Cash Joyner sat beside the road, waiting for the stagecoach. It wasn’t due for at least another hour, and in fact he’d been sitting there since dawn, watching the sun rise over the mountains and shivering in the early September chill. This was the third time he’d tried to catch the weekly stage, though, and he was determined not to miss it this time around.
The first time, he’d plain showed up late. By the time he reached his chosen vantage point, the coach had gone by and all he could see was a small dust cloud east across the desert.
The second time, a week later, he arrived early enough to choose his spot, at an outcropping of rock close to the road. He tethered his horse a ways off the track and watched until he saw the stagecoach approaching, then stepped into the road and levered a round into his rifle, taking up a proud stance with the rifle held across his chest in a businesslike manner. The coach clattered toward him, and he yelled for it to halt.
Later, it occurred to Cash that with all the noise of the horses and the wheels and such, the driver of the stage never heard the order to stop. In any event, it didn’t, and Cash figured if you were too stupid to get out of the way of a team of four horses pulling a huge wooden carriage, then you deserved what you got. He jumped aside as the stage thundered past, leaving him to choke on the dust of its passing. He kept the rifle clasped to his chest, but his stance was a little less commanding as he watched the stage continue on, following the one a week before.
Clearly, there was more to robbing a stagecoach than he had anticipated.
He gave it a good deal of thought before trying again, and this time he believed he had the problem licked. He chose an ambush site far out from towns and ranches where the road ran narrow, with a steep hill on one side and river bank on the other. He got there the day before the stage, and spent a long, back-breaking day moving stones into the roadway. The stones had to be big enough that the coach wheels couldn’t get over them, but small enough so he and his horse could move them. He used a spade to pile the stones with soil, to make it look like a rockslide from the hill. At first, Cash kept a close watch for approaching riders or wagons; if anyone asked he planned to tell them that he was clearing the slide instead of creating it. No one came.
By nightfall, the pile was knee-deep across most of the road, and Cash was exhausted—and a little disgusted as well. The whole idea of robbing the stagecoach was to avoid strenuous labor in the first place. He figured one day’s worth was better than doing it all day, every day for a measly couple of dollars a month, and when the stage came by he’d have the biggest payday he ever saw, so it was worth it. He ate a little hardtack washed down with water, too tired to cook anything, and rolled up in his blanket for the night.
He slept sitting up, not wanting to get too comfortable, and his plan worked—he slept quite poorly, startling and looking around every half-hour or so, then trying to find a position that eased his stiff neck. As the sky lightened toward dawn, he gave up trying to sleep and instead stamped around to get warm. A fire now, he reasoned in his sleep-fuddled state, would only give away his position to anyone watching. Eventually, the sun made it over the edge of the mountains and the day began to warm up, and Cash settled back to watching for the approach of the stage.
Now he heard someone approaching all right, but it came from the opposite direction, and it sounded like a single horse. Cash shielded his eyes against the still-low sun and saw a rider, still distant, trotting down the road toward him from the east. Cash swore under his breath; the stage was due soon, and now it looked as though he’d have to start dismantling the rockslide. And what if the fellow wanted to help? Imagine the two of them, working together so the stage could just rattle on by while Cash could do nothing but watch. No, he’d have to get rid of the guy one way or another. If he wouldn’t ride on, then…Cash glanced at his rifle. He didn’t want to shoot anybody, and hadn’t since the war, but this was a matter of survival.
The rider drew near enough for Cash to make out his face. The guy was bearded, with salt and pepper hair, and big under his leathers, which were dusty and well-worn. A rifle scabbard hung from his saddle, and beneath his mackinaw Cash could see a gun belt, spare cartridges glinting. The guy rode easily, without any hint of suspicion as he drew up to Cash’s rockslide. “Morning,” he called. “What’ve we got here?”
Cash nodded down at his handiwork. “Looks like part of the hill gave way,” he said. He stayed close by his rifle, but didn’t pick it up. Not yet.
The big guy regarded Cash from beneath the brow of his sweat-stained hat, then turned his attention back to the pile of stones and dirt. “Just come across it, did you?” he said. Cash nodded. “Well, what do you suppose we ought to do about it, clear it? Or leave it be?”
Cash pretended to give it some thought. “Normally I’d say clear it,” he said at last. “With two of us it wouldn’t take but a couple of hours. But…”
“I know what you mean,” the guy said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry myself.”
At this, Cash allowed himself to relax a little. He collected his rifle and grinned at the big man. “Besides,” he said, “There’s a stage due along today; why not let them earn their pay for once?”
The guy laughed and guided his horse around the tail end of the pile, saying, “Well, shit, why didn’t you say so? With the passengers helping, the driver’ll have it clear in no time!”
