Stagecoach

by Max Brand

  “Now, what I plan to do is not to try to herd them away from all the towns, but cut off the line of their retreat. We ought to get thirty or forty men out of Munson, and the same number out of Crumbock. Then split those men into two sections each. That’ll give you four posses of between fifteen to twenty men each. Then post each of the four in the mountains, in a square. Every side of that square will be about seventy or eighty miles long. We’ll put men here and here and here.” He jabbed out the places on his rudely sketched map.

  “Now we’ll make no more noise about this thing than we have to, but we’ll at once send riders from Munson to go to each of the towns where big Furness is most apt to strike. In the towns they’ll not speak a word or give any warning that we think that Furness is going to raid. Because, so far as we know for sure, he may not raid. But we’ll have our men there, as messengers. Now, the instant a raid is carried out, the messenger in the town that is raided will ride . . . not on the trail of the raiders . . . but straight into the mountains until he comes to that section of the posse that is located nearest to his own town. When the word is brought in, in that fashion, the party that is warned will give the messenger a fresh horse and send him on to warn the other nearest sections of our posse. In the meantime, it will have fixed in its own mind the most likely routes along which the seven are apt to hit into the mountains from the nearest town. In a way, you can say that we’ll have Furness and his men running right into our hands. Fifteen or twenty men, who know what to expect, ought to be able to handle at least the seven men in that gang. The advantage of surprise will be all on our side.”

  Perhaps it was a little complicated. Perhaps, also, it was a little more selfish than a real sheriff’s posse would have dared to be. But the need was urgent. And the scheme appealed most strongly to the imaginations of the men to whom Gregg talked.

  There was one chief danger. They needed three full days in order to set their trap. And if the raid occurred before the trap was set, most of their preparations would be wasted. So the first thing was speed in those preparations.

  All was arranged with perfect harmony. In another hour, Cosden was whirling away toward Crumbock to gather what good men he could in the mining camp. Jack Lorrain and others were weeding out the volunteers of Munson. They got thirty-four men who declared their willingness to remain at least a week on the job. Besides, they were furnished with five messengers who were to scatter to the points of danger exposed to the attack of Furness—namely to the five towns.

  When that was arranged, the Munson volunteers were split into two sections and marched at once out of the town. They only delayed long enough to load up with plenty of bacon and flour and salt at Rendell’s store. And then they were off.

  Anne Cosden waved farewell to them from the front door of the saloon, as cheerfully as though they were off on a picnic, and she herself left behind among old friends. She had her own work, which was to care for old Durfee in his pain, with the meager assistance of Dr. Stanley Morgan.

  But the rearmost rider of the second party that started for the upper mountains was beckoned to by her. It was Sammy Gregg, who rode over before her and removed his hat obediently.

  “Sammy,” she said, “I hope that you’re only riding out of town with the boys to see them off. You’re not going with them.”

  “Why,” Sammy responded, “after starting a thing like this, I couldn’t stay behind.”

  “Will you tell me,” Anne Cosden said impatiently, “why you should put yourself in the way of bullets when you don’t know the first thing about how to shoot back?”

  “Oh, no,” Sammy said, “I don’t expect that I’ll be of any real use when the bullets begin to fly. But I thought that I could be handy around the camp.”

  “Are you a camp cook?” Anne Cosden asked sternly.

  “I can wash the pans, at least,” Sammy replied, and he rode on with a grin.

  “Young man,” Anne Cosden called out, “don’t be silly and try to be a hero!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  At the head of that party from Munson of which young Sammy

  Gregg was himself a member, there rode that tall and long-mustached viking, Cumnor. It was he who had abandoned all such industries as mining and lumbering and even cow herding for the reason, as he said, that they were the sign of a new country, and what he wanted to be in was a country that was permanent in its occupations and in the returns that it yielded to good law-abiding citizens. Therefore, he had established himself, after a time as a rancher, in the smaller field as farmer. It was said that he and poor old Hobo Durfee were the only real farmers in that part of the world, and now that Durfee was unlikely ever again to till a field, or afford to have one tilled for him, Cumnor stood alone in that branch of work.

  He was proud of this lonely eminence, and he was fond of saying that the rest of the members of the community were no better than mere temporary interlopers, whereas he was the forerunner of the men who would make the country rich and great. The time would come, as Cumnor was fond of saying, when those mountains would be terraced high up their sides and thriving farms would throng in every valley.

  For that reason he had not hesitated to establish himself in a district where there was a good deal more scenery than there was soil. There were great crops of rocks, and the faster they were removed, the faster they grew. But the good nature and the optimism of Cumnor were as long as his yellow mustaches. It was said that he was losing money hand over hand every year, and that often he did not receive back from the soil the seed that he had sowed upon it. But his courage was never daunted, and he was fond of saying, when he was asked how he was doing: “Well, sir, I fenced in a new quarter-section last month.”

  Indeed his expenses for fencing ran very high, especially as the cow owners grew more numerous and their men developed wicked habits of cutting any wire fence lines that happened to be in the way of their cow drives. However, Cumnor would not down.

