Stagecoach

by Max Brand

  “Of course it’s spring,” Anne Cosden said, sitting down beside his bed. “It was just about a year ago in the spring, too, that I came by your house and you asked me in to have pone and strawberry jam.”

  “Ah,” Hobo Durfee said, abashed. “I disremembered for a minute. But I guess that you’re Miss Cosden, and . . .” A wave of pain struck him. He stiffened and fought out the battle.

  “Lord, man,” Anne Cosden said, “groan . . . that’ll let some of the corked-up pain out of you. When I was a youngster, I used to take pride in not making any noise when I was hurt. I was always spilling off a horse, you know, and breaking a collar bone, or something like that. But after a while I found that it did a lot of good just to lie back and shout when something hurt me.”

  Old Durfee chuckled. He had forgotten his pain. And little Sammy Gregg, noiseless as a shadow in a corner of the room, worshiped big Anne Cosden.

  She flashed a glance at him and moved her lips in a whisper that the sick man could not hear, but which said plainly to Sammy Gregg: “Will you please get rid of that goose look?”

  Then suddenly old Durfee was saying: “I’m beginning to remember. It sort of begins to work back into my mind . . . I see ’em standing there outside the door of my cabin. And . . . oh, my Lord, they got all my money! They got fifteen years that I can’t never live no more and they put them years of my life in their pockets.”

  Anne Cosden, with a consolatory murmur, put her hand on the hot forehead of Durfee, and at the same time a slight nod brought Sammy Gregg instantly to her side.

  “You know shorthand, Sammy. Now he’s about to talk . . . and you get every word down.”

  “Paper . . . ,” Sammy said helplessly.

  “Darn it,” Anne Cosden said, “write on the floor, if you can’t do any better.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  This was the fashion in which old Durfee told his story, slowly, stretching his tale over more than an hour, for often the horror of the thing that had happened would rush back upon his mind and stop his speech. But always Anne Cosden, sitting beside him, soothing him, letting him groan when he would, letting him speak when he could, sympathetic, gentle, filled with intuitions of the right manner of persuading him to talk, drew the story forth in every detail. While in the corner, unheeded by the sick man, little Sammy writhed and listened and writhed again, and, while his teeth were set, his rapid pencil took down the words of the sufferer.

  He had a little memorandum book that served him. Presently the memorandum book was filled—with the questions of the girl, and the responses of the sick man. And then he took out old letters and scrawled upon the backs of the sheets and on the outside and on the inside of envelopes, the utterances of Hobo Durfee that were to bring death to so many men.

  One might not have realized, looking in upon this scene, that Justice was no longer a blind goddess but was opening her eyes and beginning to prepare to strike, while that rapid, cunning pencil made the swift signs that could be reinterpreted as speech.

  The thing was ended. Old Durfee lay exhausted, but happy at last now that the tale had been told. For, just as the girl had told him, some of the pain seemed to pass into the groans and the words with which he had expressed himself.

  Then Anne Cosden, stifled with anger and grief, with tears in her eyes and with her square chin thrust forward, nodded jerkily to little Sammy, saying as clearly as words: “Now go out and let the world hear what we have heard.”

  So Sammy went softly out and faced the dense crowd that waited, in a deadly silence, in the outer room of the saloon. Not a word had been spoken out there. Not a drink had been tasted. But every man had a pair of revolvers belted around his hips and most of them leaned upon rifles, and in the street each man had left his fastest and strongest horse.

  At the nod of Sammy, and, seeing the paper in his hand, they followed him forth from the saloon. They gathered again in the street around him. But he was not tall enough to let all their eyes find his face, and therefore stalwart Hubert Cosden caught him up and perched the little man upon one of his broad shoulders.

  From this position, Sammy read forth his account, giving each of the questions of the girl, and each of the answers of poor Durfee. And there was not a whisper from that crowd. But every crook in it—and there were many of them there—felt like an honest man when he thought of the horror of it all.

  They came to the end of the document. Sammy reading off of an envelope, crowded with charactery.

  Miss Cosden: Did you recognize any of their voices?

