The stage had run up against the heels of the team which had piled-up on the leaders, and the horses threshed and fought the tangle of harness.
Inside, Clay Nash fought just as hard to get out from under the panic-stricken passengers who had fallen on top of him. His gun had dropped to the floor somewhere and he had one of the maiden ladies sprawled across his head. He yelled and swore and heaved, but others were on top of her and he couldn’t get purchase for his legs. There were screams and yells and cusses and boots trampled all over him and then the door was wrenched open and a rifle shot almost deafened him.
One of the ladies fainted clear away and a man’s voice, slightly muffled by a mask, snapped, “All right! Out! Get out, all of you! Pronto!”
There was a crazy scramble and a flailing of limbs and finally Clay Nash was able to stand up and step down out of the coach. To his surprise, there was only one bandit in sight. The swooned maiden lady was left stretched out along the seat and Nash raised his hands shoulder high, seeing his Colt lying on the floor on the far side of the coach. At the bandit’s command, the men released their gunbelts and Nash looked into the cold blue eyes of the bandit as he rammed the rifle barrel against Nash’s chest. The man wore a dustcoat over his clothes. “Where’s your gun?” he growled.
Nash indicated the Colt on the floor and the outlaw made him hand it out by the barrel. The man seemed somewhat disconcerted and kept looking past the frightened passengers into the coach at the swooned lady. He studied the group closely and stepped back with his rifle. Nash moved back to lean against the door which had been folded back against the body of the coach.
“All right, folks,” the bandit said, still sounding to Nash as if his mind was on some other problem. “Shuck out your valuables and we’ll see what you’re made of before I start on the Express box.”
The passengers began to dig into pockets and the trembling lady opened her purse, spilled its contents and hurriedly stooped to pick them up. For a moment, the bandit’s attention was diverted as he turned his head to look at the lady. Nash noticed he had long straw-colored hair showing under his hat at his neck and then he turned to the door, wrenched on the armrest which acted as a handle for the special, leather-hinged flap he had had the maintenance man build in at Blackwood. The flap dropped to reveal a shallow compartment in the body of the door where a short-barreled Sheriff’s Model Colt was held in place by a spring clip.
Nash had less than a second to snatch the gun and swing back to face the bandit. The outlaw saw Nash’s movements out of the corner of his eye and spun back with his rifle blazing. The bullet clipped Nash’s right shoulder, spinning him against the stagecoach, sending his own shot wild. The outlaw backed off straight away at the first sign of resistance. His rifle blazed again and one of the male passengers shouted and fell to the ground, clutching at his chest. Nash whirled with the small gun and triggered again at the running outlaw. The man staggered, half-turned and fired with the rifle butt braced into his hip. Nash felt the wind of the bullet and it thunked through the paneling of the stage as he dropped to one knee and triggered again.
The Sheriff’s Model only had a three inch barrel and it was not accurate at long range. Nash grasped the gun in both hands, hoping to fight down the muzzle-lift and recoil caused by the short barrel, laid the foresight on the outlaw’s back and fired. He saw the puff of rock dust as the bullet ricocheted from a boulder and then the outlaw was around the boulder and safe from Nash’s fire. The Wells Fargo agent leapt to his feet, wasted precious seconds picking up his own Colt from where the bandit had dropped it, and sprinted for the rocks. There was a little blood trickling down his right arm from the nick in his shoulder but it was only a superficial wound. He cursed his right eye: if it had been fully open and undamaged, he might have brought down the straw-haired man with his first shot.
Nash climbed the rocks and eased up over the top, but just as he got there, he heard the thunder of galloping hoofs and knew that the bandit was making good his escape. Nash cursed and threw himself over the top of the boulder, lying prone, dragging his Colt around. He caught a glimpse of the road-agent through the timber, crouched low over his mount’s neck as he ran it through the trees. Nash grabbed his gun with both hands, took a swift sighting, the gun travelling with his target, and fired again. He heard the bullet whine off a tree like an angry hornet and even saw the white scar where the sliver of bark had been blasted away.
He stood up and climbed back down the boulder to where the stage rested with its dead lead horses and the wounded passenger. A little farther back, one on each side of the trail, were the bodies of the driver and the shotgun guard.
There were still two live horses in the team, entangled in the harness, but a little quieter now. Nash ran to the luggage boot after seeing that the wounded passenger was not too badly injured, and wrenched up the canvas flap. He tossed aside valises and carpetbags and hauled out his saddle-rig.
“What are you doing?” asked one of the white-faced men.
“Gonna saddle one of the team horses and get after that road-agent,” Nash replied curtly.
“But—what about us?” the man demanded.
“Ride the other horse up the range to the relay station and get help,” Nash told him. “Now, out of my way, mister. Every second I tarry gives that killer more of a chance to get away.”
Nash thrust the man aside with his saddle and carried it down to the front of the stage and the terrified horses.
