by Al Lacy
As time continued to pass, Dane thought of Tharyn Myers daily, and prayed for her, wishing he knew where she was and if she was well and happy.
Though Dane lived in a boardinghouse a half-block from his parents’ home, he ate nearly all of his evening meals with them.
One evening in mid-September, while the Logans and their son were enjoying supper together, father and son were talking about a new farm family named Jones who had brought their twelve-year-old daughter to the office with a rash on her face. Both doctors had looked at her.
Dane chuckled. “You know what, Dad?”
Jacob looked at him from across the table while chewing a piece of Naomi’s delicious fried chicken. “What?”
“I was just coming out of the examining room into the office as Mr. and Mrs. Jones were standing with the girl at Mom’s desk, and when I heard Mrs. Jones tell Mom her daughter’s name was Sharon, at first I thought she said Tharyn. It sort of gave me a start. And then when Mom repeated it while writing the girl’s name down, I realized I had heard wrong.”
Naomi set soft eyes on her son. “Honey, it seems to me that you must carry Tharyn in your heart twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, and three hundred sixty-six days every leap year.”
Dane smiled at her. “You’re right, Mom. She’s still ‘little sis’ to me, and I suppose she always will be. If I just knew she was well and happy, it sure would relieve my mind.”
Jacob took a sip of hot tea, and set the cup down. “Son, your mama and I have told you this before, but I’ll say it again. Tharyn belongs to the Lord. I have no doubt that He led her to a good Christian family when she was on that orphan train. From what she told you about wanting to become a nurse, I have a feeling she achieved her goal.”
“Yes,” said Naomi. “You’ve talked about her so much all these years, I feel like I know her. From what you told us about her personality, I’d say since she is now twenty-two years of age, she is an excellent nurse at some good doctor’s side, or in some clinic or hospital. And she is probably married to a good Christian man.”
Dane’s face pinched at those last words.
“Son, I know you think a lot of that girl, but it seems to me the feelings you have go deeper than just thinking of her as the sweet girl you adopted as your little sister in that Manhattan alley,” Jacob said. “You were fifteen and she was thirteen when you met, and you haven’t seen each other since. You were both too young to be in love at that time, but you sure seem to feel that way about her now, even though you haven’t seen her in over nine years. The Lord has a young lady all picked out for you, and when He is ready to cross your paths, He will do it, and you’ll really fall in love.”
Dane drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nostrils. “I know you’re right, Dad. Tharyn is the only girl who ever captured my heart. I’ve just never met anyone like her. But, of course, we were too young to be in love back then. No doubt when I meet that special gal the Lord has chosen for me, my thoughts of Tharyn will fade.”
“That’s right, honey,” said Naomi. “They will.”
That night when Dane was in his bed at the boardinghouse and trying to get to sleep, he found Tharyn once again on his mind.
He rolled from one side to the other, then flopped on to his back, staring up at the ceiling in the dim light that came through the window from a half-moon.
Once again, he tried to imagine where Tharyn might be in the vast expanse of the West. Was she indeed a nurse? And was she married?
He thought of how she depended on him to take care of her when her parents were killed, and how lost and afraid she was when he was arrested and put in prison.
He closed his eyes. “Lord, as I’ve asked You so many times before, take care of her, wherever she is. And—and please bring the young lady You have chosen to be my wife into my life very soon.”
The next day, Dr. Jacob Logan was with a patient in one of the curtained sections of the examining room while Dr. Dane was with a small boy in another section, being assisted by Nurse Ella Dover while the boy’s mother looked on.
At the desk in the front office, Naomi Logan looked up to see a white-faced farmer named Clyde Ballard come in. The Ballards had long been Dr. Jacob’s patients.
Naomi smiled up at the farmer. “Good morning, Clyde. Do you need to see the doctor?”
Clyde removed his hat. “Not this time, ma’am. You know that my seventy-two-year-old mother lives with us.”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mama fell down the stairs in our house about a half hour ago, all the way from the second floor to the bottom floor. She’s in a great deal of pain and her legs are numb. Can your husband or your son come and look at her?”