  Durfee: One of them I thought I did. I ain’t quite sure.

  Miss Cosden: Who was that?

  Durfee: It was him that come the last. It was the seventh man.

  Miss Cosden: And who did he seem to you to be?

  Durfee: I disremember. A name come into my mind at the time, but it’s slipped out again.

  Miss Cosden: Don’t try too hard to remember. It may pop back into your mind again. What sort of a man was he? Tall or short?

  Durfee: Oh, he was considerable of a tallish sort of a gent.

  Miss Cosden: Young or old?

  Durfee: Sort of betwixt and between.

  Miss Cosden: And what did he say?

  Durfee: First I thought that he was gonna take my money away from them.

  Miss Cosden: Did you think that one man could take the money away from six?

  Durfee: I dunno. He was sort of a leader with them.

  Miss Cosden: What did he say to them?

  Durfee: He cussed them out considerable and said that what they had done was an outrage, you see. That was when I begun hoping.

  Miss Cosden: And then?

  Durfee: One of them up and said that now that they had turned the trick and got the money that so many others had tried to get and failed, that the chief might as well take his share.

  Miss Cosden: But did he take it?

  Durfee: Yes. I heard them counting the money out and I heard it go crashing and jingling into his wallet, I guess. I turned my head, and I seen him take it and I squinted hard to make out his face.

  Miss Cosden: Didn’t he have on a mask?

  Durfee: No, there was no mask on him. But there was a sort of blackness running around in front of his eyes and I couldn’t make him out clear.

  Miss Cosden: Was there anything else about him that struck you?

  Durfee: Nothing but his horse.

  Miss Cosden: What sort of a horse was it? Or could you see it in the night?

  Durfee: I couldn’t’ve seen it if it had been any other color. But it was a gray horse and mighty big and upstanding, sort of. It looked like a fine horse. I could tell that much. A horse that could carry a big man, too.

  Miss Cosden: I think you’re tired, now.

  Durfee: I’m sort of hankering for a little sleep.

  Sammy Gregg lowered the envelope. “That’s the end of it, boys,” he said. “There wasn’t any more, after that. He quieted down. And I came out to you. But I wonder if any of you think the same thing about the gray horse that I’m thinking?”

  There was an instant of scowling silence that showed that a good many had a thought but that they were unwilling to speak it. Then Jack Lorrain broke out: “I’ll tell you what I thought about . . . a gent that used to play a lone hand, but they say that he’s been mixing up with some of the other crooks, lately, and letting them do part of his work for him. The rest of you know who I mean. He’s a big man . . . and he’d be the leader of the gang, and he rides a gray horse that’s about as well known in these parts as the rider is known. I mean, Chester Furness.”

  And there was a sullen roar of assent.

  Then another in the rear of the crowd shouted: “Then let’s go and hunt him up!”

  There was another shout. And a movement toward horses was stopped by the thunder of Hubert Cosden: “You’ll never get him that way!”

  They paused, itching for action.

  Cosden went on: “I’ve seen gatherings like this before. A hun
dred well-armed and well-mounted men all set on getting some scoundrel . . . though we’ve never had scoundrels quite as black as these seven. But it always ends up the same way. We get hot under the collar. We jump onto our horses. We ride like sixty through the mountains with no particular end in mind. And, the next day, about half the boys have tired their horses . . . there’s no real clue before them . . . and most of them troop off back to town and to work. The rest stay on a few days longer, perhaps. They hear a couple of rumors . . . ride to hunt them down . . . find nothing . . . and then they go home and say that it’s the business of the law to handle these affairs, after all. But there is no law here. If we had a sheriff, we wouldn’t have affairs like this one of Durfee. There is no law except such law as we make with our own hands. And I say that the time has come for us to adopt new tactics. Do any of you agree with me?”

  They agreed. A good deal of their flare of enthusiasm vanished as he mentioned so many hard-faced facts.

  “But what do you suggest, Mister Cosden?”

  “I suggest that we have one man to direct all of us. Better to have one head, even if it’s a poor one, than to have fifty heads all wanting to do different things.”

