by Brett Waring
Maggie Moran was surprised when she opened the front door of the house and found the walk cleared of weeds. Clay Nash turned from picking up a pile of grass as he heard the door open and he smiled at the girl, wiping the back of a forearm across his forehead as he straightened.
“Thought I’d better work off some of those drinks I downed with your pa last night,” he said.
“You didn’t have to do this,” the girl replied. “Ma will be mad at you.”
Nash shrugged. “Pop didn’t have time to do it last night before his train pulled out.”
Maggie nodded, her face sober. “Was he worried about that job, Clay? I mean, he never talks much about his assignments but this time he seems worried.”
“I reckon he hasn’t got a thing to worry about. No one could get into that express van, even with dynamite. He’ll get the money and the gold safely to Tucson, all right.”
The girl’s face showed her relief.
“That’s good to hear. We tend to pick at pa a lot and ride him a little but we love him and we’d sure be lost if—well, if anything happened to him.”
“Well, with express vans like the one your pa’s guarding, I figure men like Clint Christian and Black Bart would soon be out of business. Then your pa and I’d be out of a job.”
She nodded. “Pa’s been drinking a little more heavily than usual, these past couple of weeks, since they gave him the assignment. I hope he doesn’t keep it up.”
Nash nodded. “Noticed that about him myself, but I figure once he gets to Tucson and turns over the freight to the bank he’ll be back to normal. Now, where do I put all these weeds?”
“Oh, out the back, I guess. I’ll go make some breakfast. Will you be staying long, Clay?”
“Reckon I’ll have to be moseyin’ along this afternoon, soon as I check out a couple of leads.” He looked levelly at the girl and added, a little awkwardly, “Maggie, does Pop have any money worries? I mean, debts or anything like that?”
She stared at him for what seemed a long time before replying. “Yes, Clay. We’re always in debt for something, or so it seems. I work downtown in a restaurant as a waitress, and I help ma do some sewing. I sell a little pottery as well, stuff I learnt from the local Indians. But there’s really no one else in the family old enough to hold down a steady job. We’re a large family and take a lot of feeding.”
Nash nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got that impression from Pop. He didn’t say so straight out and I didn’t figure to embarrass him by askin’. Look, Maggie, I’m single, only got myself to worry about and I’ve been kind of lucky and broken a couple of cases that’ve paid me good bonuses. I’d take it as an honor to be allowed to square away a couple of debts for you ... ”
She was shaking her head even before he had finished and his words trailed away. She put a hand on his forearm and stood up on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the cheek. “Thank you, Clay, but we can’t take help. We’ll manage. We always do, somehow.”
“Well, the offer still stands if you want to take me up on it at any time. Now, I’ll get rid of these weeds and wash up and come in for breakfast. And if it’s anything like the supper your ma cooked up last night, you’ll sure have one reluctant Wells Fargo man riding out!”
She laughed and went back into the house as Nash scooped up an armful of weeds and headed around to the backyard. This kind of chore suited him. One time he had had a spread of his own down in Texas until a land-hungry cattle baron had burned him out, and he sometimes missed the workaday life of getting a place of his own in shape. One of these days he’d figure out how he could maybe get himself another small spread and work it, but be available to do special undercover jobs for Jim Hume should he be wanted. The idea appealed to him. Maybe, just maybe, he would give it some serious thought.
There was one girl, Mary Summers, back at a relay station in Iron Ridge, Texas, he wouldn’t mind sharing that kind of life with.
He was still thinking about it when he pulled out of Yuma about one o’clock that afternoon, taking a trail to the northeast that he hoped would lead to the man who had supposedly seen Black Bart with his own eyes.
~*~
At about the same time as Nash left Yuma, the train to Tucson was drawing up to a water-tank out on the heat-pulsing Buckshot Plains. The train slowed as it approached the elevated water-tank and the engineer leaned out of his window and glanced up at the hose connection, manipulating his throttle and brake so that he stopped with the boiler intake plug almost directly beneath the swinging hose. Steam panted hollowly from the loco as he nodded to the fireman and the man swung out of the cab and down to the ground. He glanced back down the long line of cars of the stationary train as he made for the iron ladder up to the tank platform and saw curious passengers leaning out of the windows, watching.
