Freedom was only a day’s drive away as the long line of steers ambled their way across plains that gradually became lush, emerald foothills. Beyond the range lay the market at Freedom and there was a taut excitement running through the men as they drew closer to trail’s end and the prospect of a high time.
Largo Dunn had pushed man and beast hard to make up for time lost and he was once again almost on schedule. He would make his deadline and get the promised bonus—and that meant a few dollars extra in every man’s pay-packet.
Since the fight with Nash, Poison Pete had been very quiet but less surly. Nash didn’t know what Largo Dunn had said to him but the trail boss had taken the cook out of camp and it was over an hour before they rode back. After that, Poison Pete’s mood changed. He still seemed grief-stricken over the Kid’s death, but he no longer griped so much. But he refused to be friendly towards Nash. The Wells Fargo man regarded Pete warily. The man had surprised quite a few cowhands with his brawling abilities and his apparent readiness to kill: several of the men had admitted their surprise to Nash.
With some quiet questioning, Nash realized that no one in the camp had ever ridden with the Poisoner before.
He suspected that the trail cook might well be one of the men he was looking for. Marks had been one, he was sure of that, but he’d thought that the man’s companions, if they were still with the herd, would have given themselves away a long time ago. However, he knew that once they reached Freedom they would probably cut out, join together again and quit.
Nash wanted to be on hand to see it again. If it happened. So far they had been mighty sharp about keeping away from each other, so it could be they wouldn’t get together in Freedom. But he had to complete the trail drive and observe. And there might also be word from Hume waiting for him in town that would help identify the road agents ...
There was a lot of animated conversation that night at supper as the men squatted around the camp and discussed the good time they planned to have in Freedom.
“Hey, Clay, you ever been to Freedom before?” Dumplin’ Dan called across.
“Never have,” Nash lied.
“Well, man, you’re in for a treat. They got five whorehouses. Five. And some of the classiest gals this side of the wide Missouri. All kinds, too, some foreigners who can drive you out of your mind. Whooooeeeeee! I can hardly wait to hit that there town. I’m gonna dream about it all night long.”
“You eat much more of that grub an’ your belly’ll be too damn big to let you get in the whorehouse door, Dumplin’,” quipped Slim and the others laughed. Such was their mood that it took very little to get a chorus of guffaws from almost any remark.
Pecos Smith squatted beside Nash with a second mug of coffee. “Like a bunch of kids,” he said.
“Figured you’d be showin’ some signs of excitement, Pecos. Good chance for you to cut loose with some of those crazy pranks of yours.”
“Aw, I’ll leave my mark on this town, don’t you worry none about that, Clay. But I’m savin’ my energy till I get my pay. I don’t aim to burn it up in a burst of useless excitement tonight. We got a full day’s drive ahead of us yet. Gonna be kind of dangerous goin’ up an’ over them hills, too. Might not look anythin’ from here, but the trail narrows and we gotta drive the steers more or less Injun file till we get down into the pass. I’m turnin’ in early. You got any sense you’ll do the same an’ let these fools talk all night if they want. They’ll be just that much more tuckered when we hit Freedom.”
Nash nodded, then finished eating, cleaned his platter and smoked a cigarette with his coffee, watching Poison Pete at work on his bench, cleaning pots. He noticed that Largo stayed close to the cook, as if to head off any more trouble. The Poisoner caught Clay’s eye—and there was a coldness on his face before he ducked and got on with his work.
Nash somehow figured he hadn’t finished with Poison Pete. It seemed a good chance that the tough trail cook was one of the men he sought.
He took Smith’s advice and turned in early ...
Largo had the whole camp on the move by sunrise. The chuck wagon was loaded and lumbering on ahead before the sun rose over the hills. Then the herd got moving and Largo deployed his men, giving Nash a point position.
By mid morning, he saw what Pecos had meant about the trail narrowing as it climbed into the range.
Largo was ahead, after first letting the chuck wagon rumble up the narrow, twisting, climbing trail.
The steers had to be hazed into groups of four or five abreast.
As the trail climbed higher, it became even narrower and Clay’s black showed signs of irritation and skittishness. He’d had no trouble with the animal before—but then he’d not had to put it through that kind of chore previously, either.
