Clay Nash 13

by Brett Waring

  “I must say you showed remarkable restraint, Mr. Garth,” the doctor said, sounding surprised. “I expected you to begin interrogating him immediately.”

  Garth shrugged. “It’s more important that he pulls through than he gives us information. I’m not saying we couldn’t use it, but there’s no point in exhausting him when he’s on the way to recovery ...”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” the doctor replied swiftly. “It’s a good sign, I grant you, but he’s still very seriously wounded and ...”

  “Doctor.”

  The medic spun and was striding to the bedside the instant the nurse spoke. Garth was only a step behind. Hume’s eyes were open again, searching and looking wild, but calming when they rested on Garth’s gaunt face.

  “You’re safe, Jim,” Garth said, reaching out to squeeze the man’s limp hand. “In the infirmary.”

  Hume didn’t seem to hear. His mouth was moving. He seemed to be concentrating on saying something. Garth leaned down with his ear close to the wounded man’s lips as the medic felt for his pulse.

  “N-no—one—c’n—tell—Clay—c’n—f-far ...”

  The effort was too much. His chest was heaving and the medic was becoming alarmed. Hume rolled his head from side to side on the pillow and the nurse tried to soothe him as his words became unintelligible. Presently, he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Garth stood by the door, puzzled.

  “Mean anything to you?” the medic asked, urging the man out of the room.

  Garth paused at the door, glanced back at Hume, and shook his head.

  “Not a thing,” he said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “Not a damn thing.”

  Chet Winters was an ordinary-looking ranny; a fact that made him so valuable for undercover work. He could pass easily as anything from a cowpoke to a storekeeper.

  But his average, easy-going looks and manner were deceptive. For he was fast with a gun or knife, handy with his fists, and had a brain that could unravel mysteries from obscure clues. On many an occasion he had helped Jim Hume with the vital clue that was necessary to break a case wide open.

  He had taken over Clay Nash’s chore of investigating the riverboats and he was in agreement with Nash’s theories. He figured the big steamers were ideal for getting rid of loot that was otherwise too hot to handle.

  Winters felt that he was on the verge of a breakthrough. Since he had taken over from Nash, he had been riding the riverboats up and down the Mississippi, posing as a cowpoke with a roll of dinero that he aimed to turn into enough cash to enable him to buy a ranch of his own. He was the type of man the gamblers loved to see.

  But Winters had actually struck a genuine winning streak and the few dollars he had started with—wrapped around a thick roll of newspaper to make it look a lot more than it was—had built up into more than a thousand. He played his hunches and was at one stage in the middle of a hand of cards when he suddenly decided to quit the game.

  But one man complained.

  “Hell, that ain’t sportin’,” the man growled, a big beefy type in frockcoat and flowered vest. “You been winnin’ my money, an’ I want a chance to get it back. You leave your bet ride.”

  The others at the table fell silent and a hush spread across the big gambling room. The throb of the boat’s steam engines thudded through the floorboards and the big paddlewheel could be heard churning the muddy water to chocolate froth as Winters turned a cold eye to the big man known only as ‘Spar’.

  “Man, you had your chance to hang onto your money an’ take some of mine,” the Wells Fargo man said quietly. “You fluffed both chances, mister. I’m pullin’ out this hand, whether you like it or not.”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t like it,” roared Spar, scraping his chair back as he stood and moved his hand towards the left armpit where he obviously had a gun.

  Folk scattered and someone yelled for the bouncers. Three gun hung, tough-looking hombres came bursting through the doorways from the deck but froze when they saw Winters’ right hand holding a Colt in his fist, covering the startled Spar. The beefy man’s jaw hung open.

  “Judas!” he breathed. “Where’d you get that gun so damn fast?”

  “From my holster,” Winters told him quietly. “Now, if you’ve a notion to keep reachin’ for that hideaway under your coat, you go right ahead, mister. But say your prayers while you’re doin’ it.”

  Spar lifted both hands shoulder high and began to sweat.