  Anne Cosden came out to tell them to make less noise, for her charge was now asleep. But she remained to listen to the most exciting part of the scene that followed.

  Big Rendell, the storekeeper, walking with a frightful limp because of his battered hip, uttered his advice in a roar that had to be heard: “Gents,” he said, “I know the man to plan the work for you. He ain’t a fighting man. But he’s a man with brains. He can’t throw a rope, or handle a knife, or shoot with a gun. But he’s got a head on his shoulders. I mean him that brung the first big herd of ponies from Texas, which was something we all said couldn’t be done. I mean him that pushed through the Munson-Crumbock stage, after everybody else had tried it and failed. I mean my friend, Sam Gregg. He’s the man for you!”

  Anne Cosden could not help smiling as she looked at the five feet and eight inches of which Sammy Gregg was composed—and the thin face, which the sun could never entirely turn brown—and the nervous, eager body with which he had been furnished by nature and never improved by exercise. Sammy Gregg seemed immensely embarrassed and shook his head, and Anne Cosden waited for this crowd of proved men—killers, many of them, rough frontiersmen nearly all of them—to burst into a roar of laughter at the jest.

  But to her bewilderment, they did not laugh. They did not seem to take it as a joke, at all. And she was more amazed than ever when she saw them nodding gravely to themselves, and muttering.

  Jack Lorrain said: “That’s what I call good sense, Rendell. There’s enough of us to shoot the guns and ride the horses. We need a gent to sit back with a good head on his shoulders and tell us what is the next best trick for us to take. Here’s Sam Gregg that has done what nobody else could do. I say, let’s have Gregg to tell us what is what. He’s our general, I guess. And we’ll keep him off of the firing line, if we can. He’ll be headquarters for us. What you say, Sammy? Will you take the job of doing our thinking for us?”

  Sammy Gregg was most reluctant. There were twenty better men than he among them, he declared. And then he saw the astonished, almost thunderstruck face of big Anne Cosden, and his own color grew hotter still.

  “But,” Sammy said, “I’ve sat in the shack of old Hobo Durfee. And I’ve had his pone and strawberry jam, the same as most of the rest of you. And if you want me to take charge, I’ll do it. And do my best to bring in the whole seven of ’em, dead or alive . . . but mostly big Chester Furness with a rope around his neck. He’s been my bad luck ever since I came here. We landed on the same day. And my first job was to try to bring up a herd of horses from Texas. And you all know how that herd was stolen by Furness. Then I tried to open a stage line, and it was the robberies of Furness that nearly ruined me. Now it’s my turn to try to get him, and I’m going to do my best. If you want me for the job, say so, and I’ll take half an hour to think it over, and then tell you what looks best to me.”

  There was no doubt about the heartiness of the response. It was a true, old-fashioned, Anglo-Saxon throated cheer.

  Anne Cosden fairly staggered back into the room where her patient was stirring fretfully in his sleep. For to Anne, little Sammy had never seemed more than an imitation man before this day.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  They gave Sammy Gregg what he wanted—time to think out a plan—and he went off by himself and sat down on a stump behind the hotel and embraced his skinny knees with his thin hands and pondered his problem, and watched a pair of busy hens foraging among the seeds that the grass had dropped, under the surveillance of a lordly rooster with a red-helmeted head and a cuirass of curious greens and crimsons and rich purples.

  Sammy, watching this kingly fowl, thought to himself that there were men like it. There was Chester Furness, for instance, filling the eye utterly—big, handsome, stately, sure of himself. But he, Sammy Gregg, was surely none of these.

  A shadow whipped across the yard. The hens ran together in a huddle, squawking. Even the big rooster cowered, and spread his wings, and stretched out his neck foolishly to scan the sky above him. There was a hawk sliding through the sky above them, already away, and tilting out of sight behind the head of the nearest tree. There were men like that hawk, too—swifter than others, armed by Nature more than other men, keen, alert. And that strange fellow, Jeremy Major, was one of these.

  Or was Jeremy Major a type? Was he not rather unique?

