by Clyde Barker
From Brent Clancy’s perspective, the matter could hardly be simpler. Just as he had made his peace with his elder brother and was perhaps on the point of settling down a little, it had all been snatched away from him by an act of cold-blooded murder. Not only that, but the killings of the children and their mother meant there was a need for vengeance. He alone was in a position to set things straight and so it was upon him that the duty devolved.
Johnny West was a supremely ruthless and efficient killer, although an exceedingly slapdash and untidy one into the bargain. He had gained a savage and unholy joy from burning down a lawman’s house the night before, but had, in his excitement, left the evidence of the crime scattered about in the garden, quite forgetting that the deaths were supposed to appear accidental. That was the problem with using West, you never quite knew how he would behave or what he would do when the killing lust was upon him. Nobody knew this better than Frank Mason, who sometimes wondered if Johnny West were not becoming more of a liability than an asset. Still, for now, there was certainly a place in the Great Enterprise for a man of such peculiarly useful talents.
West had three special hatreds, which were Yankees, lawmen and coloured folks, roughly in that order. As a merciless killer for the Ku Klux Klan, these deep-seated prejudices came in very useful, as did a native cunning and intelligence that enabled the man to see paths through a problem when other and more acute minds remained baffled. Johnny West had never set eyes upon Brent Clancy and had been given only the sketchiest description of the fellow, but it was enough for him to be able to track the man down, when the others who had actually seen Clancy had been unable to do so. He had simply reasoned that if, as was strongly suspected, the fellow was related to the man whose family West had slaughtered a few hours earlier, then he might reasonably be expected to be seeking vengeance. Where would be the most logical place for him to fetch up? Why, the office of his murdered relative of course!
Armed only with the knowledge that the boy he was hunting was a fresh-faced fellow of about twenty years of age, with jet black hair and a scar on his cheek, Johnny West wandered down in the direction of the sheriff’s office a few hours after burning down the house. He saw at once, as he sauntered past, that somebody was already sitting in there, with a lamp burning, at six in the morning. This was in itself curious, but he kept on walking, not wishing to draw undue attention to himself. When the deputies began arriving an hour later, there were more people up and about; store-owners pulling up their shutters and blinds, men delivering goods and a few horses and carts heading over to the depot. After passing and repassing the office, glancing through the window each time in the most natural and casual fashion, West established that there was a very young man sitting in the office, apparently explaining out a case to the deputies he had seen coming to the office. This young man had black hair and he would have taken oath that it was the very person for whom Mason and the others had been hunting in vain.
By lingering on the opposite side of the road, West was able to observe the young man in whom he was interested leaving the office. He noted, to his surprise, that he was sporting a tin star. This young man’s hair was lustrous, almost blue-black, and it had been the colour of his hair that had most been remarked upon by those who had seen him in the flesh. That, combined with the fact that he could see the bloody gash on his face that had been talked of, told Johnny West that without the shadow of a doubt this was the man whom Mason wished to see killed before President Johnson arrived in town. He set off after the man, meaning to kill him quietly, just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Few men are able to survive four years of bitter, bloody war, followed by a year and a half of living as an outlaw, without acquiring a sixth sense for danger. Brent Clancy had a finely honed instinct that warned him of any threat to his life. He couldn’t have explained this to others, it was just something that he knew, as surely as he could feel when rain was coming or that there would be a frost in the night. As he left his late brother’s office that morning, he knew without the shadow of a doubt that somebody nearby meant him ill. He did nothing so obvious as to peer over his shoulder or start running. Instead, he moved at a leisurely pace down Main Street, in the direction of the railroad depot. Then, starting as though he had recollected something, he turned on his heel and began hurrying back towards the sheriff’s office.
Taken aback at the sight of his quarry bearing down on him, Johnny West was momentarily flustered and he halted in his tracks and began taking a great interest in the nearest store front. It was this slight hesitation that betrayed him and marked him out to Clancy as the one who had been following him. Brent Clancy walked past without giving any outwards show of noticing anything or anybody, but merely walked on briskly, like a man who is late for some pressing engagement. Emboldened by this, West resumed his pursuit, congratulating himself on being a pretty sharp operator when it came to hunting men. He saw the man ahead duck into the space between two buildings and speeded up his pace. Once they were out of sight of others, he could kill this troublesome boy and that would be one fewer thing for he and his friends to concern themselves about on this most important of days.
So confident was Johnny West of having the drop on the fellow he was following that he turned the corner into the alley without even pausing to peep round and ensure that everything was as he expected. Had he done so, he might not have been taken by surprise when two hands shot out. One grabbed his belt and the other his shirt-front. He was then swung round unceremoniously and slammed into the nearby brick wall. Before he had recovered from this surprising turn of events, his pistol was plucked from its holster and hurled down the alleyway. He had no time to draw breath or recover from the unusual feeling of having been utterly overwhelmed and taken wholly unawares when there was the sharp click of a pistol being cocked and he felt the cold metal of a gun barrel being jammed painfully under his jaw. It was done in such a way that he was unable to pull free because the barrel was hooked into the soft flesh beneath his chin and pressed against his jawbone. A soft but deadly voice enquired, ‘I wonder what you’ve been up to, you son of a bitch. You stink of lamp oil and the smell of burning, you know that?’
