“You sure your arm is all right, Clay?” Lucy Parrish asked with concern on her face and in her voice as Nash lowered himself stiffly into a chair.
His left arm hung down by his side, stiffly. He nodded. “Arm’s fine. But I’m lucky. Callan was a professional. Set up the stooge inside the room. If he’d nailed me, all well and good, but if he fouled it up, as he did, Callan had the element of surprise, lying outside there on the awning roof. Lucky I spotted him in time.”
“What d’you think it means, Clay?” the girl asked. “I mean, do you think your investigations were taking you too close to the truth and someone thought you had to be silenced?”
He shook his head vigorously. “Couldn’t be, Lucy. I haven’t learned a thing.”
“Then—why?” she asked in genuine puzzlement.
“Dunno. The only common link in this case is that I was friendly with the three men who were killed. Whether that counts for somethin’ now, I couldn’t say. If that is the reason, then the key has to be in something I did with the others. But I was never with all three of them together at any time. We never sided each other on the same assignment, even, though I did ride a couple of stages as extra security with Chuck Claybourne.”
Lucy sighed. “I don’t know, Clay. It’s a mystery, I’m sure. And it’s dangerous for you, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been in danger before. Seems I’ve spooked someone into comin’ after me and that suits me. It’s the way I operate best when I know someone’s stalkin’ me.”
“But you don’t know who! Nor even why!”
He smiled faintly. “I can handle it. Hollander’s warned me off, told me to clear out of town or to play things down. He knows he can’t force me out. He can’t buck Wells Fargo, but he’s just lettin’ me know he’s tough. But how about you, Lucy? Did you find anything among Mitch’s papers?”
She shook her head swiftly. “Nothing, Clay.” She seemed very tense.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no, it’s just that—well, he’d kept some letters I’d written him before we were married. They brought back—memories.” There were tears in her eyes and she dabbed swiftly with her handkerchief.
“Would you like me to go through his things for you?” Nash offered.
Lucy shook her head swiftly.
“I—I’ll be all right, Clay, thanks. You take care, though. I—wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
He smiled as he stood up. “I’ll be all right, Lucy. Guess I’ll go turn in now. They should’ve cleaned up my room by this time.” She saw him to the door and waved briefly as he strode away down the street. Lucy wiped at her eyes; closed and bolted the door and went back to the parlor. She stared at the roll top desk for a long minute and then walked across, unlocked the top and struggled to raise it. Dust flew up and she coughed, fighting the stiffness of the top. It wouldn’t go right back because it was caught on something. As she left it, it began a slow, maddening slide back down the slots and she irritably pushed it up again as she began going through the papers.
The top eased its way down yet again and angry now, Lucy Parrish pulled out the set of pigeonholes and reached in to see what was preventing it from going right back. She was surprised when her fingers touched creased paper.
She was even more surprised when she pulled it out and saw that it was a letter of some sort in an envelope, that had apparently slipped out the rear of a pigeonhole and become caught in the groove where the roll top’s slats were. It was jammed tight, being compressed each time the top was pushed back.
Lucy straightened out the creases in the envelope and saw that there was nothing at all written on it. It wasn’t even sealed. She opened it and pulled out two folded sheets of paper, both covered in writing.
As she read, her mouth sagged a little and her hands began to tremble. She felt as though a great weight was on her and she had trouble breathing.
She held the key to Mitch’s death in her hands.
The Wells Fargo offices in Virginia City were at the far end of Buchanan Street, backing onto open ground that was used to house the spare teams and contained work sheds for repairs and maintenance to the stagecoaches.
The offices were in a double-storied building and right now the downstairs section was crowded as one stage had pulled in from the Ruby City run and another was preparing to leave for Salt Lake City. Passengers and friends milled about and jostled one another. Clerks called passengers’ names and warned them there were only two minutes left to departure time. A woman complained bitterly about having to pay fifty-six dollars excess luggage on a heavy wooden trunk.
The patient clerk sighed and tried to explain that each passenger was only allowed thirty pounds of luggage weight free cartage. Each pound beyond that limit had to be paid for at the rate of twenty-five cents.