  At least Sammy knew that he was neither rooster nor hawk. He was simply plain, common, or garden humanity. He was just the average height—or was he a little under it? And he was just the average weight, or was he a trifle lighter? And he had no strength of body or no skill of hand, and he had no strange talents, like Jeremy Major and other men. He had only common sense.

  Perhaps, indeed, he differed in one respect from most people. He could give himself wholly to a task that he had at hand. He could pour brain and soul into his labors with a perfectly focused intensity. Other men, by the very wealth of their powers, were apt to give only a quarter of their strength and a tithe of their time and attention. So he had struggled up a little beyond the mass of men. At least, his bank account was considered fatter than theirs.

  Yonder lay poor Durfee, a ruined man because of the treasure of some $7,000 that he had put away. But Sammy Gregg, still far under thirty, was master of a competent fortune. Not that he prided himself upon what he had done. No, for he took it all very humbly. It merely showed him that the constant use of even the smallest means may eventually carry one to the top of the mountain. And now, most astonishing, most shocking to all that he had ever expected of himself, he was appointed to construct the plan of a manhunt. Seven human lives were the goal of his endeavors—he who could not ride a bucking horse, or shoot a gun, or read a hundred feet of the plainest trail. But those rough-handed fellows who could do all of these things—they themselves had chosen him.

  It was only for a moment that he contemplated the strangeness of his work and his place in that work. Then he lost all thought of self, and his mind was rapt in the contemplation of the problem. It was more than an hour before he called together the leaders among the men—the well-known figures who were familiar to cowpunchers and miners alike.

  More than one of them, no doubt, envied him his eminent position on this day and would be willing to scoff at his schemes. He must win their trust and confidence first of all. So he stood with them at the corner of the street and laid his plan bare.

  It was more complicated than they liked, he could see that, but the longer he talked the more willing they seemed to agree with him. In the first place, he decided that the seven, having drawn together, would never content themselves with one such act as the robbery of poor old Durfee.

  Furness was not the sort of a man to assemble forces merely because there was a handful of money like this in the offing. His own gains in the trade of h
ighway robbery must now be mounting to the scores and scores of thousands. And if he called together seven men, it was never for the sake of robbing a helpless old fellow like Durfee.

  For, as Sammy pointed out to them, Furness was a fellow who lived as a road agent partly for the money but mostly, he had no doubt, as a means of amusing himself. No, it was plain that he had appointed to his followers some rendezvous near the house of Durfee. He himself had been late, and, while they waited for him, they had started out to make a little money on the side. And the horrible torture of Durfee had followed.

  But originally they must have been summoned to effect a raid of major importance. No such blow had been struck within the last few days. Therefore it was plain that the work for the band had not yet been accomplished. It was still to do, and they could trust to Furness that the blow would most surely fall. If the countryside were roused against him, so much the greater reason would there seem to him to push his scheme through, no matter what it might be.

  With this in mind, what Sammy Gregg proposed was that they learn, as soon as possible, how many of the men who were assembled in Munson on this day could be relied upon to campaign for a matter of a week, at the least. There were now more than a hundred under arms. But perhaps more than two thirds of these could not leave their work for a long manhunt. Better find out the permanent men for the posse at once.

  For now, Hubert Cosden would enter the stage and make the journey back to Crumbock as fast as possible. There he would spread the alarm in the same fashion and gather as many permanent men as he could.

  “Now,” Sammy said to his new henchmen, “there’s half a dozen places where Furness’s riders are apt to strike. They might tackle Munson. They might try Crumbock. They might land at Chadwick City, or Little Orleans, or Buxton Crossing. Or they might even ride as far as Old Shawnee. Look at the map.” He sketched in the dust with his forefinger as he talked. “Here are the mountains in a lump . . . an armful a hundred and fifty miles across. Crumbock is fairly close to the center of it. Munson is off here to the edge. The other towns are out on the plains beyond. Very well. No matter where they rob, Furness and his men always head for the heart of the mountains. That is their hole-in-the-wall country. They hide there as soon as they can after they’ve made a raid.