“Yes, please.”
He went inside and took a clean cup from the shelf. The men were standing about, most of them silent. It was a cold morning, they had only just gotten out of bed, and they did not feel talkative.
He took the coffee outside. “It’s hot,” he warned. “Be careful.”
“Thank you.”
He put his hat on and stood beside her as she sipped the coffee. “If there is anything you want,” he said, “just tap on the underside of the roof. I’ll hear you.”
“I will be all right.” She hesitated ever so little, and then said, “Mr. Coburn, you are a gentleman.”
He made no reply, and she looked up to see his eyes were on the man who was walking up the street. The fourth passenger.
He was a lean, wiry man wearing a black coat and a tied-down gun. He carried a blanket roll in his left hand, which he tossed to the stage-top. Only then did he turn to face them, looking first at Matt, then at Madge Healy.
He had deep, sunken eyes, and thin brows on a narrow face. When he looked at Matt, the gaze straight but the eyes curiously unalive, Matt was reminded of a snake he had once seen at close quarters. The man’s clothing was new, a store-bought outfit still showing the creases of the packing case. Only the gun was not new. It was a gun that showed much use.
“You drivin’?” he asked.
“No, Dandy Burke is driving. He’s inside right now.”
The man turned away, and when he had gone inside the girl said, “Do you know him?”
“No.”
“That is Pike Sides, the Cherry Creek gunman.”
“Thanks.”
Matt knew something about him. He was from West Virginia by way of Texas and Old Mexico. He had killed a man in Chihuahua, another in Durango. He had been involved briefly in the Lincoln County War, had been involved in a shooting in Vernal, Utah, and had killed a man in Pioche and another at Silver Reef. He was occasionally a gambler, and his gun was for hire.
Burke came out and lit the lamp on the near side of the coach.
“I wouldn’t do that, Dandy,” Matt said quietly. “Anyway, it will be light soon.”
Kearns and Dunning emerged from the shack and mounted the step to the coach. Matt helped Madge Healy in, then stepped to the door and took his shotgun from under his slicker. He carried the slicker out, too, holding under it a gunbelt loaded with shotgun shells.
Pike Sides came out, glancing from the shotgun to Matt Coburn. “You the ol’ bull o’ the woods around here?” he asked.
“Just a hired hand,” Matt replied carelessly. “If I hold this shotgun while I ride they give me a free trip.”
Sides grinned, but said nothing and mounted to the stage. Dandy Burke glanced at Clyde. “All right, boys. Let her go.”
Burke swung up and Matt Coburn followed. Matt looked down at the little crowd around the shack that doubled as a stage station—Felton, Cohan and Zeller, Buckwalter, Gage, Clyde. He lifted a hand and Burke cracked his whip and the horses leaned into the harness.
The stage went down the rocky street, swung into the trail, and headed for the main trail at Cowboy Pass. Matt held his shotgun between his knees and lighted a cigar.
“You think Madge is leaving?” Burke asked. “Is she pulling her freight?”
Matt considered the question, then shook his head. “I doubt it. She’s held on for a while, and she’s game. Game as they come.”
“You think she did it?”
“No. But I wouldn’t have blamed her.”
“He was a skunk.”
Dandy Burke popped his whip over the heads of the leaders and the team straightened out to run. They swung into Cowboy Pass just where it emerged into Snake Valley. The land opened wide before them, the trail showing across the dusty plain toward the far-off, towering mountains of the Snake Range.
As the team lined out on the trail, Matt pointed ahead. “Stay with it, Dandy. Don’t make the turn.”
“The best trail is south of here.”
“I know it. The trail west is good enough when it’s dry, and it’s dry now. I scouted it a few days ago.”
Matt Coburn rolled his cigar into the corner of his mouth and, still holding the shotgun between his knees, he could reach the belt of shotgun shells around his waist under his coat. He had a handful of shells bulging each pocket. They were for Indians, like the rifle at his feet. With outlaws it was one or two shots as a rule, and he had them or they had him. So far they had never had him.
Dust devils danced on the valley floor. Over there near Jeff Davis Peak, the tallest peak in the range, was Sacramento Pass. The pass was the first danger, now that they had avoided skirting the hills to the south.