Fighting the horse took a lot of time and attention, and he didn’t much care for it, working so close to the edge of a sheer drop.
The steers were bawling and rolling their eyes—requiring constant hazing to keep them on the move. Nash was hoarse from cursing his mount, wondering what in hell was wrong with it. Then, when it stepped off the edge with one hind leg and he almost lost balance, he reckoned that was enough.
But there was little he could do, except maybe dismount and try to work the steers on foot, which wasn’t really practical. But the damn horse would get them both killed if he didn’t do something ...
“Hey! Watch out.”
He yelled wildly as Pecos Smith, working nearby, got his mount between the steers and the sheer wall rising on the far side, forcing them towards the edge of the trail.
Suddenly, a steer cannoned into Clay’s mount, crushing his leg between its body and the horse. The black whinnied and reared as the horns raked across its belly. Nash jumped, landing on the backs of the nearest steers as his horse went over the edge, thrashing wildly until it struck the rugged slope twenty feet down and crashed to the bottom.
The steers were bucking and bawling, terrified by Clay’s weight. He slithered between the bodies, the breath being crushed from him as he yelled to Pecos to throw him a rope.
But the man didn’t seem to hear ...
Nash almost went down and, choking in the dust, he felt his body being squeezed between the rough hides. A horn nudged him in the back and he threw himself forwards and up in panic, afraid his lungs would be pierced or his spine broken.
He sprawled across the back of one beast, grabbed its horns as it tossed its head with a deafening bawl, then with a frantic, lunging, crawl, he bounded over the steers’ backs until he reached the inside wall. But there was no room for him to drop off. If he tried, he’d be crushed by the surging cattle.
“Grab the rope, Clay.”
Nash didn’t know who it was who yelled and he could barely see with the dust cloud choking him. But he felt the rope slap across his shoulders and his hands snatched at it frantically. He got a grip, and then he was being hauled back over the heaving cows. He saw the horseman who’d rescued him was Hog Monaghan.
Nash stood on a bellowing steer’s back and leapt onto Hog’s horse, behind him. The cowboy crashed a way through the steers to a wider section of the trail where two other cowboys were already waiting.
One of them was Dumplin’ Dan. The other was Pecos Smith.
“I ought to throw you over the edge,” snapped Nash as he jumped down, shaken. “You loco damn polecat. You pushed my hoss over the edge and it damn near took me, too.”
“Sorry, Clay. Didn’t see you with all that dust, I guess. I thought you was on ahead. A cow had been gored an’ the others …”
“I ain’t interested,” Nash snapped. “But I aim to go look at my black.”
“It’s dead, man.”
“Yeah, likely. But somethin’ was making it act up and it was more than just working a high trail.”
The others exchanged blank looks as Nash got another horse from the remuda and with Hog Monaghan rode to where his dead mount lay below the high trail.
They dismounted and struggled to get the saddle and bedroll off the dead animal. The Wells Fargo man examined his rig carefully and he almost missed it when something jabbed his finger as he ran his hand along the inside edging of the saddle’s fender. Suddenly, he knew he’d found the answer.
A small piece of wire had been jammed into a needle hole so that when the saddle moved the wire would jab into the horse—causing it to buck and plunge.
“Hell, that’s kind of sneaky,” Hog Monaghan breathed. “See? It’s placed there in the fender so it wouldn’t jab the bronc until you started weaving back and forth in leather, workin’ the steers on that narrow trail. Then the whole damn rig had to move with your shiftin’ weight and your knees pressin’ agin the fender dug that wire in deep as it’d go.”
Nash nodded, fingering the bloody piece of wire.
“Hell, it ain’t no joke, that,” Monaghan said abruptly. “You could’ve gotten killed.”
“Reckon that was the idea, Hog. Be obliged if you didn’t let on we’d found this piece of wire.”
“What? Judas, you gotta find out who done it, Clay.”
“I will. Just don’t say nothing right now. Savvy?”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“Heard you had a lucky escape this mornin’,” Dunn said as Nash ate the noon meal, seated on a deadfall a little aside from the others.