The sun beat down mercilessly. The rungs of the ladder were hot under the fireman’s hand as he climbed up to the platform. He stood for a moment with his forehead pressed against the damp coolness of the tank’s staves and then walked to the rear of the platform to uncoil the heavy canvas hose that was hanging there.
He was just reaching out to unhitch the hose when he heard a scraping noise on the platform behind him. He started to turn but never did get around far enough to see what it was that struck him a stunning blow just above the left ear, knocking his greasy cap from his head and driving him to his knees, moaning. He didn’t feel the boot that slammed into the middle of his back and sent his body hurtling out into space to crash with a thud into the dry cholla brush below. The masked man who had gun-whipped the fireman came around the tank and walked to the front of the platform and looked down at the locomotive. He lifted a hand in the ‘okay’ sign to a man with a shotgun standing on the firewood stacked on the loco’s tender. This man nodded to the gunman who held the white-faced engineer pushed up against the side of the cab, a forty-five’s barrel rammed up under his chin.
“Now just set easy, feller,” the man said. “We won’t be movin’ yet a spell. We got some business farther down the train. Just to make sure you don’t do anythin’ foolish ”
He broke off abruptly and slammed the side of his gun across the engineer’s head, knocking the man to his knees on the steel footplate. He gun-whipped the man again, brutally, and kicked him out of the cab to fall to the tracks. Then, reaching up, he pulled the bell cord and rang three resonant notes on the big brass bell in its swivels atop the locomotive’s boiler. It was the signal that the train had been immobilized. As the third note clanged out, he pulled the throttle handle off its squared stud and flung it far out into the brush.
He nodded to the man with the shotgun on top of the firewood and started to climb down from the cab, looking up at the man on the water-tank platform.
“All right, Whip. Climb on down and let’s go give Clint a hand with the express car.”
The man started down the ladder and the trio walked back down the long line of cars. There were no passengers’ heads looking curiously out of the windows now. Other bandits had entered the cars and were holding them at gunpoint.
The express car was painted dark green and had Wells Fargo’s name painted along the sides. It was studded with glistening rivet heads from the steel lining and the yawning mouths of the chute’s funnels showed underneath, along each side, six in all. Those chutes could cover the length of the car if shotguns were fired into them from inside simultaneously. It was an ingenious idea, and had worked on a special consignment of gold coins travelling from the San Francisco Mint to New York some months previously.
But that train hadn’t come under the notice of Clint Christian and had escaped attack without any trouble at all.
Now, Christian was waiting at the boxcar in front of the express van with a bunch of his men. The man beside him, Frank Hess, was wearing shotgun leather chaps with a line of glistening silver conchas down each side. He was tall and tough looking, dark-visaged, with mean eyes, and he turned those eyes onto the trio coming from the front of the train.
> “You were too slow!” he growled.
“All right,” Clint Christian said. “We’re wastin’ time and those guards’ll be wonderin’ why the train’s so long takin’ on water ... Not to mention that bell. They must be wonderin’ about it.”
“We heard the loopholes open just before you three finally showed up,” Frank Hess said quietly. “Clint thinks he heard the floor chute coverin’s being removed, too, so they’re either playin’ it safe or they suspect somethin’.”
“Don’t much matter, does it?” asked the man who had hit the engineer.
“It matters because I want this to go smooth so there’ll be no hitches!” Christian snapped. “Now, get the wood blocks.”
Hess led the others under the car, where blocks of wood, cut from pine logs, had been stacked. He grabbed one and when he lifted it, the others could see that it had been chopped into a wedge shape with an axe. They watched as he took the heavy wedge and lifted it, muscles bulging, and eased it into the opening of one of the iron funnels of the shotgun chutes. He made signs to them not to make a noise and he pressed his weight against the wedge, pushing it in hard, effectively jamming the outlet of the chute.