  “I’m building for the future,” he would vow. “My grandsons will be thanking me for the work that I’ve done around here.”

  “But why, Cumnor,” Sammy asked upon a day, “do you want to fence in that big round-headed knoll over yonder? It will cost you a lot to drill post holes in that rock.”

  “It’s worth the money,” vowed Cumnor. “Because right yonder is the spot that overlooks all the rest of the land, and my grandson or my great-grandson will thank me for having included in the estate the right site for the mansion.”

  Of course there was no arguing with a man like that. And people merely stood by and shook their heads and waited for him to go broke, which was the direction in which he was headed as fast as he could go. But, as some pointed out, although he knew no more about farming than to order all sorts of new and unneeded implements from Rendell’s store, he was on the other hand an expert cowman of long standing. His talents were simply diverted into the wrong channel. Most pitiful of all, there was no way of getting rid of his grain, unless he could find a mill to grind it to flour, when it would sell readily enough. But this merely inspired him to build great, capacious granaries, in which he stored each year’s product.

  “Look at the way the population of the country is growing,” Cumnor used to say. “I guess that there is your sure sign that prices for wheat and barley is gonna stay right up there in the clouds for a long time.”

  And if some of the stored grain began to rot in the winter damps, he was merely inspired to reinforce the foundation of his barns. “You got to pay for experience,” Cumnor would say.

  Perhaps it would have been hard to tell whether big Cumnor was more amusing or pathetic as the owner and operator of a farm, but at the head of a trailing party, he was a dignified and important person. His school was the badlands of the Great Plains, and there he had been trained up in the terrible discipline of the Indian wars. And he remained rather a grim fellow, whenever he was put with his back to a wall, as young Sammy Gregg could testify strongly enough. But that was long ago, and they
were now firm friends.

  It was a beautiful sight to see Cumnor lay his course through the mountains to the spot that had been designated as his location. He had been given the post of honor at the angle that was nearest to the two towns of Chadwick City and Little Orleans. The warning messengers from either of those towns would find the party of big Cumnor first. And now the farmer guided his band swiftly among the growing peaks.

  He did not need a compass to tell him the way. That was a trail that he had never traveled before, but any old plainsman has learned to stock his brain with all manner of landmarks and signs, and when he comes out of the plains, where it is difficult enough to find any sort of a mark, it is simple enough when he finds himself among the mountains. For they are not to him what they are to the uninitiated—simply great forms, monotonous as waves in the sea. Rather, they are so many faces, each with individual features.

  And the general landmarks were so well fixed in the mind of Cumnor that now he led the party on with a perfect surety, never pausing to make his reckoning at any point along the journey. They crossed the first range of heights before noon of the starting day. Then they swung down into a rough, narrow valley that extended between that range and the next just off to the north.

  A narrow, rising wisp of smoke attracted the sure eye of Cumnor at this point. On the trail, the trail leader is as absolute as the captain of a ship at sea.

  “Ride over, two of you, and see who’s at that campfire. Burton and Si Manning, go along, will you?”

  “Campfire?” echoed Si Manning. “I dunno that I see any smoke.”

  “Look yonder ag’in’ that rank of big pine trees, will you. There you’ll see it, right under that big strike of yaller porphyry.”

  Any stone that does not fit in with a definitely known class of rocks is put into the category of porphyry by the amateur geologist, like the self-taught prospector. But toward that yellow strike of rock, Si Manning and Burton, his companion, looked, and after a moment they saw what looked like a tiny little blue-white cloud under the rock. It was so dim that it was lost to sight the instant it had nothing but the blue of the sky behind it.

  And Si Manning winked aside to his companion, as much as to say: “The old boy is pretty much of a mountaineer at that.”

  Then they started on their detour, crossing the valley rapidly, while the main body held on toward the summit beyond. They dipped out of view among the rocks at the bottom of the valley, and then they were lost to the following eyes.

  For a full hour they were gone, though Big Cumnor had held back the pace of the main body to a slowly dragging walk. And finally he halted his men and turned to look back down the trail with an oath.

  “Damn them no-account Paiutes,” Cumnor sighed. “Are they taking a damned siesta, maybe? Or do we have to go back and see what’s happened to them?”

  But, just as that moment, the whole party heard the crack of a gun in the distance, and then a rapid chattering of bullets. They looked, and behold there came two riders—their own men—Si Manning and Burton, riding for dear life, leaning well over the necks of their horses and firing back from time to time at the trees out of which they had issued a moment before. And the sharp, metallic clangor of a rifle echoed back to them from the trees.

  Some of the party would have scattered back toward the point of danger, had not Cumnor stopped them. “This here little game is their own making,” Cumnor said. “Now they got their wits addled and they’re pretty well scared. We’ll hear a wild yarn when they come in. But when I send out gents to scout for me, I expect them to be able to take care of themselves . . . and us. It’s what I got a right to expect. The scouts is the eyes and the ears and the hands of the main body. Look at ’em come lickety-split!”

  Even when they dashed their foaming horses up to the others, Si Manning and Burton did not seem at ease, and, in response to a volley of questions, Manning would only shake his head for a moment and, panting, point to Burton.

