The Road Agent

by Clyde Barker

  The Road Agent

  What should have been the simple robbery of a stagecoach for outlaw Brent Clancy turns into a deadly game of wits with a band of assassins determined to kill the President of the United States. In the course of this adventure, the one-time road agent finds himself on the right side of the law for a novelty, fighting both to save the president’s life while at the same time avenging a personal grievance.

  By the same author

  Comanche Moon

  Badman Sheriff

  Showdown at Parson’s End

  A Town Called Innocence

  Jed Harker Rides Out

  Writing as Harriet Cade

  The Homesteader’s Daughter

  Pony Express

  The Marshal’s Daughter

  Saddler’s Run

  Teacher with a Tin Star

  Writing as Fenton Sadler

  Snake Oil

  Assault on Fort Bennett

  The Vigilance Man

  Writing as Brent Larssen

  The Vindicators

  Fool’s Gold

  The Forgiveness Trail

  Massacre at Maple Bluff

  Writing as Ethan Harker

  Jordan’s Crossing

  Chilcot’s Redemption

  Incident at Confederate Crossing

  Writing as Jay Clanton

  Saloon Justice

  Quincy’s Quest

  Land of the Saints

  Writing as Jack Tregarth

  Blood for Blood

  Chisholm Trail Showdown

  Kiowa Rising

  Writing as Jethro Kyle

  Invitation to a Funeral

  Fugitive Lawman

  The Legend of Dutchman’s Mine

  Writing as Clyde Barker

  Long Shadows

  The Last Confession of Rick O’Shea

  Writing as Bill Cartwright

  McAllister’s Last Ride

  Gunfight at Hilton’s Crossing

  McAndrew’s Stand

  Writing as Ed Roberts

  Archer’s Luck

  The Rattlesnake Code

  The Road Agent

  Clyde Barker

  ROBERT HALE

  © Clyde Barker 2018

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  Paperback edition 2019

  ISBN 978-0-7198-3020-4

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Clyde Barker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Chapter 1

  The mule was labouring sullenly under its load, which consisted of two glass carboys, each containing five gallons of oily, grey sludge. These bulbous bottles, encased in raffia and straw, were slung over the beast’s back, one hanging on either side. Two men walked along with the mule. Both seemed excessively attentive to the animal; constantly reaching out anxious hands to steady it, if it appeared to be faltering or about to stumble. This solicitousness was motivated less by any tender regard for the welfare of a dumb animal than by their own instincts of self-preservation. The fact was that the mule was carrying on its back eighty pounds of nitroglycerine, which was more than enough to blow them all to smithereens if the tired creature should happen to miss its footing.

  ‘I don’t reckon that this here is the best means to go about this business,’ said the younger of the two men, who looked to be about thirty years of age. ‘From all I am able to collect, this stuff will go off if anybody so much as farts near it. What if this creature falls down?’ His companion, who was older, plumper and more jovial, looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Scared, are you? I am surprised, I heard tell that you rebels were game for anything.’

  The young man looked at him coldly. ‘Rebel, is it? I tell you now, I’m game for anything in the fighting and killing line, but this is another matter. I don’t see where we have to carry this here along this track in this way. Like I say, that creature stumbles and we are both done for.’

  The older man said nothing for a spell. Then he remarked, ‘It’s how your boss would have it. He wants to know that the nitro will accomplish the job he has in mind. He wants further to be sure of the quantity needed and such like. I am being paid for this. If I am not worried, I can’t see what it should be to you.’

  The two men and the mule trudged on for another half an hour without speaking again until they came into view of an old mission station. It had been built near a fort that no longer existed and had been abandoned during the war. A substantial and robust building, it was fashioned partly of stone and partly of wood and adobe.

  When the party arrived at the old building, the men very carefully lifted the carboys from the mule’s back and set them against the wall of the mission. Having done this, the two of them had a bite to eat and smoked a little. The older man had forbidden any smoking while they were actually engaged in transporting the explosives.

  After they had rested, the younger man took a sketchpad out of his knapsack and drew the building in front of them. He then paced out the measurements of the place and made notes about its construction. When he had finished, there was a pretty detailed account of the size and nature of the structure near to which almost a hundred pounds of high explosive was about to be detonated. Having done all this, he went back to where he had left his rifle. It was a seven-shot Spencer carbine and it could be sighted up to eight hundred yards. After it had been loaded and he had checked too the old navy Colt tucked in his belt, the two of them, with the mule plodding along behind, made for a rise of ground that lay the better part of half a mile or so from the mission station. The young man led them to the crest, where he stopped. He turned to the other and asked, ‘You think this is far enough for us to be safe?’

  The other man shrugged. ‘I should say so. You want to be close enough to see the result, don’t you? I thought your people wanted an account from you of the damage wrought?’