“And that’s an almighty heavy trunk you got there, ma’am,” the clerk added. “In fact, I ain’t at all sure the driver’ll take it. Might not be able to stow it without upsetting the coach’s balance.”
That gave the woman something else to yell about: she had never heard of such a thing, refusing to carry baggage for a paying customer ...
The noise drifted up to the offices above but up there it was mainly a dull rumble that continued just loud enough to be annoying. The clerks working there frequently looked up from their ledgers or erased mistakes and stomped their feet loudly on the floor. It was doubtful that their protests were heard above the din below.
In the manager’s office, now being used by Jim Hume, who had arrived on the stage that had pulled in only twenty minutes ago, the sounds below were muted. The door was ajar and Hume stood at one end of the desk, his face flushed and angry as he faced a narrow-eyed Clay Nash between the desk and door.
“By God, Clay, I gave you credit for more damn sense!” he roared and the clerks outside looked up from their ledgers, exchanged glances and with one accord, lowered their pens, looking towards the slightly open door of the manager’s office, always ready to listen-in on any gossip.
“Hell almighty, they were trying to blow my head off!” Nash protested. “What did you want me to do? Stand out in the full light of the passage and make a fine target for ’em to shoot at?”
“Don’t get smart, Clay!” Hume snapped. “This is serious. I’ve had a complaint from a member of the medical profession about the inhumane way you treated that wounded man. Now I know he was a killer and you had to act fast and get what information you could get out of him, but, good God, man, did you have to be so rough?”
“Hogwash!” Nash snapped.
“Hogwash, my foot. There were plenty of witnesses, it seems. You know the company always places a helluva lot of stock by its good name and you didn’t do one damn thing to help its image by rousting that dying man the way you did!”
“The sawbones said he only had a few minutes to live.”
“Look, I know all that and I’ve allowed for you being keyed-up from the shoot-out and so on, but you’re an experienced agent, Clay. You know how to act. How the hell is it going to seem to folk who saw you working-over a dying man? And on top of it, you got nothing, anyway! You’re too personally involved in this because Mitch Parrish was your friend. I’m going to have to take you off the assignment. Now, wait a minute, before you sound off at me, it’s not just my decision. I’ve been instructed by head office. You’re attracting too much adverse publicity.”
There was a silence and the clerks exchanged knowing looks. It wasn’t often that they had the inside running on something like this, with someone with the stature of Clay Nash getting a strip torn off him. This story would be worth a free drink or two around the saloons.
“I don’t get it, Jim,” Nash said suddenly, sounding much quieter now, but there was a cold edge to his voice that none of the others had heard before. “You’ve never come down hard on me before and I’ve been a lot rougher with some of the characters I’ve had to go up against.”
“Clay, what you do out in the wilds makes no never mind. I don’t want to know about it. The company is happy to remain ignorant of your methods. But it’s when you do what you did in front of witnesses and we get complaints that we have to act on them. You savvy that. I simply can’t figure why you didn’t stop to think! It bears out my contention that you’re too personally involved in this, hell-bent to avenge Mitch Parrish’s death.”
“Damn right I am!” Nash admitted. “And the fact that they sent two killers after me shows I was on the right track.” He paused and laughed briefly. “The joke is I haven’t yet realized where I was headed, but obviously something I did stepped on someone’s toes and spooked ’em into sendin’ those killers after me.”
“Well, you can make a detailed report and it’ll be passed on to whoever takes over the assignment. They might see something you can’t. I don’t doubt that they’ll have a far more objective view of things.”
“You go to hell,” Nash said quietly, but his words carried clearly out into the outer office and the clerks grinned in anticipation. It was always rich to hear someone stand up to one of the bosses.
“What!” came Hume’s shocked voice.
“I said for you to go to hell.”
“Who d’you think you’re talking to?”
“I know who I’m talkin’ to, Jim. And you damn well know why. I’m not turnin’ this assignment over to anyone else. It’s mine. Mitch was my pard and I aim to nail the sonuver who set-up his killin’.”
Hume paused briefly before replying and the effort at control was evident in his voice.
“Clay, calm down. Don’t make this worse than it already is. I’ve another job for you down in New Mexico and ...”
