Saddle Tramps

by Owen G. Irons

  ‘Where’s the stage station?’ I asked.

  ‘Up about half a mile, but they can take your fare in that restaurant across the street. Stage always lets the passengers stop and eat there.’

  Emerging again into the bright sunlight I paused, holding my ribs. Peering up and down the street I saw no one familiar and so I took a chance and staggered across the street toward the hotel where Eva and Marly would be waiting. The narrow-built desk clerk glanced at me with disapproval, but said nothing. He had seen worse than me pass through the door in his time, I figured.

  ‘Is there a back way out of here?’ I asked him and his eyes narrowed as if I was thinking of stiffing him on the bill. To allay that suspicion, I splashed some coins on the counter and asked him to settle our tab. He became more talkative as he tallied the bill, offering to itemize the receipt for me. I waved that off, it being of no use to me, but found out where the back entrance was. My plan – such as it was – seemed to be shaping up. Before starting up the stairs to Marly’s room, I slipped the man some extra silver and told him:

  ‘If anyone shows up asking about the ladies, you just say that they’ve checked out, understand?’

  He gave me a sly, uncalled-for wink and scooped the silver change into his purse.

  I found Marly at the door to her room, waiting for me. She looked me over, gave a muffled gasp and urged me inside, closing the door behind us.

  ‘Sit down on the bed, for God’s sake, Corey! I’ll have them send up some hot water.’

  ‘No,’ I said, though I did sag on to her unmade bed. ‘We are going to be out of here in five minutes. Throw together whatever you have to take. Tell Eva to do the same.’

  But Eva had already appeared in the doorway connecting the two rooms. Her gasp was more audible than Marly’s had been. Her hands went to her mouth and for a moment I thought she was going to scream or cry out.

  ‘What happened! Is Mosely in town?’ She asked fearfully.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I said insistently. ‘For now, get ready to leave.’

  ‘How can we … our poor horses….’ Eva was suddenly in a panic.

  ‘I sold the horses,’ I told them. I bent over, finding it harder yet to breathe, clutching my ribs tightly. ‘We’re taking the next stagecoach out of town.’

  Marly had begun throwing her poor belongings into the canvas bag she had carried. Eva continued to be swamped by bewilderment, making no move to comply.

  ‘My beautiful little pony? Why did you sell it, Corey? And what has happened to you? I don’t understand this at all!’

  ‘Later,’ I kept saying. ‘Later, I’ll tell you all about it later.’

  ‘A stagecoach?’ Eva could not be stilled. ‘Where are we going now? Corey, where are you taking us!’

  ‘To Denver, Eva. On to Denver. Mr Copperfield will be waiting for you there.’

  SIX

  The back exit from the hotel led out on to a second-floor landing and then down a flight of wooden steps to the alley behind the building. I eyed the foot of the landing cautiously. I was beginning to be wary of any and all alleys. I started down, leading Eva and Marley with their small bundles of belongings.

  Marley had had time to bathe my face with cold soapy water while we waited for her sister to collect her goods. Still my face was puffed and would soon discolor. My ribs ached wretchedly. We had flexed and probed the fingers of my left hand and found that it had not been nearly so horribly damaged as my right hand. I even believed that if trouble came I would be able to fire my revolver with my left as well as I had before. Which was not that good at all. Certainly not good enough against a man like Andy Givens.

  Like some sort of misshapen, hobbling schoolmaster I herded the women through the oily, trash-cluttered alleys toward the restaurant, explaining a little of my plan as we went.

  ‘I was told that we can pay our fares in the restaurant office. I don’t know what time the next coach pulls in – Clive couldn’t tell me. We’ll just have to hide out in the restaurant until departure time. Neither Mosely nor Andy will be able to do us any mischief – even if they do find us while we’re among the crowd in there.

  ‘Then we’ll be on board the stage and they’ll try halting it at their own risk. There will be a shotgun rider, and those men don’t hesitate to use force if anyone tries to stop their coaches.’

