Saddle Tramps

by Owen G. Irons

  Suppose Andy had promised Bull to help him retrieve Eva if Andy could have Marly? It seemed absurd on the surface. Even Andy would not go that far for revenge, for a woman, for … I and then it struck me.

  For gold? Yes. I knew Andy’s thieving ways, remembered him talking about the banks in Denver. Those, however, were formidable brick structures with steel-doored safes. Why wait for the gold to reach Denver?

  The strong-box I had seen earlier, the presence of the accompanying lawman … the stage was carrying gold! I might have guessed it earlier, but my mind had been in a fog since the beating I had taken from Mosely. But how could Andy know this, assuming it was so?

  Simple. I had seldom met anyone as garrulous as my wealthy sleeping neighbor, Warren Travers, and if anyone would know what the stage was carrying, it would be the self-important mine boss.

  Perhaps my night thoughts were running wild, my fear giving my inventions reality only in my own mind. Still I did not sleep as the long night rolled over. I wondered if I should speak to the man with the badge, Blair, in the morning. And tell him what? He was suspicious enough of me as it was. Suppose he did think it over and decide that I could be the inside man on such an attempt, ready to fling open the door to the stage-stop to allow entry to the raiders if we were set upon?

  Crazy! It was all crazy, I tried to convince myself. My imagination was over-active, my unfounded fears feeding upon themselves. Calming slowly, I rolled on to my side and having convinced myself that I was a child being visited by hobgoblins in the night, fell off at last to a troubled sleep.

  I awoke early, the orange light of dawn glowing in the high slit window above my bed, marking a bright rectangle on the far wall. Travers slept soundly. Allie, the stage driver, was awake – I could tell from his movements – but in no hurry to rise from his warm blankets and face the chill of morning. With my blanket around my shoulders I sat on the edge of my bunk and tugged on my boots. Yawning, I scratched my head and looked back upon my night fears and smiled at my own vivid imaginings. Here was morning, quiet and calm, and this day held the promise of the end of the long trail. A man can be such a fool, I thought. It was then that a voice rang out from beyond the doorway.

  ‘Fire! Everybody up. They’ve set fire to the station!’

  SEVEN

  I grabbed for my gunbelt, roused the heavily-sleeping Warren Travers and simultaneously realized that the woodsmoke I had taken as the preparation of a morning fire was much too heavy, the heat too intense.

  The stage driver, Allie, fairly bounded from his bed, quickly alert for trouble. He snatched up his Winchester and asked me, ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re on fire.’

  ‘Adobe doesn’t burn!’ he argued pointlessly as we started toward the door, half-towing the bewildered mine boss between us.

  ‘It’ll be the roof then. They’ll have thrown firebrands up there.’

  ‘Who?’ Allie shouted at me.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ I yelled back. But I thought I knew.

  When we reached the common room the smoke was billowing inside. We could hear the roof of the stage station crackling with flame. Everyone was up and dressed: the threat of fire had brought them all instantly alert. I searched first for Marly, found her with her arm around Eva, both of them with their hair in a night tangle, both frightened, as they had the right to be.

  ‘What are we standing around for!’ the plump stationmaster shouted and he started for the door. I tried to grab his arm in passing and stop him, but failed. He flung open the front door and was shot down before he could cross the threshold.

  ‘Damn all!’ Blair rumbled. ‘Everybody get against a wall, away from that door!’ he told us.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ Allie asked no one in particular. ‘What do they want?’

  We didn’t have to wait long for an answer. As black smoke was drawn past us and out the open door, a familiar voice rang out from the oak trees across the yard.

  ‘Whoever’s in charge,’ the voice of Andy Givens shouted, ‘give us what we want or stay where you are and roast.’

  Blair stepped nearer the door, gun in his hand and yelled back, ‘Who is that! What do you want! We’ve women in here and—’ The sudden collapse of a section of roof near the back of the station interrupted the lawman. It came down with an explosive sound. Golden embers shot up from the burning beams.

  ‘Send out the women!’ Andy called back. ‘Them and the strongbox. If you don’t do it, and fast, we’ll stand where we are and gun down any man trying to escape.’

