The Road Agent

by Clyde Barker

  After they had cantered along for a while, the three riders slowed down to a trot for a spell, which enabled them to have some more conversation. Jake Booker said, ‘Hand on heart Clancy, what do you think to this notion of ours, as touching upon taking down the Flyer?’

  Brent Clancy considered for a few seconds before answering and then said slowly, ‘If we could pull it off, I think it worth trying. Truly though, I’m affeared that there might be somebody riding shotgun, a body from Pinkertons or something of that nature. You follow me?’

  ‘We ain’t complete fools,’ said Seb, with some asperity, ‘We give that some thought, of course.’

  ‘Where did all this thinking lead you?’ asked Clancy ironically, ‘For if I’m to be your partner in this, we need to share our ideas.’

  But Seb Booker was offended and would say nothing more, other than, ‘You want in Clancy, then we’ll talk further on it. So far, you’ve blown hot and cold, and me and Jake’ll keep our counsel ’til you tell us you’re in for sure.’

  Not wanting to fall out with the brothers and because he thought that there might be some merit in the projected robbery, Clancy smoothed things over, saying, ‘Ah, Don’t take on so! Let’s see what the morrow brings and how we feel after we’ve reached Abbot’s and got a hot meal in us. Happen we’ll all feel a little more cheerful at that time and apt to talk.’

  When it was too dark to ride safely any further, the three men camped in the lee of a craggy bluff, which jutted out from the surrounding plain. They had alternated cantering and trotting to some effect, covering something over fifteen miles by the time that night fell.

  Clinging tenaciously to a rock face of the bluff was an ancient bristlecone pine and this the three of them managed to pull down and break up, so providing the makings of a modest campfire. Once the tinder-dry wood was blazing away merrily and providing a reasonable source of illumination, Clancy’s curiosity finally got the better of him and he decided to see what the morocco-bound vanity case, for which a man had been prepared to risk his life, actually held. He felt slightly reluctant to go through the other proceeds of the robbery in front of Frank and Seb, for it might make them feel that they had been cheated in some way by somebody else taking down the stage that featured in their own plans. Clancy’s desire to know what the case could contain that was worth dying for was, however, strong enough to overcome this slight scruple.

  ‘What you got there?’ asked Jake Booker, when once Clancy had gone over to his saddle-bag and fished out the vanity case. ‘That looks a mite smarter than anything I’d expect you to be toting around, Clancy. I’ll warrant you got it from somebody on that stage.’

  ‘You got that right. It’s what caused my face to get ploughed up by buckshot and I want to know what caused that fellow to act so.’

  To Brent Clancy’s surprise, the case held nothing of any value at all. The owner had been perfectly correct when he had said that it contained only papers, which were of no interest to anybody but him. There were sketches of a building, showing it complete and then in ruins. These were accompanied by measurements and notes about an explosion that had seemingly reduced it to the state shown in the second of the drawings. There were also a dozen pages covered in strange little squiggles, which Clancy took to be either some foreign language or perhaps a cipher. Then too, there was what looked like a map of a street. This was covered in strange, radiating lines from one side to the other. There was no indication where this place might be, other than a few of the squares, clearly meant to represent buildings, bearing cryptic notations. One, for example, bore a six-pointed star. Another, looking as though it were on the other side of the road from this, was labelled simply with a number seven; below which was a lozenge shape. Clancy could make nothing of this.

  The two Booker brothers, evidently feeling some proprietary interest in the business, since they themselves so nearly had become the new owners of the vanity case, peered over Clancy’s shoulder and made various observations. Clancy said, ‘I wonder if this here, with the star, might signify one of those Jewish churches. You know, a what do they call ’em? Synagogues is it?’

  Jake Booker laughed at that and replied, ‘Synagogue, nothing! I know what that is. Know where it is, what’s more.’

  Seb peered harder in the flickering and uncertain light, before exclaiming, ‘Hey, that’s right. I know where that is for a bet.’

  ‘The hell you do!’ said Clancy, ‘Care to enlighten me?’

