Danville Stagecoach Robbery E-Book

Frank Chandler

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 236

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Jason Colebrook hasn't travelled to Nebraska looking for adventure - he wants revenge. Travelling on the Danville stagecoach as a young lad, he survived the robbery but was badly wounded. Twenty years later, determined to uncover the truth, he gets a lead to a frontier town where he finds the townspeople are being cheated by a man running for election. Jason soon falls foul of a local gang, but also falls for a beautiful redhead only to discover she is entangled in a network of corruption, evictions and underhand dealings. Although help arrives unexpectedly from the local hotel owner's daughter, Jason has to use all his cunning, determination and gun skills to unmask his quarry and see justice is done.

Leseprobe

The Danville Stagecoach Robbery

Jason Colebrook hasn’t travelled to Nebraska looking for adventure – he wants revenge. Travelling on the Danville stagecoach as a young lad, he survived the robbery but was badly wounded. Twenty years later, determined to uncover the truth, he gets a lead to a frontier town where he finds the townspeople are being cheated by a man running for election. Jason soon falls foul of a local gang, but also falls for a beautiful redhead only to discover she is entangled in a network of corruption, evictions and underhand dealings. Although help arrives unexpectedly from the local hotel owner’s daughter, Jason has to use all his cunning, determination and gun skills to unmask his quarry and see justice is done.

The Danville Stagecoach Robbery

Frank Chandler

ROBERT HALE

© Frank Chandler 2016

First published in Great Britain 2016

ISBN 978-0-7198-2175-2

The Crowood Press

The Stable Block

Crowood Lane

Ramsbury

Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

The right of Frank Chandler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

CHAPTER 1

With a shuddering sigh the train slid to a halt in the busy cattle town of Filmont Junction on the western edge of Nebraska territory. There was a loud hissing of steam and clanking of bells. Jason Colebrook was quickly out of his seat; he grabbed his saddle-bags and made his way to the end of the carriage. His progress was suddenly arrested by an elderly lady whose frail appearance did not match her steely grey eyes, which she fixed on him.

‘Young man, could you reach my valise?’ she asked, pointing to the carpet bag in the overhead rack.

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ he replied courteously, easing the bag to the floor. ‘Shall I carry it outside?’

‘That would be kind.’

Jason put the bag down beside the lady as she arranged her hat, fixing it with a long jewelled pin. ‘My pleasure, ma’am.’

‘Thank you,’ she said with a wide smile, pressing a silver dollar into his hand.

‘Oh, that won’t be necessary,’ he said.

‘No, not necessary but it is a gift and you shouldn’t refuse a gift.’

Jason touched his hat, smiled at the old lady and slipped the dollar into his shirt pocket while collecting his mount from the freight car. Leading his fine skewbald quarter horse to the street, he scanned for the saloon and was soon ordering a beer from the barkeep. He licked his lips in anticipation as the amber liquid was poured into a glass. The train ride had been too long, too hot and his throat was too dry. Three days and 600 miles were now behind him. He put his hand into his shirt pocket to pay with the lady’s silver dollar, but let it drop back. It was a gift; you don’t part with gifts.

He put the glass to his lips and began a long gulp but was unexpectedly interrupted by an ill-phrased question. Jason hadn’t noticed the cattleman standing just along the bar and was slightly taken aback when the man turned to him and said, ‘Looking for work, son?’

Having just had his twenty-eighth birthday before setting out on this journey, Jason had a very strong aversion to being called ‘son’. He turned to the man who had moved nearer and took a long hard look at him. In his fifties, with greying hair at the temples, a sun-wrinkled face, muscled arms, calloused fingers and rough hands, he was almost certainly a cattleman. Jason dropped his eyes to the belt and could see no weapon. Looking beyond the man, he saw two cowhands sitting at a table, their eyes fixed on Jason. Both were carrying six-guns slung low.

‘No, you’ve got the wrong person,’ he said firmly, ‘I am not your son.’

The man looked hard into Jason’s eyes and rolled his tongue around in his mouth as if he was chewing something, possibly his next sentence.

