Lucy Parrish was a beautiful woman and Nash hated to see her hazel eyes rimmed with red from crying. He understood her feelings, of course. She had just been coming to terms with the fact that she was a new widow when Nash turned up and a flood of old memories came back to drown her in sorrow once more.
He felt awkward and didn’t know what to do, so decided the best thing would be to allow Lucy to cry it out. Then he made coffee and got her calmed down. But a thoughtless word by him about some past pleasure the three of them had shared, Lucy, Parrish and Nash, set her off again.
But Lucy had inner strength, struggled to stifle her sorrow and won the battle. Sitting in the small parlor of the clapboard house on one of the hills overlooking Virginia City, Nash waited for her to speak. She was a girl of medium height, had silky brown hair arranged in natural waves about an oblong face with pale, smooth skin. Lucy was not an outdoor girl, though she enjoyed horse riding and a little gardening. But she had not allowed the western weather to dry up her skin.
Indeed, her complexion was one attribute that set her apart immediately from other women in that region. That and her natural beauty, with her small, straight nose, full red lips and warm hazel eyes. Her figure was enough to fill any lonely cowpoke’s dreams. She made all her own clothes, showing a real flair in this direction.
“I’m so pleased you were able to come, Clay,” she said in her husky voice. “I’ve made friends here in town, but, as you know, I have no living relatives and you were the closest of—Mitch’s friends. You’ve been good to us.”
Nash sat on the sofa beside her and took one of her hands in his tanned calloused ones.
“I’m here to see if I can help you in any way, Lucy,” he told her, “and to see if you can help me, too.”
The girl frowned puzzledly. “I help you? How do you mean, Clay?”
He stared into her oval face, seeing the hurt back there in her eyes, knowing he was about to bring all the grief to the surface again but unable to do anything about it.
“Lucy, I’d have come anyway, you know that, but I’m here officially, too. Wells Fargo have assigned me to find out just what was behind Mitch’s killing.”
She blinked, paling a little more. He felt her hand convulse and tighten in his.
“I—don’t understand, Clay.” Her breathing was quickening as she fought rising emotion. “Mitch was killed in a gunfight over cards. Weren’t you told that?”
“Sure, Lucy. But sometimes things aren’t always what they seem.”
Lucy Parrish was an intelligent woman. “You believe there was something else behind Mitch’s death? That the—the gunfight was—rigged-up?”
He felt her beginning to shake and tightened his grip on her hands. “Hold on, Lucy,” he said gently. “You all right? I can leave this, I guess, if you ...”
She shook her head, straightening her shoulders.
“If it has to be said, Clay, say it now. I—I have to admit I’m—shocked. There was no inkling that Mitch’s death was anything more than what it appeared. A fight over cards. A—stupid—fight over ...”
She started to weep but bravely fought it and, after dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose, sucked down a deep breath and sat up straight, hands folded in her lap as she looked levelly at Nash.
“I’ll be all right now. Promise, Clay. I—can talk.”
“We don’t really have anything to go on, Lucy. Jim Hume has a hunch something’s wrong and you know he’s hardly ever mistaken about such things. Two other Wells Fargo men died on the same day as Mitch and at least one of them was marked down specially. The other, we can only suspect it was a set-up, same as with Mitch.” He told her briefly about the deaths of Chuck Claybourne and Randy Shaw. “Far as I know, Mitch didn’t really know ’em. Might have run across ’em in the course of his work but that’d be all. Am I wrong, Lucy? Did he know them better? Ever mention them or did they come here?”
Lucy shook her head without hesitation. She was frowning thoughtfully and Nash let her be for a spell until she was ready to speak.
“No, I’m sure I never heard him mention either of those names, and the men certainly never came here. But then, Mitch never mentioned his work and I didn’t pry. I understood that much of his work was confidential and I didn’t want to compromise him by prying.” She smiled fleetingly. “Not that I wasn’t curious. I simply thought it better not to ask too many questions.” He saw her mangle her damp handkerchief in her hands as she looked across the room, her eyes focused on some distant object only she could see. She spoke in almost a whisper.
“Perhaps it would have been better if I had pried more into Mitch’s work.”
“Might have put yourself in danger, too,” Nash pointed out and saw the shock of his words hit her like a blow in the face. “It’s possible. If Mitch knew something that made him dangerous enough to have to be killed, you could have been in danger too.” A sudden thought came to him and he saw the same thought form in her mind at the same time.
She looked at him with fear on her face.