  The man with the rifle lay down in the dust and placed the stock of the rifle to his shoulder. He squinted at the target. At half a mile, he could just catch the glint of glass in the sunlight and he was confident that the Spencer would not let him down. It never had yet. ‘You going to lay down?’ he enquired. The older man shook his head contemptuously.

  The shot from the rifle was deafening so close up, but it was as nothing to the roar of sound that struck them both a fraction of a second later. The ground shook and a gust of warm air blew past them, stirring up the dirt. Then, a steady rain of chips of stone, fragments of wood and chunks of plaster began to fall on and around them. The mule brayed in alarm. The mission station itself had disappeared behind a cloud of smoke and dust.

  ‘God almighty,’ observed the young man, awestruck, ‘I seed some explosions in the war, but never one to match this. One time, a magazine of powder went up, but it was nothing to this.’

  As the smoke cleared, they could see that the stout building had all but vanished. The walls had been reduced to around three or four feet i
n height and they encircled an empty space. The whole place had been blown to pieces and those pieces scattered far and wide. The two men walked down the slope to inspect the ruins.

  ‘Well, that powerful enough for you and your friends?’ asked the older man. ‘I tell you now, that Black Hercules is like nothing on Earth. It is twice the strength of ordinary nitro.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon that is just what we need. By my reckoning, that stuff should leave no survivors or nothing standing.’ The former Confederate soldier turned to face his companion. They stood ten feet or so apart. ‘Only thing is, you see, we don’t plan to buy from you. We have found a man who will make it for us on the spot. Still and all, I thank you for giving the demonstration. You may be sure that I will tell my boss that this is the goods for the job.’

  ‘You needn’t take that line, my friend. You try to cut me out now and see what happens to your precious secret.’

  The other man laughed. ‘I thought you might say so.’ He drew his pistol, cocking it with his thumb as he did so. ‘Remind me, what was it you said to me back on the road, you Yankee bastard? Something about ‘scared’ and ‘rebels’ wasn’t it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t shoot down an unarmed man. Where is your honour?’

  The ball took him in the chest and he put his hand to the wound wonderingly, unable to believe what had happened. The second ball caught him right smack on the forehead, whereupon he dropped lifeless to the ground.

  After examining the scene of the explosion carefully and making some more sketches and notes, the young man jumped onto the mule and the two of them made their way back to town.

  When, after four years of the bloodiest slaughter ever known to man, the great War Between the States drew to a close in 1865, most of the men who had fought in that conflict desired nothing more than to return to peaceful and productive lives. Some though, a small but significant minority, had acquired a taste for hazard and adventure that could not be sated by working on railroads or ranches; nor by clerking in stores, toiling in offices or digging ditches either. These men, most of them young enough to have spent the early years of their manhood in the Union or Confederate armed forces, found themselves wholly unable to settle down after the war ended. Some re-enlisted and took part in the Indian Wars, while others became lawmen. Then again, there were those who turned bad and took to robbery and rapine to provide them with the feeling of danger and sense of excitement to which they had somehow become addicted during the late war. One such individual was Brent Clancy.

  At the age of sixteen, Brent Clancy had lied about his age and joined the Union army, following Mr Lincoln’s appeal for volunteers in April 1861. He had then served right the way through the war, ending up at Appomattox Court House precisely four years later, on 9 April 1865, the day that the instrument of surrender was signed by General Lee. When he left the army, later that year, Clancy found that he could not settle to one thing or live in any particular place for more than a few weeks, or a month or two at most. He was fiddle-footed and restless and had to keep on the move. He also needed the thrill of pitting his wits against others in a life or death struggle for survival.

  So it was that a sunny summer’s day in 1866 found Brent Clancy seated on his horse and waiting on a rise of land overlooking the dirt track running between two little towns, one of which was in Kansas and the other Missouri. The stage was due any time now and it was Clancy’s intention to rob the passengers of anything they might possess in the way of watches, jewellery or cash-money. He had chosen this part of the route because it was, as far as anybody was able to gauge, just precisely on the border between the states of Kansas and Missouri. Clancy’s choice of this spot to spring his ambush was by no means fortuitous. He had found that if some fairly trifling crime took place on the edge of one jurisdiction, then sometimes the local law would purport to believe that the offence had been committed on the other side of the state line and so decline to investigate, hoping that somebody else would handle the matter. If the sheriff on the other side of the line adopted a similar approach, then there was an excellent chance of this disputed jurisdiction leading to nobody being minded strongly enough to start pursuing the man responsible. Of course, this didn’t happen if some serious felony such as murder or rape was involved, but Brent Clancy took great care not to be mixed up in such affairs.