Naomi rose to her feet. “They’re both with patients in the back room. Let me go see which one will be free first to go with you.”
Clyde Ballard paced the floor, wringing his hands while waiting for Naomi to return.
After three or four minutes, she returned. “Dr. Jacob will be ready to go first, Clyde. He’ll be through with his patient in just a few minutes.”
Less than ten minutes later, Dr. Jacob came through the examining room door with a middle-aged man who was wearing a bandage over his left eye. Jacob had his medical bag in hand.
He told Naomi to make an appointment for the man in two days so he could examine his eye, then looked at Clyde. “Let’s go.”
Naomi glanced out the big window and watched her husband jump into his buggy while Clyde swung aboard his horse. As they hurried away, she looked up at the man with the bandage over his eye. She opened the appointment book and they agreed on the time for him to come in on Wednesday.
The man moved out the door, and at the same time, a man and his wife came in. Naomi knew they had an appointment. She told them to be seated, and Dr. Dane would be with them shortly.
Naomi went into the examining room to see how it was going with the four-year-old boy who had fallen out of a tree and broken his collarbone. She stepped up and said, “Well, Dr. Logan, how’s Bobby doing?”
Dr. Dane spoke without taking his eyes off his work. “Bobby will be all right once I get him trussed up, Mom. He will heal up in a few weeks. I heard you talking to Dad a few minutes ago. Was that Bertha Ballard who fell down some stairs?”
Naomi knew her son had helped care for Clyde Ballard’s mother when she was in Memorial Hospital a few months ago. “Yes. Your father is on his way to the Ballard farm right now, following Clyde.”
“I sure hope she isn’t seriously hurt.”
“Me too. Well, I have to get back to the office. Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield are here.”
Dane nodded. “I’ll be ready to see them in about ten minutes.”
It was early morning, Tuesday, September 14. In Fort Collins, Colorado—some forty miles south of Cheyenne, Wyoming—a stagecoach and its six horses waited in front of the Wells Fargo office. The air was cool as the sun began to flush the sky over the eastern plains, casting a faint scarlet hue on the towering, jagged Rockies to the west.
Inside the Wells Fargo office, driver Buck Cummons had his stalwart young shotgunner, Doke Veatch, at his side as he ran his gaze over the five passengers who would soon board the stage for its trip north. Crew and passengers had eaten breakfast together and had become somewhat acquainted.
Four of the five would be staying aboard to Casper, Wyoming—the stage’s final destination before turning around. There were only three stops between Fort Collins and Casper: Cheyenne, Wheatland, and Douglas. Passenger Vern Stanton would be getting off at Douglas.
Stanton was a huge, hard-faced man in his midforties. At breakfast, everyone learned that he had been a sergeant in the Union Army during the Civil War, and though none had shared their impressions of the man with the others, they felt he would have been a typical sergeant with his crusty, no-nonsense personality.
The other two male passengers were Clayton Jubb, who was a Casper hardware store clerk in his midt
hirties, and Wayne Hoover, Casper’s forty-six-year-old mayor.
One of the female passengers was Stella Yoder, a widow in her early sixties. She wore a calico dress on her ample frame, and her silver hair was pulled into a tight bun atop her head. Her face was crisscrossed with deep lines on her leathery skin.
At the breakfast table, Stella told the others that she had spent most of her life on the rugged Wyoming prairie. She still lived on the six-hundred-acre ranch just north of Casper, where she was taken from Missouri as a very young bride and still ran the ranch with the help of a handful of ranch hands. She told the others that her husband and two sons died in a blizzard ten years before while driving cattle home that they had purchased from a ranch near Powder River, Wyoming.
The other female passenger was twenty-year-old Anna Devries, from Rochester, New York. She was on her way to Casper to become a mail order bride and had stopped in Fort Collins to spend a day with a friend from school who had come to Colorado a year ago to become a mail order bride. The young man Anna was planning to marry worked a ranch with his father a few miles west of Casper.
Anna was wearing a simple dress of deep apple red broadcloth. The only trimming was a double row of navy blue rickrack around the collar and cuffs. A navy crochet shawl covered her slim shoulders, meant to ward off the slight chill of the September day.