“Clay! I could still be in danger! I know nothing about Mitch’s activities, but if whoever killed him—if you’re right about it being over something more than just a hand of cards—then whoever it was might think he’d confided in me! It would be the logical thing to think. Most men talk to their wives at some time about their jobs when they’re worried.”
“Was Mitch worried lately?” Nash asked swiftly, agreeing with the girl’s reasoning but wanting to channel her thoughts away from that and onto something more positive.
She had to stop and think briefly, then she shook her head. “I can’t say he was, Clay. He did tend to—brood a little at times. Mostly it was because we didn’t seem to be able to save enough money for our ranch. His ranch, really. I didn’t care one way of the other. As long as I was with Mitch, that was the main thing.”
“How bad was the gambling? I have to ask, Lucy.”
“It was out in the open, something we had learned to live with.”
“‘Had learned’?”
She smiled faintly. “Oh, we argued about it, at first. We had some real humdingers of rows over it. Then Mitch pulled himself together, banked part of his wages and set aside a certain amount for gambling. When he lost it, he quit till next payday. It wasn’t easy but I backed him up and he managed mostly. If he won, well like all gamblers he plowed the winnings straight back across the card table in an effort to build them up and usually finished up losing them. But, no, Clay, there were no real worries about his gambling.”
Nash nodded and during the course of the next hour questioned Lucy closely about Mitch’s behavior in the last few weeks but there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary.
“About the closest thing you could say he came to worrying about,” Lucy said over another cup of coffee, which she made this time, “was the prisoner he brought in a month ago.”
Nash frowned. “Prisoner? Who was that?”
The girl shrugged. “I’m not sure of his name. Larkin or Marvin, I think. But he was a road agent. He held up the Virginia City stage out near Bannock several weeks back and Mitch was assigned to tracking him down. He had three companions, I think, and I know that Mitch killed one man and brought in this Larkin or Marvin, wounded, and he was put in the Virginia City prison.”
“Well, why was Mitch worried about that?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything like a real worry, Clay. I’ve probably given you the wrong impression. It’s just that he had brought in another outlaw a couple of weeks earlier and he was still awaiting trial. It seems that quite a few outlaws have been put into the prison over the past weeks and are still there, because of the holdup caused by that circuit judge’s death.”
“Yeah, Jim Hume told me about that. But I don’t see why Mitch would be concerned.”
“That’s the word, Clay,” she said swiftly. “He was more ‘concerned’ than worried. I guess it just bothered him to see all those dangerous men locked up together and waiting for trial on the outskirts of town. I know he spoke with Sheriff Race Hollander about it on several occasions.”
“Well, it’s got me beat, Lucy. Beginnin’ to think that this time Jim Hume’s wrong.”
“Have you checked out the other two men who were killed?”
Nash nodded. “Nothin’ there. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be anything to link Mitch with the others, apart from the fact that all worked for Wells Fargo and I counted ’em all as friends. Mitch was closer to me than the others, but—it’s the only common denominator so far.” He stood abruptly. “I’ll be goin’ now, Lucy. But I’ll be in town a spell. Got a room at the Gold Nugget Hotel. If you need me, send word and I’ll be here right away.”
At the front door, Lucy put a hand lightly on his forearm, lifted to her toes and kissed him briefly on the cheek.
“Thank you for coming. Clay. Is there—any real—danger for me, do you think?”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe so, Lucy. But don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on you. Sure would appreciate it if you could go through Mitch’s things, his private papers and so on, and let me know if you come across anythin’ that might help.”
“Of course, Clay,” she said huskily. “I—I’ve been putting off that chore—afraid of the memories, I guess. But I’ll make a start now as soon as you go. It has to be done.”
“If you’d like me to ...?”
She shook her head. “No. It has to be done, Clay. And I do need to keep busy.”
He nodded and left her. She watched him to the end of the street, his tall figure striding back down the hill towards the bustling center of town, and then slowly closed the door.
Lucy sighed as she walked back into the parlor and stood in the curtained doorway, looking slowly around the room. She had tried her best to brighten it up with patchwork cushion covers, embroidered platitudes framed and hung here and there—‘Home Sweet Home’, ‘Bless This House’—and she had changed the drapes three times since they had moved in. But it was a losing battle. She knew what was the trouble. It was the drab furniture, the battered and scarred sofa and chairs, the table with the varnish rubbed through in places, cracking in others, the bureau with the spotted mirror, the table lamp with the cracked china shade.
