by Clyde Barker
‘I lost pretty much everything when I escaped from those people,’ Brent reminded him. ‘I got only what I stand up in.’
‘I guess you’ll have to use my razor, as well as my clothes.’
The evening meal was not a relaxing one for Brent. He was aware that his table manners lacked finesse and every time he wolfed down a mouthful without first chewing it, his sister-in-law shot him a look of gentle reproach, presumably for the bad example he was setting to her children. He was glad when the meal was over and he and his brother could retire to the garden to talk and smoke.
The garden was a delight for the senses, being filled with fragrant and colourful flowers. There was a little bench to rest on, the kind of thing that you might expect to find in some public park in a big city. Once they were comfortably settled down, Brent said, ‘I reckon you’ll be wiring Washington and telling the president not to come?’
Grant shot him a quizzical look and said, ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Well, to save his life, maybe. There’s some devilment afoot and it all seems to centre around your Main Street. I guess that Johnson’s speaking in some building there.’
‘He is.’
Brent Clancy was bewildered by his brother’s calm and unruffled manner. He had supposed that the second Grant set his eyes upon the papers from the vanity case he would have been firing off telegrams to all and sundry, cancelling the presidential visit and hunting down any mischievous strangers who might be in town. He said, ‘What then, you don’t think what I showed you is a true bill?’
‘Oh, as to that,’ said Grant Clancy easily, ‘I make no doubt that something’s afoot. Concerns that blamed visit by the president too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Seeing the puzzled look on his brother’s face, the sheriff of Terra Nova laughed out loud. He continued, ‘Listen, I cancel that big show and start kicking down doors looking for a band of assassins, what do you think will be the result? All those rats will scatter elsewhere and start some new plot. Maybe they’ll be luckier next time and my brother won’t rob them of some vital documents!’ He chuckled. ‘No, I aim to find the whole crew of ’em and arrest them. You ever had an abscess?
‘Have I what?’
‘Had an abscess, you know, like a carbuncle or large boil.’
‘Sure,’ said Brent, not seeing where this conversation was tending, ‘But what’s that got to do with the price of sugar?’
‘You can squeeze an abscess clumsily and force the poison down deep into your flesh. Then you might end up with a dozen smaller boils, rather than the one big one. Or, you can let it get bigger and bigger, ’til there’s a clear head to it. Then you lance it, jab a sharp blade in and drain out the pus.’
Understanding dawned and Brent looked at his brother with respect. He said, ‘You mean you’ll let these fellows carry on, so they think that they can continue with their murderous plans and then hope to catch the whole lot of them when the time is ripe?’
Grant nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’
‘It’s the hell of a risk. These are dangerous characters.’
‘I’m a dangerous character, too. So are you, if it comes to that. I’ll do all right, I reckon, thanks to the warning you risked your life to carry to me.’
This was as close as his brother was likely to get to saying ‘Thank you’ and Brent thought that he had better be content with it. He had a sudden rush of wishing to make up for some of the disappointment that he had caused his mother, father and most likely his brother, too. He said, ‘You want any help with this? Or can you and your deputies handle it without any assistance?’
‘You know, I was kind of hoping that you’d ask that. You want in on this and it might go some way to making up for some of the capers you’ve been mixed up in since the end of the war.’
‘You saying you do want my help?’
His brother shrugged nonchalantly. He surely was not about to ask more elaborately than he had already. He said, ‘I reckon you’re a handy fellow to have about if the going gets rough. I heard a heap about you over the last few years, never mind that we haven’t met all that often. Some of it good, like what you did during the war and some not so good, like when you been on the scout. But I know that you can be relied upon in a fight and that you’re scared of nothing. You want to help me, I won’t say no.’
At about the time that the Clancy brothers were bidding fair towards growing closer than either of them could either recall ever having been before in their lives, Frank Mason was travelling towards them in the railroad train that he and his comrades had caught from the junction at Barker’s Crossing. It was an integral part of Mason’s nature that he rehearsed any projected action in which he was involved dozens of times before actually undertaking it. Some thought that this obsessive thought process was tantamount to an illness of the mind, but Frank Mason knew that it had saved his life in the past. His four companions were slumbering in the half-empty coach, which meant that they were not likely to distract his attention, for which Mason was mighty thankful.
