by Brett Waring
He dived across the room to where his rifle rested in its scabbard in a corner and grabbed it, seeing Mary and Jed beating at the flames with wet flour sacks. They had them under control but he could hear the shingles burning above. He wheeled to the window, rifle to shoulder, blazing away at anything that moved out there.
Lead raked the building. He heard fences snap and crack outside. Flames leapt up from the barn area. Nash swore, wrenched open the door and, Mary’s alarmed cry ringing in his ears, launched himself through the opening in a headlong dive. He rolled across the porch, dropped off the few inches to the yard and somersaulted so that he came up onto one knee behind the wooden-sided horse trough. A rider came racing in at him, shooting wildly, shot after shot. Water spurted. Wood splintered. Bullets ricocheted. Nash rolled onto his back as the man leapt his horse clear over the trough, gun angling down to shoot at Nash. The Wells Fargo man twisted, fired upwards, levering at blurring speed and getting off a second shot before the horse’s hoofs had touched the ground again. The rider lifted to his toes in the stirrups without a sound, somersaulted over the frightened horse’s rump and thudded across one end of the trough where he lay, head and shoulders under water.
Nash used a boot to kick him off the trough as he threw the rifle barrel across the woodwork and triggered again and again at the riders silhouetted against the flames of the burning barn. One man went down screaming. Another lurched in the saddle and rode off with his left arm dangling uselessly.
There was a thunderous roar behind him and Nash spun about, bringing the rifle around, but holding his fire when he saw it was Jed Summers kneeling on the porch, blasting with his shotgun.
“They’ve done what they came to do!” Nash yelled. “Get the old sourdough and Mary out while I send ’em on their way and start fightin’ the fires.”
Jed’s second barrel thundered and a man screamed out there in the darkness. It was like a scene from the Inferno in the yard: the noise and dust and movement of the stampeding horses from the broken corrals; the gunfire and the milling riders; the flames, leaping and crackling, lighting up the night. Nash stood up, working the rifle’s lever and triggering until the magazine was empty. By that time, the last of the raiders were riding off into the night, still shooting, but only making noise now, covering their getaway, hoping their gunfire would make Nash and the others keep their heads down.
Nash dropped his rifle on the porch and ran to the door as Jed and Mary came staggering out with the old prospector between them, his bare feet dragging across the floorboards. Nash took him up in his arms.
“Get working on those fires!” he yelled. “The roof’s ablaze! ... Forget the barn, Jed! Save the main post building!”
He ran out into the yard and set the old prospector down on a bare patch of ground, well away from falling sparks and swirling smoke. Mary ran up with blankets and he left her to cover the old man while he raced back to the water trough where Jed was dipping wooden pails into the water. Nash leapt onto the edge of the trough, poised momentarily, then jumped for the eaves of the porch overhang. He swung up, leaned down and took the pail of water from the straining Summers, running over the shingles to where the fire burned. He doused some of the flames, tossed the pail down and ran back to grab another.
A dozen trips and he had the fire out and, shaking, sweating, begrimed and half-choked by smoke, Nash dropped back into the yard. He saw that the trough had only a few cupfuls of water left in it. Lucky they had managed to put the fires out when they did.
The barn had collapsed in on itself now and flames crackled and leapt but there was no hope of saving anything, including the spare stagecoach. The corral fences sagged drunkenly and there was no sign of the horses. The raiders had done a good job but they had left behind four of their men dead and he knew at least two of the survivors had carried lead away from the relay station.
He checked two of the dead men and walked over to where the white-faced Mary knelt by the blanket-covered prospector.
“How is he?” Nash asked, still breathless.
“Surprisingly, his fever seems to have broken and he’s sleeping,” Mary told him. “He’ll be all right by morning, I’m sure of it, Clay ... D’you know who they were?”
He shook his head. “The mysterious enemy again, I guess,” he said as he moved away to check the body of a man he could see lying near the corrals. “We’re gonna be busy come daylight finding those horses they stampeded.”