Mitch had never been able to find the time to fix the furniture though he was always saying he ‘must’ repolish the table, send for a new mirror for the bureau, fix the splintered leg and arm on the carved chair. He simply hadn’t gotten around to these things and now, of course, he never would. She toyed with the idea of leaving things just as they were but she knew she could never stand it. She and Mitch had argued over the drabness of the house many times and perhaps his resistance to doing the chores that needed doing was a direct result of her ‘nagging’, but she couldn’t leave things like they were, not even as some sort of memorial to him.
She had to brighten the place up, make it look more presentable. Only then would she feel comfortable.
Bracing herself, Lucy looked long and hard at the battered Cutler roll top desk Mitch had used for all his paperwork. It was locked, the slats in the top sagging in several places and she knew it was a tricky job to get it open. She had the key to the drawers and the top. The sooner she started, the better.
And Clay had told her to look for Mitch’s insurance papers, an employee benefit provided by Wells Fargo. He didn’t know what category Mitch would have been in, but it would likely bring her in at least a few hundred dollars by way of compensation, even though, strictly speaking, Mitch Parrish had not died while on assignment.
Though that had not been proven yet.
Perhaps Clay Nash would prove it. Then the compensation would be greater.
Lucy fumbled out the small brass key and unlocked the Cutler desk, smelling the odor of ink and dust as she fought the roll top back in its slots, revealing an untidy pile of papers and small notebooks.
She felt a catch in her throat and a lurch of her heart as she recognized Mitch’s spidery handwriting. Despite her resolve, Lucy knew this was going to be an emotion-draining task.
The law offices in Virginia City at that time were about halfway down Oxide Street which ran off the main drag on its way through a secondary business district to the rising sharp angled hills where the main mines were outside of town. The town’s boom days were over though there was still a lot of silver being won out of the ore-laden ground.
But gone were the bustling, brawling fighting days of the Civil War years’ boom when Confederates and Yankees both strode the streets in tense neutrality, each trying to work rich deals with the mines for silver to back their cause. The streets had run with blood on occasions and there had been a time when the ten-man police force had been backed each night by army patrols, but now there was only Sheriff Race Hollander and his tough, gun hung deputy, Red Morgan, to keep the peace in Virginia City. Hollander, big, handsome, scar-faced; Morgan, a pugnacious, bullying man. Mostly, they were enough. Both were tough, fast with six-guns, handy with fists. Hollander was a man pushing thirty but with years of gun toting experience for the law behind him, having tamed several wild cattle towns before coming north to Virginia City and finding himself some sort of niche here. He didn’t come down hard on the citizens unless he had to. A drunk he would likely see back to his home, instead of throwing him in the cells for the night, unless the man’s wife asked him to in order to teach the man a lesson or because she was afraid of being beaten.
Cowpokes and miners in for Saturday night hell-raising were given one chance. If they were loco enough to ignore it, they found themselves with broken heads and a heavy fine the next morning. Those who were crazy-drunk or fighting-drunk, woke with more severe injuries. In some cases, if it had come to gunplay, they didn’t wake up at all. They finished under a marker on Boothill.
Red Morgan was a good man to act as back-up to Hollander. He was in his mid-thirties, had had badge toting experience along the border from El Paso to Laredo and had once ridden with the Texas Rangers. He was a weather-beaten, taciturn man who never smiled. Some said he was embittered over an old hurt but if it were true, Morgan never let drop a hint about it.
Nash was more inclined to figure the man as being a natural loner, one of those tough, lonely men who could get through life very well without the close friendship or even company of other men. He had a reputation that stretched way across the southwest and he was building a similar one here in the north.
Morgan was more inclined to shoot his man down than slug him and carry him back to the cells as Hollander would.
Both lawmen now looked at Clay Nash in the cramped office on Oxide Street as the Wells Fargo man asked his questions about Mitch Parrish.
Race Hollander shook his head slowly. “Well, I investigated that shootin’, Nash, and it seemed like just an argument over cards to me. Mebbe the hand they quarreled over was a mite odd but poker players do some queer things, anyway.”
“How about this Callan?” Nash asked.
Race Hollander turned to Morgan. “You checked him out, Red.”
Morgan, his massive arms folded over his barrel chest, looked at Nash steadily with his amber eyes and nodded briefly.
“He’s clean.”
“What’s that mean?” Nash asked sharply.
Morgan shrugged. “Agent, like he said.”
“Independent or does he work for some company?”
“Freelance.”
Nash sighed and shook his head. Getting information out of Red Morgan was like trying to squeeze sap from a dead tree with bare hands, he figured.
