Quinn's Last Run

by Paul Lederer

  Who were the men who had jumped him last night? What did they want? There were several possibilities that came to mind. Perhaps they knew about the gold and did not want it transported farther.

  Or … Quinn rose and ran his fingers through his hair before reaching for his hat. Or, perhaps it had been friends of Jody Short, planning on freeing him. Conversely, they could have been men who had known Dolores Delgado and wished to take Short to deal with him personally. If Lily Davenport.…

  It was too much to think of with a throbbing head and an empty stomach. He swung the door wide and tramped down the short corridor to the kitchen where already the others, save Mike Hancock, were settled around the table. In front of them was a platterful of scrambled eggs, bowls of thick chunky salsa, fresh tortillas and a half-gallon-sized blue enamel pot filled with dark, strong coffee. Quinn slid on to the bench at the end of the table and was served almost immediately by Pyle’s small, worried-appearing wife. He nodded his thanks, looked across the plank table at Lily Davenport whose mouth remained tight even as she ate.

  ‘Where’s Mike Hancock?’ Quinn asked Aaron Pyle when he emerged from some back room, drying his hands on a small towel.

  ‘He was here,’ Pyle shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  It wasn’t like Mike to leave his prisoner unattended, even one in manacles.

  ‘Maybe he felt sick,’ George Sabato said. From the way the fat man was shoveling food into his mouth, he was feeling anything but ill.

  ‘I’d better check on him,’ Quinn said. No one answered. He folded his napkin, placed it aside and with his cup of coffee in hand started toward the front room of the stage station.

  In one corner Mike Hancock sat sagged in a leather-strap chair, his rifle across his lap. He glanced up as Quinn approached across the room. ‘Better eat up, Mike,’ Quinn said, crouching down beside the marshal.

  ‘So now you’re telling me?’ Mike laughed. His color was not good; his eyes had a dull sheen.

  ‘There’s a long road ahead still,’ Quinn said. ‘You’ll need your strength.’

  ‘That’s just it, Tom, my strength is gone. I left it back on the long trail. When, where I don’t know, but I’m feeling tired, shaky and suddenly old. I was thinking matters over last night, Tom.’ Mike Hancock told him, ‘I believe this is my last run. I am going to find another line of work. But I have to get the kid to Yuma Prison first! I won’t end my career with a failure on my record.

  ‘Tom,’ Hancock asked, fixing pleading eyes on Quinn, ‘would you reconsider driving the stagecoach the rest of the way? Riding aboard, with you there to help me watch the kid, I could make it.’

  Tom said nothing. His perverse reaction to the beating he had taken the night before had been a hastily reached decision. In the morning light it had seemed only impulsive contrariness. He did not want to drive the stage. Why should he? Now looking at Mike Hancock’s hopeful eyes he thought matters over again.

  He had promised Tank that he would get the stage through – to Las Palmas – but there was no one there to finish Tank’s last run for him. Now Mike Hancock, obviously weary and needing help, had asked him for the same favor.

  Hell, what could another day out of his life cost him? The little ranch along the Yavapai would still be there when he reached it.

  ‘All right, Mike,’ Quinn said at length, rising out of his crouch. ‘I’ll help you make your last run.’

  He returned to the kitchen where the others were finishing their meals. Sabato was dabbing elaborately at his thick lips with a blue napkin. There was salsa on his shirt-front. Lily Davenport, her plate pushed aside, sipped at her coffee. Jody Short wore a kind of contented sneer.

  ‘How’s the marshal?’ the kid asked.

  ‘Just fine,’ Quinn answered coldly. ‘Pyle,’ he said to the station master, ‘don’t bother to send for another driver. I’ll take the stage through to Yuma.’

  Lily Davenport’s eyes lit up and beamed her pleasure his way. Perhaps she had the mistaken idea that her charms had turned the trick. Sabato wore a toothy smile and for a moment Quinn feared that the government man was going to slap his shoulder with relief. In the end Sabato just murmured, ‘Fine, fine!’ Jody Short sat watching him without expression. Maybe he had hoped that somehow he could make his escape with the stage delayed and Mike Hancock ailing. Or maybe he was waiting for friends out there to arrive and help him. His eyes gave nothing away. His sullen mouth altered into a boyish smile which he directed at Lily Davenport.