“Keep it!” Nash’s harsh voice cut in. “And keep this, too!”
The last words were followed by the thud of something being slammed down violently onto the desk in the other office.
“His badge!” one of the clerks breathed, making a silent, whistling sound with his lips. This was really blowing up!
“Don’t be stupid, Clay,” Hume said. “There’s no need for this.”
“The hell there ain’t!”
The clerks suddenly all turned back to their ledgers and appeared to be working hard as the door jerked wide and an angry Clay Nash appeared, speaking back over his shoulder into the other office.
“You can keep the job and the badge, too, Hume! The whole damn company can go rot! But I’m followin’ through on this, on my own.”
He slammed the door so hard it shook the wall and he began to stalk savagely towards the door leading downstairs. A red-faced Jim Hume came after him, holding Nash’s Operative’s badge.
“You’ve got information you gained on company time, with company money! I demand you turn it over to me, Nash!”
Nash opened the outer door and faced Hume briefly. His lips curled in a cold, crooked smile.
“Like I said, you can go to hell,” he said quietly and went out, slamming the door after him.
“You crazy fool!” yelled Hume, then, aware that the clerks were staring at him, muttered a curse and stepped back into the manager’s office, closing the door firmly.
“Whew!” breathed one of the clerks.
“I wouldn’t care to cross Nash in the mood he’s in right now,” said another.
“Ready to kill, I reckon,” opined a third man, with relish.
The saloon on Cannon Road was packed solid with miners and townsmen liquoring up.
The yellow clapboard walls seemed to bulge with the crush and the noise was deafening. There was a fight near the side door and two bulky bouncers armed with bung-starters, waded in, slugging. The combatants were both laid out; no one bothered to try to find out the whys and wherefores. The fight was simply stopped abruptly and the dazed, bleeding men flung out into the alley. Clubs raised, the bouncers faced the jeering crowd, challenging, but no one came forward. Men opened out their ranks and allowed the sluggers through to their stations on the first landing of the stairs leading to the top floor.
Clay Nash had managed to find himself a small table over against one wall. Twice he had had to defend it against burly miners who wanted to share it with him. One man he laid out with his six-gun, slamming him across the side of the head. The other he grabbed by the shirtfront and drove him back against the wall, saying something very quietly into his ear. Whatever it was he said, the miner paled and lifted his hands placatingly. When Nash released him, he jammed his hat on his head and joined the crush at the bar. He didn’t even look towards Nash for the rest of the evening.
The ex-Wells Fargo man didn’t exactly invite company or even enquiring looks. His face was as if set in granite, his eyes cold and looked inward as he thought about all his long years with the company and the missions he had carried out, the scars he had earned, from bullet and knife. He had bought a bottle of redeye earlier in the evening and now it was below the halfway mark. He swayed a little in his chair, hat pushed to the back of his head, fair hair dangling over his forehead, one boot up on the spare chair, elbow resting on the bent knee as he fumbled to roll a cigarette. He spilled the tobacco flakes twice before getting a lumpy paper cylinder formed and stuck in one corner of his bitter mouth.
The table top was wet with spilled drinks and the first two vestas wouldn’t light. He was fumbling in his shirt pocket for a third when one suddenly flared under his nose and he instinctively jerked his head back, squinting up through the smoke and glare, seeing the vague outline of a tall, wide-shouldered man. He dipped the end of the cigarette into the vesta flame and blew out a plume of smoke as he squinted up again at the man who held the match.
“What the hell do you want?” he demanded, words just a little slurred.
“Figured I’d have a word or two with you,” replied big Race Hollander. He gestured to the spare chair occupied by Nash’s right boot and lower leg. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Yeah, I do,” Nash growled.
Hollander didn’t like it but he covered the flash of anger that made the scar on his face suddenly livid and then shrugged, waving out the match.
“Won’t take long.”
“Good,” Nash said, pouring himself another whisky and tossing it down.
“Hear you quit Wells Fargo.”
Nash did no more than grunt. He knew by now it would be all over town, highly embellished by the clerks in the outer office who had overheard his argument with Jim Hume.
“Means you’re on your own now.”
Nash lifted his glass in salute to himself. “A free agent.”