  ‘I won’t go!’ Mrs. Revere said, her voice a near-scream. Marly, who had recognized Andy’s voice, calmed her.

  ‘It’s not you they want, Mrs. Revere. It’s me and my sister. We’ll go out if it will save the rest of you.’ Marly was resolute. Eva clung to her sister’s arm, shaking her head from side to side, her eyes wide. Marly shook her. ‘We have to, Eva. It’s that or burn to death in here and see the others lose their lives because of us.’

  Blair, choking on the accumulating smoke, called out to Andy. ‘The women say they’ll come!’

  ‘Fine,’ Andy Givens said calmly. ‘Them and the gold shipment. Then we let the rest of you come out.’

  ‘I’ll bring the strongbox to you!’ Blair called. The sallow lawman seemed to have lost his nerve. I didn’t blame him. With flames licking at the walls inside and a band of armed killers without, it was enough to panic anybody.

  ‘Not you!’ Andy shouted. ‘Let Keogh bring it. Keogh! I know you’re in there, you bring the strongbox.’

  Blair glowered at me, his face firelit and angry. His eyes said it all – I was a member of the raiders’ gang. He would have liked to shoot me down then and there, I thought. But he couldn’t under the circumstances. Nor could I possibly carry the heavy strongbox, the shape my hands were in. I yelled out through the smoke.

  ‘I can’t carry the gold, Andy! My hands are too busted up!’

  ‘Drag it, then, Keogh! Shuck your sidearm and then start dragging it out of there or watch everyone inside die!’

  At the first demand Allie and the shotgun rider had carried the box out into the common room, ready themselves to turn it over. Someone else’s gold in trade for their own lives made sense to the two stage company employees. Now, bending low, I took a grip on one of the strongbox’s iron handles and dragged it past the dead way-station manager and out on to the porch, a cloud of black smoke swirling around me.

  ‘Marly!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t wait any longer. Come on!’

  Heaving, I dragged the box down off the wooden porch and into the yard.

  ‘Keep coming, Keogh! All the way over here,’ Andy yelled from the oak grove.

  I moved heavily, drawing a deep groove in the soil. I saw Marly rush to me, hurrying Eva along. Marly gripped the other handle and we stumbled and staggered our way toward the cluster of oak trees. I saw Andy, smiling, step from behind the thick trunk of an old oak. I shouted at him.

  ‘Here it is! Now let the others come out of there, Andy!’

  ‘Just a little farther, Keogh. Get the strongbox behind these trees. Then I’ll let them come.’

  To the house he shouted: ‘Start throwing your iron out, boys! I’ll be counting guns. Then you can get out of there. When you come out, don’t run this way. Head toward the corral.’

  I stood panting, my chest heaving, my back against a tree. Marly was sheltering her sister in her arms.

  ‘That wasn’t so hard now, was it, Keogh?’ Andy asked in a low voice. He lifted my chin with the barrel of his Winchester. We had heard the clatter of guns being thrown out on to the porch. Now Andy told his men:

  ‘Let ’em come out, but keep your rifles on them.’

  I glanced at the other faces around me. I should have known – Bull Mosely and his two friends. Somehow Andy had worked his charm on them and brought them over to his side. I supposed that Bull had been convinced that riding with Andy could get his Eva back, and his share of the gold – more than he could
make in ten years on his farm – would allow him to take care of her in a manner that would make Eva overlook his other shortcomings as a potential mate.

  Bull stood hovering near Eva and Marly, his dull eyes hungry, his jaw slack. The roar behind me caused me to turn my head. The roof of the stage station had completely collapsed. Fire, smoke and fans of sparks erupted into the morning air. I could make out the stumbling figures of the survivors huddled together near the empty corral, staring helplessly back at the wreckage of the burning building.

  ‘Somebody’s sure to see that,’ Andy said as the smoke rose higher and plumed against the sky. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  The desolate little group behind us could do nothing but watch us go. Their horses, of course, had been scattered. Andy was too shrewd not to leave them all afoot. They didn’t dare make a move toward their guns. Andy was whistling as we made our way through the oaks. Following him were the two women and myself guarded by Bull Mosely. The other two sodbusters toting the strongbox between them followed.

