by Yes Jack
Talbot Rogers, who was in a rare hurry to be on his way to Fort Williams, cut in at this point, saying, ‘I told them not to burden themselves with anything, even their own bags. What’s all this foolishness about mail sacks?’
‘Oh don’t set any more mind to it,’ said Masters hastily, ‘it’s just that there was some valuable documents being carried. It can’t be helped.’
‘Here’s the way of it, son,’ explained Talbot patiently, ‘I have to be on my way. It’s a matter of life or death and I won’t be delayed further. I’ve brought these people here and as far as I can make out, your company should be taking care of them from here on in. That’s all and I don’t aim to have a long debate about it, either.’
Taken aback by the firm tone in which Talbot spoke and his air of not being a man used to having his wishes crossed, both Masters and Starret hastened to assure him that the Butterfield’s company would do all in their power to look after these unfortunate victims of robbery. It was while they were smoothing things over to the best of their ability that there came a single shot, which blew away half of Clarence Barker’s head and caused him to fall dead on the spot. His daughter Melanie, being liberally spattered with blood and brain matter, began to shriek hysterically.
Mercador’s death passed almost without note by the eight men sitting on their horses, watching to see what Tom Hilton would do to avenge his dead brother. It has to be said that Ramon Mercador had not been the most popular man in the gang and several men had observed before his tendency to stay clear of danger after demonstrating his prowess with a rifle. That his skulking out of the way like that had now led to his sudden and untimely death at Hilton’s hands did not strike anybody as especially surprising or undeserved. They were a good deal less enthusiastic, though, about chasing after the passengers from the stage in order to massacre them. This was especially the case after they had recollected the rumour which had led to Bill Hilton and the other four setting out to ambush the mail coach in the first place.
After Ramon Mercador had been shot down like the mangy dog that many of them believed him to be, there was a few seconds’ quiet. Even a skunk like Mercador deserved a certain respect after death.
Nobody spoke for all of ten seconds, until one of the men, Pete Jackson by name, said, ‘What d’you all think happened to those bearer bonds o’ which we heard tell? Reckon as those folk took ’em with ’em when they dug up and left?’
‘Now there’s a thought,’ said Tom Hilton appreciatively. ‘Thank the Lord one of us has the sense God gave a goat. Some of you take a look under that tarp.’
Nothing loath, three of the riders dismounted and went round to the back of the stage. There, beneath the boxes, trunks and portmanteaus of the passengers, they found what they were looking for. The mail sack was padlocked at the top, but the canvas was not proof against a determined assault with a razor-sharp Bowie knife. Once it had been gutted like a fish, they tipped the contents out into the dust.
There, among the letters, were three large, official looking packages. They were all three of them addressed to the bank in El Paso.
‘Open ’em up, boys,’ cried Tom Hilton jovially, ‘let’s see what we got.’
What they had was $3500 worth of bearer bonds.
‘Shit,’ said the man who had hacked open the mail sack, ‘that works out at. . . .’
He tried in vain to divide $3,500 by nine. One of the others accomplished the task by figuring a tenth part of the sum, which was considerably easier than a calculation involving a division by nine.
‘It’s better than $350 each.’
‘What are we waitin’ for? Let’s get to some town and turn these’un into cash money!’
‘Yeah, let’s make tracks. . . .’
Tom Hilton’s voice cut across their rejoicing. He said, ‘We’re going nowhere and doing nothing ’til I settled scores with the man who killed my brother.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. After all, Bill hadn’t been their brother, but some innate delicacy prevented any of them from putting the matter into such plain terms. Either a rare delicacy or perhaps because they had just seen Tom Hilton gun down one man and not one of them had any inclination to get crosswise to their boss when he was in such a mood as this.
Tom Hilton cast his eyes around the eight men and gauged their innermost feelings most accurately. He said, ‘I ain’t ’bout to force any one o’ you to come alongside o’ me on this. But I’ll tell you this for nothing. Any man as rides away now is stone dead to me. Is that clear?’
Chapter 5
All of the men who had been riding with the Hilton brothers were tough enough individuals and not given to allowing others to shove them around. Nevertheless, they all knew that there was strength in numbers and that if you wished to set up as a road agent or knock over a bank or anything of that kind, then you were better doing it in the company of one or two like-minded fellows, rather than by your own self.
Once you pick up with a few others, then unless you’re after endless squabbling and a life of long, pointless arguments, you needs must have one man who is the leader and makes the final choice in matters. The Hiltons had been natural leaders of the gang and now that Bill Hilton was gone, it was only natural that the remaining brother should take charge. The question was though, how far were the others prepared to follow Hilton? There was little profit for any of them to be found in chasing after a bunch of strangers and shooting them down because one of them might have put a bullet through Bill Hilton’s head. Still, they each of them had now the equivalent of $350 or more and once he’d wrought his revenge, Tom Hilton would certainly come up with other profitable schemes, same as he always had. In the end, all nine of them thought it better to stay with the gang than take their chances alone.
