by Brett Waring
“It’s mandatory for a guard who neglects his duty to be dismissed, Larry,” Hume said curtly. “The company’s liable for a lot of money by way of compensation. We’ve got to try to track down the kin of that dead passenger and pay the medical bills for the other—”
“All that aside, Jim,” cut in Nash, “Larry seems to have had the good of the company at heart. He couldn’t’ve known the banker was carrying so much money, and I reckon I would’ve done the same thing in his place. ’Specially if I was new to the game.”
“He went through our training course,” Hume replied stubbornly. “He broke a cardinal rule ...”
“We all break the rules at times, Jim. Some of us are lucky enough to get away with it. Others ...” Nash shrugged, looking at Larry Holbrook and remembering the youngster had had a lot of aggravation in his life. Also, he felt obligated to Larry for having saved his life that time with Sundance, along with the lives of all the people on that train he kept from getting wrecked. He started to remind Hume of these things, but Larry got to his feet abruptly, his clenched fists at his sides and his face flushed.
“Hold up, Clay!” Larry said sharply. “I don’t aim to trade on those things. I got a job here like I wanted and that was payment enough. Now I fouled up, so I guess that’s it. Now I’ll be on my way.”
Nash eyed Hume and shook his head. “You’re makin’ a mistake, Jim.”
Hume glared at his top agent and then he looked back at Larry Holbrook. He sighed. “All right, Larry. Despite what you say, the company owes you a lot more than just a job ridin’ shotgun. You made a mistake, a costly one, but you’re a good man just the same. To be honest, I don’t know what I would’ve done in the same situation. But don’t let me down again. Savvy?”
Jim Hume smiled faintly as Larry stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He still had a job! He reached across the desk and shook hands with Hume.
“Thanks, Mr. Hume. I won’t let you down again, I swear I won’t. No one’ll rob any stage I’m ridin’ from now on! And I won’t let go of my shotgun for any reason.”
He went across the room to Nash and shook hands with the big Texan, grinning. “Thanks, Clay.”
Nash shrugged. “You deserve a second chance.”
“I’d sure like a second chance at that Jubal Ricks hombre you mentioned,” Larry said. “Don’t s’pose I could help you run him down ...?”
“Nope,” Hume answered before Nash could speak. “You’ve been trained as a shotgun guard. That’s a hell of a lot different than being a detective. Clay’ll handle that part of it.” He rummaged amongst his papers and came up with a pink form that Nash recognized as a stage schedule. Hume scanned it swiftly, marked off a line in pencil and handed the paper to Larry. “You’ll ride the stage to Atcheson.”
Larry’s face fell. “It’s only a passenger run, Mr. Hume. There’s no express box, nothin’ worth guardin’.”
“Wells Fargo passengers are always worth guarding, son,” Hume said firmly. “You ride out on that stage. It leaves in two hours.”
Larry, looking disappointed, folded the sheet of paper and put it in his shirt pocket as he made for the door. His hand was on the latch when Hume said:
“You’ll ride that stage back across the Big Plains, too—after you pick up the New Mexico Bank’s express box in Atcheson.”
Larry grinned broadly.
“Thanks, Mr. Hume! I’ll get that box back, don’t you worry.” He looked at Nash. “Adios, Clay. Catch you next time round.”
“We’ll have a drink together,” Nash said as he watched the youngster leave the office. He turned to Hume. “He’ll be all right, Jim.”
“He better be or my tail’s in a sling,” Hume said sourly. “The Head Office wanted him fired.”
“He’s a good man,” Nash insisted. “Maybe he’s still a mite headstrong, but he’ll grow out of it. He’s a trier, Jim.”
Hume grunted.
Nash got to his feet and stretched stiffly. “Well, I think I’ll get me a bath and some grub. If you’ll arrange for a horse for me, I’ll go after Jubal Ricks before sundown.”
“Know where he is?”
“Picked up word on him a few weeks back when I was working on that train hold-up. He was seen at Tall Trees beyond Big Plains, askin’ around for the Olsens and a couple of hardcases no one ever heard of. Could be that was when he got a bunch together and hit the Deadbranch stage.”