He used a boot toe to heave the dead man over onto his back, grunting with the effort, for the man was massive. Then, frowning, Nash knelt and moved to one side so that the glow of the dying barn fire washed across the battered features of the dead man.
It was Slade.
Five – Last Stage to Shiloh
By daylight, the full extent of the damage could be seen. The barn was a total loss, as was the stagecoach that had been inside and most of the spare parts. Some of the metal ones might be salvaged, though some were twisted and warped by the heat. Everything else in the barn had burned to ashes.
There were two large charred holes burned in the shingles of the station building roof and two windows had been broken. Four of the horses had come drifting back of their own accord but the remainder of the spare teams were scattered far and wide throughout the Longknife. The corral fences were down and would take a deal of repairing. But Nash and Jed Summers strung ropes around the remaining uprights and propped up some of the fallen poles. The corral would hold the team horses once they could be rounded-up and driven back in. But it wouldn’t be an easy job finding them after the fright that had been thrown into them by the raiders last night.
The relay station was virtually inoperable now without the spare coach, many of the parts useless, and no change teams. The raiders had accomplished what they had set out to do, it seemed ...
Summers and Nash were sweating amongst the still smoking ruins of the barn, prising an iron tire off a ruined wheel from the coach, when Mary appeared on the main building’s porch and called out:
“Our prospector’s awake and feeling a lot better!”
Nash waved, and dusted himself down. He washed up at the trough and, followed by Summers, went into the room where the old sourdough lay in his bunk. He looked like a warmed-over corpse but he managed to lift a scrawny hand in greeting.
“Believe I got you to thank for bringin’ me in, young feller,” he croaked hoarsely.
“Forget that part. You’ll be all right now, I guess. D’you remember what happened?”
The oldster frowned and shook his head slowly. “Not really. Name’s Donner, Sourdough Donner. I was aimin’ to get me to Deadwood and cash my gold, which the young gal tells me is safe and sound, thank God, and I was gonna have me a time of it. I was ridin’ the cliff trail, heard a shot and only an instant later somethin’ whanged me in the side.” His rheumy eyes looked levelly into Nash’s. “Don’t remember much of anythin’ else till I woke up here ...” Nash looked disappointed. “Where’d you get all that gold, old-timer?” As he saw Donner stiffen, Nash made a swift gesture. “Easy now ... I don’t mean I want to know the exact location ... Look, I better bring you up to date. You been in those hills for long?”
“Seven years,” was the surprising answer. “Wandered all over, livin’ off the land, makin’ a sortie down to Shiloh for a few supplies once in a while, but most of the time I been up in them hills scratchin’ for my gold.”
Nash frowned. “Then you won’t know about the trouble Wells Fargo’s been having?” Donner shook his head and Nash gave him the story briefly, concluding with: “We figured maybe you’d seen or heard somethin’ that might help us ... ”
Sourdough Donner looked thoughtful for a long spell. He stared at all three of them, obviously making up his mind about something. He sighed. “Guess I can trust you after you savin’ my life. Well sir, I ain’t made any rich strike. I got me some good nuggets out there in my bags, sure, but it’s took me all of them seven years I was talking about to get ’em.
Yeah, all that time, I been scratchin’ up a little here and a little there. Found some good locations but they always petered out. No big finds. Sure not anythin’ that could be called the Lost Indian.”
He even raised a crooked smile at that.
“But I ain’t gone out of my way to contact people. I like my own company, see? Didn’t want my gold stole, neither. So I kept to the wild trails, mostly, avoided folk. Seen a lot of men in there, comin’ and goin’, some with the law after ’em, some with other men houndin’ ’em. I’ve seen men shot and killed and robbed. I’ve seen bushwhackin’s and, once, a grave-robbin’. But I never spoke about ’em when I come out for supplies. They weren’t none of my business. But lately, last few months, there’s been somethin’ a mite queer goin’ on in there, all right.”
Nash leaned closer as the oldster paused to ask for a drink and Mary gave him a sip of water. He wiped his whiskers and continued in his hoarse, croaking voice.