President Johnson and his cavalcade were due to arrive in Terra Nova in forty-eight hours. That meant that the Klansmen would have the whole of the morrow to make their preparations and lay the mine that would, it was hoped, demolish the civic hall at which Johnson was scheduled to speak. Hiring a man who would mix up the nitro just before it was to be used had been Mason’s idea. It would mean one more death; the man was a hopeless drunk who would need to be disposed of before Johnson hit town, but what was one more life when so much was at stake?
Jed Taylor would need to be killed as soon as he had prepared the explosives, but it was unlikely that anybody would miss him. He was not, after all, a citizen of Terra Nova. Killing the town’s sheriff and a man who was probably related to him though, that would be a hard row to hoe without causing alarm in the town, which might in turn lead to the president cancelling his visit. Maybe, thought Mason, as he lay back against the seat with his eyes closed, it would prove possible to guy up Sheriff Clancy’s death as an accident of some kind? Perhaps his house could burn down the night before President Johnson was expected in town. At this thought, Frank Mason smiled slightly and felt a good deal easier in his mind.
The day before the much-anticipated arrival of the President of the United States dawned bright and clear, with not the least wisp of cloud in the sky. Grant Clancy had hired some extra men to sweep the street between the railroad depot and the hotel where Johnson would be staying. He was altogether determined that Terra Nova should be seen to best advantage. Word had been circulated that if anybody appeared on the streets drunk or even the worse for wear from imbibing liquor, then that person had best watch out, for he was liable to spend thirty days in the town’s tiny little gaol cells. The sheriff saw this visit as something of a feather in his own cap and an implicit recognition by Washington that Terra Nova was an up and coming place, somewhere to watch in the future. And, as a man who had set his heart on becoming the mayor, once the city charter had been granted, it was in the sheriff’s interests that the entire visit went smoothly and decorously.
In a run-down carriage house, in an alleyway off Main Street, Jed Taylor’s life was fast slipping away, although of course he did not know that. He had, at Johnny West’s urging, been early to bed the previous night and up bright and early at the crack of dawn, to prepare the eighty pounds of nitroglycerine, for which he was being paid such a large sum that he would be able to remain liquored up for the next year or so without working. West and Mason had been exceedingly generous in their offer of remuneration, for the simple reason that they had not the slightest intention of giving the man a single cent.
‘I could surely do with just another little nip of the good stuff!’ exclaimed Taylor, in a whining voice, ‘I been working at this since first light.’
‘You already had a shot o’ rye,’ Johnny West reminded him coldly, ‘straight after you broke your fast before dawn. You’ll not have another drop ’til this work is finished.’
‘You�
�re a hard man.’
‘I’m a man who doesn’t want to be blown sky high on account of some drunken bastard makes an error,’ said West bluntly. ‘How much longer will it take before you’re done?’
‘No more than an hour.’
‘Well don’t you hurry it none. If that stuff don’t act according to plan, I’m going to come lookin’ for you and I don’t think you’d want that.’
The dusty carriage house was full of glass tubes, demijohns and carboys, all of which had been brought in and set up a week ago, following Taylor’s instructions. The only thing that it had not proved possible to acquire and store beforehand had been the ice. Jed Taylor had assured those employing him that the nitro could be manufactured without cooling with ice, as long as a constant supply of running water could be laid on to remove the heat. Johnny West, for one, would be very pleased when the job was over and he could just kill this son of a bitch and then get on with the important matter of assassinating the president and then wresting control of the South back from the military government.
It was at first sight curious that although Grant Clancy had for the last few days been busy tidying up Terra Nova and attempting to conceal from sight any of its less savoury aspects, that he should insist that his own brother walk out of the house that day wearing the grimy and bloodstained clothes that he had on when he first fetched up at the sheriff’s office the previous day. The reasoning was simple; Sheriff Clancy wanted his brother to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, so that any of those who were seeking to take his life would immediately know that he was in town and looking for trouble.