They both chuckled as Cash secured his rifle to his own saddle and swung aboard. The big guy continued west along the road, touching the brim of his hat as he went by. “Take care now,” he said as he passed.
“You too,” said Cash, and started his horse walking east. After a moment, he looked back and drew up his mount. The big guy kept moving west and Cash watched him until he was out of sight around the next bend. Then, with a sigh of relief, he dismounted, re-tethered the horse, and resumed his vigil.
The coach seemed to be running late today, and the sun was high in the sky before it appeared. By then the last of the night chill had fled and the day looked as though it would be a hot one. Cash wished he had slept a little better the night before; he kept yawning and he took bites of hardtack and jerky to stay awake. At last he heard the rattle of the big metal-rimmed wheels on the uneven road, the clatter of hooves, the jingle of the harness audible even more than a mile away. He rose and slapped the dust off his britches, put the rifle down out of sight behind a nearby stone, and took hold of the spade. Then he waited for the stage to draw near.
When the driver saw the pile of debris ahead, he did just as Cash hoped and reined in the team so that it stopped only feet from the obstruction. Cash stopped his digging and waved to the two men on the driver’s bench. “Hey there!” he called. “I’m glad you boys are here. Give me a hand and we’ll have this cleared in no time!”
He smiled to himself as the driver and the guard both clambered down. Both men wore sidearms, he saw, and the guard of course carried a double-barreled shotgun, but neither seemed particularly wary as they came over. Cash leaned on the spade and looked past them toward the carriage, where a couple of passengers had poked their heads out to see what the delay was.
“I just come on it a while ago,” Cash told the driver and the guard. “You want to help me out here?”
The two men looked at each other in a way Cash couldn’t quite read, then the guard said, “Sure, fella, we’ll lend a hand.”
“Well, here, you take this.” Cash offered him the spade and the guard took it. “I’ve got another one right here,” and he reached down behind the stone and came up holding his rifle.
“Don’t move,” Cash told them both. “If either one of you moves wrong, I’ll shoot him dead where he stands.”
Neither the driver nor the guard looked especially frightened at this prospect; in fact, they didn’t look the least bit surprised to be ambushed in such a fashion. The guard dropped the shotgun and the spade and both men put their hands in the air. The driver said, “Mister, I got to tell you, this won’t do you a bit of good.”
“Shut up and turn around,” Cash said. When they had, he reached forward and pulled their revolvers out of their holsters, then prodded them toward the coach. The passengers, a man and a woman, were still peering at the scene from their windows. Cash called to them, “This is a holdup, folks. Just take it easy and it’ll be over soon, and I promise no one will get hurt.”
He came up short when the woman called out, “You’re too late, mister!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve got nothing for you to take. We already got robbed not an hour ago.”
Cash’s jaw dropped. He poked the driver with the muzzle of his rifle and asked, “What’s she talking about?”
The driver nodded, hands still in the air. “It’s true. Fella waved us down a while back with a letter in his hand, asked if we could take it along. George here reached down for it and the guy yanks him clean off the seat, then points his pistol at me and tells me to open the strongbox.”
“We done it,” said George the guard.
Six hours later, the sun dipping below the ridgeline, Cash still fumed at the idea of it. Of course he’d checked, and just to save face he’d taken what money the passengers had on them, but they hadn’t been lying—the strongbox, bolted under the seat, stood empty of anything of monetary value. Cash’s whole take from the job came to just under six dollars. Not a bad day’s wage for digging and hauling, mind you, but hardly the riches he’d expected when he planned this job.
So he’d left the coach to clear the roadblock and set off after the big fellow, pushing his horse hard to make up time. George and the driver reckoned they’d been robbed an hour and a half before coming on Cash’s ambush. The way Cash reasoned it, the guy wouldn’t stick to the road for long; that would just take him back into town. Instead, he’d cut across country at the first opportunity. Sure enough, before long Cash found telltale gouges in the dirt, fresh hoof prints heading north off the road into the nearby hills.
Now daylight was failing, and still no sign of the big man except the occasional hoof mark. Whoever he was, the guy knew all the tricks: he rode in streambeds and gullies where possible so rainfall would obliterate tracks; he wound his way along bare rock so as to leave none at all when he could. It slowed Cash down to look for traces, and if he’d been much farther behind he might never have seen them, but he felt confident the fellow wasn’t far ahead.
