Dooley came back up, and the wagon was barreling out of Frisco before Dooley got his left leg inside the box.
* * *
Roughly thirty miles. That’s all that separated Frisco from Leadville, and fresh mules could cover that distance in no time. At least, that’s what Dooley thought. But the mud wagon was not a crow. And the road was not much of a road.
Up they went, following Tenmile Creek until darkness swallowed them, for night came early this high in the Rocky Mountains. And before long Dooley Monahan wished he had Blue up in the driver’s box to keep his feet warm.
Dooley thought he might doze again, but not with the lurching wagon, the biting cold, and the curses and popping of the whip. They turned left. They turned right. They ran over logs knocked down by wind and heavy snow. They sank into the thick mud that had not frozen. They skated over the ice when the creek crossed the road.
He smelled the forest. He saw the outlines of trees, of boulders, of towering mountains that made him feel ever so small. He froze his butt off. They stopped at a rise, woke Cody up, and lashed another log to the back wheels and slid down another terrifying ride, with only the light of two lanterns and the eyes of six mules guiding their way. Dooley had half a mind to take General Grant and leave this insanity behind. But he kept telling himself that he was a man of his word, and, well, it was mighty dark in these hills.
Twice, Motz pulled the mud wagon to a stop and made Dooley and Cody and even the loyal blue-haired dog step out and walk up the steep trail behind the coach. Four times, Cody and Dooley had to push, their boots slipping and sliding, trying to find traction on the ice. Once, Cody slipped and began sliding down the ridge, and Dooley grabbed hold of him and slid a few yards, too, before he managed to find a limb that stopped both of them from going all the way down to Clinton Creek or wherever it was the jehu said they were near. Another time, it was Dooley who slipped and Buffalo Bill Cody who stopped his fall.
By dawn, they made the turn and crossed the East Fork of the Arkansas River.
“It’s a piece of cherry pie from here on in to Leadville, boys,” Chester Motz exclaimed. “And there’s hot coffee and marmot dumplin’s waitin’ fer us at Sugar’s place in Leadville.”
“Marmot dumplings?” Dooley thought aloud, and wondered just what he had gotten himself into.
A short—relatively speaking—while later, the mud wagon pulled to a stop at the confluence of Chalk Creek and the East Fork.
“Wake up,” Chester Motz said.
Dooley opened his eyes.
“Some shotgun you is. I’d been better off just proppin’ Horatio’s dead carcass up to be my guard.”
Dooley blinked, yawned, and felt his stomach jump up toward his throat.
Six men blocked the road. They all wore masks. They all pointed shotguns at Dooley Monahan and Chester Motz.
“This is a holdup,” one of the men said.
“No foolin’.” Chester Motz spit tobacco juice into the frozen water.
CHAPTER SIX
“Shotgun,” the leader demanded. At least, Dooley assumed he led the road agents, as he had announced that this was a holdup. Dooley knew what he meant, and he wet his lips, considering his options. The odds had to be worse than actually drawing to an inside straight, but he had hired on to protect the stagecoach. Chester Motz, however, showed his wisdom and common sense by whispering, “Son, there ain’t nothin’ on this haul worth dyin’ fer.”
Using plenty of caution, and deliberately showing the bandits his movements, Dooley thumbed the lever just below the scattergun’s hammers. The barrels tilted forward, and Dooley slowly removed the two loads of buckshot, dropped them between his boots, and then gently laid the shotgun on the top of the canvas roof.
“Pistol, too,” the masked man said. “But drop it over the side. We don’t have all day to watch you unload that six-shooter.”
A few of the men chuckled. At least, Dooley thought they laughed, but it was hard to tell with their masks muffling their voices.
Before Dooley could move to tug the heavy revolver out of his holster, the man with the flour sack for a face waved his pistol and spoke again. “On second thought, just leave the pistol in the holster, and carefully—and I mean real careful, mister—unbuckle the whole rig and drop it over the side.”
“Ain’t you the careful one,” said a big cuss on a piebald mare and with a yellow bandanna over the bottom of his face.
“That man,” the leader said, “is hell with a six-shooter. So, yeah, I aim to be real careful around him.”