The trail boss rested a muddied boot on the log beside the Wells Fargo operative as Nash forked up beans.
“I was lucky, all right. Hoss acted up loco. First time I’d worked a high trail with him.”
“Yeah,” Largo said slowly. “Some broncs are like that. Had me a palomino once, beautiful animal in every way, but put him on a rise more than ten feet high and he weren’t worth a hill of beans. Had to get rid of him. Threw me twice off hogbacks, but nothin’ like that mountain trail we crossed.”
Nash continued eating.
“There’s talk you found somethin’ in your saddle that got your black actin’ up thataway,” the trail boss said slowly. “Any truth in it?”
“Who’s makin’ that kind of fool talk?” Nash countered.
Largo studied him closely for a spell, then shrugged. “Just someone figured maybe a practical joke had gone wrong, I guess. Didn’t think there was anythin’ in it. No one here would be loco enough to do somethin’ like that when a man had to ride a high trail.”
“No. Be kind of irresponsible, wouldn’t it.”
“That it would. You work out what that black was worth and I’ll either give you the cash or you can keep another hoss from the remuda. Okay?”
“Thanks, Largo.”
Nash ate mechanically as he watched the trail boss move towards the main camp where the men were gathered, still discussing the forthcoming delights of Freedom. Pecos Smith had been watching but suddenly looked away.
Poison Pete seemed involved in gathering up his cooking pots ...
The town of Freedom lived up to its name.
It was wide open. Gambling, drinking, and whoring, went on twenty-four hours a day although it wasn’t always wild. Mostly, when a trail crew hit town, the lid was lifted off Freedom and anything went. The whole population seemed to be behind the liberality for most everyone profited in some way from the free-spending trail men.
Word had gone on ahead, of course, that Largo Dunn’s crew was coming and when they finally hit town just after sundown, they found it waiting with open arms.
And doors.
Nash was with the wild bunch of riders who hit Main at full gallop and loosed off their six-guns into the air. There was a whirl of blazing lights and colors from the bunting and decorations and he caught glimpses of the whores all lined up in their silk robes on the balconies, showing flashes of soft white thighs and full breasts.
The redeye flowed with the first drink on the house, then money slid across the wet bars and no one from the trail herd seemed to know or care that they were paying exactly double what the drinks were an hour before they rode in.
The same applied to clothing and food and stalling their mounts at the livery, the cost of haircuts and shaves, hot water for baths—and the gals in the parlors. Some of the more elaborate whorehouses tripled their prices, but they didn’t have any complaints from the wild cowboys.
They were there for a high time and to hell with the cost. It didn’t seem to matter that their money would run out twice as fast: but that was the way of trail men. Put everything into one wild, hell-raising wingding then, when the hangover passed, crawl back to another trail herd and push steers up to the market for weeks at a time. And all for a pittance that would be spent in yet another wild spree that would last only one night ...
Nash seemed to enter into the spirit of things, although he tipped out most of the redeye he bought or that was bought for him. He joined in a fight when he tried to rescue Hog Monaghan from a local who claimed the cowboy had cheated at faro.
But brawls were to be expected and the waiting bouncers had thrown them out. Then, laughing and dabbing at their cuts, townsmen and cowboys clapped arms about each other’s shoulders and weaved their way towards another saloon.
Not long afterwards, they headed for the biggest, brightest, rowdiest cat house in town. Nash found Pecos Smith there, spread-eagled on a sofa with gals gathered around him. He seemed mighty drunk. The Poisoner was also there and so was Dumplin’ Dan—laughing as he carried two squealing girls, one under each arm, up the stairs, roaring like a bull.
Girls seemed to come from everywhere and Nash absently answered as two grabbed his arms and tried to lead him towards the stairs. Others were mauling Hog Monaghan and the townsmen and there was a lot of din and squeals and bare flesh. Then, as Hog Monaghan picked himself a redhead, hugging her to him, biting her plump neck, she squirmed on his lap and, laughing, said:
“Just wait up there, honey. I don’t want you bitin’ through the chain on this here pendant your ol’ pard Pecos give me.” She fumbled at the chain and Nash saw the small oval of the cameo pendant as one of his girls pulled his head around and kissed him full on the lips.
