Stagecoach to Hell Read online

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by The Estate of Ralph Compton

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9781984803436

  First Edition: March 2021

  Cover art by Chris McGrath

  Cover design by Steve Meditz

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Immortal Cowboy

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ed Frost, the U.S. marshal for the Arizona Territory, snapped open the latest edition of the Brandice Bugle and began to read. He believed there was nothing like a crisp paper to set a good tone for an evening, and he settled in for a nice, quiet time at the jail. It was a Friday night in the Arizona mining town and he hoped he could make it to Monday without any federal matters that needed his attention.

  That was why he was surprised when the front door opened and Town Marshal Laird Hall rushed inside.

  Frost lowered his paper. “What’s the matter with you, Laird? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Not a ghost, Ed,” Hall panted. “The devil. The devil himself.”

  Frost had known the Scotsman for almost a decade and had never seen him so worked up. Whatever was troubling him must be serious.

  Frost set his paper aside and got up to help the town marshal. “Take a seat, Laird. Tell me all about it.”

  But Laird would not hear of it. “No time to sit, Ed. Not for either of us. There’s trouble over at the Oriental. Bad trouble.”

  Frost hoped there was more to it than this. “Fighting and brawls are a town matter. You’ve got deputies to handle that sort of thing. The sheriff can help out if need be.”

  “It ain’t that kind of trouble,” he said. “This is your kind of trouble.” He pointed at a wanted poster on the wall next to the door. “He’s here. Tom Clay himself.”

  Frost’s eyes narrowed. He did not need to look at the poster. He had already memorized the face it showed. The long chin and saggy eyes and downturned mouth that all Clay men bore.

  Frost did not have to look at the poster to be reminded of what Tom Clay was wanted for either. Robbing stagecoaches and freight wagons was something of a family business where the Clay clan was concerned. They had been terrorizing pilgrims and merchants making their way through the territory for years.

  Ed Frost had arrested just about every single Clay man aboveground at one time or another and brought them to stand trial for their crimes. But there had never been a witness who could swear they were the people that held them up or had committed the murder they witnessed. Fear or common sense always made people change their story and the Clays always went free.

  The family had always been smart, too. They were a tight and close bunch who did not welcome outsiders and preferred to keep their mouths shut. Their discipline was another reason why they had always been so difficult to prosecute.

  That was why Ed Frost was having a tough time believing Laird Hall now. Showing up in town like this was not a typical Clay move, even for the youngest Clay. But Tom had done something that neither his father nor his uncles nor his brothers nor his cousins had managed to do in all their years of lawlessness.

  Tom Clay had killed a woman in the middle of a stagecoach robbery. And that woman’s father just happened to be Judge Barnes, the federal judge from Jessup who oversaw that part of the territory.

  “Are you sure it’s Tom?” Frost said.

  “I’m sure,” Laird told him. “Had one of the men in the Oriental come running over to tell me he was in there. And when I got there, I saw him myself with my own two eyes. Standing at the bar, buying drinks and sharing stories with the men like a country squire.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Frost said aloud. “The Clays never show their hand like that.”

  “Well, this one has,” Laird said. “Maybe he’s not as smart as his kinfolk or maybe he doesn’t think anyone would dare lay a hand on him. Either way, I’ve done my duty. I saw him and I told you where he was. Now it’s up to you to go get him and bring him in.”

  Frost managed to grab Hall’s arm before he left. “Just wait a minute. You’re not going anywhere. I’m going
to need your help.”

  Hall tried in vain to get his arm free from Frost’s grip. “You’ve got five federal deputies to help you, Ed. You don’t need me.”

  “Those men are spread far and wide and you know it. I’ll need you and every man you can spare to help me bring Tom Clay in. I’m not as worried so much about him, but about what his people are liable to do to spring him.”

  Laird pulled his arm free from Frost and tried to rub some circulation back into it. “Have it your way, Ed. I’ll go with you, but I won’t ask my men to. They’ve all got families and young ones at home. I wouldn’t want the Clays going after their loved ones to make them work against us. And with you and your men away from town so often, I can’t afford to take the risk that the Clays will hit us while you all are gone. You can fight me on that one, Marshal, but it’s final.”