Dooley carefully rose off the bench, wondering how the man knew his reputation as a gunman, while pushing open his coat and pulling on the belt. He slid the gun belt well over the side, just so no one thought he might try to pull the Colt, and let it fall. It cracked on the ice.
About that time, the canvas door unfurled, and Buffalo Bill Cody stepped out.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, all in a huff.
“The meaning of this,” said the leader, “is that if you don’t lift them hands, is that Chalk Creek’s ice is gonna be red with your blood till the spring thaw.”
Dooley looked behind him, relieved to see that the legendary frontiersman had left his Winchester Centennial in the coach. What made him breathe easier was when Cody lifted both hands. He did not look happy, but at least he decided not to be the hero he truly was.
For the time being.
“All right,” the leader said. “See what suits you.”
Three of the owlhoots slid out of their saddles, holstering their guns and moving delicately across the slippery ground toward the mud wagon. The others kept their guns aimed at Cody, Motz, and Dooley.
Dooley focused on the leader.
He wore black woolen pants, black boots, and a green plaid mackinaw. A flour sack covered his face, with holes cut out near his eyes, and he wore a tan slouch hat with a yellow bandanna tied over the crown, bringing the brim down over his ears and tied underneath his chin. Instant earmuffs, because it was mighty cold. Dooley had done that several times back during his cowpunching years on the Northern Plains. But the man did not look like a cowboy.
First, he didn’t have spurs. Second, he didn’t carry a lariat. Third, the revolver he held was a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson, far too fancy for a thirty-dollar-a-month-and-found waddie. And his saddle scabbard was empty. Maybe he had loaned his carbine or rifle to one of his colleagues in crime.
Colleagues in crime?
Dooley shook his head.
“I’ve been reading too many dime novels,” he said to himself, “or listening to Buffalo Bill Cody.”
“What’s that?” the leader said.
“Nothing,” Dooley told him.
There was something else about the bandit chieftain. He wore black leather gloves, but the sleeve of his mackinaw and shirt had risen, and Dooley could see a white rag wrapped around his left wrist. The rag appeared to be stained brown, which could have been tobacco juice, but the man was not chewing, and Dooley figured it might be blood.
He wasn’t sure what it meant, but that empty scabbard and that makeshift bandage had him thinking about the assassin in the alley back in Denver City.
Dooley shook his head. That was a stretch.
One of the men lifted Buffalo Bill’s purse from his coat pocket and the .44 caliber Remington from his holster.
“His gun’s almost as pretty as yourn—”
The leader squeezed the trigger, and the bullet slapped into a tree on the side of the road.
The mules jumped in their traces, and one of the outlaws had to dismount and quickly gather the reins to the horses without riders.
“Say my name,” the leader said, “and I kill you, you damned fool, and the passengers.”
“I wasn’t gonna say your name, boss,” the man said. His voice quivered with fear.
“Just get their valuables.”
On the other side of the mud wagon, another outlaw muttered, “I can’t make heads or ta
ils out of all these boxes and stuff in here . . . Hey . . .”
Dooley grimaced. The man had likely spied Buffalo Bill’s rifle.
“There’s a dog in here.”
Inside, Blue growled.
“Nice dog,” the bandit said.
Blue’s growl intensified.
“Nice dog.” Panic filled the outlaw’s voice.
“Blue,” Dooley called out. “Easy, boy. Easy.”
The canvas curtain flapped back, closing the coach, and the outlaw eased away.
“What’s the matter, you yeller cur!” one of the outlaws chided. “You scairt of some dog?”
“Wolfhound,” the man explained. “Blue. Mean critter.”
The men laughed.
Buffalo Bill Cody took a moment to make a speech.
“I assure you boys,” he said, “that you think you have the upper hand, but crime never pays. I know. Not that I ever tried my hand at nefarious, evil schemes, but I have lived on the frontier long enough to have witnessed the folly of men who try to make their fortune on ill-gotten gains. Therefore, I suggest that you forgo this poor judgment. Before hell breaks loose.”
