The Highbinders

by F. M. Parker

  Terpin shook off John’s clutch and slapped him in the face.

  “Just take it easy, old man. I’m going to trade you seats on the stagecoach.” He reached for the ticket. As he did so, his fingers struck the strings of the fiddle and a sharp discordant note rang out.

  Tom came instantly awake. He saw Terpin’s hand near the fiddle. Tom reached and clamped the hand in a viselike hold.

  “Don’t break the fiddle,” Tom said.

  The man yanked back, trying to pull free. Tom arose with the man’s motion, coming immediately to his feet.

  The man tried again, jerking powerfully to wrench away. Tom squeezed the hand harder and twisted. The man winced.

  The weeks carrying boulders with Yutang had greatly increased Tom’s strength and he knew that he was stronger than this man.

  “Just stand still,” Tom warned. He plucked the six-gun from the man’s holster and tossed it on the floor.

  Tom spoke over his shoulder. “John, what’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “He was trying to steal my stage ticket,” answered John. “When I tried to stop him, he bloodied my nose.”

  Terpin saw the eyes of the youth, only inches from his own, suddenly take fire and burn with fury. Then a hard fist smacked him in the face.

  “Now he has a nosebleed too,” said Tom. He looked quickly at the man’s partner.

  That man was moving sideways trying to get a better view of Tom.

  Instantly Tom swung Terpin left to put him more completely between himself and the second man.

  Tom cried out in a voice like steel striking steel. “If you move again, or reach for your gun, I’ll kill you.”

  “I don’t bluff easy,” hissed the man.

  “But you’ll die easy.” Tom was outraged at the meanness of the two men. He felt the wolf rising in his heart as he had that day when the thieves had tried to take the Chinamen’s gold. He flung the first man aside and stood poised.

  It seemed the distance separating him from the threatening man diminished by half as he focused on him. That every living thing in the room became immobile and time stood still.

  “Stokes, kill him,” shouted Terpin through the blood gushing from his nostrils and cascading over his mouth and chin.

  “Yes. Kill me if you can,” said Tom. The feeling of anger ran through his mind like arctic winter. The urge to begin the fight himself grew rapidly.

  John looked up at the young man who moved with such deceptive swiftness and strength. He sensed the building desire of Tom to do battle. John’s own heart began a wild tattoo of flutters. He believed Tom could kill the man and he did not want him to do that.

  “Let him go, Tom. Don’t shoot him because of me,” John said.

  At the old fiddler man’s calm voice, Tom grappled with his anger. It was difficult to hold in.

  “It’s not worth it,” said the old man. “Let him go.”

  John was correct, Tom knew. A cold wind seemed to blow through his brain and the violence in him was whisked away.

  “Get away from me. Get out of here,” Tom ordered.

  Stokes hesitated, evaluating Tom. The immense confidence of the youth was sapping Stokes’s courage. Some animal instinct told him he would be lucky to get out the door alive. He left at a run.

  Terpin made as if to retrieve his six-gun.

  “Leave it,” ordered Tom. “Go while you can.”

  The man hurriedly moved through the door after his partner.

  The manager went to the door, shoved it closed and dropped a heavy bar into place to secure it. “They are two goddamned bastards,” he said.

  Tom took a seat beside John. Now that the danger was past, his heart hammered on his ribs. The killing had been a near thing.

  “Thanks, John, for stopping me from shooting them,” Tom said. “But we got his nose bloodied damn fine.”

  * * *

  The driver was awakened and brought from the only bedroom in the station. The women retired there for the night. The men slept on the floor of the main room.

  * * *

  The sky in the early morning was a brilliant blue, swept clean by the passing arctic storm. The temperature was far below freezing. The snow crunched beneath the iron-shod hooves of the prancing coach horses as they were led from the stables. In the rays of the bright sun, frost on their winter coats of hair sparkled like a thousand tiny jewels.

