Stagecoach

by Max Brand

  “And how far was he missing you?” Cumnor asked Burton.

  “The devil was shooting for my ear, I guess,” Burton drawled. “I heard his bullets come singing past my ear about a quarter of an inch away. He give me a regular breeze along the side of my face, you might say, but, somehow, that breeze never blew me cool all the way across to you.” He added: “I say, let’s go back and clean up that gent. He’s aching and spoiling for trouble. He’s queer . . . that’s what he is. And he’s tricky. He’s loaded with tricks. Besides, what right has he got doing his tricks with a man-killing stallion like that? Is it nacheral? Is it anything that you or me could do?”

  “Tell me, Si,” Cumnor began. “Did this fellow really start any of the trouble with you boys?”

  “He done nothing but give it a mighty thorough finishing,” Si Manning admitted. “And if the gang rides in to mess him up . . . well, you’ll all ride in without me. I’ll stay behind to do the burying.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When such a man as Si Manning admitted with this frankness that he did not care to engage an enemy even with fifteen proved men at his back, it was enough to underline his expression of opinion, and the entire posse was thoroughly impressed.

  “But,” Cumnor said, “who the devil is this fellow?”

  “If none of you know,” broke in Sammy Gregg, “I can tell you quick enough. It’s the same man who brought the herd from Mexico for me and kept them together in spite of stampedes and thieves and everything else. It’s the same man, too, who cleared the stage line of big Furness so thoroughly that although you notice that he is raising a good deal of devil in other quarters, he has never touched one of my coaches, ever since. Some of you may not have been on the inside news, but I was there and I knew all about it. This young chap simply frightened Furness away. And if you want to clean up the whole Furness gang, there’s only one sure way of doing it. And that’s to get Jeremy Major . . . for that’s his name . . . to work with you.”

  Cumnor gasped at this flood of information, and Sammy filled in the interval with more news: “Because there’s no trail so dim that he cannot find it, and no horse so fast that his horse can’t catch it, and no fighter so great that he cannot beat him.”

  Here Burton looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “We’ll camp about three miles farther along,” Cumnor announced. “And in the morning you can go back, if you want, and try to persuade your friend to make one of us. But I got an idea that you ain’t gonna have no luck. Ride along, boys.”

  Sammy did not argue that, if he waited until morning, there would probably be no chance to find Jeremy Major. He had come to know that there are many subjects about which it is foolish and useless to argue with a Westerner. So he held his peace and rode on in the troop.

  The next morning, early, he was on the road—on the road before the sun was more than a dim brightness to the east. But even though he started so early, when he reached the spot where young Jeremy Major had camped the night before, he found that it was deserted.

  He looked vaguely about him for a trail, but not with any hope. He had a suspicion that the trails that Jeremy Major left behind him were of a kind that would quickly puzzle even the wisest trailer in Cumnor’s outfit. Where had Jeremy Major gone and when? No one could tell. The first whim that stirred him would be the one that controlled him. Too lazy to pluck more than enough of the birds he had shot the day before to keep himself from starvation, yet, if the fancy entered his head, he might mount his horse at daybreak and be away, or he might have thrown himself upon black Clancy in the dark middle of the night and darted like one pursued through the upper mountains.

  So Sammy made not the slightest effort to pursue the man, more than he would have made to pursue any phantom. He merely turned his horse from the black embers of Jeremy’s cold campfire, and rode slowly back to Cumnor’s band. And to Cumnor he made his brief report.

  “Why,” Cumnor said, “maybe it’s as good. I dunno that a gent like him would work in with the rest of us. He’s a lot more likely to play his own hand, and a lone hand at that. We’ll get along and I believe much better without him.”

  The rest of that day they labored slowly along through the mountains with the yellow flannel shirt and the rigidly squared shoulders of Cumnor in the lead. That evening they camped on the spot that had been chosen for them by Sammy Gregg before the start. They were now at one of the four corners of the square that the scattered posse sketched across the surface of the mountains. And from that time forth they need do nothing except wait from day to day for news of the raiders.

