The Road Agent

by Clyde Barker

  ‘Sure of it,’ said Clancy and gave a brief account of his role in getting the location of the president’s speech altered. ‘Stands to reason now,’ he continued, ‘that if they can’t shoot at him without being immediately killed or arrested, then they’ll have to use the stuff over there. They’ll be coming for it all right.’

  So it was that there began a nerve-shredding time as the two young men closed the door, leaving them sitting in the basement of the civic hall in complete darkness and waiting for a band of ruthless and determined assassins. Two hours passed in more or less complete silence, only the element of surprise would serve to give the two of them an edge over their adversaries. At length, they heard footsteps and the sound of men talking quietly among themselves. Both Clancy and Nolan braced themselves for action, cocking their pieces and training them on the entrance to their hideout.

  The men hiding in the basement were at a distinct advantage when the door opened, because, of course, whereas the gang were looking into the darkness from a relatively light place, Clancy and Nolan could see the other men clearly silhouetted against the light. Clancy called, ‘We’re peace officers. Throw down your weapons!’ Whereupon, all hell cut loose. The men of the Klan were not in the slightest degree inclined to surrender without a fight and so rather than throwing down their guns they drew them and began peering into the gloom in order to identify any target. Nolan hesitated, but for Clancy the case was plain. It was kill or be killed and so he fired twice, hitting two of the five men crowded around the entrance to the basement. This spurred on the other deputy and he too began firing at the rectangle of light, against which were outlined the men who wished to murder the president.

  The Klansmen were disadvantaged by their knowledge that there was a sufficient quantity of unstable explosives down in that dark space to destroy them all. This caused them to pause before returning fire, which in such situations is apt to prove fatal. So it was now, because four of the five men were killed at once in that first round of fire from the two deputies. Mason had had the sense to dodge to one side, but was left now in the unenviable position of being alone against the Lord knew how many armed lawmen. He waited patiently, until, just as he had thought would happen, one of those in the basement, assuming that all the enemy had been killed, was incautious enough to poke his head out of the doorway and look around; whereupon Frank Mason put a ball straight through the man’s forehead. His triumph on the field of battle was, however, destined to be short-lived.

  Mason listened carefully for a while and then, mindful that the sound of gunfire was likely to draw unfavourable attention from strangers and busybodies, meaning that time was of the essence, and having persuaded himself that there could only have been one person in the basement all along, he walked carefully down the short flight of steps, only to be shot dead by Clancy. Now it was Clancy’s turn to wait and listen. He heard nothing and concluded that it was safe now to leave his hiding place.

  Leaving the basement was no easy business, so cluttered was it with corpses. He stepped over Mason and then picked his way past Nolan, who lay on his back with a surprised look on his face, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. There were no living men to be seen and so Clancy counted up the bodies. He made it six men, one of whom was a deputy. He turned in bewilderment to look down again into the basement, wondering where the sixth of the men he was hunting might be, just as Johnny West, who had heard the gunfire from his perch up on the rooftop and knew that their whole plan must be unravelling, appeared behind him and, without bothering to aim properly, lifted his rifle and shot Brent Clancy in the back.

  Clancy felt the ball strike him just below his shoulder blade and the force of it knocked him off balance and propelled him headfirst down the steps and into the basement. He was winded by the fall, but had the presence of mind to retain his grasp on the pistol, which as far as he was able to recollect, still had two shots in it. The pain in his back was ferocious, but he still managed to wriggle round, so that he was lying on his back and facing the doorway. Johnny West was a deal more cautious than the others had been, but even so he could not see very much, peering through the doorway, looking from the light into the shadows as he was. Having seen what ten gallons of nitro could wreak, he did not feel at all disposed to begin firing random shots down into the darkness. Instead, he made a sudden spring for the steps, hoping to overcome any resistance from the man he hoped that he had killed, but who might only be lying wounded.

  Being injured and in pain, to say nothing of lying in such an awkward and uncomfortable position, meant that this was not the best shot of Clancy’s life, but as soon as West was visible, he fired at once. It was not a mortal shot; the ball shattered the other man’s right knee and since he could no longer support the weight of his body on his two legs, he too came tumbling down, coming to rest on the floor of the basement, no more than three feet from Clancy. Before he had time to catch his breath, Clancy raised his pistol, cocking it with his thumb as he did so, pointed it straight at the man’s face and squeezed the trigger. He was appalled to hear the muffled click that signified a misfire. Despite the agony that his knee must have been causing him, the man gave a crooked grin and then began to use one arm to haul himself away from Clancy. He kept hold of his musket with his left hand. For his part, Clancy felt that he had done all that he could and knew that bar a miracle from heaven, this was the end of the road for him.