“Take it fast across the valley, ease up at the foot of the mountains. We’re going to change horses at Silver Creek.”
Burke glanced at him. “They’ll be expecting us at the station.”
“I know it.”
The team was a good one. He had six head of broncs, half broken but full of guts and ready to run their hearts out.
Matt Coburn turned and looked back the way they had come, then let his eyes turn toward the main trail, the way they should have come. There was no dust yet.
You had to give them time. He knew they would be coming soon.
Chapter 7
*
FREEMAN DORSET WAS frightened. It was a feeling he would have admitted to no one, not even to himself. He had acted, as always, on an impulse.
He considered himself a dangerous man. He was a good shot, and he carried himself with a good deal of dash and swagger. He had practiced with a gun until he was fast—exceptionally fast, he believed.
Wherever he went, when there was talk of gunfighters and gunmen it was Hickok, Courtright, Wes Harden, and Billy the Kid who were talked of. But among those who knew the mining-camp country there was more talk of Langford Peel, John Bull, Jim Levy, Calvin Bell, or Matt Coburn. Always, always, Matt Coburn.
Dorset had taken the job riding for Rafter reluctantly. It was beneath him to be just a rider, earning thirty dollars a month. He was a gun-hand, a gun for hire. When he realized that Coburn was to get a hundred dollars for riding to Carson City, he was astounded.
His own offer, made suddenly, without thinking, had been simply ignored. Then, to top it all, Joss Ringgold, whom he had treated contemptuously as an old cowhand, proved to have been an outlaw with a reputation. The old man had probably been laughing at him all the time. Dorset’s cheeks burned at the thought.
At the mention of Harry Meadows, who was not afraid of Coburn, Dorset suddenly made up his mind. He would show them who was afraid of Matt Coburn!
Coburn had mentioned following Meadows, and instantly Free Dorset knew where Meadows had gone. More than two weeks before, hunting strays and checking available grass and water, Dorset had sighted a thin rise of smoke. Curious, he investigated. A lone man was camped in a tiny park, and from the appearance of the camp he had been there for some time. Later, checking again, he had seen two men in the camp. Without doubt, it was there Meadows was hiding.
At first it was only the idea that had just come to him. It was like many of those other times when he had vowed to himself that he would show somebody—something he had in his mind but had no serious thought of doing. But in this case he had done it—he had ridden to Meadows’ camp.
There were four men in the camp when he rode down the dim trail into the park. There were eight horses, but only four saddles and two packsaddles. He kept himself well in the open and came down the trail with no attempt at concealment.
Three of the men were about his own age, or a year or two older. One of them was a lean, dark, savage-looking man with long hair and a tied-down gun. “Are you Meadows?” he asked.
The somewhat older man who was seated on the ground with his back to a log spoke up. He had thin blond hair, a sparse beard—in general a nondescript appearance. “I’m Meadows. Who are you?”
“I’m Freeman Dorset. I came huntin’ Harry Meadows be
cause I heard he wasn’t afraid of Matt Coburn.”
Meadows sat up slowly, his eyes on Dorset. “Now, where did you hear a thing like that?”
“Matt Coburn said it himself. They were talkin’ how somebody might hold up the stage when it leaves Confusion with the gold.”
“Coburn said that, did he? What else did he say?”
“He didn’t figure you’d try it. He said you were too smart. Said there’d be other times when he wasn’t riding shotgun.”
Harry Meadows chewed thoughtfully on a blade of grass. After a moment he said, “Where was this? And who was there?”
“At the Rafter. I’m workin’ over there while I size things up. This here seemed to me to be a good thing if I had the right people with me.”
“I asked who else was there.”
“Newt Clyde, that Wells Fargo gent, Dick Felton from the Discovery mines at Confusion, and my boss. She’s Laurie Shannon.”
Meadows chewed on the grass blade in silence. Dorset found himself growing impatient. “They’ll be carrying fifty thousand in gold,” he said with authority. “That’s enough for all of us.”
Nobody commented for a minute or two, then one of the others spoke up. “What I want to know is what Coburn was doin’ at the Rafter?”
