by Brett Waring
“I want to know what happened to McPhee,” Largo Dunn broke in. “Shoot-out you say?”
Nash told the whole camp what happened. “Dunno who it was tried the first bushwhack on me, but I believed Mac when he said it was none of his doin’.”
“Likely some owlhoot on the run in there, picked you for a lawman an’ didn’t aim’ to take any chances,” Largo said and Pecos backed him.
“Yeah, could be,” Nash allowed. “By the by, where’s Johnny Marks?”
Largo’s face closed. “Gone.”
“Where?” Nash demanded more sharply than he’d meant to. He saw Largo and Pecos and the others register surprise at his tone but he didn’t make any comment or move to soften it.
“Anyone’s guess,” Dunn replied slowly, studying Nash closely. “Sold me the remuda and took off.”
“When was this?”
“Couple days after you pulled out after McPhee, I guess. Come right out of the blue. He walked up to me and said to make him an offer for the hosses, that he needed a quick stake and had some business to tend to. Didn’t say where, just that he was in a hurry. I thought he must be joshin’ and made a ridiculous offer for the broncs. Surprised the hell outta me when he said ‘okay’. Well, I’m not stupid: I know a good business deal when I see one, so I rode with him into Chicimec—it was before we pulled out with the herd—had a lawyer draw up a bill of sale and paid him by bank draft. Johnny didn’t even ride back to camp. Just cleared town and that was it.”
Nash was puzzled. It looked like Marks was one of the men he was after, all right. In fact, he wondered if it had been Marks who’d ambushed him in the foothills of the Cortes Breaks ... The man would have had time to do it and get back to camp in under a day.
“Did Marks leave camp before that time? For ... say half-a-day?” Nash asked suddenly.
“We were all out for that time and longer rounding up steers. Johnny helped, too. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Nash said. He looked at Pecos Smith. The prankster had been a close pard of Marks’, or had seemed so to Nash. Yet, he was still there ...
There hadn’t been three close pards in the trail camp. He wondered if Hume’s theory were correct after all. Maybe the three road agents hadn’t joined the trail herd. Or perhaps only one or two of them had and they planned to rendezvous somewhere else. Or go their separate ways. There was no real reason why they should stick together, Nash supposed ...
“What’s the trouble?” Largo asked suddenly.
“Huh?”
“You seem to be chewin’ on somethin’ mighty hard.”
“Aw ... weary I guess. It was a long trail. Reckon I’ll hit the sack early, if it’s all right with you, Largo. Put me on the sked from sun-up ...?”
“That’ll be fine. You get some rest, Clay. There’ll be work enough between here and Freedom to keep you busy.”
Nash scrubbed sand over his plate and dropped it in a tub of water. The Poisoner glared at him but said nothing. He’d kept to himself since the Kid’s untimely death.
As Nash spread his bedroll not far from the new chuck wagon, he figured he might as well stay with the herd till they reached Freedom. Maybe some of the men he was after were still around, maybe not. He couldn’t be sure.
But one thing he was sure about: it was no use quitting to give chase to Johnny Marks. The man had a five-day start ...
Jim Hume smiled at Merida Gomez as she let him into the cottage and told him to go straight into the parlor. The girl followed and she could tell by Hume’s attitude that the man was excited about something.
He had his leather satchel with him and he began untying the flap thong almost immediately.
“I’ve got the final translations, Merida. It holds the key to the whole thing.”
The girl crossed the room swiftly to stand beside him. “You mean ... the robbery definitely was staged only as a cover up and so my father could have been ... murdered?”
“I’d put my life on the line that that’s how it was,” Hume said, bringing out a sheaf of papers and handing them to Merida. “Just glance through them and at the back you’ll find a rough map.”
Merida scanned the translated script, then turned to the map on the last page. She snapped up her head.
“But this is ... many miles from here.”
“Not all that many. Starts near Cougar Bluffs, see? The old name was El Pima Cabezas. Now you see the tract of land that would be taken in? Clear across here, up past Chicimec. All that country contains the only water for two hundred miles.”