Hell, Dooley knew, always broke loose when he found himself in a predicament like this one. And he had been in many such predicaments. He wished Buffalo Bill would . . .
“Shut your fool mouth!” The criminal nearest Cody took the words right out of Dooley’s mouth.
Buffalo Bill Cody pouted.
The outlaws went about their business.
Dooley tried to make a few mental observations that he hoped he might remember. The horses. He could not see the brands. The saddles. Mostly slick forks, double-rigs, a few with breast collars. But nothing really stood out. And the outlaws themselves seemed pretty much nondescript, with their various masks and standard clothes. The only special weapon, Dooley noticed, was the shiny Smith & Wesson the leader kept aiming at Dooley’s chest. He looked down the trail, but saw only more ice, more snow, and woods lining the road.
“Beans,” said the man checking the luggage boot in the back. “Nails. Minin’ tools. It’ll take a month of Sundays to sort through this, and I ain’t sure we’d find nothin’ of much value. But this here’s a real nice hoss that’s been ridin’ drag.”
“Take the mules,” the leader said.
That got Chester Motz’s hackles up. He reached for the whip in the boot, but now it was Dooley’s turn to offer sage advice.
“Those mules aren’t worth dying for, either, old man,” he said.
“The hell they ain’t,” Motz said in a deadly whisper.
“You want to be the man history will blame for getting Buffalo Bill killed?” Dooley tried again. “Because you pull that whip out, and we’re all dead.”
Motz slipped back onto the hard bench and spit tobacco as some of the boys began unhitching the team.
“How much in that dandy’s billfold?” another outlaw asked the one who had stolen Buffalo Bill’s purse.
“Two hunnert,” the man answered, “maybe more.”
“That’s more like it,” the outlaw searching the boot said.
The other one backed out of the coach and stuck his sawed-off shotgun at Motz. “Strongbox up there, mister?”
“No,” Motz said. “Ain’t carryin’ no mail pouch, neither.”
“Then I’ll take your poke.”
Motz laughed, but lifted his butt off the bench high enough so he could squeeze his fingers into his trousers pocket and pull out a very, very thin pouch, which he tossed down between the outlaw’s boots.
“That’s it?” the man said after picking up the pouch, pulling open the drawstrings, and staring inside.
“Let that be a lesson to you, boy,” Motz said. “Don’t play poker.”
The other man aimed Cody’s Remington .44 at Dooley.
“How ’bout you, shotgun?”
Dooley grinned and found his wallet, which he handed with a gleam in his eyes at the man with the red and white polka-dot wild rag covering the lower part of his face.
“Ain’t nothin’ in here but some coins,” the man said.
“Denver prices,” Dooley explained.
The mules were being led away.
“This ain’t hardly worth our time, freezin’ our arses off all night waitin’ for this coach,” said the man who had almost called the leader by his name.
“Maybe.” But now the leader kicked his horse into a walk and eased the chestnut mare toward Dooley’s side of the mud wagon. The fancy pistol lifted toward Dooley’s face, and the man said, “A man with a horse like that—he’s got to be coming to Leadville with something more than small change.”
“Boss,” said one of the men looping a lead rope to the mules. “That messenger can’t own that horse. That’s a fine, fine steed. Horse like that, he has to be owned by the dandy yonder.” Dandy meaning Buffalo Bill Cody.
“You’re hiding out on me, mister,” the man with the Smith & Wesson said. And Dooley could see the white rag just above the man’s left wrist. It was not stained with tobacco juice. The man held the Smith & Wesson in his right hand. Right hand. Bullet wound in the left arm. Empty scabbard on his saddle.
This, Dooley knew, was the man who had tried to waylay him in Denver.
“Let’s have it,” the highwayman said.
“It ain’t,” Chester Motz whispered, “worth dyin’ fer, Dooley.”
So Dooley let out a sigh of defeat and eased his left hand inside his coat pocket. He found the deed the late grizzly bear of a shotgun guard named Horatio Whitman had signed over, and withdrew the flimsy piece of paper, and handed it, between his pointer and middle fingers, to the man in the flour sack.
