Clay Nash 5

by Brett Waring

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  CONTENTS

  About Last Stage to Shiloh

  One – The Deadwood Run

  Two – Shiloh

  Three – Outpost

  Four – The Old Sourdough

  Five – Last Stage to Shiloh

  Six – Hostages

  Seven – Gunsmoke Trail

  Eight – Madman’s Valley

  Nine – Unexpected Ally

  Ten – The Echoing Hills

  The Clay Nash Series

  About Brett Waring

  Copyright

  When Wells Fargo decided to run a stage route between Deadwood and Shiloh, no one could have predicted the bloodbath that would follow. Company men were beaten, shot and often killed. Passengers were harassed and on at least one occasion, a woman was raped by masked assailants. All kinds of sabotage went on and the damage ran into the tens of thousands of dollars.

  Clearly, someone out there didn’t want Wells Fargo using that route—but who? And why?

  To find out, Jim Hume sent out his top detective, Clay Nash, and soon, Clay found himself wreathed in gunsmoke. It promised to be his toughest case yet … but even Clay didn’t dream that he’d be fighting a whole army in the final, violent climax!

  CLAY NASH 5: LAST STAGE TO SHILOH

  By Brett Waring

  First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd

  Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  First Smashwords Edition: August 2017

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book ~*~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.

  One – The Deadwood Run

  It would go down on the Wells Fargo books as ‘The Deadwood Run’. And the list of names with the tiny crosses beside them to denote ‘deceased’ would be longer than on any other stretch of stage line in the company’s history. This included the early days when there were marauding Indians to contend with.

  The problem was, no one knew why so many men were dying on the proposed new stage route. Everyone knew how they died by bullets or savage beatings, but the reason was a real poser.

  The government had given Wells Fargo permission for the right-of-way months ago and the company had immediately sent in its surveyors, marked out the best and most economical route and, on the basis of the report, set aside many thousands of dollars to purchase the necessary land, running through the Black Hills, from Shiloh to the railhead at Deadwood. They paid fair prices plus a premium for ranch land and the ranchers were happy enough to sell. A few held out for higher prices, but a little horse-trading was to be expected and the company didn’t quibble. It looked like being an easy job, for usually, if there was going to be trouble at all, it was in the early stages when Wells Fargo were trying to acquire land. But, this time, it all seemed to go smoothly.

  Then came the first ‘casualty’.

  His name was John Brett and he was the company agent travelling through the Black Hills territory, buying up the land the stage line would traverse. In Shiloh, Brett was a popular character: he was young, bright, quick-witted, could hold his liquor, and was generous in buying drinks for the bar. He paid cash-on-the-barrel and, as instructed by his superiors, didn’t argue too much about an extra few hundred if necessary. He was also fast on the draw and could handle himself in a fight.

  “Gents,” he announced in the bar of the Shiloh Special after standing drinks for the crowded barroom, “here’s to Wells Fargo, the company that’s going to bring prosperity to this fine town and its citizens.”

  The men drank readily enough to that.

  Setting down his glass, Brett continued, “I’ve bought and paid for all the land we need now, with the exception of a few odd sections when we might have to cut corners or change direction, but we won’t know about that until the engineers start. And we aim to build a fully serviced relay station halfway between this town and Deadwood, for the convenience of passengers and to give the stage a change of team. The journey will be the faster with fresh horses and we can guarantee comfort. What I’m saying, gents, is that this town will benefit from that relay station in a lot of ways. We’ll need lumber and hardware and we’ll buy it here in Shiloh if it’s available rather than in Deadwood from the big companies. Wells Fargo’s policy is to help the smaller businessman along where it can.”

  There was a ragged cheer from some of the Shiloh businessmen present.

  “We’ll need broncs, so any of you fellers fancy yourselves as mustang catchers, then get up into the hills and start roping, because we’ll buy team-broke horses at top prices.”

  That brought some excited murmurings from certain members of the crowd as some of the hard-riding men present saw a chance to make a fast dollar, and were willing to take risks to earn it.

  “We’ll need some men to help out at the station,” Brett continued, “though the agent who’ll run things is already hired. Fact is, he’s an old Wells Fargo hand and we need someone in there with experience right off. But he’ll teach a local man eventually and move on to open up new relay stations elsewhere. We’ll need roustabouts and their pay will include everything found. We’ll need men to train as shotgun guards and stage drivers. We’ll need men in the depot here in town; blacksmiths, wheelwrights, painters, clerks. So you can see that where Wells Fargo goes, prosperity’s bound to follow.” He drained his glass, set it down. “So, gents, I’ll be on my way to Deadwood and you can depend that things will be humming around these parts as soon as I register the land titles. For now, I’ll say so long. And good luck!”

  He went out to cheers and good wishes, a fine upstanding man who left an excited and hopeful town behind him. John Brett was likely the most popular agent who had ever come to Shiloh.