  ‘Well, miss, it looks like I’m going to be in your company for a little while.’

  ‘Is the hostler up?’ Quinn said, ignoring all of the by-play. Aaron Pyle nodded. Quinn suggested: ‘Let’s get that team hitched then. And you’d better have him tether the two saddle horses on behind.’

  ‘Sure. Glad to,’ Pyle said, relieved that he had averted any blame that might have been attributed to him for a delay of the coach’s arrival. The others rose, going to their separate rooms to gather their belongings, such as they were. Pyle’s wife quickly, dutifully, collected the dishes from the table.

  Tom Quinn guided Jody Short to the front room and sat him down where Mike Hancock could keep an eye on the kid, and then wandered out on to the front porch of the stage station to study the paling desert sky. He braced his hands on the hitch rail, asking himself what sort of fool he was.

  The hostler, a bad-tempered, narrow, dark-eyed man was leading the hitched team and stagecoach round. A different set of horses, of course, and Tom Quinn stepped from the plankwalk to make their acquaintance. The vastly experienced Tank Dawson had told him it was useful to introduce himself to the animals. Each team, he had explained, was different, each with its own foibles, like humans. Quinn didn’t totally understand what Tank had been talking about, but in a way it seemed to make sense, and so he paused at each horse’s head, stroking its muzzle and speaking softly to it.

  Then Quinn started back toward the station to tell those waiting that the stage was ready. Apparently the hostler had already made that announcement, for before Quinn could enter the building George Sabato slipped through the door carrying the heavy canvas sack he had been guarding. His eyes flickered nervously up and down the street; his pudgy hand did not stray far from the skirt of his coat, which concealed a sidearm.

  ‘Need help, Sabato?’ Quinn asked with a slight smile.

  ‘I’ll tell you if I do,’ Sabato snapped back. His nerves were obviously on edge. His reputation and livelihood, Quinn guessed, hung on safely delivering the gold to the prison authorities in Yuma.

  The door remained open and after a minute or two the other passengers emerged: Lily Davenport carrying a small carpetbag with her overnight things in it, Jody Short with Mike Hancock directly behind him, looking gray-faced and drawn this morning. Probably what Mike needed more than anything just now was sleep, a scarce commodity when your task is to watch a killer twenty-four hours a day.

  ‘You all right, Mike?’ Quinn asked as, together, they half-aided, half-forced Jody Short up into the stage where he sat opposite Lily.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Mike replied with a weariness that did little to convince Quinn. ‘I guess I’d better sit up on the box with you. If there’s more trouble ahead.…’ His voice trailed off. His eyes pleaded that there would be no more trouble on the last leg into Yuma.

  ‘It’d probably be best,’ Quinn agreed. ‘If you don’t mind eating some dust.’

  ‘As if the dust don’t blow inside these coaches!’ Mike said, offering a weak smile.

  That was true enough. The side curtains on the coach did little but darken the interior. Just now the four curtains were rolled up as the morning remained cool. Hancock took a moment to hold George Sabato aside and Quinn heard him say in a low voice, ‘Make sure you keep that pistol of yours far away from the kid.’

  ‘Do I look like an idiot?’ Sabato asked angrily. ‘Remember, I was a prison guard for a long while.’

  Mike Hancock nodded an apology and clambered up into the
box to seat himself beside Quinn who had gathered the reins by now. The marshal muttered, ‘He don’t look like an idiot, but he sure talks like one.’

  Quinn laughed out loud, turned to wave farewell to Aaron Pyle and his wife, standing in the doorway of the stage station, and cracked the whip above the lead horses’ ears.

  With the new sun low and red at their backs, the team lurched into motion and the stagecoach rolled forward out of the pueblo of Las Palmas, carrying its diverse and unpredictable cargo on toward Yuma across the white sand desert.

  The morning was still cool, the team fresh and eager to run, and Quinn’s mood lightened as he now foresaw a quick and easy run into the town. Mike Hancock beside him rode silently, clutching his rifle. From time to time the marshal’s eyelids dropped and Quinn had to elbow Mike to keep him awake. Not only did he need an alert guard, but asleep, Hancock could easily be jounced from the seat to fall against the sand or be rolled over by the coach’s wheels. ‘Sorry,’ the marshal murmured more than once.