Following the trail of the men and women who had abandoned the stage and set off towards Fort Williams required no great art. The track was poached up all over, by horses, and men and women’s feet both. When Hilton and the others reached the point where the travellers had headed off to the bluff for the night, they didn’t bother to follow the tracks in that direction. They could see that a second set of tracks led back to the road and worked out easily enough that those they were following had just spent the night up in the rocks.
‘Anybody know around here particular well?’ asked Tom Hilton.
‘I been this way afore,’ said one of the men, ‘there’s a little hamlet called Greenhaven up ahead.’
‘How far?’
‘Few miles. Should make it in less’n an hour.’
So it was that forty-five minutes later, Hilton and his men sat at their ease, watching the little town into which they were about to ride. The first thing they noticed was that there was some species of hullabaloo going on around a large barn on the edge of town. So busy were folk clustering round the scene, that not one of them had noticed the nine riders who had reined in some 400 yards from the town. To Tom Hilton, this looked to be the ideal moment to start teaching those who had murdered his brother the error of their ways and so he slid the carbine out from the scabbard at the front of the saddle, took general aim at the group of men and women standing around the barn and let fly at once.
Talbot Rogers reacted quicker than any of the others to the shot which killed young Melanie’s father. The echo had barely faded, when he had grabbed hold of the girl’s dress and unceremoniously dragged her to the ground. Then he shouted urgently to the rest of the crowd, who were standing around looking quite at a loss, ‘Get yourselves into the barn! Hurry, now!’ He had no more idea than anybody else who was shooting, but that didn’t matter all that much. The main thing was to get out of sight of the gunman, whoever he might be.
After calling his warning to the others, Talbot manhandled the frightened girl into the barn, half dragging and half shoving her, making sure that they kept as low as could be. There were no other shots.
Once everybody was safely in the barn, Talbot drew his pistol and ventured to peep through a crack
in the rough wooden wall. He saw a dozen or so riders, sitting on their horses and staring in the direction of the barn. He had not the least notion who they might be, but could tell that they meant mischief. The riders were a pretty nondescript bunch to look at, the only bright colour to be seen was a scarlet bandana around the neck of one of the men. Other than that, they were a dusty, travel-stained crew by the look of them. The girl, far from resenting his rough handling of her, seemed to regard Talbot as a pillar of strength. She huddled near him, obviously finding comfort and a feeling of safety in his presence.
One of the Butterfield’s men came over to Talbot and said, ‘Any idea what’s to do, sir?’
‘Not in the least,’ he replied, slightly irritated that everybody appeared to take it as a matter of course that he would know more than they about any situation. ‘Some business rival of yours, perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so . . .’ began the young man, before realizing that the question had not been meant seriously. He said, ‘We got rifles in the office. You think as I should break ’em out?’
‘Depends how attached you are to this life. I’d say that we might be about to fight for our lives.’
As it happened, Talbot was quite wrong about this, for as he watched, the band of riders abruptly whirled round and made off away from the town at a fair lick. The danger appeared to be over.
‘Stay in here, you folk,’ he told the others who were huddled against the walls of the barn, making sure that they couldn’t be seen from outside. ‘I’m going to see what’s what.’
There was no mystery about the rapid disappearance of the men who had begun firing at them, because once Talbot was standing in the road which passed through Greenhaven on the way to Fort Williams, he saw at once that a body of men were coming on towards the town. Even though they were a good mile away, Talbot was able to see that they were all wearing blue and that they were travelling as a compact and well-ordered group. If they ain’t cavalry, thought Talbot to himself, then I’m a Dutchman.
As it happened, Talbot Rogers was not a Dutchman and the riders who shortly rode into Greenhaven were indeed a troop of U.S. Cavalry from Fort Williams. It seemed likely that the men who had taken a shot at the passengers from the mail coach had spotted the approaching troops and decided to hightail it away from the town. The young captain in charge of the men didn’t find the news of the shooting to be all that interesting. He certainly showed no inclination to go chasing off after the killers of Clarence Barker.
‘I’m sorry and all,’ said the officer, ‘but we’ve important business away north. Need a little shoeing done, if your smith can oblige. Other than that, we’ll not be lingering hereabouts.’
Talbot toyed with the idea of handing over the letter which Carson had entrusted to him. The dead man had, though, been most insistent about the need for the missive to be placed only in the hands of the officer commanding at Fort Williams. Besides which, these men were heading away from the fort. Talbot apprehended that there was some urgency in the matter. Now that he had seen these people safely here and there were a bunch of soldiers around, he felt that he could decently leave them to their own devices.
As he moved from person to person, saying a few words here and there, Talbot was uncomfortably aware that the girl Melanie was sticking to him like a cocklebur. He felt that he should perhaps condole with her on the death of her father, but hardly knew the right words to do so. Happen one of the ladies will take her under their wing, he thought hopefully. His aim was not to make a big announcement about his departure, but simply to slip quietly away when folk were otherwise occupied and leave without even bidding any of them farewell. The only fly in that particular ointment was the young girl who would not leave his side. When he sidled over to his horse, or rather the horse which he had commandeered back at the site of the ambush, Talbot found that the girl still had no evident intention of letting him leave. It was, he decided, time for some plain speaking.