‘Well, that’s a shame, son, because I was—’

Jason’s hand dropped to his holster and the loud click as he cocked his revolver cut the sentence short.

 ‘You don’t listen too good, do you?’ he said, his eye catching the movement at the cowhands’ table. He pulled his gun slowly and pressing it into the cattleman’s side said very calmly, ‘Now, you listen, feller. I’ve just come in here for a quiet drink, which I am going to finish. Tell your two boys not to do anything silly or you’ll get a drain-hole in your barrel. Do I make myself clear?’

The cattleman slowly moved his hands in an accepting gesture. He glanced back to his boys and nodded his head so they put their hands on the table.

‘Look, s . . .’ He nearly said it, but managed to stop himself in time. ‘I admire a man who knows how to stand his ground. I’m here to hire and you look like just the kind I want.’

‘Well, I’m right sorry to have to disappoint you, but I’m not staying here just now. I have things that need seeing to. So let’s just ease up and all go back to where we were.’ Jason holstered his gun and finished his drink as the cattleman walked back to his table.

Confrontation was the last thing Jason needed; a gunfight would likely land him in jail if not stretched out on the floor. Filmont was a big enough town to take exception to casual gun-fighting. It was not what he had come here for. As he passed their table he said, ‘No hard feelings,’ and pushed out though the batwings. He threw the saddle-bags over his horse and urged him into a steady trot.

The streets of Filmont Junction were alive with every kind of commerce. A big bustling town focussed on squeezing every dollar it could out of the cattle trade and every ruse to rob the cowhands of their hard-earned cash. Travellers changed trains here at the end of the main line and headed south towards Texas, or went west to follow a dream. The town was full of hopeful young men from city life in the East or escaping from poor prospects down South, all looking for adventure as bounty hunters and pioneer traders. The reality was a little different and many ended up as drifters in the dozens of saloons and eventually the county jail. Drifting had never been part of Jason’s life.

He rode out of Filmont without a backward glance and going northwards, the town was soon left behind and roads became tracks into rough country. Ten minutes outside town limits, Jason took a side track leading to a small outcrop, slid off his horse and climbed to the top. He lay flat and waited, ears tuned and eyes peeled. The tell-tale sign was not long in coming, a distinctive distant drumming and wisps of dust in the air. Within minutes the cattleman’s two rough cowhands passed below the outcrop at a determined pace. Jason slid back, took out his tobacco pouch and rolled a smoke. He lit it and took a long pull. Before he had finished the smoke, he heard them return at a faster gallop, no doubt heading back to town to tell their boss there was no sign of the insolent upstart, their mission unaccomplished. Jason watched them go, smiled to himself, mounted up and regained the trail.

It had been a timely reminder that Cottonwood County was on the edge of the rule of law and the gun was still preferred to a sheriff’s badge for enforcement of the pecking order. It was also a reminder to him to guard his sensibilities. There had been no need to react so violently to the cattle rancher, perhaps he had indeed been hiring hands and Jason would be a good hire.

Standing at a fraction over six feet tall with strong handsome features, dark-haired with deep brown eyes and full lips, well-muscled with fine hands and weighing in at around 170 pounds, Jason was the epitome of a fine bred athletic young man fresh in from the East. But the gun belt and the .44 Colt frontier strapped low on his leg coupled with the occasional sharp focus of his eyes dispelled any notion of a greenhorn. Jason Colebrook was his own man, and nobody’s son, except his pa’s, God rest his soul.

Jason continued northwards and late that afternoon he rode into Blackstone, a growing two-bit town, reverberating to the sound of sawing and hammering as new buildings took shape on both sides of the main street. A handful of Mexicans, a long ways from the border, stripped to the waist, were whacking in new planks on the boardwalks to extend the town’s possibilities, as yet just a hunch in some tycoon’s bag of dreams. Hitching outside the one and only saloon, Jason went up to the bar.

‘Glass of beer and something hot to eat if you can.’

‘Steak and beans?’ asked the barkeep, pouring the beer.

‘Just fine. Can you recommend a room?’