  But twelve miles out along the trail, as he rode slowly through the dark green beauty of the hills, a bushwhacker’s rifle whiplashed, and when Brett’s body was found two days later, there wasn’t a paper or a red cent left on it.

  John Brett was only the first of the long list of casualties associated with the Deadwood run out of Shiloh.

  The engineers didn’t fare any too well. There was no trouble for the first few weeks, but once they got out around the area of the relay station’s site, things changed. Trouble started on the Saturday night when the crew hit Shiloh for a high old time after weeks out in the wilderness with camp cooking and no women. Like a bunch of trail herders in with a bunch of beeves, they cut loose and whooped it up, and the townsfolk didn’t mind but went along with them. That was, all except for one bunch of hard-eyed hombres whom no one had seen before.

  They were iron-jawed men, all tall and straight, and gun-hung, and there was something of a sameness about their features, a cold mercilessness that set them apart from the normal townsfolk or trail men. They stayed together for a time then spread out through the town in twos and threes. There didn’t seem to be anything special about the way they wandered around, but, later, folk recalled how they had all converged on places where the road builders were riding the high iron.

  There were several brawls to start with, not the usual western roughhouse but real mean, knock-down drag-out fights that left the engineers battered and, in two cases, near crip
pled. These strangers didn’t know the meaning of fair play. They waded in and right from the start used forked fingers into the eyes, updriving knees into the crotch, hammer blows to the back of the neck and, if a man was unlucky enough to be put down, he didn’t get up again: not without kicked-in ribs and stomped-on face, or mangled hands that were crushed under twisting boot-heels.

  More than half the off-duty crew got this rough treatment and, when some of the others heard about it, they went looking for the band of strangers. It was their mistake. The cold-eyed men were waiting and this time they didn’t want fists and boots, they were ready for a shoot-out.

  Now an engineer on the frontier had to be pretty tough at the best of times, but usually his fists were enough to get him out of trouble. Occasionally, he might have to resort to gunplay, but this would usually be in defense of a position, shooting at raiders from behind cover. It rarely, if ever, meant a square off, gun to gun.

  But that’s how these strangers wanted it and they would have it no other way. The engineers, savagely angry at the way their pards had been viciously crippled, didn’t aim to back down, either, and before anyone could spit, the streets of Shiloh trembled to the crash of gunfire and the reek of powdersmoke was all through the stunned town.

  Dazed, the citizens slowly came out of doors and stared at the strewn bodies in the smoke-hazed street as the hard-eyed bunch forked their horses out of town and faded as swiftly and mysteriously as they had appeared.

  The fighting didn’t stop the Deadwood Run progressing, of course. Wells Fargo had plenty of engineers it could call on and they went in this time with an army guard for protection. The stage route was constructed slowly, but not without trouble.

  There were mysterious blastings in the hills and landslides that tore down much of the engineers’ work. No one was spotted but there were vital tools stolen or smashed up; explosives disappeared; forest fires destroyed lumber earmarked for Wells Fargo.

  There was even trouble getting the lumber and hardware supplies for the relay station from the Shiloh merchants. A fire in the lumberyard destroyed a lot of milled timber. The storekeeper had his entire stock of nails stolen and got a cracked skull from one of the masked robbers into the bargain. Men who went into the hills to get mustangs for the stage teams sometimes didn’t come back: their bodies were never found. Those who gathered the horses and worked to break them, often had them stampeded off.

  But still the work went on, for when a big company like Wells Fargo dug in its toes, not much could shift it and the stage line from Shiloh to Deadwood was considered to be an important link, bringing the Black Hills closer to civilization and the railhead. It had State and federal backing and the army patrolled the hills and, though they didn’t catch anyone actually trying to sabotage the Wells Fargo team, the trouble abruptly ceased.

  In a matter of weeks, the relay station was built, the stage road graded clear through to Deadwood, and the relay station manager moved in. He was Jed Summers, who, with his daughter Mary, had been transferred to this North Dakota post from Iron Ridge, Texas. They had several years’ experience behind them and old Jed was tough enough to handle most trouble that might come his way. But it had been quiet for a long time, now, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then Jed started to hire men to work at the relay station. Two were beaten up, near crippled, just like the engineers. One man, riding out to take up his position, had his horse shot from under him and put up a fight, shooting it out with his bushwhacker, but he lost, and wheeling buzzards directed the searching Summers to his body.

  The stage depot in town didn’t seem to have much trouble with staff. The stages themselves made the run in record time, without incident, for a while. Then a period of harassment began.

  There were hold-ups, by bunches of masked, armed men, even when the stages weren’t carrying any express boxes stuffed with gold or money. It seemed mainly designed to upset the passengers and this it did. They were humiliated, searched, stripped in a couple of cases, and left on foot. The stage drivers were beaten, and the guards were usually shot out of their seats to start with. If the teams weren’t run off, they were brutally slaughtered on the spot.