  “That’s better,” Winters said and flicked his gaze to the bouncers who were spreading out behind him. He smiled crookedly. “Easy, gents. Ain’t goin’ to be no trouble. All I aim to do is quit this here hand of poker. I don’t reckon there’s any objections to me doin’ that now ...?”

  He glanced quizzically at Spar and the man swiftly shook his head. The house man indicated that he had no objections and nodded gently to the bouncers. They relaxed and the other players released long sighs of relief as Winters returned his Colt to his holster.

  “Where’d you learn to draw like that, cowboy?” the gambler asked, a sallow-faced man with a thin moustache.

  “On the Chisholm Trail,” Winters growled. “All right, I’m quit. I’ll maybe see you gents in the mornin’, if I’m feelin’ lucky.”

  The gambler nodded and Spar and the others still in the game urged the man to deal the cards and get on with it. Winters put his money away and signaled to one of the scantily-clad boat girls carrying a tray. He selected a Cuban cigar, gave her some coins and stood beside the card table, going through the procedure of biting off the end of the cigar and lighting it, idly watching the game as it got under way again.

  “What you callin’, Spar?” the dealer asked him.

  Spar glanced at his cards. He selected three and tossed them into the discard pile. “Hit me with three,” he snarled, smarting under his recent humiliation. He raised his eyes to Winters and they were deadly. Winters had been going to move off but because of the anger on Spar’s face he stood his ground a mite longer. He aimed to let the man know he wasn’t afraid of him.

  He smoked steadily, watching casually, listening to the other noises in the big gambling room; the discordant piano in one corner; the boat’s sounds as it made its way up-river against the flood; the thud of something bumping the length of the hull, likely a floating log; the snap of dice; the clatter of the faro cages; the click of the blackjack card shoes; and the curses or cries of elation of the gamblers as they won or lost ...

  He was aware that Spar was talking and, glancing back to the table, saw that two men had thrown in their hands and it was up to Spar to raise or see the dealer’s hand. The beefy man had laid his five cards face down on the green cloth and was digging a hand into a coat pocket, speaking to the house man.

  “I’m a mite short of cash because of that cowpoke not givin’ me a chance to square away, but I got this. It ought to be worth fifty bucks at least.”

  He held out a gold and ruby brooch, oval, with a cluster of small diamonds around the edges. The gold was filigreed but there was an empty socket where one of the rubies had fallen out. The dealer sighed and reached out to take it. He examined it closely, but briefly, and then handed it back, shaking his head slowly.

  “Might be worth fifty bucks but I ain’t got no use for it,” he said. “Nope, can’t take that, Spar.”

  The beefy man colored. “You’re just tryin’ to squeeze me out. If I can’t raise or see, I got to throw in my hand, that’s why you won’t gimme an advance.”

  The dealer merely shrugged.

  Angrily, Spar turned to the other players. “How about it, gents? Someone like to buy this from me? Forty-five. How’s that, eh? It’s worth twice that, but that’s all I need to raise him and I’ll settle for it. Huh?”

  But no one wanted the brooch and Spar cursed and picked up his cards to discard them and started to put the brooch in his pocket. Then he stopped as a hand reached forward and took the jewelry from his hand. He snapped
his head up and frowned when he saw Chet Winters critically examining the brooch.

  “Hmmm. Looks all right. English made by the hallmark.” He flicked his eyes to Spar and asked casually, “How’d you come by it?”

  The beefy man shrugged. “Belonged to the mother of a pard of mine. He sold it to me when he was broke. Been a kind of good luck piece to me. Up till now.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you forty-five bucks for it,” Winters said.

  Spar grinned then frowned uncertainly almost at once as Winters slipped the brooch into his pocket and pulled out his wad of money.

  “Er—well, why d’you want it, cowboy?”

  Winters winked, his cigar jutting from his mouth. “My mother’s long dead, but I reckon I know someone who’ll appreciate a bauble like that.”

  Spar seemed a mite unsure, even when Winters handed him the money. He started to say something, then forced a smile and flicked the other a brief salute. He held up the money.

  “Mebbe it’s lucky money at that.”