He nodded over Jason’s shoulder. ‘Across the road, where you can get your steak and beans. Three dollars gets a room, a hot bath and breakfast as well.’

Moments later Jason checked in across the road. Then, having put his horse into the livery stable for the night and eaten a satisfying prime cut steak, he soaked in the bath and turned in early. From force of habit he’d checked that the bedroom window dropped straight down into the dirt at the back of the hotel. He hung his gun belt on the bedpost and with the Colt under his pillow, he drifted off into a deep sleep. Amazingly he didn’t dream for a single second that night.

For years Jason had been unable to stop dreaming about the fateful day he was on the stagecoach to Danville. It had become a recurring nightmare in which fact and fiction became indistinguishable. He had been traumatized into thinking it was somehow all his fault, that he had been responsible for what happened, that he should have done something to stop it. But he was only a child of eight, what could he have done to stop three robbers?

From the age of fourteen he became a regular visitor at the law firm his pa had set up from scratch and built into a thriving business. Astute and intelligent, Jason had made himself useful brewing coffee, running errands, delivering court papers and four years later he began law studies in earnest. He was determined to follow in his pa’s footsteps and become a county prosecutor. Then, getting near to the end of his studies and no longer able to keep the nightmares to himself, he asked his ma to tell him the truth about the stagecoach robbery. After dinner one night they sat together in the kitchen, lit only by the flickering flames of a blazing fire as the light faded outside and shadows danced on the ceiling. The setting somehow added an extra dimension of unreality to the awful truth which Jason was hearing for the first time. Fact and fiction could at last be separated. His nightmares might not stop at once but he had at last some tangible detail on which to rationalize his thoughts. His ma wept as he had never seen her weep and putting his arms round her as she shook with huge sobs, he knew there was no chance of following his intended occupation until he had delivered a more direct kind of justice.

He had carried on his law studies in his pa’s firm to please his ma and at the same time he began to prepare for the search. He read through old copies of the Danville Courier to see what the press had to say about the stagecoach robbery. He spent time assiduously studying the court records to see what had been reported of the robbery. Useful snippets were gleaned but nothing gave him the break he needed. His legal work was beginning to pay a small wage with a little left over from providing for his ma and himself, so over the course of a couple of years he took intensive lessons in riding and shooting, and studied fieldcraft, camping out with an old Crow Indian who had opened an enterprising business for would-be frontiersmen.

Then, out of the blue, after years of frustrating research, he came across the lead he’d been waiting for. He saw the name, Clem Marlin, on a wanted poster. The name was surprisingly similar to one that had been reported in the Danville court records of the robbery. Jason made some enquiries and when news came through that a posse had captured Marlin and he was now lodged in a Nebraskan jail, Jason told his ma he had to go and see this man. At first she implored him to leave it all alone as no good could now come of what was long since finished. There was no point in raking over something that happened twenty years ago, but all his plans had now become a reality and it was time to test his resolve.

He packed his bag and kissed his ma goodbye. Putting his hand to her face and wiping away the tears from her eyes, he held her tight and promised to take care of himself. She knew what he was doing and knew she couldn’t stop him; in her heart despite the fear of losing him, she didn’t want to.

Now he was asleep in a small town called Blackstone 600 miles away from his ma in a dreamless place with creaking floorboards and faraway voices drifting on the night air.

He woke an hour or two after sun up and breakfasted downstairs on bacon and eggs with a mug of good strong coffee. Ahead, as far as he knew, lay another fifty miles of mostly easy riding across open spaces, wooded valleys, rocky outcrops and winding streams that would bring him at last to the township of South Bend.

A light spring breeze whipped little eddies of dust in the street as he rode his horse out of the livery corral and turned toward the north. Folk were already beginning to populate the sidewalks as shutters went up on the stores. Pots and pans were being hung up. Sacks of flour appeared in front of a half-finished facade grandly displaying a painted sign proclaiming provisions of every kind and heralding the beginnings of competitive trading. Carts and buckboards negotiated their way between each other, coming in for supplies or, business already done, making their way to outlying spreads.