The others nodded and took a wedge each, jamming them as silently as possible into the chute openings. They plugged three chutes in this way and then, on the fourth, the man called Whip was just approaching when there was a thunderous, hollow-sounding explosion and something burst from the mouth of the iron chute with tremendous force, lifting his body and the wedge off the ground and flinging him back seven feet, almost cut in half by a charge of buckshot. The man approaching the next chute dropped his wedge and started to run but wasn’t fast enough. A charge blasted from the chute and caught him in the middle of the back, picking him up and hurling him into the brush like a bundle of bloody rags.
“All right!” bawled Christian. “They want to play rough, so we play it that way, too! No quarter!”
“That you, Christian?” yelled Pop Moran’s voice from inside the armored van.
“It’s me, all right!”
“Figured it had to be! It’s no use. You’ve blocked some of the chutes but you won’t get near the others and you can’t blast us out. Best ride off while you can!”
“You open them doors or we start killin’ off the passengers!” Frank Hess snarled.
“Women and kids first!” Christian added coldly.
There was a silence from inside the van and then Pop’s voice came through one of the loopholes again, not so certain this time.
“Makes no difference, Christian. We can’t open up. And it’d sure kill off the legend of Clint Christian if you slaughtered innocent people! You’d be finished!”
Christian swore. Moran had called his bluff, but it had been worth a try. Now he would put the other plan into operation and Moran and his cohorts would be damn sorry they hadn’t just opened up in the first place.
The dapper outlaw leader turned to Hess and nodded. “Get the Mishawka,” he said curtly.
Inside the van, Moran was sweating as he looked through the loophole but he couldn’t see much. He only caught fleeting movements as the bandits kept out of a direct line with the loopholes. He must remember to tell Hume that the van’s defense could be improved if the loopholes were made ‘T’-shaped instead of round. That way they would have a bigger field of vision and would also be able to cover it with traversing fire. That was if he ever got out of here alive.
There were five other guards and they looked at him expectantly. Not one showed fear, simply stoic determination not to let Clint Christian and his outlaws get his hands on the stacks of gold and cash in the ironbound boxes surrounding them. They had all been promised a large bonus at the end of this run and they all aimed to live to spend it. Christian’s cry of ‘no quarter’ didn’t bother them unduly. They figured it was part of his scare tactics, for they figured they were impregnable here. The old train robbers’ dodge of setting fire to the van wouldn’t work and hastily set dynamite wouldn’t blast the steel walls. Roof and doors were of heavy-duty plate steel, the doors securely bolted. There was just no way Christian could get them out. They had food and water enough for a week, but Christian couldn’t sit outside the train that long. Other trains would be along and lawmen would be here long before that time, for the special train had a checking schedule to keep that entailed stopping by telegraph poles beside the tracks and Moran himself was to climb up to the wires, clip on his portable telegraph and tap out a coded call every hour. When the next one didn’t come through, there would be an alarm and a posse would start back along the track in special trains waiting on sidings along the route to Tucson.
Then, out of the silence, Pop Moran said, “I don’t figure we’ve got much to worry about. It’s just that Clint Christian ain’t the type to tackle somethin’ like this unless he’s figured all the angles. He must have somethin’ up his sleeve.”
The others began to look worried and Pop swore to himself. He ought to have had more sense than to speak out like that! He should have been boosting their morale, not undermining it. But he had had this bad feeling for the past two weeks. It was something he hadn’t been able to shake. He was a man who believed in hunches, had, in fact, stayed alive at times by playing his instincts. And he had had a hunch that something was going to go hellishly wrong with this assignment, despite everyone’s assurances that it would be impossible to rob that express van.
Suddenly, at the same time as one of his men shouted that there was smoke coming in through one of the shotgun chutes, Pop Moran’s eyes began to water and something hacked at his throat like he had a gulletful of red-hot coals.