  Marly nodded and continued along beside me, determined and deliberate in her stride. Eva, on the other hand, dragged her heels, looked frequently over her shoulder for any pursuers, asked me dozens of questions which I just did not feel up to answering. My breathing around those cracked ribs was getting no less painful. I knew it would be awhile before they healed. I had been kicked by a horse once and all the doctor knew to do was shake his head and bind my ribs up as tight as possible.

  We entered the restaurant by the back door, startling the pair of big-bellied cooks at their labors, passed through the kitchen and were given seats at the table farthest from the front entrance. It was the best spot we could have found, and I didn’t blame the waitress for offering it to us. The way I looked, it’s a wonder she didn’t ask me to eat out back with the dogs. In deference to the ladies, however, they allowed me to sit among the civilized people.

  I held my head in my hands, elbows on the table while people murmured around us. I left the ordering to Marly, and it didn’t take long before coffee and biscuits with honey began to appear on the tabletop. Marly touched my arm.

  ‘Maybe I could slip out and get you a clean shirt, at least,’ she whispered.

  ‘And risk running into Andy Givens.’ I wagged my head. ‘No. That’s a bad idea. I’m all right. I’ve looked like a fool before!’ I said. And I felt like one now, roughed-up as I was, but the people around us were polite enough to pretend not to notice my condition, and when breakfast began to arrive – ham, eggs, fried potatoes, I forgot my troubles long enough to fill up my stomach.

  Later, I made my way to the front desk and asked about coach fares. The man there was busy with some sort of business papers and he just tapped a finger on the yellowed schedule of prices hanging on the wall beside him. When he was finished with what he was doing I paid for three through-fares to Denver, got three big red tickets which I tucked away in my torn shirt and made my way back to the table.

  ‘It should be about a two-hour wait,’ I told the ladies. ‘The worst is behind us now.’

  I didn’t really believe it, though I smiled at Marley trying to reassure her. She saw the concern in my eyes but said nothing. The trouble was that Bull Mosely was still crazy with what he took for love and would not stop following after Eva, despite what I had told the women.

  The bigger problem – I realized this now – was that Andy Givens was just plain crazy and there was no predicting what he would do or how violent he might become in his own strange pursuits.

  We sat and we waited. And waited. People came, ate their meals and left as we sat watching the front door for any sight of Mosely and his crew or for Andy Givens. We drank coffee and waited as the brass-bound clock on the wall behind us ticked time slowly away. The waitress obviously wanted us to clear out of the restaurant so that the table could be used by someone else. I went ahead and paid our bill, giving the woman a large tip which only mollified her a little. There were whispered conversations among the staff watching us. Eva and Marley both became nervous, fidgety.

  ‘They don’t want us here,’ Marley whispered to me.

  ‘I know that, but we’re staying.’

  Time moved slowly, plodding past, but after another hour I heard a different sort of conversation around us, and glancing up I saw a new group of people – three of them – entering the restaurant, their faces excited, their eyes weary, their clothes dusty with travel.

  ‘The stagecoach must have pulled in,’ I told the two women. ‘Have a look.’

  Marley glanced around at the newcomers and smiled hopefully at me.

  Eva asked, ‘Why don’t we get aboard, if we’re going?’
/>
  ‘They’ll be changing horses at the stage stop while the passengers eat. We watch. When the driver returns to call for them, we go with them.’

  It seemed an eternity. I thought I had never seen people eat so slowly as these stagecoach passengers, although that was my imagination. I wanted out of there, away from Pueblo, from the hunting men. There was a prosperous-looking big man among the travelers, and when he would pause between bites to speak, I mentally urged him to shut up and eat!

  After half an hour a rough-looking man with a short red beard poked his head into the room and called in, ‘Denver stage is pulling out in five minutes, folks!’

  Eva started to rise, but I put my hand on her arm. ‘Wait until they’re all ready to leave. We want to go in a bunch with them.’

  ‘But surely…!’ Eva complained in exasperation.

  ‘But surely nothing,’ I told her more sharply than I had intended. ‘I won’t take another beating. And if you want to see Denver and Mr Copperfield, we do everything we can to ensure our safety. Do you understand, Eva?’