“Why’s Wells Fargo makin’ such a big deal out of this?” Hollander asked. “You say Parrish was one of your operatives. But he was a human being, too. He had the usual weaknesses, I guess. Gamblin’ was one of ’em, looked like. Wells Fargo afraid of him givin’ the company a bad name, or somethin’?”
Nash stared at him levelly. “A little more to it than that, I reckon. Thanks for your help, Sheriff. You, too, Morgan.”
Red Morgan made no acknowledgement but Hollander walked to the street door with Nash.
“You gonna be around for a while?”
“Few days.”
“Where you stayin’? If I find out anythin’ more I’ll pass it on to you.”
Nash nodded. “Obliged. Room Seventeen, Gold Nugget.”
“Okay. But you’re floggin’ a dead horse, Nash.”
The Wells Fargo man was about to leave but swung back suddenly, one boot on the office stoop.
“Did you know Mitch Parrish pretty well?”
Hollander frowned. “Tolerably. We had a few dealin’s when he was after road agents and so on.”
“He strike you as bein’ in some sort of trouble, maybe?”
The sheriff pursed his lips, shook his head. “Always short of dinero, but who isn’t? No. If you want my opinion, I reckon it’s just how it looks. He got a mite desperate, took a chance and rigged a card deck. He was unlucky to pick Callan, a man who’d once been a professional gambler and who knew all the tricks.”
“First time you mentioned Callan used to be a pro,” Nash said slowly.
Hollander met and held his gaze. “It was years ago. Down in Dodge.”
“You knew him then?”
The sheriff shrugged. “Seen him operate in Dodge. For the Harley House. Like I said, it was years ago. Seems he quit pushin’ the pasteboards for a livin’ a long time back, went into the minin’ agency business.”
Nash nodded slowly, touched a hand to his hat brim. “Thanks for your help, Hollander.”
“One more thing, Nash. Parrish was your compadre, you say. I don’t want you cuttin’ loose in my town tryin’ to square off for him. Savvy?”
Nash held the sheriff’s gaze for a long minute, then turned and walked away down the street towards the center of town.
Hollander watched him go and felt Red Morgan at his shoulder. The battered deputy spoke quietly near his ear.
“Dangerous bastard.”
The sheriff grunted by way of reply. It could have meant anything.
The governor of the Virginia City jail steepled the fingers of his hands together, elbows leaning on the edge of his polished desk, and he looked through his fingers at Clay Nash seated opposite.
“The man’s name is Larkin, Walt Larkin,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice that seemed to go with his thick-chested body and bull neck. Late afternoon sunlight slanting through the window behind him sheened from the top of his bald head. “He held up one of your stages with three other men, one of whom your agent Parrish killed. The other two have since been apprehended trying to cross into Canada. One looks like he’ll die, shot down trying to run from border guards. The other is in one piece and talking his head off.”
Nash sighed. “Well, that’s that theory gone. I thought maybe Larkin’s pards had set up the fight between Callan and Mitch Parrish.”
The governor shook his head, unsmilingly. He had a brutish face, thick-lipped, with a large nose and flaring nostrils. Heavy, shaggy eyebrows seemed to hang precariously above his small, glittering eyes.
“Wasn’t that big a job they pulled. If you check your records you’ll see they only got away with a couple of thousand.”
“Recovered?”
The governor’s eyes narrowed. “Not that I heard,” he said slowly.
Nash frowned. The man’s tone made him tense. “Are you trying to tell me somethin’, sir?”
“If I was, I’d say it right out loud,” the big man growled. “You want to see Larkin?”
Nash thought about it, decided he would. The governor arranged for him to interview the outlaw in a small room down on the ground floor and Larkin proved to be no more than a kid, not yet twenty, and scared. He was gangling and awkward, nervous as he faced Nash across the deal table.
The Wells Fargo man knew he was going to get nothing helpful out of Larkin. He tried a more friendly approach and the kid seemed slightly more at ease but still claimed he had never clapped eyes on Parrish before the man had arrested him. He was more worried about the coming trial than anything else.
“How long you figure it’ll be now, Mr. Nash?”
“Can’t say. They’ve got to find a judge who can fit it in on his circuit.”
“What—what’s the usual sentence for armed hold-up? I—I never done nothin’ like this before.”
“For a first offence, seeing as no one was badly hurt, you’ll likely get eight months to a year, I’d guess. But I’m only guessin’. Depends a lot on the judge.”