  As for Burton, he looked as though he had been kicked in the face by a heavily shod horse. It was Manning, however, who told the story, little by little, a rather confused narrative, but the chief points of it were made out clearly enough.

  They had crossed the ravine, as the main party saw, and the pair had then proceeded more carefully, attempting, if possible, to steal upon the hidden campfire unobserved. They had got well within the edge of the trees when they were met by a good-natured hail from the glade just before them, and then accordingly gave over their attempt to stalk and, feeling very foolish, had advanced into a small clearing among the trees. They had expected to find a number of people there, some one of whom they felt must have given warning to the rest of the approach of strangers, but, when they came in, they found—at that moment at least—that the camp was occupied by one person only.

  This was a slender youth, handsome, dark brown of eye, very genial and lazy of gesture and of voice. He had greeted them kindly and without surprise and invited them, if they chose, to have supper with him, only stipulating that they should pluck their own supper, a task that was too much for his single pair of hands. He illustrated by pointing to a heap of dead birds. Some few of these were of a fair size, but the rest were mere little puffs of feathers.

  They thanked him but told him that they had to push on. And yet, as Si Manning said, it was a most tempting spectacle that they had before them—the stranger taking up one by one the birds that he had plucked and cleaned and spitting them on a long, clean stick. Apparently he had selected the cream of the kill for his first ration. And now, as he turned the birds above the blaze, the fragrance of the roasting meat was almost too much for the always-raging appetites of two true mountaineers. The other, turning the spit with care, kept glancing in dismay at the heap of slaughtered birds.

  “A mighty shame to have them all go to waste,” he said. “I didn’t realize that I had snagged so many of them. And there they are . . . poor little beggars . . . and all for nothing but fun, you might say. I wish you strangers could stay a while and eat up the batch for me.”

  “Why,” Si Manning said, “d’you mean to say that you’re only gonna be able to eat the few that you got on that stick there over the fire? Ain’t you got no more room than that in your stomach for such game?”

  “Matter of fact,” said the youth, “I suppose that I could eat two or three helpings like this. There isn’t much to ’em, you see. But when it comes to sitting and pulling out the feathers . . . why, that’s quite a job. I’d rather go about half hungry than stay here drilling away at work like that for another half hour.”

  They could see that he meant what he said.

  At this point a great black stallion, which had apparently been approaching through the brush, but with all of the uncanny silence of a stalking moose, appeared within the clearing and, at the voice of the man, walked straight up to him, just as a dog would have done. It was the grandest-looking horse that Si Manning had ever seen.

  “Ah,” the stranger said, “you’ve found water, have you, Clancy, you old scamp? Well, you can lead me to it, after a while. Now go back and find the best grass around. You may have weak pickings tomorrow.”

  The stallion, exactly as though he had understood the spoken words, had turned and started across the clearing, when Burton intercepted him. The beauty of the wonderful animal had been too much for him, and he had stepped forward with his hand outstretched.

  “Be careful,” warned the stranger. “That horse is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous nonsense,” Burton said. “I’ve known horses all my life and I can tell the bad actors by the look in their eyes. This here horse ain’t no more’n a pet.”

  As he spoke, he went close to the big black, which had paused, with pricking ears. But now the ears flattened like magic and the stallion flung himself suddenly at Burton.

  The master cried out sharply—and in time. The head of Clancy was thrown up as though he felt a strong hand wrenching on a curb bit. But the impact of his lunging shoulder ha
d struck Burton and knocked him flat. Altogether, it was a very uncanny affair.

  But Burton had leaped to his feet in a wild tantrum. He had been made a fool of a little too thoroughly to suit a man of his humor. “Damn you and your tricks!” he had shouted at the stranger. “Here’s a trick that’s worth a dozen of them all!” And he took a hearty swing with his big fist at the head of the owner of Clancy.

  The latter had been seated, but in some manner he had floated up to his feet and away from the blow. And the next instant he had struck Burton a staggering blow that had sent the latter reeling across the clearing. After him went the stranger, with a leap like a panther’s. And there was such a devil in his face, Si Manning vowed, that it still curdled his blood to think of it. He caught Burton at once and struck him to the ground with a blow that fairly crushed that unlucky mountaineer. He was by this time too frightened to feel the effects of the blow. He simply rolled to his feet with a yell and leaped into the saddle on his horse. Si Manning had followed the example.

  “There was something about that kid,” Si Manning said. “I dunno what it might’ve been, but after I had had one look at his face, I forgot all about having a pair of Colts on the hip. All I wanted was to get distance between him and me. I didn’t remember a gun until I was in the saddle and he was shooting after us.”

  “Burton must’ve been right part ways,” declared big Cumnor, who, like the rest had listened in amazement to this weird tale. “But why wasn’t he able to drill you boys good and proper?”

  “Gimme another look and you’ll see what he could’ve done if he’d wanted to.” He snatched off his hat and held it before them. At least five bullets had flicked through the high crown of the hat, tearing it to ribbons, but so sharp was their razor-edged flight, that the hat had not been torn from his head.