  Eva nodded meekly

  After a time Marly said quietly to me, ‘It’s just that she’s afraid, Corey. Eager and afraid.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. But we can’t take any more chances.’ Briefly, too briefly, Marly’s fingers touched the back of my hand indicating that she understood. The stagecoach driver had reappeared at the entrance.

  ‘Coach to Denver is leaving, folks!’ And we rose to join the rest of the travelers, sensing safety and freedom from pursuit.

  My left hand did not drift far from my holstered Colt as we stepped out of the restaurant stage-stop into the morning sunlight. I saw no one I did not wish to see as we clambered aboard. The stage had a strangely mismatched team: three stolid bay horses and one wild-eyed piebald on the off-wheel. I didn’t care just then if they were four mules or goats! We were on our way.

  The red-bearded driver looked competent with his long, fringed gauntlets, the shotgun rider had the kind of tough, pale-blue eyes that look right through a man.

  There were three other passengers seated opposite us as we squeezed into the cramped quarters of the Butterfield stage: the prosperous-looking man I had noted earlier; a matronly woman named Revere who, as we were soon to discover, could not stop talking about her daughter and her new son-in-law, an army captain; and a sallow, unfriendly middle-aged man with a lean jaw and a Remington pistol carried high on his waist. His presence too, I found reassuring.

  The driver whooped and his bullwhip cracked above the horses’ ears and the stage lurched into motion. I leaned back thankfully against the hard seat between Eva and Marly. I was hatless, battered, my shirt and jeans torn. I wore my gun on the wrong side of my hips and I knew my face showed recent cuts and bruising. I caught our new fellow travelers eyeing me with puzzlement and concern. I could not have cared less.

  Marly was close beside me and it seemed that somehow I had managed to salvage the disastrous situation.

  The stage rocked on for mile after mile across the long-grass, oak-studded land as we continued to climb toward Denver. The driver knew his task well and so did his team of horses, apparently. Eva fell into a conversation with the prosperous traveler in the pearl-gray suit, Warren Travers by name. He, it seemed, was part owner of a Comstock Lode mine which had done well, especially in silver. I barely listened. To me the rough riding coach was more comfortable than any of the others could have guessed. With Marly next to me, the occasional touch of her concerned hand on my still-swollen right wrist, my stomach full for the first time in awhile, our troubles apparently left behind, I was content.

  I even managed to doze for a time. The sun began to heel over toward the west. The driver of the coach shouted out something that I didn’t catch, but the mine-owner repeated it to us.

  ‘The next stage stop is Canyon City. We’ll be there in about an hour,’ he said with the confident knowledge of an experienced traveler. ‘The food is not so good as that in Pueblo, but there is always plenty of it!’

  He leaned back, glancing at the gold watch he wore on a chain across his ample belly. The sallow man with the tight expression still had said not a word. The garrulous matron, Mrs. Revere, continued to prattle on about her daughter and how fine a catch Captain Mason had been, how happy they would be to see her.

  Marly touched my shoulder and whispered, ‘It will all be all right now, Corey. Thanks to you.’

  I could only hope she was right.

  I had not forgotten that there was a man with a strange compulsive madness behind us on the Colorado trail.

  Sundown found us at a remote stage-stop. Built of adobe blocks, sheltered beneath a grove of live-oak trees, lantern-light shone in its windows and smoke curled up from the chimney into the darkening sky, promising warmth and comfort.

  Inside the low-ceilinged building we were met by a birdlike woman who bounced from point to point, setting dishes, coffee pots and bread on the two plank tables and a phlegmatic man I took to be her husband who rose once, shook hands with the mine owner and the sallow traveler and planted himself again firmly in his leather-bottomed chair.

  The three women were led off to some sheltered room to clean up. I sat the end of one of the plank tables, waiting for them to return. The mine owner, Warren Travers, was in close conversation with the manager of the stage stop. Not much was said, but it ended with both men laughing out loud over some private comment.