  Frost had no intention of fighting Laird Hall about anything. He was a good man who had stayed in the law game too long. He should have been in a rocking chair on the porch of an old-folks home five years before, maybe even ten. He had helped bring law and order to this part of the territory. At least as much law and order as anyone could bring to such a wild land.

  He did not expect Laird to do his job for him. He only needed his help to get Tom Clay from the Oriental to his jail in the back. After that, he’d call in his deputies to help back him.

  Ed Frost took down his gun belt from the peg by the door and put it on. He knew the layout of the Oriental well and knew how to play it. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to stay out front and make sure no one goes in or out of the Oriental who might help Tom. I’ll go in the back way, buffalo him, and hopefully take him in without incident. I’ll need you to keep an eye on the crowd for me while I bring him over here.”

  “Think it’ll go as peaceful as all that?”

  Ed Frost hoped it would, but violence had always had a way of finding him. Not wanting to scare the town marshal, he said, “I’m not going in there looking for a gunfight, but if shooting starts, you rush in and back me up.”

  Laird swallowed hard. “Whatever you say, Ed.”

  Frost made sure his belt was secured with a final slap of the buckle and held the front door open for Laird. “You’d best go out first. Amble over to the Oriental and hang around out front. Don’t be too obvious about it and try to look calm.”

  Laird Hall shook his head as he passed him. “Kind of hard to look calm where the Clays are involved.”

  Frost pulled the jailhouse door shut behind him. “Try it anyway. For both our sakes.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Frost watched Laird take a left along Main Street toward the Oriental. Laird was normally an affable man whose approachability had made him popular in Brandice for over ten years. But now, as he headed out to help brace the Clay family, he walked stiffly and did not acknowledge any of the townspeople he passed. Frost knew he would have to move quickly before Laird’s nervousness gave up the whole game before it even started.

  He jogged across the thoroughfare and darted between two buildings. He stopped on the street behind the buildings that had become known as Back Alley Way on account of it being where the backs of buildings facing Main Street and Lincoln Street met. He turned left and began heading toward the back door of the Oriental Saloon. He ignored the forbidden transactions taking place in the shadows all around him. Soiled doves finding pigeons of their own. Dope peddlers hawking opium tar to desperate fiends. A gambler who had not been able to cover his debts being worked over by his creditors.

  The whole thing was enough to make Ed Frost’s skin crawl. He hated town life and the people who lived in such places. He would have preferred to live away from a town, in the open air, where he could see people coming before they got close. Where he could take their measure and gauge their intentions. Where everyone was equally at the mercy of nature and just as likely to be killed by it as not. There was an equality in the wild outdoors that people missed in a town. Numbers allowed men and women to become lazy and laziness bred lawlessness. There was no light bright enough to shine on the town and rid it of the shadows where these people indulged their vices. At least none that man could make anyway.

  That’s why grabbing hold of a man like Tom Clay was important to him. Not just because the young robber had killed a federal judge’s daughter. Not just because a wanted poster hung in his office, but because Tom Clay and his kind stood in the way of making the territory a better place to live. And Ed Frost was paid to keep the Tom Clays of the world from getting their way.

  There were no saloon signs on the back doors that faced Back Alley Way, but Ed Frost knew the town better than he knew his own face that he saw in the mirror when he shaved each morning. He turned in the back door of the saloon and stepped over the drunks that lounged on the floor of the back hallway. He was not concerned about clearing them out of there because he had no intention of bringing Tom Clay back out this way. He intended on dragging that boy to jail in front of the whole town so they would know what happened when a man found himself on the other side of the law. It might keep another young man out there from taking the same walk himself someday.