Larkin nodded, mouth tight. “Yeah, I’ve heard some can be tough. But the fact that they got back my share of the loot ought to go in my favor, huh?”
Nash stiffened. “Who got back your share?”
“Why, Parrish, of course. Two hundred bucks. He said he’d turn it in and it’d help my case.” Larkin paled suddenly. “Judas, he did turn it in, didn’t he?”
Nash was frowning down at the deal table, deep in thought. “Uh—I dunno. I didn’t check. I guess so, knowin’ Mitch Parrish.” He left the prison soon after and rode the five miles back to Virginia City. It was full dark by then. He was going to brace Race Hollander with the news but changed his mind. The sheriff hadn’t mentioned recovery of any loot and the governor of the jail seemed to be under the impression that none had been found. Maybe someone was working a racket here.
Nash knew Mitch Parrish well enough to be sure he would have turned in any cash found on Larkin and his pard. But he didn’t know Sheriff Race Hollander well enough to swear he’d admit it now that Parrish was dead. Who would there be as a witness? Only Red Morgan, and they could have split the loot. No one would take much notice of Larkin, or any charge he made.
Deep in thought, Nash picked up the key to his room at the Gold Nugget desk and went slowly up the stairs to his room. If he hadn’t had the whereabouts of the stage money on his mind, he might have been more cautious in entering his darkened room.
But he opened the door and stepped inside and, while he was silhouetted against the lamplight in the hall, before he had closed the door, a gun blasted out of the darkness at him.
The lead whipped past his cheek and, as he felt the air current and instinctively dropped to one knee, palmed up his own six-gun, Nash thought that the man wasn’t a professional or he wouldn’t have tried for a chancy headshot that way.
He sprawled full-length on the floor as the killer’s gun blasted again and heard the bullet rip into the woodwork somewhere behind him. The flash of the gun had showed him a man crouched between the bed and the window of the room. Nash fired under the bed and was rewarded by a high-pitched scream followed by a clatter as the man sprawled. The killer sobbed in pain but apparently he still held his gun for he snapped another shot across the bed.
Nash rolled, came up with gun blazing. He distinctly heard the smack of lead going into flesh and the man grunted, fell back. There came the unmistakable thud of a six-gun falling to the floor and the untidy sound of a body following it.
Clay Nash waited, hearing running footsteps outside in the hall. Slowly, he stood up, gun still trained on the corner of the room where the killer had fallen. Then he caught a slight movement out of the corner of his eye and swung swiftly towards the window. A man’s silhouette showed there and he knew there was a second killer, crouched outside the window on the awning roof above the saloon porch.
The man’s gun blazed and the window glass shattered as Nash flung himself aside. He felt the burn of lead across his upper left arm and the blow turned him so that he stumbled. The assassin’s gun bellowed again and more glass shattered. Nash fell against the wall, slid down to one knee and fired two fast shots. He clearly saw glass shards and wood splinters fly. And then the man’s shadow out on the awning seemed to leap into the air, hurtling backwards, arms and legs flailing. There was a thud and a clatter and Nash knew the body was skidding and sliding down the slope of the awning, across the shingles and plummeting down into the street.
The Wells Fargo man spun as the door was kicked open and he caught a glimpse of a man with a gun in his hand. At the same time, lamplight glinted off the star on the man’s chest, an instant before the gun fired and the bullet slammed into the wall only inches from Nash’s head.
“Hold it, goddamn it!” he bawled and he saw then that it was Red Morgan. The man held his fire as he started to throw down again and Nash stood slowly, face angry, hand holding to the wound in his upper arm that was oozing blood now. “You’re damn trigger-happy, Morgan!”
“Here to keep the peace,” the deputy growled, putting up his gun but keeping his hand on the butt as he squinted at Nash. “What was it?”
“Two gunnies layin’ for me. One down beside the bed. Dunno if he’s dead or not.”
“Judas!” Morgan exclaimed and his gun palmed up as he threw himself across the bed, barrel pointing down.
“If he’s alive I want him kept that way!” Nash yelled, hurrying around the end of the bed.
Morgan held his fire. “Looks dead to me,” he said, standing up again.
“Light!” Nash bawled and someone in the crowd took down a lamp from the passage wall and held it aloft inside the room. Nash knelt beside the huddled form, kicking the man’s gun out of reach under the bed. There was blood on the killer’s face and his chest. Nash’s hand felt for a heartbeat and came out bloody as he turned his face towards the deputy.
“He’s alive. But only just.” Nash raised his voice. “Someone get a doctor.”