The prospect of playing the part of a tethered goat did not precisely appeal to Brent Clancy, but he was bound to concede, in fairness to his brother, that the basic idea behind the trap was a sound one. All he had to do was walk about town as prominently as could be and hope that one of the Klansmen would recognize him and feel minded to either kill him on the spot or bring others to accomplish the task. It was unlikely that a murder would be committed out on the open street; these men still had to preserve their secrecy before they launched their bid to assassinate the president of the United States. Most likely, they would trail him and hope to catch him in a lonely spot, so that he could be disposed of with a dagger in the ribs or some similarly silent and inconspicuous way. Grant had explained that in India this was how they hunted tigers.
‘See now,’ he had told Brent, ‘They tie up a goat or sheep and let it bleat away. Then the hunters set up a hide nearby and they wait. Wait ’til the noise of the goat or what have you attracts a tiger. Then, when the big cat shows up, bang! They have it.’
‘Which sounds just fine and dandy,’ said Brent Clancy, ‘unless you happen to be the goat. Which, I suppose, you’re asking me to be?’
‘You want to get your own back on those boys, don’t you? For killing your friends and causing you to leave your horse and other gear behind?’
‘Don’t try and buffalo me, Grant. This needs thinking on.’
‘We ain’t got a mort o’ time, but I guess you know that.’
In the end, Brent Clancy agreed. It was true, he did wish to be revenged upon the men who had almost killed him, but there was more to it than that. Grant had been pretty decent about his turning up like that and had opened his home to his scapegrace brother without any hesitation. If he could do his respectable brother a good turn and help advance his prospects, well then it was only a fair exchange.
Brent said, ‘You want me to look as rough and ready as can be and then go drawing attention to myself around town, is that right?’
‘Me and my boys’ll be behind you all the time. If anything will draw those fellows out the woodwork, this is it. They think you know all about whatever they got planned.’
‘Ah, hell. Yeah, I’ll do it. Won’t be the first time in my life I played the goat!’
At that, Grant Clancy threw back his head and guffawed with laughter. He said, ‘Ain’t that the truth though?’
Brent, who could not recollect ever having heard his staid and dignified brother laughing out loud in the whole course of his life, stared in amazement. When he had recovered himself, Grant said, ‘Listen, you think you got the raw deal on family life, always having some wonderful big brother held up to you as an example of Godly behaviour and righteousness. Personally, I ain’t a bit surprised you turned out like you did!’
In response to his brother’s enquiring look, the sheriff of Terra Nova said slowly, ‘You think I don’t know how you had me and my doings rammed down your throat by our mother, God rest her soul, your whole life long? You think it’s easy to be held up as a pattern of virtue, knowing your every move is being studied and admired? Well it ain’t, I’ll tell you that for nothing. It’s a burden is what it is.’
‘I never thought of it so.’
‘I’m no saint, Brent. Just happens that I never took to liquor and I always feared the Lord. There’s no virtue in it, that’s how I am. I told Ma, you know. Told her to stop praising me up all the livelong day, but you think she’d listen? Like I say, I ain’t the least bit surprised you cut loose as soon as you were able.’
While the Clancy brothers were having the first serious conversation they’d had since Brent became an adult, five men had booked into the Imperial Hotel, the grandest place to stay in Terra Nova. It was where President Johnson was to stay on the first night of his whistle-stop tour of the Union, which was due to begin the next day. The men had slept on the train and so just took the rooms, left their bags there and then went hunting for breakfast. They had not been such fools as to march into the hotel as a body of five men. Instead, they had entered at intervals and affected not to recognize each other. After depositing their luggage, which in every case amounted to little more than saddle-bags and portmanteaus, they made their way, one by one, to the disused carriage house where Jed Taylor was cooking up a large batch of nitro.
‘How’s it going, my friend?’ asked Frank Mason amiably of the man he had hired.