  So two lazy days in the camp passed away—comfortable days of rest for the men with Cumnor, but days of torture for Sammy, for he was not one of those who are plentifully entertained by the sights and the sounds of the great outdoors. If someone cared to sit down and talk to him about the nature of the stones or about the trees and their peculiarities, their ages and their uses, he was glad enough. And there were many men who could make a most fascinating tale out of the sign on the trails that crossed the mountains. However, if left to his own devices, Sammy could only sit and twiddle his thumbs.

  Left to himself in the dreary silences of the camp, he could only wonder if any success would ever attend this complicated scheme of his, or would it be another of the failures that had always attended every effort to bring back Chester Ormonde Furness to the hands of the law?

  It was on the fourth evening that the news came. They had started the campfire to cook the evening meal. Cumnor himself, left free from camp duties as the leader of the expedition, was walking across a hill to the east of the fire, when they saw him pause and then wave his hand and shout. A moment more and they heard the rapid drumming of hoofs. And after that, a horseman loomed suddenly beside Cumnor—a man who talked with many violent gestures.

  It seemed that Cumnor refused to listen. He turned and led the way to the fire, the rider still rattling forth news as he went. But when they came in to the scene of cookery, Cumnor said: “There ain’t gonna be anything gained by saving five minutes here and now for the sake of confusing everybody. A gent always fights better and rides better on a full stomach, and without no hunger or curiosity eating away in him. Now what I claim is best is for you to set down here and roll yourself a smoke and tell us what news you bring in from Chadwick City. Take it easy. We got lots of time to listen and you got lots of time to talk.”

  The other dismounted obediently and stretched. “All right,” he said. “You’re the boss. I can’t turn around and catch the whole seven of ’em with my bare hands. But sure as fate, they’re comin’ right at you now, boys . . . makin’ a beeline straight for where your camp is.”

  “All right,” Cumnor said. “The straighter they come, the easier it’s gonna be for us to get our hands on ’em. Now you talk and tell your yarn. Ain’t any of you boys got any coffee ready? Are you gonna make a gent talk with his throat all caked up with dust?”

  Coffee was brought in a great tin cup that held more than half a pint. The cigarette was rolled.

  “All right, Cumnor,” said the messenger. “If it comes to takin’ time and sippin’ coffee and smokin’, I reckon that I can do about as good as any of you. I’ll yarn it for you as much as you want. You go back to the time that I was sent off to Chadwick City. I didn’t think much of this here scheme. Askin’ the pardon of Gregg, who I see now for the first time. However, I didn’t think much of the idea of sendin’ about a hundred gents off into the hills to set there and wait around and try to hatch an egg with Chester Furness inside of it. Y’understand?

  “But I didn’t care much if I wasted a few days lazyin’ around Chadwick City, where I know some of the boys pretty good. I put up with a friend of mine, Hank Treecomer. Maybe some of you know him, too? Well, I laid around at Hank’s place every day, swappin’ lies with Hank, when he was around, and lazyin’ pretty much in general. But along about when night comes, I sort of set up and opened my ears and my eyes, gettin’ ready in case so
mething should happen along that I had ought to know.

  “Well, things went along like that until this mornin’, along about ten, when the day begins to get sort of hot and sleepy. Jest when I was takin’ a nap for myself in the hammock in the back yard of Hank’s place, I hear a terrible loud bang, like the slammin’ of a door with all bolts let go.

  “‘Somebody is leavin’ home mighty fast,’ I says to myself. ‘And maybe they’s a couple of flatirons follerin’ him.’ Right then I heard a half dozen more bangs. There wasn’t no mistakin’ ’em this time. When a door slams, it don’t cough, if you gents can foller what I mean. And these here noises had a sort of a cough to ’em. Right on the hind end of that, I hears a yell . . . a sort of a long yell that died out weak toward the end, like somebody was terrible sick. ‘There’s a dead man or a scared woman, one of the two,’ I says to myself. So I rolls out of that there hammock and I come around to the front of the house, but, before I got there, there was a roarin’ and a smashin’ of rifles and revolvers about enough to deafen you. And everybody in that there town had turned loose and was yellin’ and hollerin’ and tellin’ everybody else to get ’em quick.