  Among those who were, like he himself, on the scout, Clancy would own to being a road agent. This was a facetious term for those who preyed upon stagecoaches and lone riders; similar in many ways to the highwaymen who once infested the roads of old-time England. Sometimes such men operated in teams. Others, like Clancy, preferred to work alone. The returns on this form of robbery were not high and such enterprises were not without risk; but it suited Brent Clancy well enough. He did not target consignments of bullion, which might be more heavily guarded than the usual passenger runs, nor had he yet harmed anybody. His activities so far had been bloodless and conducted with as much good humour as was possible when one man is robbing others.

  In the distance, the stage hove into view and Clancy’s sharp eyes at once discerned that there was only one man driving it. Nobody was riding shotgun. This was apt to make the whole enterprise far more agreeable and reduced the risk of a gun battle, which was the last thing Brent Clancy was looking for. As the stage rattled its way along, it was now about a half-mile away, he pulled up his neckerchief and adjusted it over the lower half of his face in approved bandit fashion. Then he rode down the slope to intercept the scarlet coach and relieve its occupants of anything that he might find useful.

  Once Clancy had reached the bottom of the slope and was on the track itself he withdrew from a scabbard hanging in front of his saddle, a sawn-off scattergun. So short was the barrel of this piece that its load of nuts, screws, buckshot and scraps of metal would fan out and catch anybody within a radius of about twenty feet. It was no manner of use for hitting any particular target, but for spreading injury and death over a wide area, there was no better weapon. The fellow in charge of the team of horses pulling the stage evidently had no inclination to risk falling foul of Brent Clancy’s shotgun, for he reined in as the young man trotted his horse forward, applying the brakes as he did so and then, so there could be no possible misapprehension as touching upon his own pacific intentions, he raised both hands above his head as well.

  The driver of the stagecoach was a man in his riper years, with sparse grey hair and a deeply lined countenance. He said in a resigned voice, ‘Well young man, what will you have?’

  ‘Just climb down from your perch there and invite your passengers to step out where I can see them. You might apprise ’em of the fact that I’m ready to shoot any man, woman or child as shows defiance, while you’re about it.’

  The man in charge of the stage apparently had a fund of common sense, coupled with a strong instinct for survival, for he clambered down without another word and, walking over to the door of the coach, called through the open window. ‘Don’t none o’ you folks fret now, but we’re a being robbed. Just do as this young villain tells you and we should come out the situation with our lives. He’s bearing down on me this minute with a scattergun, so nobody do anything sudden or unexpected. You all come on out now.’

  Upon these hints, the four passengers emerged blinking into the sunlight and Clancy saw to his dismay that one of them was known to him. This was a young girl, scarcely old enough to have started putting up her hair, whom he had met at a hurdy house in the Kansas town of Sheridan. Clancy had visited the hurdy-gurdy house for three nights running, the previous week, flirting with and striking up something of a friendship with Maggie. It had amounted to no more than a little canoodling, nothing serious, but the girl would surely remember him, even with his mouth and nose concealed in this way. So it proved, for as soon as she stepped down from the coach and glanced up at the rider who was menacing them, Maggie had squealed girlishly and cried, ‘Oooh, Clancy!’

  Brent Clancy’s eyes blazed at the hapless young woman and
she realized that she had put a foot wrong, saying hurriedly, ‘Oh, beg pardon, I took you for another.’

  The three other people from the coach, all men, stood around trying to look as though they were tough, but somehow didn’t feel that day like tackling this young robber. Two of them were respectable-looking young men, a little older than Clancy himself. The third was a swarthy fellow of about forty-five or fifty, who was immaculately turned out and looked as though he were not in the habit of mixing with common folk, unless he could help it. None of the three men were carrying guns; at least as far as Clancy could see. He dismounted, all the while keeping an eye on the others, for fear of treachery. When he was on firm ground, he said, ‘I’ll thank you all to place your wallets, watches and suchlike on the ground in a pile. If nobody fools around, then there’ll be no bloodshed today, leastways, not on my account.’

  The younger men slowly removed billfolds and set them carefully on the ground. One of them had also a watch; an expensive-looking gold hunter. This, he disengaged from his vest pocket and, with every show of the greatest reluctance, set it down beside the two wallets. The older man took a little longer. He was handicapped by having in one hand a morocco-bound vanity case, the kind of thing that might contain shaving tackle. He had to shift this from one hand to another, in order to take out his watch and then fumble in his pockets for his money. Brent Clancy observed him shrewdly, noting that he seemed excessively anxious not to be separated from his little case for a single second. This was enough to persuade Clancy that here was something valuable. He said to the man, ‘Just lay that case down there as well, along with the rest of the stuff.’

  ‘It is nothing in here, nothing but a few papers. They’re private matters, not worth a cent to you.’