  Ed Frost had been in the Oriental enough times in his life not to be surprised by the smell, much less affected by it. The place always had a unique stench all its own that no one had ever been able to identify to everyone’s mutual satisfaction. Some said the stale tobacco juice had worn a hole in the floorboards and allowed the smell of horse manure and urine to fill the place. Others claimed the dirt beneath the place served as a coffin where old possums went to die. Still others thought it was the rotting souls who had died in the saloon or because of it. Ed Frost knew that was hogwash. He had only known of one man who had died in the Oriental, an old whiskey peddler who keeled over while a girl named Berry Wallis was busy plying her trade. As the peddler had undoubtedly died happy, Frost saw no reason why his soul should haunt the Oriental or any other earthly place.

  Ed Frost had never wasted much time on wondering what caused the stink and today was not the day to start. He would have his hands full bringing Tom Clay out of there alive.

  The customers of the Oriental were used to seeing all sorts of lawmen going in and out of the saloon for all sorts of reasons. Some professional, some personal, and some a mixture of both. So they did not show him any special deference upon seeing the federal star pinned to his chest. After all, lawmen had to drink, too.

  He was glad the crowd did not part for him, allowing him to remain out of sight of Tom Clay until the last possible second.

  The customers might not have parted for him but they had certainly parted for the man who was waving his hands as he retold a story. Ed looked between the men who had formed a circle around the storyteller and confirmed that the man was Tom Clay.

  He bore little resemblance to the picture on his wanted poster, but he had the same hangdog expression that had afflicted every Clay man Frost had ever known. And he had known them all.

  Tom was short, as far as Clay men went. About five and a half feet tall and maybe a bit more. His sandy-brown hair had not seen a comb in a long time, if ever.

  Ed could not hear what Clay was saying, but whatever it was seemed to be entertaining the men who had gathered around to listen. As he drew closer, he could hear Tom retelling the story of how a pretty young woman swooned when he held her at gunpoint and offered him anything he wanted.

  “No thanks,” he recounted. “If it can’t fit in my saddlebag, I ain’t interested.”

  The audience laughed and Ed took this as his cue to rush Clay. The longer he waited, the greater the risk he might be spotted in the crowd.

  Ed drew his pistol as he pushed through the men who had encircled Tom Clay. He broke into the clearing and belted the outlaw across the head with the butt of his gun. A great cry went up from the crowd as Ed took hold of the reeling Clay and began to pull him out of
the bar. Despite countless protests and threats hurled his way, no one stepped forward to stop him. They cleared a path for him all the way to the front door and out onto the boardwalk.

  When he led Clay out into the street, Frost found Laird and another man pushing the crowd back away from the door.

  Frost kept the outlaw moving, taking him by the arm and pulling him into the thoroughfare and across the street toward the jail. The commotion drew a fair amount of attention from the townspeople, but not the kind where someone might try to stop him.

  With Laird watching his back, Frost felt comfortable enough to holster his weapon and fish out his keys to unlock the front door of the jail. He hardly had to stop his prisoner before he wheeled him inside and pushed him toward the cells in the back. He tossed his keys on the desk and took the iron ring of keys from the nail on this side of the door as he grabbed Clay and shoved him into the first empty cell he saw. The outlaw fell onto the cot, holding his aching head while Frost locked the door.

  “You’re in luck,” Frost told him. “You’re our only customer for the moment, so you’ve got the whole place to yourself.”

  “I need a doctor,” Clay said. “I think you busted my head something awful. I can’t hardly walk straight.”

  “And you won’t need to walk much anymore, especially after the judge sentences you to hang, but he won’t want you mistreated. So, I’ll get a doctor to look in on you. But no visitors, Clay. I’ll not have anyone in here looking to break you out.”

  But Clay did not look like he was feeling too sociable as he cradled his head. “No friend. Just the doctor.” He squinted at Frost through the pain. “Say, who are you anyway?”

  “My name is Ed Frost. I’m—”

  “I know who you are.” Clay cut him off. “Grew up hearing your name, though it was usually with a couple of cusswords in front of it. My daddy’s no friend of yours.”

  Ed Frost grinned. It was nice to be a man the Clay bunch hated. “And I’m no friend of your daddy’s nor of your uncles’ either. I’ve been trying to hang one of them for years and now it looks like I might finally get my chance.”