Merida’s face showed some excitement. “There was a letter, an exchange of letters between my father and someone in Chicimec, I’m sure. I didn’t think they had anything to do with this so I didn’t mention it before but now ...”
Merida hurried to her father’s old roll top desk and began going through the papers stuffed into the many pigeon holes.
“Well, I figure I was still right about those three men joining that trail herd. And if your father was in touch with the man I think he was in Chicimec ...”
“Ah, here we are. No. It is not from Chicimec, it’s the one from Freedom ...”
Hume strode across swiftly and took the letter. “Freedom? Someone up there was corresponding with him, too ...? Let’s see, Merida, if it’s the same hombre who ...”
The window glass shattered at the same instant that a rifle thundered outside. The bullet passed between them, splintering several of the smaller pigeonholes, and sending papers flying.
Merida screamed, and Hume grabbed her arm then pulled her down, palming up his Colt with his other hand as the gun hammered again—raking the small room with a withering fire.
Hume turned and shot out the two oil lamps. The girl was trembling as she crouched against him. Hume pressed her hand, indicating she should stay put, and then crab-crawled across the room to where he’d seen a rifle on the wall pegs. He reached up and grabbed it as the gun blasted more lead into the room. Hume skidded the rifle across to the dim shape of the girl.
“Just start shootin’,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Fast as you can. I’m going out the back way.”
He made his way for the door into the kitchen as the room shook to the thunder of the first shot as the girl fired the rifle. The gun outside replied with two fast shots then was silent. The girl kept shooting and Hume smiled grimly when he heard the tinkle of glass and knew she had shot out some of the glass shards from the frame.
By then Hume had reached the rear door and he unlatched it, then slipped into the darkness of the night. The gun out front triggered twice, then once more and, although the girl’s rifle went off a couple of times, he heard the gunman making his move.
The man was coming his way ...
The Detective Chief thumbed back his Colt hammer and pressed in against the side of the building. He saw the silhouette of the gunman crouching as he ran down the side of the house.
The man spotted him and swung the gun down and around. Hume stepped away from the wall to give himself more room, his thick legs braced.
The rifle and Colt blazed simultaneously and Hume kept thumbing back the hammer and letting it drop, until he’d got off three shots. By that time, the gunman was down on his knees, sobbing—his rifle clattering onto the stones of the path.
As he made a lunge towards it, Jim Hume leapt forward and stomped a boot on his spread fingers. The man groaned as Hume kicked the rifle aside and flung the killer onto his back.
Merida came running up. “Is he ...?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“No, he’s not dead. You got enough left in you to do a little talkin’, right, pard?”
Hume struck a vesta on his thumbnail and held it close to the wounded man’s strained face.
Afraid of dying, Johnny Marks nodded vigorously.
“I ... I’ll ... talk,” he croaked. “G ... get me a ... a sawbones.”
Eight – The Poisoner
For some time, Clay Nash had felt a little uneasy whenever he wa
s around the Poisoner. The cook was surly, but he’d put it down to the man’s depression over the Kid.
Nash, always a man who was sensitive to people’s attitudes towards him, got the impression that the cook was decidedly hostile towards him.
There were a couple of occasions when he could have bought into a fight with the rawboned trail cook but he’d let them slide, in deference to what he figured was the Poisoner’s grief.
But suddenly he wasn’t so sure.
The man seemed to be deliberately giving Nash the worst of the grub and either smaller quantities than the other hands or else so much was piled up on his platter that it spilled over the edges. His coffee was either too bitter or too sweet.
There had been a rainstorm, brief but heavy, and Poison Pete had had hot biscuits and coffee ready for everyone when they got back to camp as usual. But he’d managed to leave Clay’s serve until the last and then had ‘tripped’ and spilled the biscuits into the mud. Deadpan, he’d looked at Nash and shrugged.
“You’re gettin’ kind of clumsy, Poison,” Nash said grimly.
“Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it,” Pete replied.
Nash started to bristle for it came at the end of a long line of incidents—but then Largo Dunn had strolled casually between the two men and thrust a biscuit into Clay’s hand.