Although he could not see the man’s face—just the hard eyes through the holes in the sack—Dooley knew the leader was smiling as he plucked the deed from Dooley’s fingers and shoved it into a coat pocket.
“I’ll fetch that fine-lookin’ hoss,” said one of the outlaws.
“I’m a-gonna take that dog,” said another. “Always wanted me a cur dog fer a pet.”
“Don’t be a dad-blasted fool,” the leader said, turning his head quickly, away from Dooley, staring at the man who was reaching for the canvas-curtain door.
Dooley braced himself. Started to yell at Blue, to yell at the damn fool outlaw, but he was too late. The curtain was pushed back, and Blue let out a vicious bark. The coach seemed to lunge this way and that, so hard Dooley thought the mud wagon might tip over. The man screamed. A gun roared.
And Dooley dived onto the man with the flour mask, the fancy Smith & Wesson, and the deed to Dooley’s mine in Leadville.
Hell broke loose, but Dooley had figured that was bound to happen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The dumb fool screamed as Blue sank his fangs into the man’s arm, as he dropped his weapon between the right wheels on the mud wagon. Dooley saw the man and the blur of Dooley’s blue dog. He also saw the leader with the flour sack of a face, swinging that shiny pistol toward Blue. That was just about all Dooley had a chance to see, because he was still standing, and he leaped out of the driver’s box.
He caught the gang’s leader across the chest, heard and felt the blast from the pistol, but Dooley knew he had knocked the gun arm, spoiling the killer’s aim. He felt the pain of contact, felt the leader’s horse spinning in a panic, and felt the air whooshing past him as the white ground rushed out to meet him and the leader.
They landed with a thud. The man grunted. Hooves crashed against the road. Another gunshot roared. Curses came here and there, grunts, and gasps for breath. Blue growled, snapped, and attacked. A man cried out.
Dooley came up quickly, sent his right fist into the leader’s flour sack. Then he rolled off. His eyes searched the white ground for the silvery Smith & Wesson, or his own revolver. He saw the latter and reached for it, but his boots slipped on the ice and he fell facedown.
Swearing, he put his hands out in front of him and pushed himself up again. The hands slipped on the wet, s
lick ice, and Dooley planted his face in the hard, cold ground again.
Now he came up, just as a bullet practically parted his hair. He did not know who had fired the shot, only that it had not come from the leader of the road agents. That’s because Dooley saw the man, on his knees, eyes behind the flour sack, searching desperately for the revolver he had dropped. Dooley also noticed something else. The man was gripping his left wrist, and dark blood seeped between the black fingers of the leather gloves, dripping onto the snow and ice.
That’s when the man saw Dooley, and Dooley realized he was looking in eyes filled with pure hatred. The stare held for barely a second, because the man had also spotted the Smith & Wesson.
Dooley, however, had spotted something else. His Colt, still in the holster, lay just near the front wheel. It was closer to Dooley than the Smith & Wesson, and he leaped for it.
Only to see the entire gun belt and holster disappear as he dived. It happened like a blur—something shiny and black and tan—and only later could Dooley recognize what had happened. He had caught the glimpse of Buffalo Bill Cody’s boots and buckskin britches.
Cody kicked the holster with his polished black boot on his left foot, somehow sending the holster and belt up in the air toward the wagon tongue. Yet all the while Buffalo Bill Cody kept moving forward, reaching up with both his hands, securing the holster with his left, and slipping the Colt .45 into his own right hand.
The hand holding the gun belt lowered. The hand with the Colt came up, the gloved thumb pulled the hammer to full cock, and the weapon exploded. Twice. Almost sounding like one shot, but Dooley saw two of the bandits go down. One of them somersaulted over the back of his horse. The other grunted and flew over the wagon tongue, dropping the pistol—Buffalo Bill’s Remington .44—which slid next to the whip Chester Motz had dropped on the other side of the mud wagon. Dooley also glimpsed the man with the flour sack of a face, who left his Smith & Wesson on the ice and took off through the woods. That happened to be in the same direction as the outlaw leader’s horse had taken off after Dooley’s dive. Buffalo Bill Cody sent a shot after the fleeing man, but missed, and quickly turned to fire two more shots.
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