  There was the sound of shouting and running footsteps and then they heard somebody shouting out near at hand. ‘We’re Pinkertons’ men. Best not fool with us, now.’

  The man with the shattered leg had managed to crawl on his belly over to the great, bulbous glass flasks that contained the nitro. He said, ‘You’ve done for me, you bastard, but I’ll not be taken by anybody. If I’m going, you and all them others’ll come with me.’ He succeeded in pressing the muzzle of his rifle against the nearest of the carboys and then smiled at Clancy. ‘Adios!’ he said and then pulled the trigger.

  As soon as he realized what the man intended, Clancy prepared himself for the tremendous explosion that would instantly end his life and when he heard the crash of the rifle shot in the enclosed space he assumed that this was the end and closed his eyes in resignation. He opened them again when he heard agonised screaming. For a second, he wondered if he had died and been dragged down to the infernal regions, but unless hell bore an uncanny resemblance to the basement of Terra Nova’s civic hall then that was unlikely. For some unknown reason, the nitroglycerine had not been detonated by the shot fired into it. But what could account for that frantic shrieking? He glanced over toward the glass containers and saw a sight that would live with him until his dying day.

  Johnny West’s shot had shattered only one of the carboys, but the contents had not, as he had confidently expected, blown to pieces both him, the man who had shot him and the Pinkertons’ men overhead. In his final agony, perhaps West had realized the folly of depending upon the drunken sot whom he and Mason had hired to cook up the explosives. Because whether due to the lack of copious amounts of ice to cool the process or possibly because Jed Taylor had misjudged the precise proportions needed to effect the transmutation of the acids and glycerine into a high explosive, the fact was that the concentrated sulphuric and nitric acid had not combined as they should have done and both constituents had retained their dreadful, corrosive power. As soon as his shot had broken the flask, five gallons of powerful acid had engulfed West.

  The addition of the glycerine had turned the liquid acids into the consistency of molasses and the sticky substance had slopped all over Johnny West’s shoulders when the glass had been broken. As he tried to pull himself free and alleviate the burning pain, he only succeeded in entangling himself further in the gooey mess. Clancy had witnessed some horrible deaths in the war, but this surpassed anything he had seen on the battlefield. As he watched the man wriggling like a fly caught in treacle, he could both see and smell the flesh burning away from his bones. The nauseating stench, comb
ined with the wound to his shoulder was enough to cause him, for the first and only time in his life, to faint.

  It would be pleasant to relate that from then on, as soon as he recovered consciousness, everything was plain sailing for Brent Clancy, but real life isn’t like that. His injuries amounted only to the cracking of a few ribs below his shoulder. For a few days, he was the hero of the hour, lauded and praised throughout Terra Nova. President Johnson, vastly impressed by the young man’s actions, wished to award him the Medal of Honour, but wiser counsel prevailed. Perhaps the Pinkertons’ men who looked into the affair alongside the regular law had their suspicions about the true character and history of Brent Clancy, because he realized after a week or so that he was being viewed by those in authority a little more coolly. In the end, no real investigations were conducted into Clancy’s background and past actions before fetching up in Terra Nova, for which that gentleman was heartily glad.

  Because he had actually been sworn in as a deputy and had, when all was said and done, saved the life of the president, it was decided by the town council that if Clancy wished to stay in Terra Nova and continue in the role then that was fine with them. It was a chance for him to forget the past and settle down, which had been his desire for some while now, so that worked out to the good. When Terra Nova was granted a city charter the following year and the deputies were transformed into police officers, Clancy too became a policeman; a development that he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams at one time.

  Edwin Stanton’s role in the Great Enterprise was suspected, but never proved. President Johnson fired him a short while later, but was later forced to reinstate him. As for the Klan, they descended into petty bickering and achieved in the end little more than carrying out a handful of lynchings and burning a few crosses. Had the Great Enterprise succeeded, it could have changed the United States irrevocably and that it did not was largely due to the most unlikely figure in the world: Brent Clancy, one-time road agent and later deputy sheriff and police officer in Illinois.