“Lots of strange riders prowlin’ the hills. Some alone, some in bunches of two, three, even six. They looked hard hombres to me, eyes like gun barrels. They never spoke much amongst themselves, but I seen ’em kill a couple prospectors once when they were workin’ upstream from me. I was lucky I wasn’t spotted or they’d have killed me, too.” He looked suddenly startled. “By hell, I guess they tried, at that! It must’ve been them that shot me!”
“What part of the hills was all this activity in?” Nash asked.
“Aw, general territory around that canyon where you said you found me. But both sides of the range; s’pose you could take Bald Head Peak as the rough center and say ten miles out all round.”
“Judas! That covers a hell of a lot of territory!”
He smiled crookedly. “I had seven years to do it in, mister. But that’s where I kept seem’ these fellers. Somethin’ about ’em; they all looked the same in a funny way. Not dressed the same, I don’t mean that, but somethin’ about their faces, their eyes. They was all killers, you could see that.”
“Outlaw hangout, sounds like,” opined Jed Summers. “Seems that way,” Nash agreed.
“Mebbe,” Donner said slowly, but not sounding convinced. “I guess some of ’em were owlhoots, all right, but not all. Don’t ask me how I know, I just had a feelin’, a hunch, is all. But I kept well clear of ’em. Never trod on their toes that I know of.”
“Must’ve been getting close for them to drygulch you,” Nash allowed.
“Guess I must’ve, at that,” agreed the old prospector.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t because of your gold, Mr. Donner,” Mary pointed out. “We still have that for you.”
“I had it hid,” Donner said tentatively.
Nash smiled faintly. “Took me all of five minutes to locate it amongst your things.”
Donner shrugged and sighed wearily. “Sorry I can’t help you more, but that’s all I know.”
He was very tired, spent from all the talk, and Mary frowned slightly, caught Nash’s eye and moved her gaze towards the door. Nash nodded, getting the message.
“Thanks anyway, old-timer. You just take it easy now. I’ll talk with you later when you’re feelin’ better.”
Nash and Summers went out of the room while Mary made the old man comfortable in the bunk.
“What d’you reckon, Clay? Bunch of outlaws holed-up in there and they’re afraid the stage line will open up the country, bring proper law and order?”
Nash shook his head slowly as they went out into the yard again.
“I dunno, Jed. Seems loco that they’d start all this killin’ and robbery and draw attention to the area. The army’s been in there already, lookin’ around. Be kind of risky if it was an outlaw hangout.”
Summers shrugged. “Guess so. But, still, the army never found nothin’ ... ”
Nash was about to answer when something caught his eye far out to the north of Longknife. A rising plume of dust. He shaded his eyes and squinted, then, still looking, spoke quietly to Jed Summers.
“Well, guess whoever they are, they ain’t done such a marvelous job after all. Here comes a stage down from Deadwood. I’d say the run’s about to be opened again, Jed.”
Summers swore softly and gestured around at the burned barn and empty corrals. “Great!” he said. “But I wouldn’t exactly say we’re ready for ’em!”
~*~
Clay Nash sure wasn’t ready for the two passengers who stepped down from the stage when it rolled into the relay station yard: Walter Garth and his beautiful daughter, Susan.
Begrimed and sweaty, stripped to the waist as he was, Nash felt his cheeks start to burn after the initial shock and the girl gave a small squeal of delight and ran to him. She was dressed in Eastern finery and hesitated to throw her arms around him but bent forward from the waist and planted a moist kiss on his mouth.
“Why, Clay Nash! What a wonderful surprise to see you here!” She laughed, full of youthful exuberance, and turned slowly so he could see her properly. “Don't you think I’ve grown more—mature—since last we saw each other?”
“You have, Susan,” Nash said finally.
He saw Mary out of the corner of his eye standing on the porch, watching somewhat tight-lipped. “You sure look more mature.”
Susan pouted a little. “Well, I thought I might get more of a compliment than that out of you, after all this time!”
