when Burrows sat down again and sipped at his drink.
“All through checking around?” Burrows asked.
“Guess so. Looks like I was wrong. Everyone had a good reason for coming here.” He frowned, washed beefsteak down with a mouthful of beer. “I’m still not certain now that Burns is the man. Figured he was when I brought him in, but couple of the other passengers reckon that the road-agent wore the silver ring on his left hand, too. Hate to send the wrong man to the gallows.”
“It’s happened plenty times over the years, I shouldn’t wonder,” Burrows said. “Burns ought to be glad you’re takin’ so much trouble to make sure about him.”
Nash smiled wryly. “I don’t reckon he’s too grateful. I wouldn’t like to be in Fort Laramie prison even one night with Bronson for Warden.”
“He’s sure got a bad name. Listen, they brought in the original passenger list on the stage and I see someone’s name was crossed out and yours written in over the top.”
“Yeah. Stage was full. I heard the road-agent had taken the train here and I had to get down here so I had to put one of the paying passengers off. Widow woman name of Gant, and she didn’t take none too kindly to it, either.” He smiled ruefully and rubbed at his jaw. “Set a couple of hardcases onto me and one got carried away and tried to kill me and—”
He broke off suddenly, seeing Burrows’ face.
“Wait a minute! You’re thinkin’ ... ?”
Burrows nodded. “Just a thought. She would have been on that stage if you hadn’t put her off at the last minute. And if she set someone onto you to beat you up it shows she wanted to get here in a mighty big hurry ...” He frowned. “Though I can’t see Julie Gant havin’ a man killed.”
“You know her?”
Burrows nodded. “She comes from around here. Julie Benbow was her maiden name. She’s had a heap of bad luck in her life. Whole family wiped out in a forest fire, includin’ her brother.”