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ said Jake, ‘That there star, it tells that it’s the sheriff’s office. Surprised at you Clancy, for not figuring that one out! And the seven, that with a diamond ’neath it, that’s a saloon called the Seven of Diamonds. It’s just across the way from the sheriff. Place is a gaming house really, which accounts for ’em naming it after a playing card.’

  ‘Alright then,’ said Clancy patiently, ‘Where d’ye say this is?’

  ‘Why, it’s a little town up in Illinois, name of Terra Nova.’

  Upon hearing this surprising piece of information, Brent Clancy felt as though he had received a sharp blow in his solar plexus. He said, ‘You sure ’bout that, Seb?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Ain’t I right, Jake?’

  ‘That you are. What’s the matter with you Clancy? Look like you seed a ghost.’

  Recovering his wits and realizing that it would not do to let that pair of scamps guess the real reason for his momentary discomposure, Clancy prevaricated skilfully, saying, ‘It’s just that I came across the name of that place only two days ago, is all. Seems like a rare coincidence.’ He reached into his jacket and fished out a crumpled piece of paper, torn from a newspaper he had found lying around in the hurdy house in Sheridan. He handed this to Frank Booker and said, ‘There! I call that odd, if you don’t.’

  The newspaper cutting was, according to the masthead at the top, from the Sheridan and Chapman’s Crossing Agricultural Gazette and Intelligencer and it read as follows:

  Those readers who favour the Democrat Party and support our current president, Mr ANDREW JOHNSON, will be pleased to learn that following his well-publicised difficulties with both the Republicans and members of his own administration, such as Secretary of War Mr EDWIN STANTON, President JOHNSON is taking to the hustings for the Congressional elections this year. If I said that following his accusing various respectable politicians of rank treason, the president hopes to ‘drum up support’. It will be recalled that less than six months ago, in February, President JOHNSON gave a speech at the Whitehouse in which he rallied his supporters and astonished everybody by the claim that Pennsylvania Congressman THADDEUS STEVENS and Massachusetts Senator CHARLES SUMNER were so vehemently opposed to his policies that they were planning to assassinate him. These differences, combined with his fierce antipathy to members of his own government such as Mr EDWIN STANTON, have impelled the president to begin a nationwide tour, in which he will explain his aims to the population at large. This will begin on the 29th Inst. At the Illinois town of Terra Nova, where President JOHNSON believes that he might expect a fair hearing.

  After the Bookers had read the piece from the newspaper, they allowed that it was somewhat of a coincidence. Thankfully, neither of them asked Clancy what his own particular interest in the town was, nor why he had troubled to tear out the cutting and keep it. After they had perused it, Clancy placed the paper back in his saddle-bag, where he kept a number of similar items.

  There being nothing much for them to stay awake for, the three of them, by common consent, turned in early and agreed that if they rode hard, they should be able to cross into the territories the next day and perhaps even reach Abbot’s place before dusk.

  The greeting that Frank Mason received when he entered the saloon where he had agreed to meet his fellow conspirators was by no means a cordial one.

  ‘Where the Deuce have you been, Mason?’ said one of the roughest and most forthright of the men, ‘We expected you two hours since.’

  ‘I was unavoidably detain
ed,’ he replied smoothly, ‘It couldn’t be helped. Gentlemen, we have a problem.’

  The noise in the bar-room was such that there was not the slightest apprehension of their being overheard as the five of them talked in low voices in a partitioned space around a table. As Mason outlined the precise nature of the problem, the faces of the other four men grew grave. It was obvious that, like him, they were greatly concerned about the loss of the notes relating to the ‘Great Enterprise’. Mason’s behaviour could not be criticised, this was just a stroke of ill fortune. He said, ‘We must all of us be in Terra Nova, two days from now, which is cutting things damned fine. But if those papers fall into the wrong hands, it could spell ruin for our plans, to say nothing of setting our necks at hazard. I say that we should all ride at dawn for the Indian Nations, find this boy and kill him. There’s a new line running through the territories, it links up with the Union Pacific. We have time to ride south, take care of this matter and still be in Illinois in time.’