  The three teams of horses were backed into position on opposite sides of the tongue of the stagecoach and the trace chains hooked to the single trees. Baggage was brought from the station and crammed into the boot in the rear of the coach or tied on top.

  “Bundle up in your heaviest coats and get aboard,” shouted the driver. He scampered up the front wheel and into the driver’s box. He threaded the reins between his fingers and looked down at the passengers as they loaded into the coach. The Paiute scrambled up over the luggage in the boot and settled himself among the boxes and bags on top.

  There were four bench seats in pairs situated crosswise the coach. Tom took one next to a window. John sat beside him and one of the cowboys occupied the third seat. The two women and the other cowboy sat facing them. The remaining passengers found space in the facing seats in the other end of the coach.

  The long bullwhip cracked and the rested horses, invigorated by the cold, left the station at a run. Snow swirled up and trailed the coach in a white, billowing tail.

  The driver soon pulled the horses down to a trot and went directly south on a well-used road through slightly rolling grassland.

  The coach lurched as it dipped into a small gully crossing the road. The young woman opposite Tom was jostled and her knee rested against his for a moment. She smiled at him and drew away.

  Tom had never being so near a woman. This one was very pretty and not much older than he. From then on Tom did not know which he enjoyed the most, the lovely woman directly in his line of sight and whose leg touched his from time to time, or the delightful stagecoach ride. He did know that the thought of her kept him warm in the cold drafts that came in past the window curtains of the coach.

  Shortly before midday, the stage halted at Summit Spring. The passengers and driver had lunch and fresh horses replaced the tired ones. The horses were changed again at Ten Mile Creek. At dusk, the snow-covered Steens Mountains were passed on the far borders of the western sky.

  Once darkness came, it seemed to Tom that the woman’s leg touched his more frequently. Finally, after a hard jolt, the warm pressure of her leg remained pressed to his. He made no effort to draw away. He was exhilarated and he knew his heart was racing. Why did the mere touch of her do this to him?

  Fort McDermitt, sitting astride the Oregon and Nevada border, was reached in the snowlight of a high, cold moon. The stage stopped in front of the yellow, lighted doorway of the station. The passengers climbed stiffly out after many hours of travel.

  All the luggage and parcels were removed from the coach. The soldiers gathered their belongings and walked away into the dark and snow. The women and the cowboys left shortly thereafter, off along the street.

  Tom felt a loss at the going of the woman. He watched after her, thinking she would look back. Not once did she turn her head. She disappeared into the night with her friends.

  Tom pondered over the girl for a few seconds and then shook his head. He would like to learn more about females.

  Tom glanced at the dim outlines of the buildings lining the street. He wished it were not dark so he could see the town.

  “Food’s ready,” a woman called from the lighted doorway of the stage station.

  “How are you holding up?” Tom asked John.

  “Fine. I can stand anything knowing California is getting closer.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes. If you have enough money, let’s see what they have prepared for us.”

  They dined with the other passengers on roast beef and potatoes, boiled eggs and the flesh of crab. “See what I told you,” said John an
d pointed at the crab. “The ocean and California are getting nearer.”

  The woman cook heard John’s words and spoke. “With the railroad at Winnemucca and ice every place, it is easy to get seafood.”

  “And crab is my favorite kind,” responded John, taking another serving.

  The replacement driver came to the door of the station. “I’m loading the luggage now. The stage leaves in ten minutes.”

  There was a last foray on the food and the passengers filed outside. Tom was amazed, for in the light shining from the door, he saw a larger and nearly new coach.

  The body of the coach was a bright red and the undercarriage a rich yellow. There were splendid, thick cushions on the seats. Still, only twelve passengers could be seated. The extra space was taken up by army pouches, mail and other special parcels that required speedy transport.

  The stagecoach left on the blackness of the night. It plunged south along the Quinn River into a bleak and lonely land.