Nash smiled. “You took me kind of by surprise, Susan. Wasn’t expectin’ to see you and as you can see, we’ve had some trouble. I guess I’ll think of somethin’ more complimentary to say later ... ”
Susan laughed and glanced towards Mary. “I’ll hold you to that, Clay!” She moved towards the porch. “Oh ... Margaret Summers, isn’t it?”
“Mary ...” the older girl answered deadpan, and then smiled sweetly, holding out her hand. “Nice to see you again, Prudence.”
Susan colored. “My name’s Susan!”
“Of course. It’s still nice to see you. And you, too, Mr. Garth.”
Walt Garth, a tall, elegant, distinguished-looking man in gray frockcoat and pinstriped pants, bowed slightly from the waist. He walked forward and shook hands with Jed Summers and Clay Nash.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here on this assignment, Clay, but I see you’ve had your troubles.” He gestured to the yard.
“Better come inside, Walt, while you get the details ... I don’t know that Jed and Mary are exactly ready to take care of the other passengers ... ”
He arched his eyebrows quizzically at Summers.
“We’ll manage somethin’,” the old man said. “Take Walt through to our kitchen, Clay, him and his gal. Mary and me’ll take care of the passengers. But there won’t be any team to change.”
“We can afford to rest up for a few hours, I think,” Garth said, pulling a gold watch from his vest and flicking open the cover. He nodded and followed Nash inside ...
~*~
Mary bustled in and out of the kitchen with coffee pots and plates of hot biscuits while Nash drank coffee at the table with Garth and Susan. The girl tried to keep the conversation light but her father was plainly worried and had serious things to discuss with Nash. Finally, he suggested that Susan help Mary take care of the other passengers. This did not appeal to the girl but she caught a stern look from Garth and rose, calling to Mary and asking for an apron.
When they were alone, Garth looked levelly at Nash. “Clay, this is the last stage to Shiloh.”
Nash stiffened, coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “The company’s closin’ the line?” he asked incredulously.
“For the time being,” Garth said. “Too many killings. Political pressure is very heavy at present to withdraw the company’s right-of-way permission. I’ve been dabbling in politics myself and I was lucky to get an advance whisper of it. I think that rebel, Orson Mandrell, is behind it. You know he has ambitions to be President, with radical views on how the country should be run, and anything that he can use to make the present government look bad or inept, he’ll u
se. He’s been making a lot of noise about the trouble on this line and the papers have gotten hold of it and there are hints about political bribes having changed hands so that Wells Fargo could start the stage line through here. There have been claims, and I’m afraid I must agree with them to some extent, that all the trouble is not worth it to open up this stretch of country. But it’s not just the politicians who are clamoring for closure, Clay. The general public’s taken up the cry now, thanks to Mandrell’s publicity. So head office has decided to close down temporarily until it’s all sorted out.”
“What the hell does ‘sorted out’ mean, Walt? What do they think we’ve been trying to do, for cryin’ out loud!”
Garth held up a placatory hand. “Head office is well aware of everyone’s efforts to solve this thing, Clay. Fact remains, we’ve lost too many men and are no closer to a solution than when we first put the line through. I’m on my way to Shiloh now to have a conference with Jim Hume, local law officers, the army and a representative of the federal marshals. You’re welcome to travel with Susan and myself if you’d like to be in on it.”
Nash shook his head unhesitatingly. “Can’t leave Jed here without help. I’ll give him a hand to get the teams rounded-up, and then I’d like to go into the hills again and look around this area I was tellin’ you about, the one old Sourdough Donner mentioned. Reckon I can do more there than at some conference table.”
“Of course, Clay. You were always the man of action. Is there anything you want me to report to Jim Hume?”
“Only what I’ve told you. And I think he should send a few men up here to stay with Jed and Mary. They’re pretty vulnerable here and close to the hills.”
“I’ll recommend it.” Garth pulled out his watch again and flicked it open. “I think we might as well stay on here most of the day and make an afternoon run to Shiloh.”