  Just beyond the trees stood the stagecoach. The piebald horse had been harnessed wrong, now at the wheel side of the coach, I noticed. Andy glanced at me and grinned as we reached the stage, proud of his cleverness. One of the farmers stood holding the reins to their saddle ponies.

  Farmers? I don’t know why I continued to think of them as that. Now they were nothing but thieves and killers. They had found an easier way to make a living than scratching it out of the reluctant earth. None of them would ever return to a laboring life no matter what they might have convinced themselves.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Marly asked.

  ‘Not far,’ Andy answered as the two farmers loaded the strongbox into the coach’s boot.

  ‘Then why…?’

  ‘You can’t ride with one of those on your pony’s back,’ Andy said, nodding at the heavy strongbox containing the gold shipment. ‘We’re going to haul it off the way it was hauled in.’

  ‘You can’t get away with it, Andy,’ I said.

  ‘Sure I can. We have so far, haven’t we? We’re just going to use the coach to haul the box away. Off the stage route. Someplace hidden. Then we’re going to crack it, divvy up the gold and ride our separate ways.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not difficult, Keogh, if you take a while to figure things out.’

  One of the farmers had clambered on to the stagecoach box and gathered the reins. ‘We’d better quit yakking and get moving,’ he said. ‘That fire might bring somebody.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Andy agreed, calling for his appaloosa to be brought up. ‘Mosely, you want to help the ladies aboard?’

  ‘I’m not going,’ Marly said, resisting the hand one of the farmers had placed on her shoulder. Her eyes met mine with stubborn fear.

  ‘Sure you are,’ Andy said. He took her roughly by her other shoulder and the two men forced her up into the coach to sit beside Eva who seemed to have lost the power of resistance. She sat staring at the floor of the coach as Bull Mosely swung heavily aboard.

  Fury was building in me. I turned Andy roughly toward me. ‘You said that nothing would happen to Marly!’

  ‘Did I? I don’t recall saying that,’ Andy answered, the smile gone from his face. ‘Don’t worry, Keogh. I’ve kind of lost interest in the girl. She’s just going along for the ride as a hostage. You just remember that I have her, and if you get any ideas about following me – well, then something just might happen to her.’

  ‘Follow along?’ I said numbly. ‘I’m not going with you?’

  ‘You!’ Andy laughed harshly. ‘Keogh, what would I need you along for?’

  I started to make an angry move, but knew it was futile. Four armed men were watching me. Andy swung into the appaloosa’s saddle and shouted for the party to move.

  There was absolutely nothing I could do but stand and watch as the stagecoach rolled away, Marly’s pleading eyes watching me until they were out of sight. I started trudging back toward the stage stop, cursing all the way.

  Blair and the stage crew stood watching me from the front of the adobe where they had rushed to recover their guns before realizing that there was no one to use them against. Behind them smoke still billowed into the clear morning sky. Through the open door of the building I could see the last of the roof beams, blackened and broken, the few pockets of still-burning flame licking at the walls of the destroyed way-station.

  ‘What are you doing back here?’ Blair demanded. His sallow face was now soot-darkened. There was a hangdog look about him. To one side, Allie and the shotgun rider stood glowering at me. The birdlike little woman, Jane, sat on a round rock nearby, her face buried in her hands. Mrs. Revere stood beside her, murmuring words we could not hear. No one had yet removed Jane’s husband’s body from the doorway.

  ‘Where else would you have me go? Look. Blair – I wasn’t with them. If I was, I’d be gone.’ I spotted my pistol just outside the door where I had dropped it and stepped up on to the porch to retrieve it. No one tried to stop me. I thought unhappily that it was going to do me as much good as their weapons were. I asked:

  ‘Aren’t there any other horses around here?’

  ‘They’ve been scattered. You saw the corral.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to do then?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Wait for the next stage to come through. It should get here around noon,’ Mlle answered.

  ‘What about the bandits? The kidnapped women?’ I asked the red-bearded man. He shook his head and replied:

  ‘Mister, the company pays me to drive their stagecoaches, not to track down highway robbers.’