  “You could be right,” Winters agreed and sauntered off as Spar watched him go.

  “You goin’ to raise?” snapped the dealer suddenly and Spar turned back to the game, flinging the bills into the center of the table and picking up his cards, smiling slowly as he fanned them out ...

  A few hours later, the riverboat pulled into a landing at a small town where it was going to take on more passengers. They would be at the landing for at least two hours and quite a few folk elected to stretch their legs ashore and wandered up the street into the town.

  It wasn’t very large, but the stores and saloons were still open, hoping to catch some trade. Chet Winters strolled around and wandered off by himself. He found that there was a railroad depot at the end of the street and made his way there.

  As he had hoped, there was a telegraph office attached to the depot with the operator dozing over his key.

  Winters rapped on the counter and woke the man up.

  “What can I do for you, cowboy?” the man asked.

  “Want to send a wire. To Mr. Walter Garth, Wells Fargo, St. Louis ...”

  As the man wrote laboriously on the message pad, Winter’s fingers caressed the brooch in his coat pocket.

  Clay Nash returned to St. Louis a weary and disappointed man.

  He had thought he had been hot on the trail of Chips, the mysterious horse-faced man who seemed to fit the description of the bandit who had held up the stage, but it had abruptly petered out after the shooting in Feather Creek. No one knew who had hired Hondo Hatton but there was a blood-stained knife in the man’s possession that seemed to indicate it had been the gunfighter who had slit the undertaker’s throat.

  Nash had questioned most people in town, but no one could tell him anything more about Chips.

  The undertaker had obviously been killed to make sure he didn’t pass on anything else of value. Nash went through the funeral parlor’s books but found nothing of value to help him.

  He figured it was time for him to return to St. Louis and go through the lists he had asked Walter Garth to prepare, naming the men who might want to see Jim Hume dead.

  It was night when he arrived in St. Louis by train and he knew the office would be closed up, so he went directly to Walter Garth’s suite of rooms in the Atlanta Hotel on Jackson Avenue. As he had hoped, Garth had the lists with him and while he ate a meal at the director’s expense, Nash studied the pages thoroughly.

  “I’ve marked off in red those who have died since Hume convicted them or those who are still in prison,” Garth pointed out. “Those with the blue tick beside them are men who have been released and haven’t been in trouble since. The ones with the black cross have Wanted dodgers out on them, and the two names I’ve circled, Denman and Cole, have married since their release and seem to have settled down. But they both live not far from the Victoria Flats stage route.”

  Nash nodded and reached for a thick file. He flicked through the pages, looking up Cole’s case history first, and then that of Denman’s. He whistled softly when he was through.

  “Both threatened Hume at their trials. But it was years ago, Walt. Seven in Denman’s case, eight for Cole. You reckon they’d wait this long to try for Jim?”

  “Who knows what they might do? Could’ve been busy making a new life for themselves and now that they’ve done it, they’ve got time to think about old scores again. I figure both those men are worth checking on, Clay. I was going to send a man out on it tomorrow ...”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You need rest.”

  “I’ll rest when I nail the varmint who shot Jim. From the description, Denman sounds more like this Chips feller than Cole. Don’t see any mention of him bein’ able to handle woodwork tools, though.”

  “I’d still check him out,” Garth said.

  “That I’ll do. First thing in the morning,” Nash promised.

  He left town on the first available train out and arrived at Denman’s ranch the next morning. He saw at once he was on the wrong trail. Denman only had one leg. He had caught a leg between two logs two years earlier and it had been so badly crushed that it had had to be amputated. He didn’t know Nash and the operative just passed himself off as a drifter, ate a meal, thanked the man’s wife, gave their daughter a dime, and rode out.

  Cole was a different kettle of fish.

  For a start, he hadn’t been home in a month; his haggard wife told Nash that he had taken a job trail driving to try to get some money together to help their struggling ranch along. A small boy of about six clung to her skirts, staring at Nash with big eyes.

  Another thing, in a shed behind the main house, Nash saw a fine chest of woodworking tools and there was the outline of a square-rigged ship burned into the lid.

