by Max Brand
Two young men, who were about to slide over the back of the coach and drop to safe terra firma, heard that calm announcement and sneaked back into their places, where they sat quivering, hoping that no one had seen them. And the rest of the passengers began to lift their heads from their bristling coat collars and look about as though wondering how they could still be intact.
Sammy was silenced, but his dismay was not the less. It was Alec who spoke.
“The lady wants to go on with the party,” said Alec. “Lemme get down and see how many patches we’ll have to make!”
There were not so very many, after all. One singletree, tough hickory though it was, had been twisted neatly in two. And there were some broken straps about the harness, here and there. However, the omnipresent baling wire repaired those breakages, and presently the horses were dragged to their feet. The broken singletree was replaced.
“Hold hard,” cautioned Alec. “I’m going to see if I can’t scare these boys into a little run.”
So, when the blindfolds were removed, he whirled his whip, cracked the long lash, scourged each of the six, apparently, with one and the same movement of the lash, and uttered a ferocious scream.
The six mustangs swung of one accord, curled like a snake, caught the coach with an abrupt cross pull, and yanked it flat upon its side.
Sammy Gregg, being the lightest missile, sailed the farthest. He found himself pausing for an instant astraddle of the back of the off leader. But from that point of vantage he was presently bucked into space again and landed once more, this time in a group of bystanders.
When his senses came back to him, he saw the fat man in whose stomach his head had been buried, sitting with a stricken look where he had fallen. The rest of the crowd was busy righting the team and the coach. And the leader in the good work was Anne Cosden.
Munson had wrecked the second hat which she had ventured to wear there. It sat now, or a fragment of it sat, atilt on one side of her head, and half of her bright red hair had slipped out and tumbled down her back. But she held the refractory off leader securely by the nose, twisting his upper lip until the agony made him tame.
“The third go will bring us luck, boys!” sang out Anne Cosden. “Drag out the baggage and heave the old wagon up on her legs once more. There’s enough of you to do it!”
There was not a member of the party, not even Alec, who would not have relinquished all thoughts of the trip for that day, at the least. But men cannot let women see the white feather in their hats.
Sammy Gregg, shaken from his fall and weak-kneed with terror, set doggedly about doing his share. And as he struggled with the head of the near leader he heard her singing out encouragingly: “Get him by the nose and twist!”
The near leader was pacified at last.
“That was a bad fall you got,” said Anne Cosden good-naturedly. “I thought you’d never stop sailing.”
“Where were you to watch?”
“Sailing, too,” replied Anne, grinning. “But I happened to land in a thick spot of dust, so I’m all right; seems to have shaken you up a bit, though.”
“I’m not hurt,” said Sammy, who believed in the truth. “But I’m scared almost to death! And so are the rest of ’em except that you’ve shamed them out of it!”
She looked at him in amazement. It was the first time in her life that she had heard a man admit fear. And for that reason, I suppose, she suddenly liked Sammy.
“You’re the owner of this mess, aren’t you?” said she.
“Yes, I put up for it.”
“Cheer up,” said Anne sympathetically. “A rainy morning makes a good fox hunt. And we’ll be in at the kill in Crumbock, after all. There, they’ve got the coach up.”
Thirty pairs of willing, heaving, struggling arms had managed that trick, and the stage, stripped of baggage, was bolstered up, then rocked suddenly into an erect position.
Once more, the baggage was piled in. The wan and silent passengers, each with a covert eye upon this slave-driving girl, climbed to their places. The blindfolds were snapped from the six heads, and once more Alec rose to his task. A little streak of crimson was dashed like war paint upon one cheek. He was covered with dust, but covered with courage, also. And the terrible lash of his whip cut a thin, deep gash in the hip of the boisterous off leader.
That told the tale. With a wild snort, half grunt and half neigh, that was a true stampede signal, the off leader hit his collar with a weight that made the fifth chain groan, and the rest of the clan, true to their breed, answered the stampede signal by stretching their heads forth and striving to squeeze through their collars.
In another instant the coach was shooting down the street of Munson. The dust cloud rose high behind it. It swung out of sight, cutting the first corner on two wheels, and the dust cloud, still rising, spread broad, mothlike wings behind and still soared dimmer and dimmer above the roofs of Munson.
“There’ll be eleven dead men and one dead woman before that trip is finished!” said Rendell.
“No,” said another. “She’ll get to Crumbock if she has to make it riding bareback on that devil of an off leader.” Which was the general opinion in Munson.
But, in the meantime, the first mile of that journey was enough to turn hair white, even on the head of a hero!
Six flying, straining wild horses whirled the stage over what was called a road in that part of the country. There were lifting rocks like great teeth ready to spike the stage as it passed. And there were ruts eager to break wheels, and hummocks guaranteed to overturn the wagon. But still Alec managed to shave the edge of these dangers one after another until the first steep grade was reached.
Then there was a different story. For behind the heels of the wild horses there were two tons of weight, living and dead. A trifle on the level, but a very great deal to whip up a sharp gradient.