  A quarter of a mile on the man standing in the middle of the road with a shotgun in his hands halted the stagecoach.

  Quinn’s first impulse was to run the man down, but then he saw the surrey drawn to the side of the road, saw a Spanish-dressed woman in black standing near it, leather satchel clutched in her small hands, and though he told Mike Hancock to stay wary, Quinn did not take it for a hold-up attempt.

  The man, thick shouldered, rough-appearing, wearing a thick bandito-style mustache approached the stage and shouted up to Quinn.

  ‘My daughter, she needs to go to Yuma. We had trouble with a wheel on the road. I could not make the station before you left. I will pay whatever you want now, but she must go to Yuma.’ Quinn glanced at the small Spanish girl who had turned her eyes down shyly, then looked back to the grim face of her father who still held his shotgun tightly. ‘It’s all right with me,’ he answered. ‘You ride on into Las Palmas and pay the station master there after we’ve gone.’

  ‘I will do that, I promise, señor.’ There was relief and sincerity in the big man’s eyes. Personally Quinn could not care less whether or not he took an extra passenger on to Yuma, but he knew the Spanish man would feel he had not met his obligation if he did not pay for his daughter’s passage.

  Therefore, with Mike Hancock holding the reins, Quinn stowed the young woman’s small bag in the boot and helped her aboard the stage where three sets of appraising eyes studied her closely. Sabato just seemed puzzled, Jody Short wolfishly interested; Lily Davenport’s gaze was one of inspection and assessment.

  Climbing back up on to the box, Quinn took the reins from Mike, situated them in his gloved fingers and started the team westward once again.

  ‘That was kind of funny, wasn’t it?’ the marshal asked after another mile or so.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, stopping the stage like that. He said he’d had trouble with a wheel, but if so, how did he manage to fix it again way out here?’

  ‘I guess he’s handy,’ Quinn said with a smile.

  ‘I’ve been a lawman too long, Quinn,’ Mike Hancock answered. ‘It makes a man suspicious of everything and everyone, I guess. But I was wondering if … maybe the man didn’t go into Las Palmas because he didn’t want his face to be seen.’

  Quinn guided the team onward across the barren flats. His answer was vague if not unconcerned. ‘It’s a mysterious life, Mike.’

  ‘Isn’t it,’ the marshal agreed and he leaned back, tilting his hat forward against the glare the white-sand desert reflected from the rising sun.

  The horses ran on easily. The land rolled past – a land remarkable for the absence of landmarks of any kind. Endless sand, scattered creosote and clumps of nopal cactus, little else. Quinn fell into silent concentration. He considered Mike Hancock’s words only once and then dismissed the assumption. What did it matter to them anyway if the big Spaniard was a wanted man?

  Still, it was a little puzzling if one thought about it. But then, as he had said to Hancock, it’s a mysterious world we live in, never knowing the comings and goings, the intent of those around us. We can only accept what we are told. Wild surmise can lead to dangerous conclusions.

  Yet … the young Spanish girl did seem to be a mysterious presence among them and they needed no more problems than they already had riding with them.

  The stage rolled on farther across the white wilderness carrying more questions than answers.

  FOUR

  Her name was Alicia. Quinn found that much out as they halted the team at the Tortuga Creek crossing around noon to let the horses water and rest. There was scrub willow along the brightly flowing creek and a thicket of mesquite trees along the sandy shore where the passengers gathered what relief they could from the sun in the lacy shade the thorny plants offered. The girl had been standing apart from the rest of them, hands clasped together in front of her. Her dark eyes were wide and slightly timorous when she lifted them at Quinn’s approach.

  Quinn stretched the truth when he told her, ‘I need your name to write down in my register. The company likes to keep records, you see?’

  She only continued to stare up at him like a small animal trying to decide whether to bolt or not. Tom Quinn wondered whether perhaps the girl did not speak English. He began trying to frame his question in Spanish for her, but she suddenly blurted out:

  ‘Alicia,’ and spun away to walk off through the vague dry shade of the thicket.

  That was all the information Quinn got from her. Well, the girl had her secrets – they all did on this run, it seemed. There was no point in pressing inquiries further. Quinn had no register, had no reason beyond curiosity to even be asking the girl that much. Shrugging, he returned to the creek where the horses, up to their hocks in the stream, drank. Mike Hancock held the reins to the team. Quinn dipped his hat into the creek and emptied it on his head.