~*~
The road-agent had quit the hold-up scene mighty fast and hadn’t had the time to cover his tracks. Nash found the trail easy to follow through the timber, where it twisted and turned but always headed across the face of the Wolfshead Peaks and angled down towards the country below.
More and more, Nash figured this man was someone from around that area. He seemed to know just where he wanted to go and planned his hold-ups in places where the geography was to his advantage. This last one, for instance, had been pulled not only when the stage team was weary and about due for change, but at the slowest point in the journey just below the peak. It had been an ideal place for a one-man operation.
Nash frowned as he rode, and thought back over the hold-up. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the bandit had had his plans spiked in some way. The man had looked kind of bewildered there for a while and seemed to be looking for something that wasn’t there, something he had been expecting to find. It didn’t make sense, but that was the feeling he had had during the robbery. Maybe the man was just nervous at pulling it alone.
Things had happened so fast at the coach that Nash really hadn’t noticed if the bandit limped or his boot toe bulged as Roarin’ Dick Magee had claimed. There was no doubt he was the same man who had held up the Blackwood stage and it showed just how little he thought of Wells Fargo’s protection arrangements that he should pull this attempt alone. There was something else to consider, too. How did he know the train wasn’t carrying the shipment of gold and money as it was supposed to be? Somehow he had known it was a decoy and the Express box on the Knife Edge stage was filled with the loot. He surely was a mighty tough customer in more ways than one. Murderous, callous, greedy, likely one of the worst road-agents Wells Fargo had had to contend with in its history, Nash reckoned. He rode on into a thick stand of timber, following the clear tracks. The sun did not penetrate and it was cold and gloomy.
Nash would be glad when he was out of this thick timber and into sunlight again. It was chill, spooky, had a kind of ‘bad luck’ feel to it, and it was hard to follow the road-agent’s tracks. Almost every step of the way he expected a gun to blast from ambush.
Even so, when it came it took him unawares.
The tracks started off to the left, angling slightly towards high country again, and Nash had trouble getting the horse to go that way. He could hear the faint trickle of water ahead and figured there was likely a stream up there and the animal was intent on going in that direction. He stopped, then savagely yanked the reins the way he wanted to go, at the same time slamming his heels into the flanks.
“This way, you jughead!” he gritted, holding on as the horse reared, forefeet pawing the air. Just as the animal came down again to the ground, a rifle whiplashed from above and to his right, and the horse slammed over sideways as if rammed by an invisible locomotive. It had taken a headshot, but Nash had no doubt the bullet had been meant for him. It had only been the horse’s wild antics that had saved him, the animal spinning slightly as it reared and came down, getting its own head in front of him and taking the bullet.
This flashed through his mind even as he flew from the saddle and then he smashed hard into the ground, his rifle exploding into the air. but he retained his grip on its stock. Two more bullets hammered into the ground close to his head and he rolled in tight against the quivering carcass of the horse. This damn killer sure had no respect for horseflesh, Nash thought, levering in a shell and squinting through the gloom.
The man had laid his trap well, leaving clear tracks leading to the left so that Nash would have been on more or less clear ground, on a small rise, a perfect target from the right hand slope where he had really gone. Through the timber, he could see the paleness of sandstone and figured there was a clump of rocks up there. Likely that would be where the killer was holed-up, Nash figured, and he swung his rifle barrel in that direction just as the gun up there blazed again. He ducked and lead slapped into his saddle, the horse’s body jerking a little. Well, he was right: the bushwhacker was holed-up in those boulders. But Nash had to take a chance.
He lunged over the horse’s carcass, in a rolling dive, ducking his head well down, lighting on his shoulders and going over in a complete somersault. Instead of coming upright in a direct line with his movement, Nash threw himself to the left in a muscle-wrenching twist that sent him staggering and fighting for balance, but he managed to keep his feet under him and, stumbling, he kept on for the nearest trees on the same slope as the ambusher’s boulders. Finally, he launched himself into a headlong dive and came up behind a large deadfall, crouching on one knee.
While he had been making these maneuvers, there had been five blasting shots from the killer but he had had to change his direction of aim so many times and Nash had been moving so fast that none of the bullets had found their mark.
He could now see right up the slope and had a good view of the boulders the killer was using as shelter. He even caught a glimpse of the man’s dustcoat and he snapped off a hurried shot, saw the sandstone spurt in a miniature dust cloud. The road-agent must have moved swiftly for when the dust cleared there was no sign of his coat. Nash threw his rifle to his shoulder again, levered and triggered four times, fast, moving his shots in a line across the edge of the rock, making the man keep his head well down.
At the fourth shot, Nash leapt up and over the deadfall, zigzagging up the slope, levering in a fresh shell as he ran. He made it to the trunk of a big elm.