He looked out the window across the awning and saw the edge of a crowd beyond the guttering.
“Hey, down there. That hombre cashed-in?”
A man stood back and looked up at Nash in the hotel window.
“Drilled through the middle of the face and the throat,’ the man called up. “He was dead before he fell off the awning. That broke his neck for good measure.”
Nash called, “Anyone know him?”
Another man appeared beside the first and Nash recognized the tall form of Sheriff Race Hollander. A sheen of light touched the short ridged scar on his right cheek as he looked up.
“I know him, Nash. It’s Callan.”
Nash stiffened and turned his attention back into the room as a doctor came through and knelt beside the wounded ranny. He began to work on him swiftly.
“How much life left in him, Doc?” Nash asked.
The medic didn’t look up. “Not much, thanks to whoever planted the lead in him. You’re not going to get much out of this hombre if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I am,” Nash said shortly.
This time the sawbones turned and glanced up at the tall Wells Fargo agent. His pudgy face was angry, his thick fingers continuing to dab at the bullet wounds in the killer lying on the floor. Red Morgan stood silently by. He had cleared away the gawkers from the passage outside.
“You’re a cold-blooded son of a bitch, ain’t you?” the doctor said to Nash. “Fill a man with lead, then want to make his dying hard just so’s you can annoy him.”
“He’s got information that I need, Doc.”
“You leave him be.”
“I’m a Wells Fargo agent.”
“Don’t give a damn if you’re a deputy of the Grim Reaper or the President himself, you killed a human bein’ and a man’s a man no matter what side of the law he’s on. I took an oath to heal and prevent suffering. Keepin’ this hombre alive the way I see it, is only going to make him suffer at your hands.”
Nash squatted down and stared bleakly into the medic’s face. “Damn right he’ll suffer. If necessary. He’s sidin’ the bastard who gunned-down a pard of mine and he did his damnedest to put lead into me as I came in that door. You might call him a man, I call him a killer. If my questionin’ won’t allow him to die in peace, then so be it. But I aim to make him tell me what he knows before he’s turned over to the undertaker.”
“You’re worse than he is!” the little medic said.
Nash snapped, “How long’s he gonna live?”
The doctor clamped his lips tightly together and his eyes blazed but his gaze wavered under the steady chill of Nash’s stare. “Minutes. An hour. Can’t say.”
“Better get him over to the infirmary, Doc,” Red Morgan suggested.
“No, movin’ him won’t help. Might kill him quicker.”
Nash jostled the doctor aside in the cramped space as the killer groaned and fluttered his eyes open. He blinked as more blood trickled into his left eye from the wound in that side of his head.
“Who sent you to nail me?” Nash asked harshly, shaking the man by the shoulder.
“Now, just a minute!” protested the medic.
Nash ignored him, shook the killer again: “You’re goin’, mister, fast. Do one decent thing before you die on us and I’ll see you get a decent grave and headboard, a pine marker with your name on. Any kinfolk you want notified, I’ll undertake to do that, too. You know enough about me to know I keep my word. Deal?”
“Damn it, Nash, let the man die in peace!”
“Shut down, Doc,” Nash said quietly, not taking his eyes off the blood-streaked face of the dying man. “Well, mister?”
“Callan,” he croaked.
“Yeah, we know he was waitin’ outside my window. He left the chancy spot to you. But he’s dead.”
The man’s mouth worked for a spell before he spoke again, harshly, the words seeming to gurgle deep in the back of his throat.
“Callan—hired—me,” he gasped and slumped.
Nash swore and shook the man again. His head rolled limply on his neck. His eyes were staring. The medic pushed in roughly, examined the killer briefly.
He turned and glared at Nash.
“You can quit shaking him. You’ll get nothin’ more out of him.”
“He’s dead already?”
“There’s still some sort of a flutter that you might call a heartbeat, but he’s so weak I’ll wager he never regains consciousness again.”
Nash sighed and stood up. He saw that Sheriff Race Hollander had come into the room now and was standing beside Red Morgan.
“Learn anythin’?” the sheriff asked.
“He said Callan hired him,” Nash told him flatly.
Hollander arched his eyebrows. “The next question being, who hired Callan, huh?”
Nash looked at him soberly. “That’s one.”
Hollander frowned. “One what?”
“One question.”
“You got others?”
“Sure, Sheriff. Like how come Callan managed to slip back into town past you and your hotshot deputy?”
Race Hollander’s eyes narrowed and the small scar on his cheek was livid now, seeming almost to pulse against the flushed flesh of his cheek.