  ‘I don’t see that we have another choice,’ said a swarthy-looking fellow with a faint French accent, ‘We cannot risk betrayal.’

  The others nodded their heads soberly and all of them agreed that they should get early to bed and start at first light for the territories. It was undeniably a nuisance, but with matters about to reach a climax, leaving those documents floating around in the hands of the Lord knew who was really not to be thought of.

  Suspicions regarding the strange conduct of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had begun swirling around almost before President Lincoln’s body was cold. That the intention that April evening had been to kill all the major figures in the United States government was beyond doubt. Secretary of State Seward was stabbed in the throat as he lay in bed, at the same time that Lincoln himself was being shot in the theatre to which he and his wife had gone that evening. Other assassins had been despatched to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson at the same time. Stanton later claimed to have driven off a man who was trying to harm him as well, but nobody else saw this mysterious assailant. The actions of the secretary of war in the immediate aftermath of the president’s death were certainly open to misinterpretation.

  Without attempting to contact the vice president and find out whether or not he was alive, Edwin Stanton virtually declared martial law in Washington, sending troops to guard key points in the city. More than one observer remarked that the Secretary of War’s actions that night looked to him very much like a military coup. Had Andrew Johnson actually been killed, which was the plan although he managed to evade death, then Edwin Stanton would undoubtedly have been in control of the nation for an indefinite period. As it was, Johnson, whom Stanton loathed, was sworn in as president and took the reins of power out of the hands of Secretary Stanton. The two men were bitter enemies ever afterwards.

  It was partly to counter the intrigues and plotting of his Secretary of War, whom Johnson had been unable to remove, that President Johnson had announced his grand speaking tour. He may have had enemies in Washington, but he was convinced that he was beloved of ordinary people and wanted to give them a chance to see and hear him.

  Brent Clancy lay on his back in the darkness, quite unable to sleep. He could hear the gentle snoring of the Booker brothers, who had seemingly fallen into the arms of Morpheus as soon as they had laid down and wished him goodnight. For his own part, Clancy had never been more awake or less able to close his eyes and drift off. Terra Nova! It had to be Terra Nova. For the last nine months or so, he had been seeing odd mentions of the town and had eagerly devoured any scrap of information that had come his way about it. He knew that very soon now, the councilmen of the town hoped to apply for a charter and have their town declared a city. He had read of the new manufactories there, which were making the town a byword of modernity. Most of all though, he saw mention of the renowned sheriff of Terra Nova; a man who was well known for his exploits before the war. In those days, he had been a US Marshal, of course, tracking down desperate criminals and either killing them or bringing them in to face justice. It was only natural that an up and coming town like Terra Nova should have wanted such a man to become its sheriff when peace returned.

  One cutting that he kept in his saddle-bag mentioned the likelihood of the sheriff of Terra Nova turning to politics at some stage, when once he had hung up his gun-belt and handed in his star. He was after all still a relatively young man, despite all that he had so far managed to pack into his life. If he were spared, then Sheriff Grant Clancy would be just thirty-eight years of age this fall.

  All his life, Brent Clancy had lived in the shadow of his older brother. His brother had been a deputy at the time that Brent was born. Nobody had been more surprised than their mother when, at the age of forty, she had fallen pregnant. Her family was complete and all but one of the children left home. Now, just when she thought that she could ease up a little, she was faced once more with the daunting round of diapers and child-rearing. Still, there it was. Prudence Clancy was not one to shirk her duties and she set to the task with grim determination, and if ever she felt some slight resentment towards the child who had come along so unexpectedly, then she hoped not to show it. Brent Clancy knew two things almost before he could walk and talk. One was that he had not really been wanted by his mother and the other was that he would need to work pretty damned hard to approach even remotely close to the standards set by his mother’s first-born son, the famous Grant Clancy.