‘Look, Miss . . .’ he began.
‘Oh, please don’t call me Miss,’ said the girl, ‘it makes me feel old. Just Melanie will do fine.’
‘Miss Melanie,’ said Talbot, ‘I know you won’t be offended, but I have to leave now. I know you’ve had a terrible loss and I’m sorry for it, but I have business to attend to.’
‘Loss?’ said the girl. ‘Oh, you mean my pa. Truth to tell, I didn’t really know him. Not ’til a week or two back, anyways. Never got the chance to get to know him, as you might say.’
‘That makes mighty strange listening,’ Talbot said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin, ‘but I don’t have time to talk on it. Run along and tell your story to one of the ladies, there’s a good girl.’
‘You’re going to Fort Williams, ain’t you?’
‘That I am.’
‘Well then, I guess as it won’t harm you none to have me ride along o’ you. My pa has, had kin up that way. I don’t know what’ll become of me if I’m stuck here.’
She could see that Talbot was wavering and redoubled her efforts, saying, ‘I feel safe with you, sir. I know you won’t let nothing hurt me.’
‘It’s a two day ride from here. It would mean sleeping out another night.’
‘I don’t mind that. I’ve camped out with my cousins.’
It was very clear to Talbot Rogers that if he delayed much longer then others would notice that he was heading off and then they too would ask to accompany him. If he just agreed to take this child with him, he might yet be able to slip off without any fuss.
‘This is a d . . . I mean to say deuce of a nuisance,’ he said irritably, ‘can’t you attach yourself to some other individual? I’m surely not one to play nursemaid to you.’
The girl looked so crestfallen to be spoken to thus, that Talbot felt ashamed. She had, after all, come within a whisker of being raped and then seen several people shot dead, including her own father. It was a hell of a thing for her to go through and she only fifteen years of age. He said, ‘Oh, very well. Fetch your horse over here, without making a production of it and we’ll just go off quietly.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, a broad grin splitting her face, ‘thank you so much!’
As Talbot had figured, there was so much fuss and talking going on between the passengers from the stage, the folk living in the town and the troopers from the fort, that nobody noticed the two of them leading their horses off. When they were a hundred yards or so from the barn, Talbot said, ‘Well, mount up then and we’ll be off.’
As they trotted south, Talbot thought over one last time the possibility that he had any sort of responsibility either to care further for his fellow passengers from the mail coach or to tell them of his impending departure. Try as he might, he couldn’t see that he owed any of those people a thing.
Once they were fairly on their way, Talbot thought that he should ask the child a little about herself, maybe comfort her a little, seeing as she had had a pretty bad time of it lately. Before he could say anything though, Melanie Barker herself spoke.
‘How come you stopped being a lawman?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you like it any more?’
Talbot turned and looked at the girl. She was the first person in a good, long while who had asked him that question straight out like that. He thought for a space and then said slowly, ‘I don’t know as I’d say I didn’t like it any more. I was good at it and it was never really work for me. Riding out alone, answerable to nobody. It was a good life.’
‘You weren’t answerable to anybody?’ she asked in surprise. ‘I thought this was an army thing?’
‘Well, so it was. But they gave me my head, as you might say. The officer above me, he knew that if he let me be, I’d bring back the man I went after. They kind of let me get on with it.’
‘So why’d you stop?’
‘For a young person, you’re mighty pressing. Here’s the way of it. Most all those I went in search of were wanted on the capital charge. Murderers, rapists and such. You know what I mean by the capital charge?
’
She shook her head.
‘Means that when they fetched up before the court martial, they was liable to draw a death sentence. Mostly hanging, sometimes shooting. As arresting officer, it was my duty to attend the executions. After some years, I’d seen enough men die like that and so I left the army.’
The girl didn’t say anything for the next few minutes and when the silence looked as though it was going to stretch on uncomfortably long, Talbot said, ‘So how come you didn’t know your pa that well?’
She shrugged. ‘He left my ma when I was too little to remember him. Went off with another woman. Some time since, Ma and me’d been scrapping like cat and dog and one day, he just turns up on the doorstep.’
‘What did you and your mother fight over?’
‘Nothing special. When I could put up my hair, some boy I wanted to go on a picnic with. Just things.’
‘So where did your pa fit into the scheme?’
‘He told Ma that he wanted to get to know me. Said he’d got himself a new job away over in El Paso. They kind of agreed that I could go live with him for a spell. Ma’d had about enough o’ me by then and so told him he was welcome to me.’
Talbot thought about this and then said, ‘So how did you get along with him?’
‘All right, I guess. I never set eyes on him ’til two weeks since, so I never had a chance to get to know him real good. But I recollect as he told me that his mother lived nigh to Fort Williams.’
The landscape through which the two of them were riding was monotonous and bleak. It wasn’t desert, but the land was arid and the only vegetation sparse and scrubby.
Although Talbot was a solitary-minded individual, he observed that young Melanie was bright and lively enough and would probably be apt to liven up the journey to some extent. He had in his time had to endure travelling companions who were a sight duller than this child and so he thought that all things considered, the next few days might not be so bad.