“Have one of mine. I ain’t hungry,” the trail boss said gruffly. Then he turned swiftly to the cook. “An’ Cookie, you’d best get yourself more rest. You’re staggerin’ all over the place, keepin’ the long hours you do. You should’ve let me hire you an off-sider to replace the Kid.”
“No,” Pete snapped, his eyes blazing angrily. “No one can replace that boy.” He glared past the trail boss at Nash and the Wells Fargo man began to realize that the cook was somehow blaming him for the Kid’s death. “He ... he worked his tail off. For all of you. Least I can do is handle his chores as well as my own.”
“Don’t see your logic, Pete,” Largo said reasonably.
“Don’t have to. Just—just let me be. All of you. Now get the hell away from my fire an’ let me get on with my chores.”
The men shuffled away to change into dry clothes, muttering.
Pecos Smith seemed worried and tried to talk with the man but Pete apparently wouldn’t listen, slapped Pecos’ friendly arm away from his shoulders and raised his metal ladle in a threatening gesture.
Pecos jumped back hurriedly, dropping a hand to his gun butt. It was the first time Nash had seen the prankster cowboy really angry—and was surprised to see murder in his face ...
Then Pecos dragged down a deep breath, let it hiss out between his teeth, then straightened slowly and stomped away.
Nash watched the cook warily after the incident. He took note, too, of how the Poisoner treated the other trail hands. Nothing seemed to have changed there, except that the cook didn’t exchange the usual banter. If a man complained about his grub, the cook merely took back his platter and tipped the food out on the ground, then, with a challenging look, handed the man back the empty plate. There were few complaints.
But Nash saw his relationship with Poison Pete deteriorating rapidly and had a hunch it was going to end in trouble. He was beginning to think he should have it out with him. It was time for some straight talking ...
As it happened, it was taken out of his hands.
It was just before supper when the men were in from the long day’s drive. They were washing-up at the edge of the stream where the herd was being bedded down. Nash was stripped to the waist, and he sluiced stream water over his torso and through his hair to get rid of some of the dust he had eaten in the course of the day. He stood up and reached for his shirt to dry himself and, when he turned, he cannoned into the Poisoner, standing only a couple of feet behind him.
“What the hell,” Nash said, startled.
The cook was angry, and his mouth was pulled into a tight line.
The others stopped their joshing and splashing as they realized the confrontation between the two men had arrived. Pecos Smith hurried across.
“Hey, Poison, what’s that I smell a’cookin’, feller? Dumplin’ Dan reckons it’s stew, but Slim and Hog say that lame ol’ geldin’ from the remuda’s missin’, so I …”
“Shut up, Pecos,” the cook said quietly, coldly, not taking his eyes off Nash. Smith swallowed the rest of his joking words, and looked worried. Pete placed a stiffened forefinger against Clay’s wet chest. “You killed the Kid,” he breathed.
“What kind of fool talk is that?” Nash snapped. “He got caught in the stampede.”
“Set off by you.”
“No. I tried to get the drop on McPhee and Brandon and their pards so there’d be no shootin’ ...”
“But there was shootin’. An’ the beeves stampeded an’ that poor little kid was stomped into—into a piece of—raw meat.”
“Easy, Pete,” Nash said quietly. “It just happened. There was nothing I could do once they started shooting.”
“That kid,” the cook continued with a break in his voice. “That kid left a widder-woman mother with five other brats, all younger’n him, to rear. No man to help her on her hard-dirt farm. Nothin’ but the Kid’s pay to look forward to. Largo give her half when the Kid joined us an’ the Kid would’ve sent her the rest when we hit Freedom—’ceptin’ now he’s dead.”
“We’ll all chip-in, Pete, we told you that,” said Pecos Smith, trying to head off the trouble he saw brewing.
The Poisoner ignored him. He was shaking with pent-up emotion and grief. “I ... I was like that kid myself, years ago. Run off to help a trail cook with a big herd goin’ up the Chisholm. I grew into a man there with the help of that old cook an’ the men I rode with. I ... I aimed to look after the Kid’s education that way an’ now ... now he’s gone. Because of some lousy, sneakin’, low-down badge-toter like you.”