It was by no means the first tight squeeze in which West had found himself and although matters had taken an unlooked-for turn, that did not mean that he was about to stick his head in a noose by making any damaging admissions. Nor was there any purpose in trying to wriggle free of the trap in which he now found himself. His enemy’s weapon was cocked and he was unable to move his head by the least fraction of an inch. Instead, Johnny West let his body relax a little, as though in despair and at the same time moved his hand casually to the small of his back, as though trying to ease the pain from the awkward pose he was in. Then he drew the bowie knife that nestled at the back of his belt and brought it out swiftly, meaning to gut like a fish the man holding him.
Instead of the deep, slashing strike he intended, West only managed to jab feebly at the man holding him at such a tricky angle. It was, however, enough to make the other man loosen his grip a little in shock at the sudden pain. In a flash, West had squirmed free and shot off into the busy thoroughfare. Clancy drew his gun and set off in pursuit, but his erstwhile prisoner had too much of a lead on him. Besides which, Brent was not at all inclined to run until he had examined the harm that might have been wrought to his belly. There was no point in sprinting off down the road only for his intestines to start slopping out over the roadway.
By a miracle, the knife had wrought him no harm at all. The strength of the thrust had been largely intercepted by the stout leather belt around his waist. It had been a close run thing though, a quarter-inch lower and he would be lying in the alleyway right now, watching his life’s blood running out into the dirt. He’d have the devil of a bruise to show for it, but the leather had stopped the blade from piercing his vitals and that was something to be thankful for. It had just penetrated the leather, leaving a superficial cut on his stomach. It wa
s little more than a scratch though, certainly not sufficient to impair Clancy’s efficiency in carrying out his self-appointed task that day.
Clancy knew now that the man who had run off after trying to kill him was the one who had burned down his brother’s house and killed the entire family. Who else in that town would both reek of oil and smoke and also have a desire to follow him? More to the point, he had the best possible description now to give to hotel owners or lodging house keepers. Where he was, then the others would be close at hand. With some luck, he would be able to settle accounts for his brother’s murder and prevent anything untoward happening to President Johnson, which he himself didn’t care much about, but had been important to Grant. It would be an act of honour to his brother’s memory to thwart whatever plan those boys had in mind for this day.
‘I tell you, he was wearing a star,’ said Johnny West, ‘Sure as I’m standing here.’
‘Then it can’t be the one I was looking for,’ replied Mason, ‘He can’t have changed from road agent to deputy in a matter of hours.’
‘If he was related to that dead sheriff, he might,’ observed one of the others, ‘Could have sworn him in. They say blood’s thicker than water.’
‘It’s too late to fret over,’ said Frank Mason. ‘If it is the same man as robbed me, then he can’t do anything to stop us now. When we spring our mine, maybe he’ll be standing by and guarding Johnson.’
‘You don’t reckon as we should change tack?’ asked another of the men lounging around the hotel room.
‘Not a bit of it. We’ll get the gear stowed ’neath the stage and carry on. Anybody sees that boy, they can kill him, nice and quiet if they can. Otherwise, it makes no odds. Long as Stanton holds up his end o’ the bargain, that boy can yap as much as he likes.’
The citizens of Terra Nova were proud of their civic hall, which was used for everything from dances and concerts to political meetings and speeches by men of the local council. It had a large stage, sufficient to accommodate an orchestra and enough space for hundreds of people to stand in the body of the hall. This morning, the place was a veritable hive of industry, with people climbing ladders to hang bunting and others sweeping the floor and removing the wooden chairs, to make more room, so that everybody who wished to do so could have a peek at the president. There was rumoured to be an entire coach full of reporters accompanying the president on his tour and Terra Nova was determined to present itself to best advantage.
So rapidly had Terra Nova expanded that the town’s services had been unable to keep pace. One sheriff and four deputies were nowhere near adequate to maintain order and had it not been for the fact that the majority of the population were decent and law-abiding, things could have come to a crisis before this day. As it was, with three deputies out patrolling the streets, only one could be spared to check that everything was as it should be at the civic hall. This man, Tom Parker, was wandering around at the back of the stage when there came a rap on the back door of the hall, which let out onto an empty lot. He opened the door and was confronted by four men who had a load on a hand barrow. One of them said, ‘We’ve to set this down here.’ He consulted a sheet of paper and continued, ‘Says we got to put it in the space beneath the stage. See, there’s a little door over yonder that gives access.’