Anna’s honey blond hair was pulled back from the sides of her pretty face and tied at the crown with a dark blue ribbon. The rest of her blond tresses fell down her back in soft waves almost reaching her waist.
Driver Buck Cummons, who recently turned fifty, smiled at his passengers. “Well, folks, we’re ready to board.” He looked at his shotgunner, giving him an eye signal, and Veatch nodded that he understood.
Vern Stanton hurried to the door and held it open for the ladies to pass through. They both smiled and thanked him, then he preceded them to the stagecoach while Jubb and Hoover followed, with the driver on their heels.
When Stanton reached the coach, he opened the door, then offered his hand to Stella and helped her aboard. While he was doing this, four young men who stood in front of the livery stable next to the Fargo office began calling to Anna with flirtatious words, calling her “blondie” and smiling.
Suddenly, Stanton turned and looked at them, his motion like the swift cut of a knife and his eyes like coals of fire. His attention stayed fixed on them until they went silent and their smiles faded away.
“Thank you, Mr. Stanton,” said Anna and took his hand.
Stanton helped her into the coach, and she sat down beside Stella on the seat that faced the rear of the coach. The bulky former army sergeant climbed in and sat down facing them, and Jubb and Hoover followed, crowding onto the seat with Stanton. Driver Buck Cummons closed the door, then looked back toward the office and nodded. At the door, Doke Veatch nodded in return, then pivoted and moved into the office.
“Okay,” said Doke to the Fargo agent who stood behind the counter.
The agent reached under the counter, lifted an oblong metal box by its handle and extended it to Doke. He then lifted up a folded piece of canvas and handed it to him. Doke smiled, took the canvas, shook it open, and wrapped it around the metal box. “See you in a few days.” He left the office.
By the time Doke reached the stage, Buck was up on the seat with the reins in his hands and one foot teetering on the brake. Doke reached up, set the canvas-covered metal box on the seat, shoved it toward Buck, then climbed up and sat down. He placed the metal box beneath the seat and picked up his shotgun. “Okay, Buck. Let’s go.”
The Wyoming sun was halfway down the afternoon sky. In a patch of forest just south of a small settlement known as Chugwater some forty-five miles north of Cheyenne and twenty miles south of Wheatland, the six men who made up the Tag Moran gang sat on the ground, each one of them with his back against a tree. Their saddled horses stood close by, swishing their tails at the flies that were pestering them.
Four of the gang members were brothers. The oldest, at twenty-eight, was Tag Moran, who was also known to be the toughest. Bart Moran was twenty-six, Jason was twenty-four, and Darryl was twenty-one. The other two gang members were twenty-seven-year-old Gib Tully and twenty-three-year-old Tony Chacone.
Tag took a pocket watch from his vest pocket, looked at it, and returned it to its place. “Stage should be along in about forty minutes.”
Gib Tully grinned at Tag. “I’m sure glad you ran onto your old pal, Harry Eads, in Wheatland, Tag. You didn’t know he worked for Wells Fargo until you ran into him there on the street this mornin’, did you?”
“Sure didn’t. He’s lived in Wheatland for a long time, but from what he told me, he’s only been with Fargo a few months. When he gave me the information this morning about the stage carrying the fifty thousand dollars from the Bank of Fort Collins to its subsidiary bank in Casper, all he asked for telling me about it was a couple hundred dollars, so I went ahead and gave it to him.”
“Wow! Fifty thousand dollars!” said Tony Chacone. “Maybe we should have started robbing stagecoaches a long time ago. We’ve robbed banks in western Nebraska, all over Wyoming, and in northern Colorado, and done well, but it sounds to me like we’ve been missing something.”
Tag shook his head. “Just robbing stagecoaches at random isn’t worth the effort, Tony. All you get is what the crew and passengers might have in their wallets and purses. But when you get a tip on big money being transported by a stage—like I got from Harry—it’s plenty worth the effort.”
“Opportunities like this with stagecoaches don’t come along very often, big brother,” said Bart, “but we’ve sure been successful robbing banks these past two years. We’ve been living well on our loot, plus we’ve got forty-five thousand in the kitty at the hideout. That’s seventy-five hundred for each man. This fifty thousand will sure add to the kitty—over eight thousand apiece. That’ll sure make my darling Lucinda happy.”