  The terrain was an intermontane basin, an area as large as France from which no streams flowed, an area where once gigantic north-south-trending blocks of the earth’s crust had been thrust upward, and then eroded and carved by wind and water into long mountain ranges. The rivers that were born on the mountains all flowed into miles-broad alkali flats of the lowlands and there dwindled away to nothing in the sands.

  Four hours later, Flat Creek Station was reached. Tom got out to stretch his legs and stood in the snow while a change of horses was being made. In the starlight he could tell the land was wide and open to the west. The giant bulk of a mountain, the Santa Rosas, one of the passengers had said earlier, blocked out the stars on the east.

  Ahead there were deeper shades of black where the valleys of streams came down from the mountain. Those would be dangerous to cross and a wreck could happen easily in the dark. Still, the skilled driver and the night-seeing eyes of the horses were keeping them all from harm.

  His father had told him about stagecoach travel. He had not mentioned that a portion of the journeying would be in the night.

  The coach moved swiftly behind trotting horses in the cold morning hours. It rode easily, rocking on the leather through-brace shock absorbers. Tom dozed.

  The sun came up over the high Santa Rosas and evaporated the darkness. Tom opened the leather side curtains and stuck his head out the window to view the country.

  The Quinn River lay three or four miles to the west. The tall Santa Rosas to the east were carrying the morning sun on their rocky spines. Ahead past the trotting horses, the valley of the Quinn River stretched onward for a dozen miles before it veered west.

  Soon the road swerved southeast and climbed up into a pass cutting through the rugged Santa Rosas. Just as the grade broke to the east, the stage reached Willow Point.

  Horses were swapped and the coach rocketed down the eastern grade into the glistening, snow-covered Paradise Valley. The last battleground of the Paiute nation, where two years before the U.S. Army had finally caught and conquered the hostile warriors.

  The stage drove directly south, paralleling the Little Humbolt River and its braided channel. The road ran on the wavecut terraces and beaches, marking the shores of an ancient sea that once, twelve thousand years before, filled the valley hundreds of feet deep.

  Small herds of cattle and bands of sheep grazed the tall, wild rye grass in the river bottom. Some ten miles farther east, the Hot Springs Mountains were visible. Immediately behind them, and towering over their lesser neighbors by half a mile, were the Osgood Mountains.

  The stage drew to a halt at the main Humbolt River. Both banks were lined with thick ice extending ten feet or so out into the water. A four-man work crew, two men on each shore of the river, were chopping at the ice with axes. Beneath the slashing blades, the ice shattered and sailed away in sprays of silver shards.

  One of the workmen hurried up to the driver. “We’ve finished cutting the path for the horses and stage. Whip them up so you get a run at that steep far bank.”

  “Damnation,” cursed the driver. “I know how to drive these horses. Get the hell out of the way.”

  With a wild yell from the driver and the nine-foot whip popping near the ears of the horses, the coach plunged down the bank and into the ice and water. The driver lowered the metal end of the snapping bullwhip to touch a lagging steed. The animal surged forward to tighten his traces.

  The solid vehicle rattled over the stony bottom of the river ford and bounced up the bank behind a scramble of driving hooves. A minute later, with a squeal of brakes and taut reins, the stagecoach came to a halt at the station in the center of Winnemucca—the site the Shoshone people had once called, “Place by the Water.”

  The town consisted of sixteen boxlike wooden buildings on the south bank of the Humbolt River. The structures lined a snow-covered dirt street that extended a short distance up a low grade to the south. Three miles beyond the termination of the main street, the ten thousand feet high Sonoma Mountains rose precipitously out of the grass and sagebrush desert.

  Tom and John stood on the only stretch of sidewalk in the town, a fifty-foot section of wood planks running in front of the stage station and the hotel next door. Hammers rang in the cold desert air at half a score of buildings under construction. A large structure of three stories was nearing completion near the railroad tracks.

  “Not much of a town right now,” said John. “But it soon will be. The coming of a railroad and the discovery of gold always makes for boom times. I’ll bet that big building by the tracks is a new hotel. They always build them close to the depot.”