Hume frowned. “I’d sure like to know how he found out that banker was carryin’ so much dinero. Or maybe he just got lucky, eh?”
Nash shook his head. “Ricks doesn’t ever ‘just get lucky’. He plans his jobs every step of the way. Look at that hold-up. He knew about the driver being an ornery cuss who likes to stop the stage midway across the ford so passengers have to wade to the bank. Larry leaving his shotgun to carry that woman was a bonus.”
Hume nodded as he pushed a file across the desk to Nash. “Full details are in there, Clay. Read it, get cleaned-up and outfitted, then go bring the bastard in.”
Three – Manhunt
The town of Tall Trees, a lawless place, was on the edge of high mountain country. It could be reached only by a narrow, winding trail. Tall Trees was a good town for men on the dodge.
Nash made his way across the Big Plains, swung to the north and came in on Tall Trees from across the range, riding out of heavy timber on a weary, trail-dusted mount.
A few enquiries soon put him onto a pair of hardcases who had been with the Olsens and Jubal Ricks. The Olsens and Ricks had not been seen around town since the stage hold-up, but the hardcases, Short and Peel, had been spending money. However, Short had accused a houseman of cheating at poker. The man Short picked on was called “Slick Dick” Calloway; the nickname should have given the hardcase a clue, but he was reeling from too much whisky and was brash enough to think he had to impress the henna-haired saloon girl he had taken a shine to. So, when he lost a big pot, he accused Calloway of cheating.
Men scattered and within seconds guns blazed and Short was stretched out on the sawdust, dead.
When Peel heard about his partner’s death, he took a rifle and waited in the darkness of an alley. Calloway was on his way home that night when he was back-shot and robbed.
Peel was the prime suspect, but no one came right out and said it.
Until Clay Nash arrived. He found Short’s henna-haired saloon girl, Lila Denver. She was blousy, had a hair-sprouting mole on the left side of her chin, and her mouth was smeared with glistening rouge. She could have been anywhere between twenty and forty and she reeked of cheap perfume.
“Short was a big spender,” Lila told the Texan after he’d bought her a few drinks. “He wasn’t much of a man, I guess, but he knew how to show a girl a good time. I liked him. He was generous with me, and I ain’t sorry that that damn gambler got back-shot.”
“Word is that Peel did it,” Nash said.
She looked at him suspiciously. “You ain’t a pard of Calloway’s, are you?”
“Hell, no! I’m lookin’ for Jubal Ricks,” Nash said. “Heard tell before I rode here that Short and Peel might know where I could find him.”
Lila pursed her thick lips and studied Nash for a long moment before nodding slightly. “All right. You look like you’re on the dodge to me. Yeah, Peel back-shot Calloway. Miserable louse won’t share the dinero with me, though. I figure I’m entitled to half, seein’ as how I was Short’s girl and all ...”
“Yeah, sounds right to me,” Nash said. “I’d’ve split with you.”
She looked at him sharply, then smiled, showing chipped teeth. “You’re all right, mister. You wanna stay a spell? Give you a cheap rate ...”
Nash shook his head, still smiling. “Gotta get to Jubal Ricks or we’re both in big trouble. Know where I can find Peel?”
Lila shrugged. “Cabin on the south edge of town. Shares it with a Chinee gal.” She primped her piled-up hair. “You sure you ain’t got twenty minutes or so to spare ...?”
“Sorry. Thanks for your time.” Nash flipped her a silver dollar as he turned to leave.
“Hey! You lousy tightwad! I don’t come that cheap!”
“Sorry,” Nash said as he went out. “All I’ve got.”
As he closed the door of Lila’s room behind him he heard something shatter against the wood on the other side. He moved along the lantern-lit passage and left the saloon by the side door.
He went to his horse and rode through town to the south end, where he sat his mount in the shadow of an abandoned store, looking at the motley collection of ramshackle huts dotting the hillside. Which one was Peel’s? He dismounted and left his horse in the shadows, looping the reins over a broken plank. He slid his rifle from the saddle scabbard, jacked a shell into the breech and started up the slope.
The first two cabins were in darkness and he couldn’t hear any sounds coming from them. But he could hear piano music and raucous laughter from the saloon in town and figured the two cabin owners were there.
