THREE The stagecoach took six hours to reach Parrish. On the way Clayburn rode up beside the driver and learned what he knew about Harry Farnell. Clayburn's interest was strictly personal. The red-haired killer had robbed him of his stake and his winnings. And pistol-whipped him into the bargain. These were things for which due retribution would be extracted. About such matters Clayburn had the persistence and patience of an Apache. And he figured the best method of finding the redhead was through whoever had hired him to do the killing.
According to the stage driver, Farnell had run a freight line out of Parrish. He'd hit a string of bad luck and been close to going out of business when he'd acquired a new partner recently who'd injected fresh money into his firm. The reason Farnell hadn't been able to weather his business losses on his own was that he'd sunk all the profits of his previous successful years into a big spread up north. That was where Farnell had been coming back from on the stage; his wife and children lived on the spread.