A man in a grey suit and derby hat stepped out in front of Jason. ‘Good morning, sir!’ he exclaimed, raising his hat. ‘Can I interest you in a plot of prime grazing land? Or maybe a town house? We have many fine plots for sale in our peaceful and law-abiding community.’

Jason shook his head. ‘I’m headed up to South Bend, thanks all the same.’

‘South Bend! Well, we have an office there too, young man. Yes indeed, sir, a good friend of mine – one Rosco James by name – is the land agent and he will find you a very good place. Why don’t you step right here into my office and I’ll give you a letter of introduction.’

Jason reined in and looked at the man for a long moment, chewing something over in his mind. The land agent seemed unsure whether the offer was about to be accepted or a gun pulled to send him scurrying back into his office. The latter certainly wasn’t in Jason’s mind, he was figuring that every scrap of information might prove useful.

‘Sir?’ the agent repeated, gesturing toward his office with his hat.

Jason dismounted, hitched his horse and stepped up into the office. He sat down in a large comfortable chair next to the desk. At the back of the office sat another man, clean shaven, probably in his late forties, slow moving with a slight limp and wiry. He was busy stacking papers, but the red bandana round his neck and the polished gunbelt looked like imitating a hired hand rather than an office boy. The agent passed Jason a fine china cup of hot coffee.

‘Now, sir, let me tell you today is your lucky day. My name is Jim Tracey and this is my assistant Abe Renton, and I am going to give you a note of introduction to my partner Mr James in South Bend. Yes, sir, a note of introduction. Mr James will find you the very best plot of land.’

Jason let the agent ramble on.

Tracey lowered his voice and looking down, shuffled some papers on his desk. ‘I trust you have erm . . . erm . . . arranged the necessary erm . . . securities with a bank of your choice.’

‘I have sufficient funds if that’s what you mean.’

Tracey leant forward ingratiatingly. ‘Of course, sir, of course. Now . . . Mr . . .’

‘Colebrook.’ Then Jason leant across the desk too, conspiratorially. ‘You see, I made my money in the East, a few robberies, the odd bank or two, not forgetting a very profitable ransom.... Now I thought I ought to settle down a bit, make myself scarce for a while or two, buy a spread and raise me some beef.’

Jim Tracey wasn’t sure whether to laugh out loud or not. He compromised by chuckling intermittently. ‘I see you are a man with a sense of humour. . . .’

Jason looked him squarely in the eye but didn’t say a word and the agent started to fidget uncomfortably. He took a sheet of paper from the drawer and dipped his pen in the ink pot.

‘Well, Mr Colebrook, you won’t find us unduly inquisitive, no, sir, we keep ourselves to ourselves out here. Every man has a right to his privacy. Isn’t that so, Mr Renton?’ His assistant nodded in silent agreement. ‘And see here,’ he said, handing the paper to Jason, ‘this will introduce you to Mr James. Mr James is the man you want. Yes, sir, only Mr James. No other land agent will do. Remember the name.’

Jason folded the letter, stepped out of the office, put it into one of the saddle-bags, unhitched then mounted and turned his horse again to the north. At that moment there was a scream, a door opened and a woman ran out into the street, her blouse ripped across her back. She stumbled and fell, her arms splaying into the dust, followed by a dishevelled ruffian, his suspenders askew, holding his pants up with his free hand.

‘Bitch, whore, where’s the money?’ he screamed at her, falling upon the hapless woman, no more than a girl by the look of her, slapping her about the head. ‘The money?’ he demanded, pulling a long knife from his belt.

Jason drew his Colt and fired once into the ground beside the wrestling pair. ‘Leave her be!’

‘You stay out of this,’ the man shouted back, briefly looking up, ‘or I’ll cut your throat, too.’

Jason fixed the man with a steady gaze, levelled his gun to the man’s forehead and pulled back the firing pin. ‘Is there something wrong with your ears? They don’t listen too good, do they? Perhaps you’ll hear better with a hole in your head. Now leave her be.’