Smoke was pouring up through the chutes in the floor that remained open and while he was directing his men to close them off from the inside, making signs as he was unable to speak, bunches of smoldering brush were stuffed through the round loopholes in the walls and the stinging sensation in his eyes became intolerable and the tears blinded him and his chest heaved mightily as he fought for air.
The bellows! He screamed, but it was only in his mind; he couldn’t get out more than a guttural gurgle as he clawed at his throat and staggered towards the bank of bellows that would clear the van’s air. But it was no use. His men were down on their knees, coughing and retching and gagging, and, though the chutes were closed, the burning brush sticks in the loopholes filled the van with their noxious gases. Pop Moran’s legs wouldn’t support him and his hand was still twelve inches from the first of the bellows handles. He collapsed against the wall, his head feeling as if it was exploding from inside, his lungs seared, eyes blinded ... and yet, there was really only a very thin haze of smoke visible in the van.
His one thought was air! Fresh air! And the others had the same thought and were crawling towards the doors of the van, reaching up for the bolts. He blinked, everything a foggy blur, remembering his job: to guard the gold and the bank’s money! That was all-important ... He tried to call out but he had no voice. One bolt was shot back and two men struggled with another. He dragged out his six-gun, the weight seeming like an anvil in his hand, but he got it up in both hands and thumbed back the hammer. It exploded and the thunderous noise was deafening in the van and someone gave a choked yell, but he no longer had the gun in his hand. It had jumped from his grip with the recoil and he was too blinded now to see it.
Air! Dear God, they had to have air ...
He couldn’t help himself now. He had to get that door open before he choked, but he couldn’t even see as he crawled forward, groping blindly ahead of him. His fingers touched someone’s clothing and he heard the dull clank of metal and he fell forward. Suddenly, there was a rush of searing light and he felt the hot desert air against his skin and his laboring lungs sucked it in and such had been the pain from the noxious gases that the blistering desert heat actually felt cool.
There was movement and noise that was all a-jumble in his head and slowly it filtered through his poisoned senses that the van door was open and there was n
othing to stop the bandits from getting in.
He lurched to his knees, groping around him for his six-gun, his sight slowly returning. And then brutal fingers twisted in his hair and yanked his head back and he looked up along a line of glistening points that were the conchas on Frank Hess’ chaps, straight into the muzzle of the outlaw’s six-gun.
“Told you we’d get in, Moran!” Hess snarled. “And now you’re gonna pay for bein’ stubborn!”
Frank Hess fired and Pop Moran’s body jerked and sprayed blood over the killer’s leather chaps. The agent’s groping hands closed convulsively about the man’s legs as he slid slowly down to the iron platform at the entrance to the express van. Hess kicked him away callously and stepped over his body into the main part of the car, fanning wildly with his hat, turning towards Clint Christian as the dapper outlaw came strutting in, holstering a smoking pistol. Other guns cracked as the bandits killed the guards one by one.
“How long does this stuff take to clear?” Hess asked. “My eyes and throat are hurtin’ already.”
“Give it ten minutes. And yank them bunches of michauca out of the loopholes.” He grinned boyishly. “Flushed ’em out, all right, didn’t it? Just the way we used to flush prairie dogs out of their burrows when I was a kid messin’ about with the Injuns camped outside of town.”
In his exuberance, he slapped his hand flat against the steel lining of the express car.
“Nothin’ can stop Clint Christian once he makes up his mind to do somethin’! Nothin’!”
Three – The Avengers
James Hume stood at the door of his office and watched as the half-dozen men he had just finished briefing, dispersed, talking quietly and seriously amongst themselves. They were operatives he had called in swiftly from nearby areas to work on the train robbery. He sighed as he looked out over the streets of Tucson and was about to go back inside when he saw a rider coming down the street.
Hume frowned in puzzlement and then his mouth clamped into a tight thin line and he stepped out onto the landing as he watched the rider put his horse into a hitch rack and dismount swiftly. Hume’s fingers tapped irritably against the balcony rail as he saw the man dust himself off with his hat and then start up the outside stairs.