He heard the redhead say, as she dangled the cameo in front of Hog’s bleary eyes, “Pecos Smith give me this for treatin’ him right. On top of the money. Mebbe you got a li’l somethin’ extra for Ginger, too, huh, honey? What you say? Huh? You take me upstairs an’ I’ll guarantee to ... Hey, what the hell you doin’?”
Ginger reared to her feet, her face angry, and her fingers hooking like claws as Nash thrust the girls aside and snatched the cameo pendant from her.
“Hey, gimme that, you son of a bitch,” Ginger snarled. “That’s mine. A bonus for my special an’ ...”
Nash placed his open hand in the middle of her face and thrust her away so hard that she and Hog went backwards out of the chair and floundered wildly on the floor.
The Madam came rushing in.
“Now, listen, cowboy, I don’t want no trouble.”
“Get out of my way,” Nash growled and heaved the fat woman aside as she yelled for the bouncers, and Nash strode towards the sofa where Pecos Smith was sitting.
The girls suddenly deserted him when they saw Clay’s face. He held up the cameo.
“This clinches what I been suspectin’ for quite a spell, Pecos. You stole this from a woman when you robbed the Spanish Springs stage and killed Gomez, the Mex.”
Smith stood abruptly in the hushed room. The madam signaled to the bouncers to stay out of it. She could see it was going to be real trouble and she didn’t aim to get in the way of any stray lead or have her gals get cut down by it, either. She moved around swiftly, ushering out the girls.
Pecos grinned tightly and suddenly he didn’t seem owl-eyed drunk anymore and Nash knew that he, too, had been only putting on a front.
“Figured you’d show your hand for sure in town, mister,” the prankster said. “Fact, I been kind of expectin’ somethin’ since you took your saddle off that black. You found my wire, huh?”
“Yeah. You nearly fixed me then, Pecos. But I was lucky.”
“Well, your luck just ran out, Wells Fargo man. This is trail’s end—in more ways than one for you.”
“For one of us,” Nash allowed.
“You,” Smith breathed, and his hand streaked for his gun. Men scattered and dropped to the floor as the Colt blurred up, blazing.
Nash was already moving to the side as his Colt came out of leather too fast for the eye to follow, the muzzle bucking as it roared and stabbed flame and smoke across the room.
His lead caught Pecos in the left shoulder and spun him back over the sofa. But he immediately came skidding across the floor and drove his good shoulder behind the sofa, his hand coming over the top, and gun thundering.
Clay Nash rose to one knee and his gun bucked twice, the lead ripping stuffing out of the padded base.
Suddenly, Smith spilled to one side, his mouth open and working wordlessly as he stretched out, shuddering in his death throes.
“Watch the Poisoner, Clay,” Hog Monaghan cried, suddenly very sober as he crouched beside a small table.
Nash heaved backwards as Hog spoke and the last word was drowned in the crash of the trail cook’s gun. The Wells Fargo man fired, then his gun hammer clicked on an empty chamber, but the cook had thrown a vase at him and was already on his feet—running for the stairs.
Nash reloaded swiftly, but Poison Pete had realized he wasn’t being shot at, and blasted two deliberate shots at the Wells Fargo man.
Nash dropped flat, spun in close to the sofa where the dead Pecos lay and thumbed home the last cartridge. He snapped the loading gate closed as the trail cook turned and sprinted up the last flight of stairs.
Nash stood, sighting carefully and, as he reached the top, Pete turned, shooting wild. Nash felt the wind of the slug, then dropped hammer.
The Poisoner rode up to his toes and staggered back against the balcony rail. Nash fired twice more, seeing the dust puff from the man’s shirt. His body plummeted into the parlor, splintering a table and smashing a large china urn.
Clay slowly lowered his smoking gun as he looked at the dead trail cook. That’s two of the varmints, he thought. He only wished one of them had lived long enough to tell him where Marks had gone. For there’d been three men marked for Hell in Clay’s book—and he didn’t like to leave any chore only partly finished ...
He was suddenly slammed forward as if kicked in the back by a mule.