  Smoke from the fire backed up into the room when the wind gusted, not enough to make it unpleasant, but the scent of burning cedar wood pervaded the place. The stage driver and his shotgun rider had still not come in from the stables and so we waited for our meal. Opposite me, seated at the second table, the expressionless sallow man studied me closely. I still hadn’t heard him exchange a word with anyone. His eyes were intense, his mouth pursed. I saw him lean back, fumble in his shirt for a cigar.

  And with that gesture he spread his jacket enough for me to catch the glint of a silver star pinned to his shirt front. I cursed silently and tried my best to look both uninterested and innocent. No wonder the man had been eyeing me so narrowly. Wretch that I was, I looked like someone who might have been up to no good, perhaps making my escape from the law.

  Which I was, I considered dejectedly.

  There was the small matter of a man’s murder back in Tulip.

  The three women re-entered the room at that moment, disengaging the lawman’s eyes. He rose as Mrs. Revere seated herself opposite him at that table. Eva and Marly swept in behind her and took their seats, Marly next to me, Eva across from her sister. Within the next minute as if they knew from past experience that supper was ready to be served, the driver and shotgun guard opened the heavy oaken door and entered after stamping their boots to shake off the red clay they had accumulated in the yard. Both had rinsed off and wiped their hair back with water.

  Between them they carried a heavy lock-box, and crossing the room they spoke to the man with the badge.

  ‘Where do you want this, Blair?’

  ‘Back room,’ the lawman answered. ‘You know where I sleep.’ As he said this, he kept his eyes fixed on me. I looked away deliberately.

  With everyone settled at the tables, the birdlike woman whom her husband called Jane began serving large platters of food-steak and fried potatoes, baked apples. The conversation among those at the opposite table lowered to a contented murmur. At our table there was near silence. Eva and Marly exchanged some small talk about the food and their weariness, but I was not in the mood for any conversation. Marly was observant enough to see that I was troubled again, and asked me with a signal of her hand. I leaned toward her and whispered:

  ‘The smaller man traveling with us – he’s a lawman of some sort. Probably a line detective.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Marly said, but I now saw her eyes flicker to the yellow-faced man from time to time.

  ‘We’re staying the night here,’ Eva said to me. ‘Did you know that?’

  I had
not, although I should have guessed. It would be unwise for the stage company to run their coaches through the night, risking injury to their horses and subsequently to the passengers. If a horse did go down, even if there were no injuries, being stranded at night in the cold mountains would be more than uncomfortable.

  ‘At least we’ll have warm, safe accommodations for tonight,’ Eva was saying. Her face had brightened and her old smile appeared again. ‘And Mrs. Revere says that our schedule has us arriving in Denver at noonday tomorrow. So Corey, don’t look so worried, you have done it! Our journey is nearly at an end.’

  I wasn’t so sure. That night I shared a small room with the red-haired stage driver, whom I had only heard called ‘Allie’, who was not much for conversation, thankfully, and with Mr Travers who finally yawned himself to sleep after an explanation of some mining technique I did not understand and Allie was utterly uninterested in. I lay awake, watching the starlight through the high, slit window of the room, and considered.

  The stage line might rest their ponies and balk at running them in darkness, but if there were pursuing men on the trail behind this, they would not be so cautious. They could easily catch up with us overnight. It would make no sense to assault a tightly-constructed outpost directly, where half a dozen armed men could easily fight them off. If it were me, I thought, I would think this over and realize that there were other ways to attempt their objective.

  For example, the horses could be scattered, leaving all inside stranded. Again such a risk seemed unreasonable … for sane men. I tossed restlessly on my bunk. Unsleeping still, I wondered how long Bull Mosely would pursue his runaway lover. It seemed unlikely that his farmer friends would be willing to go along with such a mad scheme for the sake of his unrequited love.

  Andy … yes, he was capable of such a wild scheme, but he was a lone rider, was he not? What could he do by himself? I frowned deeply, wondering. Maybe he was not alone any longer. He might have gathered some men desperate enough to follow him. He could even have somehow induced Bull Mosely to accompany him, as wild an idea as that seemed. How could that be done?