Parker saw nothing strange about the idea; people had been coming and going all morning with various deliveries and so on. He said, ‘I’ll check with the organiser. You fellows wait here a moment.’ There was nobody else at back of the stage at that moment and so when Parker turned to hunt out the man in charge of the arrangements for this evening’s meeting and the person who had told him about the delivery leapt on his back and knocked him to the floor, there was nobody to see what was happening. While Johnny West killed the deputy, by the simple expedient of sticking his knife in Parker’s chest, one of the others opened the little door giving on to the storage space beneath the stage and swiftly bundled the bloody corpse out of sight, pushing it down the short flight of steps into the darkness, among the boxes and barrels stashed out of the way there. The others lifted one of the heavy carboys off the barrow and, very carefully, carried it under the stage, setting it down next to the external wall. With luck, nobody would suspect that any harm had befallen the deputy. Maybe they would just think that he had wandered off for a drink or something.
Chapter 8
Sitting alone in his study, Edwin Stanton felt like a chess player about to bring off a fantastically elegant checkmate in just one more move. Andrew Johnson had few supporters and Stanton had subtly canvassed all the important political and military figures in Washington, sounding them out about their loyalty to the president. Almost to a man, they were willing to switch their allegiance if circumstances warranted it. Stanton talked delicately of the precarious position in which Johnson now found himself, hinting at the possibility of impeachment, with all the uncertainty that such a development would bring and the paralysis that would be brought to the government if matters ever reached that far. He had personal assurances from General Grant that the army would follow Stanton’s orders to withdraw from the South and he had also spoken to the most eminent constitutional lawyer in the country and found that his scheme of suspending the constitution was quite legal, as long as certain conditions were met. If the men from the Klan fulfilled their part of the bargain then by nightfall Edwin Stanton would be virtually a dictator, in complete and utter control of the northern states of America and answerable only to his own conscience.
Nobody seemed to have noticed the disappearance of Tom Parker; there was simply too much going on in the civic hall for one man’s absence to be a matter of remark. The two heavy carboys, each weighing a little over forty pounds, had been gently manoeuvred into place, as far as could be judged, right beneath the lectern at which the president would be standing. They would erupt like volcanoes, smashing the entire building to fragments, as effectively as a similar quantity of liquid had demolished that old mission station. Frank Mason, who knew something of such matters, unreeled a spool of safety fuse and ran it from one of the huge glass vessels to the outer wooden wall of the cellar-like space in which they were working. He pushed one end of the fuse out through a little hole, where he had knocked out a knot hole in a plank, so that it protruded for a foot or so. At the other end, right on top of one of the carboys, he attached a flask of black powder.
Walking the streets in hope of coming across the man who had tried to knife him did not seem to Clancy a good use of his time and energy. Instead, armed now with a highly detailed and specific description of the man whom he was perfectly certain had murdered his brother and his family, he resolved to visit some hotels. He struck lucky on the first he tried, the smartest one in town.
‘Why yes,’ said the clerk at the counter of the Imperial, ‘Strikes me that you are talking of a fellow who booked in yesterday morning. He hooked up with some friends who had already arrived here.’
‘I’d like to see their rooms, if you please.’
‘Well, I suppose it will be all right,’ said the fellow dubiously, ‘The manager ain’t here just now, but if you’d care to come back in an hour or so. . . .’
‘This is a matter of life and death,’ said Clancy curtly, ‘You frustrate my purpose and you’ll answer for it in court.’
That did the trick and seeing as the man before him was, by all appearances, a genuine deputy sheriff, the clerk led him up to the rooms occupied by the seven men. There was nothing of interest in the rooms though, notwithstanding that they had been booked for the week and cash paid upfront. Clancy toyed briefly with the idea of staying there and staging an ambush, but time was running precious short. He knew from the conversation with the other deputies that one of them was to be stationed permanently at the civic hall, so there was no point in going there. He decided to go down to the depot instead, the germ of an idea beginning to ferment in his mind. Before that though, he wished to take a look at a building that he had noticed earlier, the n
ew bank. He smiled involuntarily at the idea of his scouting out a bank now, not with a view to robbing it but rather as a deputy, desirous of preventing the commission of a felony. You surely never knew how things were going to turn out in this world!
As he strode down Main Street towards the railroad depot, Clancy’s brain was working furiously. He’d no idea how it was to be done, but from all that he was able to comprehend from those papers, the focus for any mischief was to be the civic hall. That’s where all the lines of fire were drawn and unless he and his brother had been greatly mistaken, some kind of explosion was planned there as well. What if the president never went anywhere near the civic hall though? Suppose that he could be diverted away from the place on some pretext? That would surely have the effect of luring those skunks into the open and forcing them to reveal themselves. But what could he say to President Johnson to cause him to change his plans?
By the time he had reached the depot, Clancy’s plan had assumed solid form. It was a scheme that would flush those assassins from hiding and give him a chance to take them. His plan seemed, at least to him, mighty thin, but for want of any better this would be what he would go with. It all depended upon just how proud of himself the president was.
It was no secret that President Johnson was as vain as a peacock. What Clancy had decided was that he would approach the president in his official capacity as deputy sheriff and tell him that the civic hall was too small and that so many people were desperately anxious to see him that it would be fairer for the folk in the town if he were to give his speech in the open. This should flatter the man. If he could persuade the president, then there would be no reason at all for Johnson to set foot in the civic hall. He could go straight from the Imperial Hotel to the bank and anybody wishing to kill him would be compelled to come right into the open.