  Throughout his childhood, Clancy had had the example of his big brother constantly held up before him. Even when Grant was prowling the country, running down malefactors, he always found time to recollect his filial duty and write letters home to his mother and father. These missives were read out loud by Mrs Clancy to her husband and younger son, and it was generally understood that the sentiments contained in them were invariably pious, elevated and correct. For in addition to being a lawman, his big brother was a lay preacher for the Methodist church and never let slip an opportunity of mentioning the will of the Deity and how it behoved us all to fulfil our duty towards Him. A natural and wholly unsurprising consequence of all these circumstances was that Brent Clancy reached adolescence with no favourable view of either lawmen or God. It came as a shock to nobody when he signed up as a soldier and immediately took to drinking, gambling, cursing and low company. It was no more than his mother had expected all along.

  While Brent Clancy slogged away from battle to battle as a lowly infantryman, his brother gave up law-keeping for the duration and received a commission. The life of an officer was very different from that of a youngster in Brent’s position and their paths did not once cross throughout the whole course of the war. While Grant continued to keep his mother apprised of all the wonderful things that he was doing and how he never passed up the chance to witness for the Lord, even on the very battlefield, Brent somehow felt little inclination to write long letters home. He limited himself to the occasional brief note, which was just sufficient to reassure his mother that he was still in the land of the living.

  The war ground to its inevitable and tragic end and Grant left the Union army with fresh honours and plaudits, to become the sheriff of a town on the verge of becoming a city. His young brother turned to banditry and nobody, either in his own family or the world at large, was the least bit taken aback to see the very different roads that the two men took. It was understood by his mother’s relatives and friends that she was immeasurably shocked by having a son on the scout, but that this was more than recompensed by having another boy who was renowned for being hot for both the Lord and the law of the land.

  It was a strange thing, but for reasons that he could not really understand Brent Clancy had fallen into his mother’s habit of clipping any mention of his brother’s activities, or even the town where he was sheriff, from newspapers and keeping them with him. He was quite unable to say why he did that, but it accounted for his knowing about President Johnson’s forthcoming visit to the town and also explained why he had been more than
a little disturbed to find that the man he had robbed had some mysterious connection with the town of Terra Nova.

  The next day dawned fine and mild. Clancy had fallen asleep in the end, but only fitfully and his repose was broken by a variety of vivid and unpleasant dreams. He was as a result not in the most amiable frame of mind that morning. There was little enough for the three men to break their fast on; a little dried jerky and the heel of a week-old loaf of bread. They were apt to be on short commons until they reached Abbot’s place. The chances of coming across any provisions store in the wilderness that lay between them and their destination were vanishingly slender.

  It was as they finished eating and were preparing to move out that Clancy had a sudden thought, followed swiftly by another, one of which was alarming in the extreme. His first thought was that it might be worth examining the pocket watch of the fellow to whom the vanity case had belonged. It might chance that there was an inscription or some such, something that would shed light on the man’s identity. The second thought was the realization that he knew perfectly what was represented by all those lines drawn across the map of the street in which his brother’s office was apparently situated, if the Booker brothers were to be believed, that is. It was a wonder he hadn’t thought before, but these lines and cones were obviously meant to indicate lines of sight and, as a natural corollary, lines of fire, too. Combined with the notes and sketches relating to some explosion, it seemed to Clancy that some villainy might be planned for the town where his brother was charged with keeping order.

  The watch seemed nothing out of the ordinary, the kind of Hunter that any well-to-do man might sport. It and the chain were made of heavy, old gold; Clancy guessed that it was scarcely alloyed at all. This would fetch a pretty price, if he was any judge of such things. Springing open the back showed nothing in the way of engraving, but after he had closed up the watch, Clancy noticed something that had evaded his attention until now. Attached to the ‘T’ at the end of the watch-chain was a tiny gold locket. It was barely half an inch across and at first he thought that it might be something to do with the Freemasons, who he knew identified each other sometimes by strange little trinkets and charms of this kind. As he began fiddling with it, Jake Booker came over and said, ‘Thought you was in a rare hurry to move out at first light? What are you fooling around with there?’