So the six slowed abruptly from a gallop to a trot, and from a trot to a walk. And then they would willingly have stopped altogether, but the whip in the hands of Alec was a sword of fire, and when they tried to jump out of the way, their collars were hands of steel. So the stage lurched heavily on its way.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOLDUP
BUT THE SIX wild horses which were harnessed to the stage at Munson were only the “pick of the whole lot!” There were other sets to be hitched to the stage before it was rolled into the dirty streets of Crumbock. And the other sets were a sketchy lot, the first that came to hand at any of the stations of relay along the way.
Needless to say, the stage on its first run was not on time. They averaged exactly one hour of time to make each change of horses. And, when the change was made there was a fearful rushing through the hills! But still, the stage rolled on its way, and no matter what else happened, it was not again overturned.
At two relay points from Munson they came to the rougher region of mountains, and there, at the second relay from Munson, Sammy Gregg had arranged an “escort of honor,” so to speak. Because the progress of this first stage through the mountains was apt to be a dangerous affair.
The outlaw who first “stuck up” the new stage was apt to be remembered long, and for that very reason, there was apt to be a good deal of crowding for the post. In the stage itself there were means of defense. In the first place, there was hardly a passenger, outside of Sammy, who did not carry a gun, and most of them were supposed to know how to use their weapons, while old Alec on the driver’s seat had a sawed-off shotgun hanging in a leather noose by his leg. It was a monstrous old brute of a weapon, fit to have served as an elephant gun, and in its two enormous barrels there was poured a fair double handful of slugs of various sizes.
“From toothpicks to marbles,” Alec was fond of saying, “this here old gun don’t much care what it shoots!”
That was not all. There were many valuables in the cargo aboard that stage, and the temptation to stop it was apt to prove too much for the gentlemen of the road. So, at the second relay, Sammy had hired two men of wide repute for
their skill with shooting irons of all kinds.
Lester and Andrew Gunn were men who had stayed within the limits of the “law” for only one good reason, which was that the law had never happened to be looking very hard their way during certain interesting moments in their lives. Ten years before, they were in the way to making quite a reputation for themselves and decorating the noose of a lynching party’s rope some day, when a certain famous sheriff took the trouble to read them a lecture on the law, its ways and means. They took that lecture so much to heart, that they had decided upon the spot to follow his good advice, and from that time forth, they became strict adherents to the party of peace.
But they could shoot just as straight as ever, and at various times, always side by side in every pinch, they had demonstrated their willingness to support the nearest sheriff as deputies. Such men were sure to be known and dreaded. And so, by reputation, they had become known to Sammy Gregg.
You may be sure that he did not hire them because he liked them. There was not a man in the mountains, for that matter, who would have owned himself a friend to the Gunn brothers. Their narrow, swarthy faces and little animal-like black eyes warned all beholders that they were brutes of the lowest type, without nerves or conscience to trouble them. They looked, in short, exactly what they were: hired gunfighters.
Even the steady composure of Anne Cosden was shaken not a little when she was told that this dismal couple was to act as guards to the stage. But they jogged on ahead of the coach and most of the time they did not spoil the view with their presence. They were always just around the next curve of the trail which the freighters had carved deep, even in the rocks. A very efficient couple, no doubt, and their services for this single day had cost Sammy Gregg fifty heart-felt dollars.
“For one day?” he had cried at them in surprise.
“You never can tell,” said Lester Gunn. “It might be our last day. And a gent’s last day is worth something extra for funeral expenses, you might say.”
That grim joke settled the question.
“If some one tackles them, we hear the trouble and can get ready,” Sammy explained to Miss Cosden, “and if they tackle us first, the Gunn brothers will hear the racket and they can come back to us. You see, it works both ways.”
Miss Cosden looked him fairly in the eye. “Yes,” said she, “if all the men on the stage are willing to fight!”
Sammy turned a bright crimson. But his eye did not flinch from hers. “I’m no hero,” he said. “And I don’t know anything about guns. But the other men on the stage have weapons and they can use them well enough.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” said Anne Cosden, “but I’ve heard that a rifle has a very quieting effect if the man behind it has the drop. However, we won’t have any trouble. The old days of road agents are done with. This is modern life!”
It is usually that way. All evil belongs to the dark days of the past. The present lies in a white sunlight of innocence and freedom from wrong.
The afternoon wore out. The sun was no longer an intolerable lump of white fire. It was a dazzling golden ball dropping little by little toward the blue tops of the western peaks. A little more, and the evening was coming on them.
Have you seen the evening come over the mountains, ever? It is a thing to see and never to forget. For in the mountains, the evening seems to come in two ways. First, it is cropping out of the sky. Secondly, it is rising out of the deep valleys like a dark, cool mist.
Every time the stage dipped into a hollow the world seemed already more than half lost to the night; and every time it rocked up onto a high point, the world seemed saved to a beautiful part of the day, still. So they wavered up and down the trail, between darkness and light.
It was as the stage mounted to the top of one of these many knolls that Andrew Gunn was heard to cry out in a sharp, snarling voice, and then there was a loud, rapid blur of shots. Just an instant of gunfire, you understand, a single second packed with the crackle of musketry.
And then a dizzying silence.