Meadows took the grass from his teeth. “Is he ridin’ a appaloosy—black an’ white?”
“Uh-huh—a good horse, too.”
“So…we might have knowed. You figure that was him, Kendrick?”
“Who else? I told you somebody was skirtin’ around the hills kind of aimless-like…like he had nowheres to go and plenty of time to get there. You think he’s spotted us, Harry?”
“Look at it,” Harry Meadows said. “Even this green-horn had us spotted. I should have figured on that, on’y it didn’t seem likely anybody would be around these hills.”
“He’s just one man,” Dorset interrupted. “He’s got just two hands.”
They ignored him. He stared at them angrily. What had he come over here for, anyway? As he shaped the question his mind suddenly asked him: Well, why had he come?
Was he aiming to turn outlaw? Or was it simply that he was jealous of Matt Coburn’s reputation? Was it because he himself had no reputation?
“I want in,” he said sharply. “After all, I told you about Coburn and the fifty thousand.”
“We knew about Coburn,” Kendrick said roughly. “We’ve known for days. We knew he was going to be asked before it ever happened.”
“And the shipment won’t be fifty thousand, it will be a hundred thousand,” Harry Meadows said, “but who wants to buy the kind of trouble Matt Coburn has to offer?”
“We’d have to kill him,” one of the men said, “else he’d follow us to hell an’ gone.”
Harry Meadows was wary of a trap. Like an old plains coyote, he was as shrewd as he was dangerous. His career as an outlaw had been uniformly successful in evading the law, even if he had not always come off with the big strikes.
He had grown up in the back country of Missouri, one of a family who had lived off well-to-do people on the flatlands, stealing stock, occasionally raiding country stores. Then as a boy he had struck out for the West, selling liquor to Indians, stealing cattle and horses, and finally stealing money.
Wells Fargo had occasion to know him well. He was not a man to be lured by big money, for big money incurred big risks, and Harry Meadows had been born without a reckless bone in his tough, wiry body. He liked living and he liked his freedom, and his strikes had been carefully planned, neatly executed, with no false motion.
The one man whom he had reason to hate was Dandy Burke. There had been $9,000 in the Wells Fargo box, and Meadows knew it. He had stopped the stage near the crest of a steep grade and ordered Burke to get down. As Burke got down he spoke to his team, and well-trained as they were, they commenced to back up. Meadows, who had not heard Burke’s low-voiced command, was irritated by this. The edge of the trail was too close and it was six hundred feet to the bottom of the canyon. “Stop them!” he ordered.
Dandy Burke obligingly climbed back on the box, took up the reins, and said over his shoulder something about “…on top.” He eased the stage forward, and as it topped the ridge Dandy let go a wild Texas yell, cracked his whip over the leaders, and the stage lunged ahead, leaving Harry Meadows standing with his mouth open as it raced around a bend and out of sight.
The story had been told and laughed at in every bar and bunkhouse over half a dozen states, and Harry Meadows did not like being laughed at. He had made known his displeasure, and had voiced his intentions toward Burke, when and if he found him again.
Now he was faced with a problem. He wanted Burke, and he wanted the hundred thousand. His spies in Confusion had reported the find of the nugget and had told how large the shipment would actually be, but Meadows wanted no part of Matt Coburn.
Now he thought he saw a way.
He glanced up at Dorset, and gestured to his gun. “Are you any good with that?”
“You’re damn right I am!”
“As good as Coburn?”
“Well,” Dorset said with elaborate carelessness, “I’ve heard a lot of talk, but I never seen any of his graveyards.”
Kendrick caught a glimmering of what Meadows had in mind, and said, “Nobody could be blamin’ you if you was afraid to tackle him.”
“Who said I was afraid?” Dorset demanded.
“He’s not scared.” Meadows sat up. “I can size ’em up, Kendrick. Dorset ain’t scared. Anyway, why should he be? Coburn is mostly reputation. He isn’t all that fast.”
Meadows started to roll a cigarette. “Anyway, Dorset wants to join up with us…at least for this deal. Now, we already knew about the shipment and how big it was, an’ he’s smart enough to know if we want that gold we’ve got just one problem.”