‘I’m quite finished, Mister Mason,’ replied Taylor, obsequiously. ‘Just let that stuff in those two carboys cool for a spell and there you have it. Eighty pounds of Black Hercules.’
‘It looks a little murky,’ said Mason dubiously. ‘You sure it’ll answer for our purposes?’
‘Well, I ain’t asked what your purposes are, you know,’ said Taylor facetiously, ‘But if you’re after the devil of a bang, then it’ll act alright.’
‘And you say it’s ready to use?’
‘Soon as it’s quite cool. Leave it for twelve hours and that’s it.
‘You’ll be wanting your reward, I dare say?’ asked Frank Mason, an almost imperceptible smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
‘What’re you laughing at?’ enquired Taylor uneasily. ‘You’re not minded to cheat me of what I got coming, I suppose?
‘Not a bit of it, you’ll get what’s coming to you.’
While Mason was speaking, Johnny West had been moving casually behind the jumpy little drunkard and as he did so, he reached to a sheath that was affixed to the back of his belt. Nestling there in the small of his back was a razor-sharp bowie knife. Once he was behind Taylor and out of his line of sight, he drew the knife and then, in one swift movement, leaned forward, grabbed the man’s hair, jerked back his head and then drew the blade briskly across the tautened flesh at the front of the Jed Taylor’s throat. The bowie knife was sharp enough, but it was an awkward angle at which to cut and so West had to saw a little in order to get through the hard cartilage of the voice box. As soon as he had done so and the carotid artery was severed, blood sprayed out as though from a soda siphon.
West’s action was greeted with cries of fury from the other men, who shouted things such as, ‘Christ man, mind my jacket!’ or ‘What’s wrong with you West, it’s going everywhere!’ The strong feelings expressed all seemed to be concerned with the mess created and the possibility of having their clothes stained. Not one of the six men present showed
any emotion at the death of a fellow being in front of them.
There was little point in trying to hide the corpse and it was just rolled under a bench and an old tarpaulin thrown over it. If things went according to plan, there would be a number of deaths of far more consequence than the drunken engineer and it was unlikely that anybody would find Jed Taylor’s body anyway until the half dozen Klansmen had been long-departed from the town. It was agreed to repair to the hotel for coffee and to make final preparations for the murders that would take place the following day. President Johnson was scheduled to arrive at the depot at four in the afternoon on the morrow, go to the hotel to freshen up and then deliver his great speech at eight in the evening. There was plenty of time to make the necessary dispositions.
Had they but known it, Mason and the rest of them missed Brent Clancy by a matter of seconds that morning. When they reached the hotel, the clerk said, ‘Why, somebody was asking just now about any new folk recently arrived here. I wondered if he meant some others.’
‘What did he look like?’ asked Mason, ‘Can you give a description?’
‘Well now, he was a right scruffy looking type. Dirty clothes, blood down the front of his shirt. You’d surely know him if you saw him. Nasty cut running right up and down one cheek.’
Frank Mason did not reply but turned and walked straight out of the Imperial and looked up and down the street. He was unable to see anybody fitting the clerk’s description, although he had little doubt that the man was the very same who had robbed him a few days back. The devil of it was that he was the only one in town who had got a good look at this Brent Clancy, up close. The others had only glimpsed him from a distance under the circumstances of the chase that had culminated in the wretch leaping aboard the Flyer. He would have to roam around town a bit now and try to run the boy to earth. Mind, with that scar on his face, he should be easy enough for anybody to recognize.
Under normal circumstances, it would probably have been a fairly simple and straightforward matter for Sheriff Clancy to ask around hotels and lodging houses in order to find out if there was a group of strangers in town. Of course, circumstances were anything but normal right now, with the President of the United States due to arrive the next day. A lot of people from surrounding farms were drifting into Terra Nova in the hope of catching a glimpse of Andrew Johnson. Not that he was enormously popular hereabouts, but after all, the president is the president and it is something to say that you’ve heard him speak or even just caught sight of him. The place was accordingly heaving with unfamiliar faces and the chances of picking out this or that stranger were exceedingly slim.