There had been a hammer blow under his left shoulder and the wall rushed to him. He cannoned off, dropping his Colt as he spilled to the floor and lay sprawled on his face, his senses spinning and the numbness on his back spreading.
He could see his Colt lying on the floor still smoking a little, not a foot from his hand but he couldn’t seem to make his hand move towards it ...
Then two scuffed, muddied riding boots appeared before his clearing vision and he blinked to get them in focus. With difficulty, he craned his head back to look up at the man standing over him.
It was Largo Dunn.
“Goddamn you, mister, whoever you are. You just nailed two of the best pards a man ever had,” Largo said and kicked Nash in the side.
“Wh ... what ...?” Nash said in confusion. “Largo? ... I figured Marks was ... was the third man.”
“He was,” the trail boss snapped. “But there were four of us, mister. You slipped up there, huh?”
Nash was surprised by the news and he nodded slowly. “I ... wondered for a time about you ...”
“Yeah. You were suspicious of the whole damn crew. Just like any badge toter.” He kicked Nash again. “Well, you’re all through now.”
Largo aimed the gun at Clay’s head, the hammer clicking back to full cock. There was a gasp from around the room but no one made any attempt to buy into it.
“Why?” Nash asked desperately. “How’re you in it, Largo?”
“Go to hell,” Dunn growled and took aim.
Nash watched, fascinated as the blood left the knuckle of Largo’s trigger finger as he applied pressure.
Then the doors of the whorehouse crashed open and someone yelled, “Dunn.”
There was a crash of gunfire and Largo Dunn staggered across Clay’s body, stumbled and began to fall. There was another shot and the trail boss was flung back six feet by the strike of lead. He hung over an overstuffed chair, unmoving as his blood stained the upholstery.
Suddenly, Jim Hume was kneeling beside Nash, yelling for someone to get a sawbones pronto.
“How you feel, Clay?”
“Strangely enough, I feel mostly ... all right. ’Cept for a feelin’ like someone’s got a nail hammered under my shoulder.”
“Looks like the bullet kind of glanced off the shoulder blade. Didn’t penetrate too far. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner to warn you about Largo.”
“Your timing was okay,” Nash said, forcing a brief smile. “But how did Largo fit in?”
“Those papers gave him title by heredity to a large tract of land in this neck of the woods. It took in the area of trail used by Largo now that he’s been forced off the old trails by railroads and so on. Gomez did a lot of checking around with land agencies and I guess someone told Largo. He wrote to Gomez saying that he needed to keep the trail open, it was his livelihood, and that if Gomez had his claim upheld by the Governor, Largo would be forced to drive his cattle through waterless wastes where, naturally, he’d lose a lot and would soon be out of business. But Gomez pushed on with his claim and said they might come to some arrangement, but his primary concern was to get land that was rightfully his.”
“Largo found out he was on the stage and set his three hard cases onto him,” Nash said.
“That’s it. Seems they’ve pulled quite a few other jobs, too, and Largo’s trail herd has always been handy for ’em to get away, using it as cover. Only this time, they pulled a murder, too.”
“One of ’em’s still loose, Jim,” Nash gasped. “Johnny Marks.”
“No. He came after Merida, thinking there might be duplicate papers. I nailed him.”
Nash relaxed as the doctor came through the shattered door. Then he raised his head as he caught a glimpse of something black on the porch. The doctor’s body blocked his view and Nash looked towards Hume.
“Did ... did I see Merida Gomez out there?”
Hume grinned. “Yeah, she rode up with me. I’m gonna escort her to Austin to the Governor. Maybe if your wound ain’t too serious you can ride along ...?”
Hume looked quizzically at the doctor as he examined Clay’s wound.
“This ranny’ll be on his feet an’ ridin’ again in three days, wouldn’t wonder,” the sawbones announced. “Bullet glanced off the bone. Couple of splinters to dig out, then I can sew him up. Few days’ rest an’ a feller with his constitution’ll be riding again.”
Nash smiled slowly, ignoring the pain as the doctor probed for splinters. That sounded fine with him.
“Maybe you could head back to head office and I could escort Merida Gomez to see the Governor, Jim?” he asked.
Hume smiled thinly. “Maybe.”
That was good enough for Nash.