Clay Nash 19
Page 11
The girl lay sprawled on the rim, her head and one arm dangling limply over the edge.
He looked around for the squaw but couldn’t see her. Face grim and heart pounding, Nash spurred his mount along the canyon wall, found a trail leading upwards and put his horse up it, yelling in his haste.
On the top, he ran the mount back to where the girl lay and, as he quit leather and sprinted towards her still form, he slowed. The Indian squaw’s body was sprawled behind a rock, the Bowie knife a yard from her outstretched hand.
He ignored her and went to Mary Lee. He pulled her back and rolled her over, cradling her in his arms. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared blankly at him, a dull, mechanical smile on her puffed and split lips.
“Mary Lee, it’s all right now,” he said gently. “You’re safe. I’m taking you home. You hear me? You’re going home.”
She stared at him dully and when he eased her down with her back against a rock, she simply sat in the position he placed her and Nash swore savagely under his breath.
Brewster had had some sort of victory, anyway, he thought angrily. He had reduced the girl to a vegetable ...
Nash moved across to see what had happened to the Indian woman, Oro. He was surprised to see there was a neat hole in the center of her forehead that had hardly bled at all. But the back of her skull had been blown out. He frowned. She must have caught a stray slug during the gunfight. It was the only explanation ...
No matter: she was dead and Mary Lee was still alive if you could call it that.
Nash strode angrily along the boardwalk in Cheyenne, looking neither to right nor left, his eyes blazing. He was heading for Farrell’s hotel and he didn’t hear Jim Hume calling to him from the window of the Wells Fargo office.
He was about to enter the hotel door when Hume, panting, caught up with him and grabbed him by the arm. Nash swung on him angrily.
“Get your hands off me, Jim.”
“Just you wait up, Clay ...”
“No, damn it!” Nash shouted as he wrenched his arm free. His voice shook with emotion. “I just delivered Mary Lee Farrell to the infirmary. The doctors say she’s been violated maybe two dozen times, beat up—and reduced to a mental and nervous wreck ... She’ll be six months or more comin’ out of it. If she comes out of it. And Luke Farrell’s gotta accept some of the responsibility for it. And I aim to see he pays.”
Hume grabbed Nash again, ducked the fist that Nash swung, then pinned the man’s arms, using his greater weight to push him back against the wall.
“Clay, wait. Wait ... That’s better. First off, tell me how you got the gal away ...”
Nash scowled but though he struggled, he couldn’t break Hume’s grip and he spoke between gritted teeth. “I rigged a bunch of vestas in the end of a detonator in a stick of dynamite and put it in among the lead bars. When the lid was prised up, the vestas struck and the dynamite blew ... In the confusion, I managed to shoot my way out ... Now for Chrissakes let me get my hands on Farrell ...!”
Hume eased up on his grip and shook his head. “You’re too late, Clay.”
“What?”
“Farrell was standing at the window of his suite only two hours ago. No one heard anything for sure, but some say there was a faint shot, like it had come from over half a mile away ... Anyways, Farrell took a bullet smack between the eyes. Went in neat but blew the back out of his skull.” Even as he fumbled in his shirt pocket, Nash remembered how the squaw had looked up on the rim. Then Hume held up a copper-jacketed bullet, only slightly misshapen. “We dug that out of the wall across the room from where Farrell fell. Most unusual. A marksman’s bullet. Or an assassin’s.”
Nash turned the slug between his thumb and fingers and smiled faintly.
“So he was at Tomahawk after all,” he murmured to himself.
“What’s that?” Hume asked, frowning. “Who ...?”
Nash looked up and handed back the slug. “Nothing. Just thinkin’ out loud. Well, looks like Farrell fell to the law of the bullet, huh?”
Hume looked grim. “You could be held responsible, Clay.”
“Me?” Nash asked innocently.
“Shell Shannon,” Hume said coldly.
“Shannon? Hell, he quit yesterday. He’s likely miles from here by now.”
Jim Hume raked his face with a hard glare. “There’re posses out looking for him. They’ll get him. Sooner or later.”
Nash smiled slowly. “Maybe,” he said. “Personally, I hope he gives ’em the slip. Now, I’m goin’ for a cold beer, Jim. I figure I’ve earned it. Like to join me?”
Jim Hume shook his head. “It can never be the same again between you and me after this, Clay.”
“I’m sorry about that. I meant it, Jim: I did what I figured I had to.”
He turned and walked back down the street towards the saloon.
Jim Hume watched him go, his face sad. “Yeah, you did it your way, Clay. And you’re man enough to stand by your actions.” He tightened his lips and said, “Aw, to hell with it. I will have that beer ...”
He hurried after Nash calling.
“Clay! Hey! Hold up, amigo ... Wait for me.”
About the Author
Keith Hetherington
aka Kirk Hamilton, Brett Waring and Hank J. Kirby
Australian writer Keith has worked as television scriptwriter on such Australian TV shows as Homicide, Matlock Police, Division 4, Solo One, The Box, The Spoiler and Chopper Squad.
“I always liked writing little vignettes, trying to describe the action sequences I saw in a film or the Saturday Afternoon Serial at local cinemas,” remembers Keith Hetherington, better-known to Piccadilly Publishing readers as Hank J. Kirby, author of the Bronco Madigan series.
Keith went on to pen hundreds of westerns (the figure varies between 600 and 1000) under the names Kirk Hamilton (including the legendary Bannerman the Enforcer series) and Clay Nash as Brett Waring. Keith also worked as a journalist for the Queensland Health Education Council, writing weekly articles for newspapers on health subjects and radio plays dramatizing same.
More on Keith Hetherington
The Clay Nash Series by Brett Waring
Undercover Gun
A Gun Is Waiting
Long Trail to Yuma
Reckoning at Rimrock
Last Stage to Shiloh
Slaughter Trail
Sundown in Socorro
The Fargo Code
Ride for Texas
Bullet by Bullet
The Santa Fe Run
This Lawless Land
Guns on Big River
Compadre
Sundance
Escape to Gunsight
Ride the Stage to Hangman’s Spur
Only a Bullet
Law of the Bullet
… And more to come every other month!
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