  It was all too much for Wells Fargo. The army and the local law had done their damnedest and come up with nothing. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the continual troubles. No other stage line had even considered opening the route from Shiloh to Deadwood. The railroad ended at Deadwood and had no immediate plans to drive on through the Black Hills. The ranchers had sold their land willingly at good prices. As yet, the stages weren’t carrying a lot of valuables ... and if the hold-ups kept up, they wouldn’t be, either. For no one would use them.

  So Wells Fargo figured the trouble needed looking into from another angle. And Jim Hume, Chief of Detectives for the company, called in his crack undercover agent, Clay Nash, to tackle the job.

  By that time, it had become known as ‘Deadman’s Run’. “Seems an apt enough title from what you’ve told me, Jim,” Nash said, lounging in a chair in Hume’s Deadwood office. He pulled out tobacco sack and papers and began to roll a cigarette. “They were even talkin’ about it way down in Colorado. What the hell’s behind it, Jim?”

  “It’s your job to find out, Clay,” Hume told him, trimming the end of a cigar, scraping a vesta into flame and holding it out towards Nash’s finished cigarette before touching it to his own smoke. He pushed a manila folder across the table with the name ‘Shiloh’ printed across it. “That’s the file. You can read the details later. Essentially, it’s just as I told you. Trouble with a capital ‘T’ almost from the word go. We had very little opposition and those who complained at first that ‘trade in Shiloh was going to be ruined,’ soon came round. There’s still plenty of silver and gold in the Black Hills and I guess there’ll always be treasure hunters looking for the Lost Indian Mine.”

  “That’s only legend, isn’t it?”

  Hume shrugged. “Who knows for sure? But, legend or not, a lot of good men have died trying to find it. And a lot more will join ’em, I reckon. Stories about a mine worth most of a million dollars will have folk tryin’ as long as the Black Hills are there, I reckon.”

  Nash looked thoughtful. “Is it possible that someone’s found the old Lost Indian Mine and is makin’ this trouble to keep folk out? It’s happened before, Jim.”

  “And it could be happening this time. We’ve no real idea what’s behind it. All we know is twenty men have died so far, seven others have been permanently crippled, four partially so. Others have been beaten; teams shot or run off: passengers robbed and humiliated and the first rape of a young woman happened only three days ago. It’s becoming a horror run, Clay, and Wells Fargo are going to have to close down the line before we even get going unless you come up with something pretty fast. You’ll have all the cooperation you need. Just ask. And that includes the army and local law, such as it is. They’d like to get to the bottom of this as much as we would.”

  Nash had been flicking through the handwritten papers in the folder while Hume was talking and he nodded, his eyes scanning some of the words, picking out an occasional one. He looked up sharply.

  “What’s this? Joe Summers is agent at the relay station?”

  Hume nodded. “Sure. Your old friend from Iron Ridge, Texas. Mary, too.”

  Nash smiled faintly. “Well, that’s fine ... except I don’t like Mary being in the thick of this.”

  “You know Mary Summers,” Hume said, allowing himself one of his rare smiles. “Fact, I might go so far as to say you likely know Mary Summers better than anyone else, Clay!”

  Nash felt his cheeks flush. “Well, we did kind of hit it off down in Texas. Which is why I don’t like her bein’ caught up in the middle of this. Jed’s an old fire-eater. If they raid that station, he’ll fight, that’s for sure. And Mary won’t just stand by. I’m scared for her.”

  Hume shrugged helplessly. “It was her choice, Clay, and nothing’ll change her mind. Jed can’
t get her to move to Shiloh or to Deadwood, though I’m willing for her to go to either place.” He gave Nash a level look, his eyes hard. “But your concern for Mary Summers has to be a low priority in this one, Clay. You’ve seen the casualty list in that folder. It’s got to stop or we’ll have to close down the line. But by Godfrey, we don’t aim to do that without a fight!”

  Nash came to his full height with a lazy grace. He tapped the folder with his fingers. “I’ll take this back to my hotel room and go through it properly. Then I’ll come back and discuss a plan of action with you.”

  Hume stood, too, still looking levelly at Nash. “Sooner the better, Clay ... you understand what I said about Mary?”

  Nash met and held his gaze. “Sure. Low on the list.”

  “It has to be that way, Clay. This time.”

  “When I’m in the field, I’m my own man, Jim. I play it the way I see it.”

  Hume’s mouth tightened. He took the cigar from between his lips and gestured towards Nash with the lighted end. “You play it the way I tell you this time, Clay. There’s too much at stake here!”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. You ought to be able to trust my judgment after all this time, Jim.”

  Hume sighed. “Guess so, but the pressure from head office is really strong on this one, Clay. Politics is involved. It took a deal of fast talkin’ on someone’s part to get the permission for the right-of-way pushed through so quick. And politicians don’t like being made to look foolish, Clay.”

  “Try tellin’ that to the seven crippled engineers.”

  Hume’s face flushed angrily. “That wasn’t necessary!”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Nash admitted quietly. “Sorry, Jim. You’re only doing what you’re told, I know that. If I do things my way and it doesn’t work out, you’re covered.”