  ‘Something has to be done,’ I said frantically, thinking of Marly and Eva. ‘What about you, Blair!’

  ‘What would you have me do?’ Blair asked. ‘Walk after them?’

  He was right, of course. There was nothing that could be done. I stared dismally into the distance. I had tried to help the women, but that was of no consolation to them now. Andy Givens, damn him, had outsmarted me.

  Desperation brought a grim sort of determination with it. Looking southward, the direction Andy had ridden, I said to Blair, ‘Why not? Why not try to walk after them?’ The man looked at me as if I had gone mad. Maybe I had. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘they won’t want to travel far with the stagecoach. Spotted anywhere off the coach trail it’s a dead give-away that something’s wrong. They’ll have to stop, break into the strongbox and divide up the gold, won’t they? There’s a chance—’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Blair muttered. Then he turned glumly away. Warren Travers had eased up beside me, looking haunted.

  ‘Do you think you can do it?’ the mine owner asked.

  ‘Who knows? It seems unlikely, but I can’t just stand here.’

  ‘If you could recover the gold….’

  ‘That is completely unlikely,’ I said. The mine boss’s eyes were pouched, weary.

  ‘The gold was mine, Keogh,’ he told me. He lifted his hand as if he were going to grip my shirt, but it fell away again.

  ‘I know it. Everyone knows it. There was practically no one you didn’t tell that the stage was carrying gold. Why do you think the bandits decided to hit us? You talk too much, Travers.’

  ‘I know I do,’ he said miserably. ‘I thought the shipment was safe enough. I even hired a line detective, him,’ he said nodding at Blair, ‘to help safeguard the shipment. A lot of good that did me. But the gold … I need it badly, Keogh. I lost a fortune when I had a shaft cave-in at my Number Two mine. I have to dig it out, start over. The gold was to start over, to repay debts owed. I’m ruined if I can’t recover it.’

  ‘It looks like you’re ruined, then, Travers,’ was all I could say. I turned my back then and started away. Now he did grab my arm. I shook his hand off.

  ‘You’re going ahead anyway?’ he asked in puzzlement.

  ‘I have to. There’s something that the bandits have that’s more valuable than all your gold. I’m going after them.’

  ‘There’s a reward,
even for a partial recovery—’ he pled to my back. I kept walking away, striding through the oaks where I hoped to find the wagon tracks and somehow follow the stolen stagecoach. Futile as it seemed, still I had to try. Succeed or fail. Marly would expect it of me.

  The tracks weren’t hard to find, and I walked on, trying not to think about the distances ahead of me, the raw land and bitter wind which was beginning to rise to chill me to the bones. I tried not to think about my battered hands and the small protection my wrong-side-slung pistol would provide against four armed men.

  Perhaps Andy would keep his word this time, I thought hopefully. Maybe he would release Marly. Eva, however, was a different proposition. She had been a part of the bargaining price when he fell in with Bull Mosely. Bull would not let her go. That meant that Marly would never again be the woman that she was. She had devoted her life, rightly or wrongly, to her sister.

  Andy Givens. What would he do? In the past few days he had murdered two men, showed signs of madness so that I scarcely recognized him. Would he actually be willing to split the gold with Bull Mosely and the other bandits?

  I had no answers to any of my questions, but they spun constantly through my mind as I trudged along over the broken ground, my ribs aching, my feet, tight in my Western boots, unsuitable for hiking, already beginning to blister.

  The sun rose higher and the land to grow even rougher. Ahead I saw only rocky crags, tangled red canyons, stacks of gray boulders. No stagecoach could make it across that section of land, not unless the bandits knew of a hidden trail – and none of them was familiar with this part of Colorado. At least I did not think so. That broken land would be where they intended to hide the coach, break open the strongbox and split the gold, make plans. I knew that. It had to be. I tried to hurry on, but even with a renewed sense of urgency my body could do no more.

  Was I too late? They could have finished their task and ridden on their way already. Even if I did find them, then what? Rush the camp with my pistol only to be shot down? It was a desperate man who now climbed a rock-strewn knoll, skirted a broad patch of nopal cactus and slid, stumbled, half fell down the far side of the rise.