Gib laughed. “Yeah, it’ll make my sweet Kathryn happy too.”
Tag chuckled. “It ought to. When I came up with the idea of forming this gang, those wives of yours weren’t too happy about you guys becoming outlaws. But they’ve sure changed their tune since we’ve come home to the hideout these past two years with all that money.”
“Yep, Tag,” said Gib, “they sure have. Kathryn has her hopes up high because of the goal you’ve set for each member of the gang to have a quarter-million dollars so we can all head for California and live like kings the rest of our lives.”
“So does Lucinda,” said Bart. “Maybe the rest of you guys will find gals to marry in California so you can share your wealth with them like Gib and I are doing with our wives.”
Darryl Moran spoke up. “Well, before we reach that goal, we’ve got a lot more banks to rob.”
Tag nodded. “You’re right, baby brother, and I’ve got big plans. I’ll tell all of you about banks we’ll be hitting in the future when we get back to the hideout.” He looked toward the south. “Right now, we’ve got to concentrate on the stage that’s coming our way with the fifty thousand.”
Some twelve miles south of Chugwater, Buck Cummons pulled back on the reins, slowing the six-up team. A few seconds later, he veered the stage off the road and guided the team toward the gurgling stream of water known as Horse Creek. When Buck drew the team to a halt, Doke Veatch laid his double-barreled shotgun at his feet, then hopped down from the box and grasped a bucket from where it hung on a wire hook on the side of the coach.
Buck climbed down while his shotgunner was dipping the bucket in the creek, stepped up to the door, and pulled it open. “Doke’s gonna water the horses here, folks. It’s quite a stretch from Cheyenne to Wheatland, so we always stop here at Horse Creek and give the team a drink. If you’d like to step out and stretch your legs, you’re welcome to do so.”
Vern Stanton stepped out, adjusted the gun belt on his waist, glanced at the shotgunner as he was carrying the full bucket toward the horses, and said, “How
about me helping Doke, Buck? I’m really eager to get to Douglas as soon as possible. I’ve been gone for over a month. My wife—”
“We only have one bucket, Mr. Stanton,” cut in Buck. “It won’t take Doke long to water the horses. We’ll be on our way shortly.”
Stanton sighed and nodded. “Okay.”
The others told Buck they would just stay in the coach. Stanton waited impatiently, pacing back and forth near the team while watching the shotgunner hurrying between the creek and the team, giving each horse a full bucket to drink.
The stop lasted a total of twenty minutes. The stage then pulled away from the creek bank and headed up the road.
In the patch of forest just south of Chugwater, the gang members were now on their feet in anticipation of the stage showing up. Jason Moran was telling his brother Tag how excited he was about becoming filthy rich and spending the rest of his life in California, living high on the hog, when suddenly Darryl pointed south down the road. “Here comes the stage!”
Every eye turned that way, and they saw the cloud of dust on the road, preceded by the fast-moving stagecoach.
Tag ran his gaze over the exuberant faces of the other five. “Okay, boys. You know what to do.”
In the driver’s box on the stagecoach, Buck Cummons slowed the team as they drew near a narrow spot that was sided by huge boulders, each some fifteen feet in height.
As the stage entered the narrow passage, suddenly a large length of broken tree came tumbling down from the boulder on the right and blocked the coach’s path. “Whoa!” Cummons cried and quickly pulled rein, stopping the frightened horses.
The passengers were pushing their faces out the windows, and at the same instant, they and the crew saw five men, guns drawn, surrounding the stage.
Some of the horses whinnied nervously.
Gib Tully stood facing driver and shotgunner, and snapped loudly, “You first, driver! Throw your guns down on the ground. Your revolver and your rifle!”
Buck licked his lips, pulled his revolver from its holster, tossed it earthward, then leaned over and picked up the rifle that lay at his feet. From the corner of his eye, he saw the anger on Doke’s reddened features and whispered, “Don’t try anything. They’ll kill you.” With that, he tossed the rifle down.