The next shack had a lighted window and a strip of torn burlap hanging across the frame. Two men sat inside at a packing case table, drinking whisky from a stone jug. Neither fitted Peel’s description.
The fourth building was on the top of the rise. Before he was within its shadow, Nash knew he had found Peel’s cabin. He could smell burning joss-sticks and he saw a pottery Buddha on the porch, the tiny glow of the burning stick showing against the idol’s protruding belly.
The front door had light around its edges and between the gaps in its planks. He was debating his next move when there was a cry behind him.
“Peel! Watch out!”
Nash swore. Lila! That damned whore! Insulted by the silver dollar he had tossed her, she had puffed her way up the slope in time to warn the hardcase.
He heard a table overturn, then the cabin was plunged into darkness. A girl inside cried out in alarm and shrilled words in a sing-song voice. He moved to the left and broke into a run as he heard the rear door crash open.
Nash rounded a corner of the cabin and saw a man running for a lean-to where a horse was tethered. As Nash lifted the rifle, the man turned and fired his six-gun. The slug chewed slivers of wood from the corner of the cabin. One struck Nash in the face and he stumbled and went down, feeling warm blood coursing down his neck. The man triggered two more times and ran into the lean-to.
Panting and swearing, Nash got to his feet and brought up the rifle. He fired two shots that missed and then the man rode out of the lean-to, lying flat along the bare back of a wild-eyed horse. He fired at Nash and the Wells Fargo man got off two fast shots, bringing down the horse in a somersaulting spill that threw Peel into the air, his body rolling across the yard in a cloud of dust.
The man staggered to his feet as Nash ran towards him. Then a gun hammered behind the Texan and he felt the death whisper of a bullet past his face. Instinctively he wheeled, rifle butt against his hip, triggering. He heard the Chinese woman scream and her slim body fell in the rear doorway.
“Lin!” cried Peel in anguish, then he leveled his gun at Nash.
They fired simultaneously. Peel’s shot missed but the hardcase was smashed back as if kicked by a mule. He went down, his hands scrabbling in the dirt for the gun he had dropped. Suddenly Nash towered above him, one boot pinning his right shoulder to the ground. Nash pressed his rifle against the man’s sweating face, contorted now with pain as he looked up at the Texan.
“You can get out of this alive if you do exactly like I say,” Nash growled.
Peel, blood glistening on his shirt front, cursed him. “You shot Lin!”
“She was trying to shoot me,” Nash said. Turning his head, he saw the henna-haired saloon girl kneeling beside the crumpled body of the Chinese girl. “With any luck, she’ll be all right, too. All I want from you is Jubal Ricks’ whereabouts.”
Peel seemed surprised. “Jube? You’re after him?”
“Where?” Nash put some weight on his boot and pressed the rifle muzzle hard against Peel’s neck.
Peel sobbed. “All right! No skin offa my nose. Jubal got himself a shack with the Olsens up on Reindeer Creek. Near the falls.”
“I’ll be back for you if you’re lyin’.”
“I swear I ain’t! Who’re you?”
Nash hit him with the gun barrel, knocking him unconscious. He would let the small fry go to catch the big fish, he figured, starting towards the hut.
Surprise froze Nash as the henna-haired whore raised the Chinese girl’s gun and fired. The bullet winged him in the side, ripping through shirt and vest and burning a shallow line across his ribs. He spun around and the woman’s next shot missed.
“Help! Help!” she screamed. “We got us a lawman! I went through his saddlebags! He’s Wells Fargo!”
Nash cursed and lunged around the side of the cabin, one hand pressed against his wound. Men from other shacks spilled into the night at the whore’s words. A lawman loose in Tall Trees was definitely not to their liking.
Nash made it to the store where he had left his horse. He vaulted into the saddle and rode out hard, guns hammering behind him. He felt the horse stagger and break stride, but then pick up again. It thundered over the slope and away from the outlaw town.
Atcheson was more clapboard than brick or adobe. The wooden buildings were burned raw by the unrelenting sun and scoured by the hot winds that blew across the plains. So far the Kansas-Pacific railroad had only reached as far as Atcheson but there was talk of extending it. If that happened, Wells Fargo would have to drop the route linking Atcheson with Topeka and other towns.