  ‘Learn anything?’ the marshal asked.

  ‘Her name is Alicia,’ Quinn answered. Then he took the reins from Mike and backed the team on to dry land so that the passengers could climb aboard the coach again. The two saddle horses which had been untethered to drink were again tied on behind the stage.

  They continued then, following the old stage road up out of the river bottom on to the white flats once again. The sun assaulted them. The hot winds gusted intermittently. The horses, no longer so fresh, had to be urged on to speed now and then. Inside the coach the passengers bounced and careered into one another as the hot dust crept in around the margins of the curtains. Mike Hancock spotted them fast, and he lifted a gloved hand toward the mounted men sitting their horses motionlessly on the road ahead. ‘I don’t think these men are waiting for a ride,’ the marshal muttered, levering a round into the receiver of his Winchester. Tom Quinn slowed the team. What was there to do? These were men who meant them no good. Five of them, Quinn counted. It would do no good to try to run through them. They would catch the coach quickly. There was nowhere to veer from the coach road. Their wheels would swiftly sink into the white sands.

  ‘It must be the gold they’re after,’ Hancock guessed.

  ‘It seems likely,’ Quinn said grimly as he slowed the team still more. ‘If that’s all they want, I say let them have it.’

  ‘You are not a lawman,’ Mike Hancock answered with determination. ‘I can’t just sit here and watch a hold-up.’

  ‘Mike,’ Quinn cautioned. ‘You aren’t going to fight off five men. As you can see, I’ve got my hands full. Besides, starting a fight might mean that one of the passengers will catch a stray bullet. We’ve got to let them have the gold if that’s what they want.’

  Mike Hancock frowned, ground his teeth together and tightened his grip on his rifle as Quinn halted his shuddering team. The waiting men circled the coach, guns in hand. They did not wear masks. That indicated not carelessness to Tom Quinn, but a lack of concern about being identified.

  Mike Hancock recognized their leader as he neared the stage. The marshal hissed: ‘Gu
errero!’

  It was indeed Ernesto Guerrero. Quinn glanced at the narrow dark face with its neatly trimmed mustache, the black expressionless eyes. The rumor that he was still imprisoned down in Riodoso was obviously wrong.

  Guerrero walked his horse nearer, his Colt held loosely in his right hand. Two rough-looking men flanked him. One a thick dark Mexican, the other a pale blond kid whose eyes held a vaguely unsettled look.

  The movement that Guerrero made was sudden and unexpected. Quinn was never sure if the border raider had recognized Hancock or only seen the badge on his shirt front. Nor was he sure that Mike had not fired first with his Winchester. Two shots rang out almost in unison. Mike half-rose from the bench of the coach, looked skyward and toppled to the earth below. The horses reared and strained at the reins and Quinn had to settle the team. There was no chance for him to draw his gun even had he been inclined to follow Hancock’s folly of facing down five armed men.

  ‘You,’ Guerrero said to Quinn, not yet holstering his smoking pistol. ‘Hold the team steady and do not try for a weapon.’ The bandit did not recognize Tom Quinn as one of the posse that had chased him from the Yavapai range. On that occasion they had never gotten close enough to Guerrero himself for the outlaw to have seen Quinn.

  ‘I’m holding them,’ Quinn said in a flat voice. His boot was braced against the wooden brake handle, his gloved hands tight around the reins. He looked to where Mike Hancock lay unmoving against the hot sand, his rifle beside him, and his mouth tightened. So Mike had made his last run as well. If the marshal had maintained his patience just a little while longer he might have ended up, as he wished, running a stage station, or as a settled bank guard somewhere. Mike Hancock, Quinn decided, had had too much of a sense of duty for his own good.

  ‘Toss down your weapon,’ Quinn was advised. He slicked his Colt from his holster, reversed it, and tossed it to the bandit sitting his horse nearest him. Glancing to his left, Quinn did see a bright object on the seat beside him. It was Mike Hancock’s pistol, fallen from his holster in the brief struggle. The bandits had not searched Hancock’s body. What threat was the marshal to them now, armed or unarmed?