  Tom remained silent for he had no comparison to make.

  John continued to speak. “However, San Francisco and Sacramento are real cities. You will be seeing them soon.”

  “Let’s find out when the next train leaves heading west,” said Tom.

  They shouldered their gear and tramped along the streets to the train depot.

  The agent of the railroad at the depot answered their question. “The train leaves daily for Sacramento at three P.M. You have about a half hour to wait.”

  “John, we haven’t really rested for more than a day and a half,” said Tom. “Do you want to sleep for a night or catch the next train out?”

  “What do you want?” countered John, looking out over the sere cold emptiness of the valley.

  Tom grinned. “I’m anxious to get on with the journey. I’ve a woman to meet in San Francisco, and I’m sure there is much to see and many things to do there.”

  “Good. Let’s take the first train. We’ll catch what rest we can on the move.” John felt an urgency to not delay, for there was a tremble of weakness running throughout his body. His limit of endurance had been exceeded and he was traveling on raw nerve alone. He did not want to gamble on becoming more ill and dying in this grim land. He would make California or perish on the way.

  CHAPTER 14

  The locomotive gave a shrill whistle, a belch of steam, and its driver wheels began to grind for grip on the iron rails. Towing three passenger coaches and two mail cars, the engine crept from the Winnemucca Station.

  Tom settled back upon the upholstered seat beside John and watched out the window. The speed built and the sound of the wheels hitting the joints of the rail sections grew to a rapid, unending series of dull clicks. The snowscape glided past faster than the swiftest horse could run. Altogether a very pleasant sensation of movement.

  The conductor in his black uniform came through the coach, collecting tickets. He stopped for a moment at the metal stove in the center of the car and stoked it full of hot burning pinewood.

  Tom smelled the newness of the railroad car and the pungent odor of the pine resin bursting into flame. He was pleased at the comfort and speed of the train.

  “John, I believe I’m going to like this way of traveling,” Tom said.

  “It certainly has advantages over horseback and stagecoach travel,” agreed John. “I’ve heard the Central Pacific has all new
locomotives and coaches on their portion of the transcontinental run.

  Tom watched the passengers swaying to the motion of the car. Nearly all the seats were full. He recognized only the three miners of the stage ride.

  John brushed his hands tiredly across his eyes. “I think I’ll try to get some rest now,” he said.

  Tom looked closely at the pale, old man. He was obviously very ill and yet not once had he complained of the many hours of arduous riding on the cold, jarring stagecoach.

  “There’s more than enough seats for everybody,” said Tom.

  “I’ll find another one. You take all this space and stretch out the best you can.” Tom stood up and walked forward to the seat behind the miners.

  John took his bedroll from the floor at his feet and extracted a blanket to use as a pillow. He lay down.

  The voices of the miners talking among themselves reached Tom. One said, “In fact each year since the foreign miners” tax was passed into law in ‘66, my collections have increased.”

  “Mine have, too,” a second man said. “I bet there are at least three thousand Chinamen in Oregon. Nearly all are mining. They’re panning away on just about every stream that’s showing color.”

  “How much tax have you been collecting?” asked the third man.

  The first man laughed. “Do you mean what did I turn in to the state? Well, now let me recall. In July I tried something new. I hunted Chinamen in the night when they came into their camps after working the creeks. That was a poor month. Only collected eighty licenses. In August I got rough. Had me a China fight. Knocked some down and pulled my iron on the rest. They put out then. Took twenty-nine hundred dollars. September, collected about twenty-four hundred dollars. October, three thousand dollars. Had a great time that month, cut off several Chinamen tails.”

  The second man spoke. “In November I took in forty-one hundred dollars,” he bragged.

  Tom stopped listening. The men were tax collectors. Sigh had told him of the fee Chinese had to pay to mine gold in Oregon. The charge was four dollars each quarter of the year. Tough men were hired by the state to search the creeks and collect the tax.