“Jiminy!” grinned old Alec, as his hand relaxed from the reins which he had begun to draw taut, and as he lowered again the terrible muzzle of the sawed-off shotgun which he had jerked up at the first alarm. “I thought for just a minute that it wasbut I suppose the boys just seen a rabbit or something like—”
Just then Sammy, looking half-worried ahead of the nodding ears of the leaders of the stage, saw a beautiful big gray horse covered with a mottling of large dapples step into view around that corner of the road where the Gunn brothers had disappeared. And next he saw big Chester Ormonde Furness.
There was no mask upon Furness this time. Perhaps he had decided that he and his horse and his ways were becoming so well known that it was useless to try the masking game anymore. Perhaps he was tired of it. Perhaps, and this indeed the most likely of all, he simply wanted a new thrill and therefore he was letting himself be identified with that sort of a crime which hangs the criminal when he is caught. The old way was so safe, so dull, that it would not serve any longer.
But, most significant detail of all, and the first detail for everyone on that stagecoach to see, there was a beautiful, long-barreled repeating rifle cuddled into the hollow of the shoulder of Mr. Furness and his head was leaned a little to one side, as though he were whispering loving words to the breech of his gun. He was steady as a veritable rock. There was not a glimmer of waving light as the barrel of that gun steadied upon the top of the stagecoach.
Those practiced eyes which beheld this tableau understood the meaning of that steadiness. Instantly there was a forest of arms upon the top of the vehicle, a stiff-standing forest raised just as high as possible above the heads of the travelers, and the arms of Sammy Gregg were almost the first up.
Even old Alec knew that he had been beaten at last, and he did not more than half raise the shotgun which was his pride. Instead, he let the muzzle sink by degrees while he moaned: “Oh, my Lord, if I’d only taken the first think more seriousif I’d only played that first hunch, the first hunch always bein’ the only good one when it comes to guns.”
The last part of this remark was torn from his lips, so to speak, by the explosion of a revolver just behind his head. For there was one person in the stage who had not thrust up hands at the summons. And now there was one revolver leveled at big, handsome Chester Furness. Not a big black Colt .45. This was a more refined pistol with a pearl pair of handles, and a beautifully burnished octagonal-barrel .32-caliber gun.
“One of them kind that pricks you pretty bad, but mostly never does no killin’ “as a Westerner would have expressed it.
Now, however, this little .32 was thrust out and twice it exploded. And the broad-brimmed hat leaped from the head of Furness and exposed his fine features to the fight of the late day. She had shot the sombrero fairly from its place!
Then one of Gregg’s hands descended, brutally hard, and the thin, hard edge of his palm struck her wrist and turned all the nerves in her hand dead, and made the six-shooter and its four unfired bullets drop into the dust.
“You idiot!” cried the girl to him. “How did you dare?”
She did not complete the sentence. For just then big Furness spoke, and the sound of his voice made all other things seem unimportant.
“Madame,” said he, “I thought you were about to do a murder, but I’m glad that it is not to be on your conscience. Thank you, Sammy!”
Cool? Yes, it was very cool, and he looked fully as calm as his words, and about ten times handsomer and bigger and stronger and more deadly than anything that had ever come across the path of anyone in that stage, including Miss Anne Cosden among the rest.
His gun, you see, had not wavered for an instant. And yet neither of her bullets had missed him. Her second shot, obviously, had torn the hat from his head. And now it was seen that her first slug had touched his cheek. Which, when you come down to it, is not half-bad practice for a girl doing snapshooting from the wavering to
p of a big, lumbering stage!
One could not tell how badly he was hurt. Just scratched, perhaps. But there was a visible stream of crimson working its way down the side of his face. It was a staggering thing to her. It was even more staggering to the rest of the men on the coach, for they all had heard of this man and most of them had seen him. There had been talk about him, rather naturally, during this very journey toward the hills.
Yes, it took the breath from every man on the stage, and it took the breath of Anne Cosden’s own fierce self, the moment she heard him speak. I suppose it made it a little more poignant to her, the fact that he spoke in a pure grammar with the voice of a cultivated man. He was one of her own class. A villain, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, he was nevertheless a gentleman and a hero as well. He had just demonstrated that fact twice over!
Anne Cosden sunk into her place, and she was trembling. Almost for the first time in her life she was trembling. And it was fear, too, that made her tremble, not the thought that she had almost taken this man’s life. Indeed, I think there was a hot wish in her heart that she had killed him. Because now he had filled her with a chilly dread unlike anything she had ever dreamed of before. She leaned a little forward, gaping at him in a most unromantic and ungraceful way, and the beauty of that fine face and head of his sank upon her eyes and upon her heart, and his smile and the dark shining of his eyes as he looked up to her and the quiet music of his voice.
Yes, she wished that one of those bullets had gone a little lower, or a little more to one side. Poor Anne Cosden!
Then, from beyond the curve of the road, for the first time, she and the rest heard a low-pitched, stifled groaning. Not one voice, but twothe sick, weak, bubbling groaning of a very badly wounded man.
Have you ever heard that sound? It will make a hospital ward turn pea-green in an instant; it makes even a doctor need a drink. And it drained the very last thought of resistance, if they had any in the first place, out of the systems of the men in that stage.