The man let go and took a couple steps toward Jason. Another shot into the dirt stopped him in his tracks. ‘If you have a grievance against this young lady, you take it to the sheriff. Personally I can’t abide men who rough handle women.’

By this time a sizeable crowd had gathered to witness the commotion. The sheriff emerged from his office. He strode across the street.

‘Aww, Bill, you got a problem with Betty? Man, you gotta keep these things to yourself. Now let her up and sort it out decent like. There ain’t no need for cutting her.’

Jason holstered his gun and watched to see what would happen next. The man put his knife in his belt, spat into the dust in Jason’s direction and that was to be the end of it.

Jason slipped off his horse and approached the man. ‘That seems like pretty uneven justice to me.’ In a flash he pulled his fist back and delivered a heavy blow. Bill’s head jerked back and his knees crumpled beneath him as he fell prostrate into the dust.

‘Now wait a minute,’ the sheriff said to Jason, ‘you can’t just. . . .’

‘Can’t what? Do your job cos you’re too weak to do it yourself? What kind of a town is this?’ He mounted his horse, and glared at the sheriff. ‘Certainly no decent place, that’s for sure.’

He moved his horse lightly into a trot and didn’t look back at the crowd of Blackstone citizens who had barely moved for the last five minutes, but he heard them arguing amongst themselves.

CHAPTER 2

Jason was in no hurry. Time didn’t matter, a satisfactory outcome was all that he cared about. His quarry was no more than a day’s ride away. He envisioned the confrontation, a ranch somewhere away from the town, an exchange of words, a reminder of what happened twenty years ago, an admission of guilt, a confession, then justice could be served. The one big difficulty was avoiding any gunplay; the man that he wanted to bring to justice would not be a man on his own, he would have a retinue of hired hands, of skilled gunmen. Jason knew he would be just one man against them all. If South Bend was at all like the two-bit town of Blackstone he had just left, then it was unlikely he’d be able to call on the assistance of any badge-wearing lawmen.

The track dropped down to a bubbling stream shaded by cottonwoods and aspen. The sun was high in the sky and a blue jay was squawking nearby. Jason steered his horse a little ways upstream and dismounted. He untied the cinch and eased off the saddle then let him graze the fresh green grass. Gathering enough fallen wood to make a small fire, he took some water from the stream into his can and set it down on the wood to boil. Sitting close to the fire, he crossed his legs and pondered. Just now, everything was going well.

Finishing his coffee, he kicked out the fire and retreated further into the wood. Nestling down by a moss-covered boulder, he rolled a smoke and blew out the blue tinged mist, watching it disappear into the green canopy.

His horse pricked its ears first. At almost the same moment Jason sat upright, shifting his holster to a better position. He listened intently, there were no voices, no conversation, there was only one horse. He heard the rider drop to the ground near the ashes of his recent fire. Peering through the tangled undergrowth, he wasn’t surprised to recognize Abe Renton. Was he following Jason, and if so, why? All Jason had to do was pull his gun and question the agent’s so-called assistant, or he could just leave him be and see what he did next.

Pulling his gun out, he pushed gently through the bushes. ‘Howdy, Abe! Looking for something?’

Jim Tracey’s assistant held his hands out to show he had no intention of going for the gun which he carried high on his waist. ‘I was just curious.’

‘And just passing by on the off chance? Where are you headed, Abe? Or were you just told to follow me?’

‘Follow you? No, no, I’m taking some papers from Mr Tracey to Mr James at South Bend, that’s all. The smell of hot ashes was strong where the track crosses the water so I thought to have a look see on the off-chance of a cup of coffee.’

Jason thought the story not unreasonable but couldn’t help suspecting that there was more to it. ‘What sort of papers?’

‘Land registries, a few claims, that sort of thing. They’re in the saddle-bag, you can check if you want.’

‘Show me,’ Jason ordered. ‘Get them out real slow.’