Nash stiffened, aware of the even deeper silence that had hit the camp at the cook’s words.
“Badge-toter? What the hell you talkin’ about?”
Pecos Smith forced a laugh. “Hey, Poison, you got your wires crossed, ain’t you, man?”
“We know you’re a Wells Fargo man, mister. We ain’t dumb,” the cook breathed.
“You got me mixed up with someone else, Pete,” Nash said quietly.
“Liar.” the Poisoner snapped.
Largo Dunn came running across the camp from the remuda. He could see trouble exploding in the camp. Already the cowpokes were lining up on the stream bank, urging on the two men. They wanted to see a good fight to break the monotony.
“Poison,” Nash barked, “you got a load of grief and it’s stoppin’ you from thinkin’ straight. So I’ll forget you called me a liar. Just go set down an’ drink a bottle of redeye an’ sleep it outta your system, feller. I don’t aim to get into a brawl with you.”
But Nash had no choice.
The cook had been spoiling for a fight and he didn’t mean to let the chance pass. As Nash made to step around him, Poison Pete shoved him—and the Wells Fargo man was knocked into the shallows. The cowpokes laughed and urged him to get up and fight.
Nash figured if there were a fight, it might get their minds off the accusation about him being a Wells Fargo agent. But he wanted to know how Poison Pete had got that information—and just what it meant to the man.
These thoughts raced through his brain as he thrust up out of the stream, flung his sodden shirt into the cook’s face as the man lunged towards him, with fists hammering.
Pete clawed at the garment and Nash hit him in the midriff, doubling him over. He brought up his knee, and the cook flew backwards, spread-eagled on the slightly sloping bank.
The men were cheering and Largo started in to break it up but Pecos Smith shook his head, indicating that the men were enjoying it and shouting that it would maybe get the gall out of the cook’s spleen.
Pete flung a handful of mud into Clay’s eyes and was thrusting up. Then he kicked at his legs and the Wells Fargo
man went down to one knee, still trying to get the mud out of his eyes. The trail cook kicked him in the side, clubbed a fist and hit Nash on the back of the neck. He kicked at Clay’s supporting arm and the undercover man went down with a grunt. Poison Pete stomped at his head, missed by a whisker, although his boot heel grazed Clay’s face and opened a gash in his cheek.
Clay rolled away and, gasping for breath, then staggered to his feet. The cook launched himself headlong, his shoulder ramming into Clay’s stomach—the impetus carrying both men into the stream.
The cowboys crowded the bank, yelling, throwing punches into the air, and jostling each other with excitement. The two combatants reared up out of a flurry of water and mud, their fists sledging and hammering. Clay’s body showed numerous red marks where the cook’s fists had landed. Blood ran from the gash in his cheek and one eye was swelling.
Clay ducked as a punch came at his face and it slid over his left shoulder. He came up inside the cook’s guard, and rammed his head into the man’s face.
Poison Pete’s head snapped back and he stopped with a grunt as blood flowed from mouth and nostrils. Nash hammered at his mid-section, mauling the ribs, his blows ripping the man’s shirt.
He turned a shoulder as the cook planted his feet and made his stand. A blow whizzed past his eyes and he spun back, driving an elbow point upwards into the other’s chest, just above the arch of the ribs.
Pete gasped and his face went gray as Nash followed with a heavy blow to the same spot.
Nash cocked his fist for the finishing blow but Poison Pete had recovered and launched himself forward with a yell, catching the Wells Fargo man off balance. Once again there was a flurry of mud and water as they rolled over and over in the shallows. Pete came uppermost and straddled Clay’s chest. He locked his fingers around the other’s windpipe and began to squeeze, wrenching Nash up and down, alternately trying to drown and choke him.
Nash couldn’t get a breath. He bucked and squirmed, but he was fighting by pure instinct. His blows lacked power as he rained them on the cook’s shoulders and he tried to stab at the man’s eyes with pronged fingers but the trail cook was wise in rough-house brawling and kept his head well down.