But right now the only way to ship cash and valuables to any town beyond Atcheson was via the Wells Fargo Concord stagecoaches.
It had been a boring trip, with complaining passengers and thick dust boiling under the hoofs of the racing team. The driver was a surly oldster known along the Wells Fargo stage trails as Gripe. He spoke only when he wanted to complain and he had an endless string of complaints.
Larry Holbrook’s head was spinning when the stage finally rolled into the depot yard in Atcheson.
Signing off, Larry looked up as Gripe sauntered away, complaining that the depot clock was fast and he wasn’t thirty-seven minutes behind schedule as the dispatcher claimed. The dispatcher winked at Larry as the youngster finished signing his name.
“How’d you like old Gripe’s company all that way?” the man grinned.
Larry’s scowl was answer enough.
“You got me booked out for Topeka?” he asked.
The clerk consulted a book. “Yep. Dawn stage. Gotta be at the New Mexico Bank here in town by four-thirty in the a.m. to pick up the security box. You’ll be packin’ ten thousand in gold pieces, I hear, not to mention thousands more in silver and bills.”
Larry grunted. He was less interested in the cargo than in the driver of the stage. He asked who it would be.
“You drew lucky, kid,” the dispatcher told him. “Old friend of yours, Sol Guinn.”
Larry Holbrook’s face brightened. Guinn was one of the drivers he had trained with. The man was in his mid-fifties and had led a colorful life, working old ghost town mines, tangling with Indians, bears and mountain lions, and sometimes outlaws. Occasionally he had traded a bullet or two with the law. He had taken a liking to Larry and it was mutual. Larry looked forward to making the long run across the Big Plains with Sol Guinn.
By the time Larry checked in his guns and cleaned up it was dark. He ate a lonely meal at the cafe across the road from the depot, went to the saloon afterwards and ordered a beer. At the far end of the room was Sol Guinn. The man was short and blocky, thick-necked and big-bellied, bearded and bald, and he had an infectious laugh that rumbled around in his barrel chest before he let it out.
“Larry, boy!” Guinn roared when he saw the youngster at the bar. He waved. “Come on down and join us, feller!”
Larry took his glass of beer along the bar to Guinn’s table. Guinn poured a generous slug of whisky into the beer.
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“There, kid, that’s a real man’s drink! Beer’s for ladies or when you’re thirsty. Whisky’s for drinkin’! Get it down, boy.”
Larry hesitated. “Well, I dunno, Sol.”
“You’re a man ain’t you? Prove it then.” Guinn winked at the painted saloon girl sitting beside him and gave her a sign to signal one of her friends to come over. A moment later a slim girl with slightly negroid features and dusky skin hipped slinkily to the table. Larry tossed down the beer and coughed as he felt the bite of the whisky. “That’s my boy!” Guinn laughed and splashed more whisky into the beer glass.
“Judas, Sol,” Larry said, “that’s a lot of redeye!”
“It’ll get you in the right mood. You and me’re gonna have a long, dry ...” he winked and prodded Larry in the ribs with an elbow “... and lonely trail back to Topeka. We gotta make up tonight for what we’ll be missin’ the next few days.”
Larry gulped when the swarthy girl sat down, smiled and pressed her leg against his.
The older man grinned, revealing broken teeth. “Reckon you might need all that whisky after all, eh, kid?”
Larry looked uncomfortable. Then, as the dark girl slipped her arm through his, he lifted his glass and gulped down nearly raw whisky. He choked and coughed and tears ran from his eyes. Guinn thought it was funny. The girls had strained smiles on their faces.
Suddenly Larry heaved back, snatching his arm free of the swarthy girl so violently that she almost fell out of the chair. He kicked over his chair with a clatter and wiped a hand across his smarting lips, glaring at Guinn and the two women.
“Damn it, Sol, is this your idea of fun? It sure ain’t mine! I’d rather listen to your stories.” Larry swayed a little. “I don’t aim to make that long run with a hangover. And I got no money to spare for whores.”
“Now wait a minute, sonny!” snapped the swarthy girl. Leaping to her feet, she signaled one of the bouncers. “No need to get insultin’.”