Visibly nervous, Abe Renton opened the saddle-bag. ‘I ain’t pulling no tricks, mister, I saw what you did to Bill Smithers, you have a strong sense of justice, but hereabouts you better be careful, folks don’t like incomers pushing them around. That’s all I’m sayin’.’ He lifted out a bundle of official looking documents and held them towards Jason. Jason waved them aside; instead he lifted the saddle-bag flap and fished about inside pulling out another folded paper and a wad of bank notes. He dropped the bank notes straight back and opened out the paper. It was a letter from Tracey to Rosco James advising him of Jason Colebrook’s imminent arrival in South Bend with a few lurid details about the incident in the street and warning James to be careful. It suggested Jason Colebrook may not be what he seemed and made a hesitant reference to Jason’s mention of bank robberies and so on. Jason folded the letter and put it back in the saddle-bag.

He holstered his gun. ‘That all seems perfectly OK to me, and you best get going if you’re to make South Bend before nightfall.’

‘And you?’

‘Me? You can tell both Mr James and Mr Tracey I’m just fine.’

The agent’s assistant mounted and tightened on the reins but hesitated to go. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question, Mr Colebrook?’ Jason acquiesced with a nod of the head. ‘There’s more than $250 in that wad, but you didn’t even look, and unless you’re planning to put a slug in my back you ain’t touched one copper penny of it.’

‘Perhaps you didn’t listen up too good. I told Tracey those days are over, I need to settle down, not get some posse scouring the landscape for me. Now scram.’ He slapped the horse’s flank and it jerked into a quick trot, the hoofbeats soon changing to a regular canter. Looking closely at the ground, Jason noticed that Renton’s horse had a distinctive groove on one of its shoes. Such close observation was one of the valuable lessons he learnt from the old Crow.

Jason went back to his resting place and reflected. The upshot satisfied him a great deal, in fact he couldn’t have done a better job himself. All he had to do was let Renton deliver the letter to James before he called on him himself. Any story he told James would be believed because he would already have seen it in the letter from his friend Tracey.

Given the rest of the day to ride, Renton would reach South Bend by nightfall. Jason decided to proceed at a slower pace, to sleep out overnight and ride into South Bend later the next day. Having eaten biscuit and some cold bacon washed down with coffee, Jason laid out his bedroll and gazed at the stars. He wondered what his ma was doing, no doubt she was fast asleep beneath these same twinkling beads of light. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why he was out here in the wilds of Cottonwood County instead of 600 miles away to the east, looking after his ma and progressing his law practice. He knew exactly why he was here and he wasn’t going to question it. Thinking wistfully of home, he soon fell fast asleep.

Waking early the next morning, Jason encouraged the embers of last night’s fire to struggle back to life with a handful of dry twigs. Once it had recovered its strength, he piled on a few larger chunks and put some water to boil. He carefully rolled some tobacco, lit it, inhaled deeply and throwing his head back, blew a stream of smoke into the sky. He crushed some roasted coffee beans and poured on the boiling water. Taking the last piece of hard cheese and the last two biscuits from his food pouch, he breakfasted, albeit frugally, in high spirits. Today he should reach his destination, maybe even his destiny, and hopefully get a sight of his quarry.

Making sure the ashes were thoroughly soaked, Jason kicked them out, scuffed out traces of his stay as best he could, mounted up and rode out. Following the main trail north, he soon came to an intersection with a signpost showing five miles to South Bend. He decided to skirt round to the west and look at the lie of the land. The rough track climbed up the side of a canyon and brought him out high on a small scrub-covered plateau overlooking the surrounding landscape.

Away to the left the land continued to rise in a range of hills with rocky outcrops and deeply cut valleys. In the east the sun was still low in the sky and spreading its early daylight across a fertile valley with a wide winding river, good stands of mature timber, open grassland, and low hills rising in the far distance. The same outlook was to be had to the north. There the hills became mountains, making the situation of South Bend an ideal spot in the intersecting valleys with a small river port for trade downstream toward the Missouri. The only thing missing was a railway and with the Union Pacific railroad that he had just travelled a hundred miles to the south at Filmont, surely it would come soon and South Bend would boom overnight. For Jason the lie of the land both physically and metaphorically was beginning to fall into place.