  “Well, when I got around to the front of the house, all that I seen was a cloud of dust wingin’ up from the street and a lot of men gallopin’ away in the dust like shadders inside of a fog. Just then one of them horses went down . . . slam! And a puff of dust went up, like somebody had dumped loose a whole sack of flour. And there was a gent that was down, sprawled flat on the ground. He got up, staggerin’, and I seen that there was only a sort of an empty hole where his head had ought to be. And then I seen that he had a black hood pulled down over his head. Sort of ghostly-lookin’, he was. And about a hundred gents started in yellin’ and pot-shottin’ at that poor beggar. But just then the tail end of that dust cloud was kicked out and through the hole there came a gent that all of you boys would be pretty glad to see dead. He didn’t have no mask on. Like as if he would say that he didn’t care about how many bad things he done, nor who knowed about ’em. He comes sashayin’ back with a Colt in each hand, turnin’ em off pretty loose and liberal. And if I seen one man duck for cover, I seen about a dozen. And the shootin’ at our end of the line got sort of scarce. And I seen this big gent on the big gray gallopin’ horse . . . that was Furness, as I s’pose that you’ve guessed a while back . . . I see this here Furness rush up to the gent that had lost his horse. He was a pretty good-size man . . . as big as me, anyway. But Furness just leaned out plumb easy and picks him up with one arm and throws him like a sack over the pommel of his saddle and goes smashin’ off down the street, turnin’ in the saddle and loosin’ off behind him a gun that was shootin’ so straight that nobody cared to step out and take no chances with it. You might say that was a sort of a thriller. And it sure took all of my breath away from me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  At this point the narrator paused, not as one who requires much urging before he will tell his story, but rather as one who wishes to close his eyes and taste again, in reminiscence, the strangeness of the thing that has passed.

  “It was Furness and his crew,” murmured big Cumnor. “What a roaring scoundrel that gent is . . . and what a man. You could take him and spread him out and there would be enough of him to carve out half a dozen little ordinary gents, like you and me, boys.”

  All, apparently, were willing to concur with this view of the gentlemanly outlaw.

  “But when it comes to roasting the feet of poor old helpless men to make them give up the money that’s been worked for?” suggested Sammy Gregg.

  “He didn’t do any of the roasting,” Cumnor put in.

  “He took his share of the coin, which was just as bad as helping at the torture of poor Durfee.”

  “Aye, and he’ll roast in purgatory for it,” Cumnor muttered. “All right, old son, you go on with your yarn. I suppose Furness just about cleaned up the town, before he got out if it?”

  “He didn’t bother nothin’ but the bank,” said the messenger. “What he done was just to ride right up to the door of the bank and get off his horse and walk in. Seems that about a dozen gents seen him go down the street, just joggin’ his horse along, free and easy. And every man says to himself that it sure must be old Chester Furness and his gray galloper. And then everybody says to himself that it couldn’t be Furness, because not him nor nobody else in the world would have the nerve to come ridin’ into the town in the middle of the mornin’ like that, all alone, and take the chance of bein’ blowed to bits.”

  “Alone?” Cumnor broke in, surprised.

  “Wait a minute,” the messenger said. “That part is comin’ next. Because when Furness gets off his horse and walks into the bank, the cashier is busy with some accounts and bendin’ down low over the list that he was addin’.”

  “‘I beg your pardon,’ says Furness, ‘but may I cash this order here?’ You see there was two or three women standin’ there in the bank room, that minute, and they didn’t catch on that there was anything gone wrong. ‘All right, in a minute,’ says the cashier, and goes right on doin’ his addin’, and not lookin’ up, and big Chester Furness goes right on standin’ there, hummin’ a tune to himself mighty calm, and tappin’ free and easy on the edge of the counter with his fingers. ‘All right,’ says the cashier after a minute. ‘Now let me see your check.’ And this is what he read . . . Please pay to bearer and charge to my account all the cash that is in the bank. And it was signed S.S. Colt.