Harry Meadows touched his tongue to the paper. “I think Dorset is just the man for it. He’s fast with a gun, he ain’t one least bit scared of Matt Coburn, so he’s just the man to stop him.”
“To what?” Freeman Dorset had an uncomfortable feeling that things were moving faster than he wanted, and in a direction he had not considered.
“To stop Coburn. To put a bullet into him.”
“Man, what a scalp that would be!” Kendrick agreed. “To be known as the man who downed Matt Coburn!”
“Now, just a minute!” Dorset protested. “I ain’t the least bit scared of Matt Coburn, but I—”
“Strawberry Station, that would be the place,” Meadows interrupted. “Dorset could make his own plans. He’ll know best how it should be done, but it ought to be at Strawberry, right at the opening of Sacramento Pass through the Snakes. If Dorset puts Coburn out of action at Strawberry, we could take the stage in the pass. A thing like that, gettin’ rid of Coburn, that would call for a big slice of the pie—maybe twenty-five thousand of it.”
The others looked at Harry Meadows, but he avoided their eyes. “Up on the box, with that shotgun, Coburn could be mighty hard to handle, but down on the ground at Strawberry, unexpected-like…”
“Now, wait just a minute!” Dorset protested again.
The dark, savage-looking man spoke up. “For that much,” he said, “I’ll tackle him myself.”
Meadows shook his head. “He knows Dorset here. He could get close to him, take him unexpected-like…not that he’d need to, y’understand.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars!” Kendrick said, drawing a long breath. “That’s a sight of money.”
Freeman Dorset was perplexed. How had he gotten into this situation anyway? He had come here in anger and some spite, only half in the notion of doing anything about it, and now instead of perhaps having a hand in a stage holdup, here he was being saddled with a shooting, and of Matt Coburn, of all people.
“You can see he’s not the kind to scare easy,” Meadows persisted. “Coburn probably takes him for nothing but a loose-mouthed kid. Wait’ll he sees him with a gun in his hand!”
&nbs
p; To back out would seem cowardly, but Dorset wanted desperately to back out. He was not conscious of any fear of Matt Coburn, it was simply that he had not bargained for any of this. What he had done had been done on the impulse of a moment, but getting in was easier than getting out.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said lamely. “I’d need to plan, see how it shapes up.”
“Nothing to plan,” Meadows persisted, “nothing to shape up. Coburn will ride the stage into Strawberry. He’ll find everything as it should be. He’ll be tired, off-guard. How you do it is your own affair, but it’ll be dark, and I’d say the best thing is to suddenly yell at him. ‘Who’s a liar?’ an’ shoot as you yell. He’ll be dead, and folks will say he called you a liar and you beat him to the draw.”
Free Dorset was a weak young man, and he was tempted. He had seen the awe that surrounded men like Matt Coburn; he had seen the way heads turned when they passed, and how strong men moved aside for them. He was torn between what he wanted and the sneaking realization that he was not man enough to bring it off. Yet that realization was only a dark shadow in the back of his mind, and he could already see himself walking hard-booted down the boardwalks of western towns, pointed out as “the man who killed Matt Coburn.” He had dreamed of such a thing, and now the possibility was here.
Along with it, twenty-five thousand dollars in gold. More than he was likely to see in a lifetime of hard work.
“I don’t need no tricks. I can beat him without them.”
“Sure you can. But why not a little insurance?”
“If you’d leave right now,” Kendrick suggested, “you could be there waitin’ when the stage pulled in.”
“I wasn’t figurin’ on anything like this,” Dorset protested. “I mean, bein’ gone so long. Miss Shannon, she’s sure to be wonderin’ whatever happened.”
“Don’t let that worry you none a-tall,” Meadows replied easily. “You just ride over to the Rafter. Before evenin’ one o’ the boys will come driftin’ by an’ say how he seen some Rafter stock over next to Strawberry. She’s o’ny got you an’ that ol’ man, an’ he won’t be beggin’ for no ride. If she don’t ask you to go, you just speak up and offer, but give her a chance to ask.”
Novel 1969 - The Empty Land (v5.0) Page 6