  “Your husband ever a sailor, Mrs. Cole?” he asked.

  “Before I knew him,” she replied. “Though he did take one voyage after we were married. To get money. He shipped out on a Boston whaler and was away for nigh on two years. About seven, eight years back, it was ...”

  Nash kept a straight face. He knew the ‘voyage’ Cole had taken at that time. He had been in Canyon City Penitentiary in Colorado for his part in a stagecoach robbery. Jim Hume had put him there ...

  She had no idea where her husband was or when he would be back so Nash decided to move along.

  He camped out that night and was just banking his fire before turning in when a shot blasted from the darkness. He dived over the remnants of the fire as the rifle roared again and he heard the lead whine off a tree on the other side of his camp as he hit hard on his shoulders, rolled, and came up onto one knee with his six-gun in his hand, searching the night.

  Nash was in the shadows with the trees at his back. He knew he would make a difficult target and he crouched, his eyes straining to see. There were no more shots but he heard someone moving near some rocks.

  Clay Nash moved silently, stooping and removing his boots, then padding like a ghost across the gritty sand of the campsite. The creek gurgled behind him. A bird whirred by unseen overhead. Some nocturnal animal slithered through the brush fringing the clump of trees.

  Then a dull ‘clunk’ came from the rocks.

  It was very quiet, but it intruded on the natural sounds of the night. Then his horse stomped and blew through quivering nostrils. He eased around a rock and saw the animal where he had left it. Nash waited, his gun raised.

  Suddenly a shadow moved near his horse.

  Nash stepped out, his gun hammer ratcheting back with a loud, cold sound.

  “Hold it. Move a whisker and I’ll blow your head off.”

  The man didn’t hesitate. He threw himself back and down, twisting to bring around his rifle. It blasted in a single shot and Nash didn’t hear where the bullet went as he dropped hammer at the same instant.

  The intruder grunted and was slammed back hard against the boulders. His rifle clattered as it fell from his grasp. The horse reared, whickering in fear, dragging the reins free
and running off a little way. Nash ran towards it, his gun cocked and ready. He knew the horse wouldn’t go far.

  The wounded man was on his belly, one hand clawed into his side, the other stretched out within a half inch of the fallen rifle. Nash stood on the man’s hand, then pressed the barrel of his Colt against the man’s head.

  “Forget the gun, eh?”

  The man jerked to get his hand free and Nash relieved him of his holstered Colt before taking his weight off the hand. He twisted his fingers in the man’s hair and flung him back against the rocks, in a sitting position. The man groaned and held both hands to his bleeding side. He didn’t seem interested in fighting.

  Nash removed his guns and built up the fire. In the flickering flames he saw a middle-aged man with gray stubble and agonized eyes glaring at him.

  “Cole?”

  The man nodded, running a tongue over dry lips.

  “You bastard,” Nash said without anger, “Why’d you try to bushwhack me?”

  “You’re the bastard,” Cole gasped. “You an’ your lousy questions. My wife figured you for a lawman, after you’d gone. It was too late then. But she got to thinkin’ about that voyage after whales I was s’posed to be on. I never came back with any money. She soon figured I’d been in the State Pen. She’s talkin’ about leavin’ me, thanks to you.”

  “She’ll calm down,” Nash told him confidently. “You should come clean about everythin’ when you start a new life, Cole.”

  Cole spat at Nash’s feet. “You hombres never let a man like me forget, do you?”

  “I don’t aim to bust up the life you’ve made for yourself. I’m lookin’ for somebody who tried to kill Jim Hume. You threatened him at the trial.”

  “Judas, that was a long time back! I was riled. Had time to calm down in the pen. The rock pile has a habit of makin’ a man forget such things. Not that I ever forgot Hume. I still hate his guts, but that’s as far as it goes. What happened?”

  Nash told him—and also about Chips.

  Cole shook his head. “Can’t help you. Plenty of hombres’d like to see Hume dead. I wouldn’t lose no sleep over it myself. An’ I’ll tell you this, mister, I’ll see my son grows up hatin’ his name, too. And yours.”