  “‘S.S. Colt?’ says the cashier. ‘I’ve never heard of him. Who the devil may he be?’ ‘If you have never met him,’ says Furness, ‘pray let me have the pleasure of presenting to you Mister Six-Shooting Colt.’ And he lays the barrel of a long gat on the edge of the counter under the cashier’s window bars. The cashier was pretty much staggered, as you or me might have been. He looks up again into the face of the hold-up artist and he says in a whisper . . . ‘Furness.’ ‘Thank you,’ says Furness. ‘I’m glad you know me. Then I can hope that I shall have to do you no harm.’

  “Well, that cashier didn’t wait. He just walked right over to the safe and he opened it right away quick, the same as you or me would have done, with that Colt starin’ us in the eye, all the time. But all the time, that gent was thinkin’. And he says to himself that there is about a cool quarter of a million in banknotes in that safe, and that it is a devil of a shame if the bank has got to be ruined because one crook like Furness has took a fancy to that cash. Now he reaches inside the safe and he unlocks the inside drawers all fast and steady, and he reaches into the first drawer with both hands, as though he was gonna bring out a whole double handful of packages of banknotes. But instead of that, what he had his grips on was the handles of a mighty snug little gun. Because he was a game sucker, this here cashier, y’understand? And he knew how to handle a gun, and he was a sure enough a fightin’ fool when he had a chance.

  “Then he draws back from the safe and turns quick and tries to get in a pot shot at big Furness, but there wasn’t no time for that. He couldn’t even get turned halfway around. Because Furness was watchin’ all of the time, d’you understand? And he seen something change in the face of the cashier, I guess. But anyway, he planted a big Forty-Five-caliber slug of Army lead right in the shoulder of the cashier and knocked him flat. Like that . . . d’you see?

  “Of course, there was the devil to pay right quick. And there come gents runnin’ from every which way. But Furness didn’t even turn around to see who was headed for him. He just grabbed hold of the steel bars that was over the cashier’s window and heaved himself up by them and he sings out as he climbs . . . ‘Guard my back, boys!’

  “The boys was right there for the job. It seems that a number of gents had showed up at the doors of the bank while Furness was standin’ there, chinnin’ with the cashier, and the minute that Furness sung out, these six gents stepped inside of the bank, and from under the edges of their sombreros they yanked down black hoods that covered their heads f
ront and back. And they outs with their guns . . . one in each hand . . . and they had the drop on everybody in that bank so bloomin’ bad that it would’ve made you sick to see it, I guess. And they kept things covered.

  “Then some gents that was supposed to be right in there savin’ the bank . . . them bein’ the hired guards . . . they started firin’ pretty free and plenty in through two of the windows and the six boys peppers them right back. And in the meantime, there was big Furness just swingin’ himself over the tops of the steel spikes and dropping down on the floor inside. Once he was there, it was mighty easy to scoop the stuff out of the safe and throw it in bundles over the top of the bars, and his boys on the outside scooped up the stuff and dropped it into a sack.

  “After that, they scattered for the street, big Furness heavin’ himself over the bars again in fine style and singin’ out to the cashier . . . ‘You’re a nervy kid. If the bank doesn’t take care of you, you can depend upon it that I shall take care of you.’ And dog-gone me if I don’t think he meant what he said.

  “And then they go swarmin’ down the street, raisin’ a dust that made shootin’ after ’em pretty much like guessin’ in the dark. But there’s one funny part of this here game that you gents had ought to notice . . . that there was enough lead spilled around to make up a regular battle. But there was only three wounded . . . all on the side of the town and countin’ the cashier as the first of the three. And on the side of the outlaws there was just a horse killed, the way I told you, and there was no other harm done. Which is something that I wouldn’t’ve believed if I hadn’t been there myself and seen.