Nash stood there, pressed against the tree, ears strained, eyes moving across the face of the slope, tensed. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse’s hoofs, going away from him.
He swore softly. The man was making a run for it, leaving him on foot. There was a glimpse of a horse flashing through the timber far to the right and below, and Nash threw his rifle swiftly to his shoulder. His finger curled around the trigger but he eased off the pressure almost immediately and lowered the weapon. It would be just a waste of lead, trying to shoot through that timber. There must be thirty trees between his position and the fleeing road-agent.
Angry at himself, he lowered the hammer on the rifle and pondered his next move. After a minute or so he climbed the slope to the boulders where the killer had lain in wait for him. He found empty cartridge cases, some jerky that had been partly eaten and a dark, moist patch on the moss that might have been blood. Looked like he might have wounded the man at the stage hold-up, which could explain why he had quit now. If he had been unscathed he likely would have shot it out with Nash.
There was nothing that would help in identifying the man.
Nash figured he wasn’t going to turn back just because he was on foot. If the killer was hit, the wound might take its toll and he could topple from the saddle at any time. In any case, there was no point in walking back to the relay station for another mount now. Not when he had seen the direction the killer had taken. It might be slow, but he would hunt the man down. Eventually, he would come to some place where he could get himself a mount again. Meanwhile, he would collect his canteen, spare bullets and food from the saddle rig on the dead horse and follow the killer’s tracks.
He didn’t aim to give up now he was this close.
~*~
The trail was easy enough to follow for several miles and then the road-agent had taken time out to start covering his tracks. It wasn’t elaborate, at least not at first; he merely rode down the centre of a shallow stream and came out onto the bank a long way up. It was no problem to figure which way he had gone, up or downstream, for down led back towards the valley where he had ambushed Nash.
Nash got soaking wet and it took him two hours to locate the spot where the man had left the stream, but he found the marks all right and was able to follow the trail for another two miles without trouble. By that time, there were signs that the killer’s mount was tiring, for it was all up-slope and Nash was pretty well tuckered himself, but he pushed doggedly on, saddlebags and canteen slung over his shoulders, rifle in hand.
By mid-afternoon, he had lost the tracks and was unable to find them again. The outlaw had deliberately ridden into the forest where there was a thick carpet of leaves that seemed to spread out in every direction for miles around. This only strengthened Nash’s notion that the man knew the country, for it was impossible to follow tracks through the leaves. There was just no way he could tell whether the man had changed direction ten feet into the forest or a mile in, or if he had indeed changed direction at all. He hunted around, looking at tree trunks, low-hanging branches, for scars of a rider’s recent passing but there was nothing. He had completely lost the trail and darkness was close.
There was nothing for it but to bed down for the night. Nash made a cold camp in the forest, huddled up against a tree trunk with leaves piled over him for warmth.
The next morning, cold and stiff, he set off in the general direction the killer had been taking yesterday. He didn’t know the country or what lay ahead. He had some notion that there were small towns out this way, angling well away from the Knife Edge trail, and there could be ranches, too, but he didn’t know for sure. If he had had a better knowledge of the territory he might have been able to make an educated guess as to the road-agent’s destination. As it was, he was moving blind.
He came out onto a knoll and climbed a gnarled tree for a better look around. Shadowed and misted hills rolled away on every side. Below in the valley, through the ground mist, a thin spiral of smoke rose into the air.
A campfire! And he would bet it was the straw-haired outlaw’s. It had to be! The man was using the mist to disguise his fire but because Nash was above the mist layer, he could see the smoke plainly.
He took his bearings and dropped to the ground, picking up rifle, saddlebags and canteen swiftly and starting down the steep slope into the valley below.
By the time he reached the valley, the mists were dispersing and rays of the early sun were probing through the timber. But there were still tendrils of mist around the trunks of trees and he seemed to be walking through clouds. The ground mist hid the ground from him so that his pace was slowed while he felt around for a firm footing as he drew closer to where he figured the campfire was.
He could smell wood smoke now, and frying bacon, coffee brewing. The man must have been supremely confident that he had shaken Nash, to delay so long and cook breakfast. Nash slowed his pace, got a firmer grip on his rifle, crouched as he made his way warily through the trees. He could hear water running, too, and figured his man was camped beside one of the many mountain streams.
Then the timber thinned out ahead and he could see the campsite. That was his man, all right. There was the jaded, lathered chestnut mount, standing with drooping head, ground-hitched, cropping sweet grass. The man crouched by the fire, stirring something in the skillet, both hands occupied. His hat was tilted to the back of his head and the sunlight shone on yellow hair combed thickly about his ears and neck. His clothes were faded, nondescript range clothes and he wore a single six-gun low on his right thigh.
Nash figured he would never have a better time to move in and, cocking the hammer of his rifle back slow and easy without noise, he stepped out of the timber.
“All right, mister!” he snapped. “Grab air!”