“Without Wells Fargo to back you,” added the sheriff. He leaned forward on his hands on the edge of the table. “Which is what I want to talk to you about. You’ve got yourself quite a reputation, Nash.”
The ex-agent said nothing, merely played with the empty shot glass, rolling it between his fingers, seeming to find some fascination in the patterns of the cut glass. Either that, or he simply wasn’t listening to what the lawman was saying. Certainly his attitude would do nothing to earn him any friends.
“Over the years you’ve gunned down a lot of men, put a lot more behind bars. Like a town marshal or sheriff you’ve built yourself up quite a heap of enemies.” Hollander reached out and slapped the glass from Nash’s hands. The man snapped his head around and up, tense, alert, eyes narrowing. But all the lawman had wanted was to get his attention and now he had it and said, “Now you don’t have Wells Fargo behind you. Those enemies will be crawling out from under every rock and comin’ after you. You’re on your own now mister, and you’re gonna attract trouble like honey draws flies.”
“I’m used to trouble,” Nash growled.
Hollander shook his head slowly. “Not like you’re gonna have. I know what I’m talkin’ about. I turned in my badge in Hays City once, had some loco idea of settlin’ down on a ranch. I hadn’t ridden three miles out of town before two hombres tried to bushwhack me. By the time I’d gotten ten miles out, I’d had to kill four men and I had two slugs in me. I hid out, got better. I never did make it to that ranch. There were others waitin’. I was dodgin’ lead night and day for a month before I woke up it was because I had no backin’, no law behind me anymore. A man’ll think a long, long time before he goes up against a badge toter for he knows if he kills his man, he’ll be hunted down, for years if necessary, by other badge toters. Most fellers wait until the man turns in his badge, then they come after him.”
Nash looked hard at Hollander. “So?”
“You’re in the same position. There’s gonna be a lot of lead comin’ your way, Nash.”
“And you don’t want it to be in your town, right?”
Race Hollander smiled crookedly. “Not as drunk as you look.” Nash glanced past Hollander’s shoulder and saw big Red Morgan standing by the end of the bar, carrying a double-barreled Greener shotgun, watching his table with a deadpan expression. Nash nodded.
“I’m sober enough to know you aim to make your threats stick.”
Hollander shrugged. “Morgan’s just a back-up. I know you’re still riled after your fight with Hume. I know you’re just itchin’ to cram your fist into the middle of my face and maybe I’m tempted to mix it with you, but right now I don’t need to be busted up. Aw, I figure I can take you, but it wouldn’t be easy and I’d get hurt before I did it. Don’t see the point when Red’s shotgun can get you movin’ on just as quick.”
“S’pose I don’t want to go?” Nash asked quietly.
Hollander’s crooked smile widened. “You ain’t that stupid.”
Nash sighed and nodded slowly. “I was aimin’ to pull out come mornin’, anyway.”
“You got till sunup. And I’ll be standing on the porch of the law office watching for you to ride out, Nash. Me and Red. And he’ll have a friend named Greener with him.”
Nash said nothing and the sheriff started to swing away, but turned back, looking slightly puzzled.
“How come you’re ready to pull out? I figured you’d be wantin’ to stick around to help Lucy Parrish.”
Nash shrugged. “Nothin’ more I can do for her. The company’ll pass on Mitch’s compensation in due course. I can’t find any other reason for him being killed than that he got caught four-flushin’ at cards.”
Hollander nodded soberly. “Yeah. It looked that way to me, too. Guess that feller Callan must’ve heard about you workin’ on the case, figured you’d come after him, and tried to get in first by settin’ up that bushwhack in your hotel room.”
“Yeah. Looks that way.”
Still Hollander hesitated. “Listen, heard they need a deputy sheriff down at Fort Contender. Might suit you.”
“I’ll find my own job,” Nash growled, and the sheriff shrugged.
“Suit yourself. Just be out of Virginia City by sunrise.”
He turned away, signaling to Morgan, who let the sheriff pass first before turning and following him out of the crowded room. Nash poured another glass of whisky, scowled into it, and tossed it down.
He stared moodily at the wet, scarred table top, a dangerous man, alone with his thoughts.