As it happened, he was right about that. Riding up a dry wash he leaned over in the saddle, searching the ground for the next mark, and two things happened at once: he heard a sharp crack nearby, and felt a tug at his shoulder as a bullet passed where his head had been a moment before. Cash hadn’t been shot at since Vicksburg
Startled by the sudden noise and motion, his horse trotted farther up the slope, taking with it the rifle in its scabbard. Cash stayed on his belly and drew his revolver. It wouldn’t be much use against a rifle, unless he could figure where the bushwhacker was laid up and somehow circle around behind him. With his left hand, Cash felt his right shoulder, where the bullet had clipped him. There was no blood, and no pain, but he could feel ragged threads in the cloth of the sleeve. An inch or two lower, and the slug would have smashed his collarbone, or worse, pierced the lung.
At Vicksburg , and Shiloh before that, Cash had many close calls of the same kind, bullets or shell fragments that came near or struck someone else while leaving him unharmed. He never grew accustomed to it, but somehow his body learned to put off being frightened until the business at hand was finished. After the battle ended, he would tremble uncontrollably, sometimes even weep—but not until his job was done. Somewhere ahead of him and to the right, the big fellow with a rifle waited to see what he would do, where he’d gone. If Cash made the wrong move or too much noise, another bullet would follow the first, and the next one might be better aimed.
Cash cursed his own stupidity. The big fellow knew all the tricks, all right, and Cash should have anticipated this one. Of course he would set an ambush on his own trail, to see if he’d been followed and discourage pursuit. Only blind luck kept him from putting his bullet through Cash’s head. Strangely, that thought steadied Cash a little; you could be good and you could be lucky, and sometimes the one got you through until the other one showed up. So far, the big fellow was good, but Cash had just gotten lucky. It was time to get good.
Moving slowly, trying not to disturb the dry brush around him, Cash began to shrug out of his coat, then his boots.
* * * * *
Forty yards farther up the wash, Tom Mulvehill watched over the sights of his rifle, looking for any sign of movement in the bushes below him, listening for the telltale rustling that meant his target was shifting position. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked to him like the rider had leaned over just before Mulvehill fired. If the guy wasn’t dead, it made things more complicated; Mulvehill didn’t relish poking through the scrub in the dark, looking for an injured (or worse, unhurt) man with a gun. No, there was still some daylight left, enough to see if the guy tried to move, and if night fell first, Mulvehill could just up and leave. The rider’s horse had kept on going, and he’d have a hell of a time finding it in the dark. By the time he did, Mulvehill would be long gone.
A soft rattle of pebbles shifting sounded from below, and Mulvehill flattened himself against the boulder he’d chosen for his firing position, swinging the muzzle of the rifle slightly back and forth, searching for the source of the noise. The evening dimness made him imagine he saw bushes moving on the edges of his vision, but he knew where the rider had gone down and he didn’t think the guy would have moved far.
There it was again; someone was moving down there, right about where Mulvehill figured. He settled the rifle against his shoulder and sighted along it, waiting for the guy to show himself.
His eye caught the motion and he took aim just long enough to assure himself it wasn’t his imagination, then fired, cocked, fired again, cocked again and paused, holding his breath.
He had spied a hat, edging up over the tops of the bushes, and fired low, trying to hit the head inside it. The hat instantly dropped out of sight again and Mulvehill tried to decide whether he’d scored a hit. He strained his ears to make out any sounds through the ringing of the gunshots. He heard a brief thrashing in the brush that soon went still, and a single wet, choking cough of a kind he’d heard before—the final breath of a dying man.
Rising from behind his boulder, taking care where he trod, Mulvehill advanced down the wash. He kept his aim fixed on the patch of brush where the hat had appeared, in case the fellow wasn’t dead but only wounded or shamming. When he’d gone ten yards or so, he stooped and picked up a couple of small stones with his left hand, keeping the rifle trained with his right, and tossed the stones ahead of him to one side. No one rose up to investigate the noise, so Mulvehill stalked a few yards closer until he was able to see over the bushes that had screened the rider.
The darkness was nearly complete now, with just a corona of light outlining the hills behind him, but the glow was enough to make out a pale shape beyond the sagebrush—a khaki-colored duster stretched out along the floor of the wash. One arm draped over a bush, and the coat bulged oddly in places. Staring hard through the gloom, Mulvehill thought he could make out a dark hat at one end and boots sticking out of the other. He raised the rifle and drew a bead before stepping closer and reaching down to poke at the shoulder of the hunched form.
Behind him he heard a voice say, “Drop that rifle, you son of a bitch, or by God I’ll put a hole in your head to match the one in my hat.”
Mulvehill froze and slowly put his hands out and up before tossing his rifle to the side. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “I fell for that even harder than you fell off your mount.”
“Shut up,” the voice said. “Now give me your pistol slowly. Butt first.”
Mulvehill hesitated, weighing his chances and finding them slim. He would have to draw, spin, find his target in the near-dark, and shoot—all in the time it would take for the man to pull the trigger. The fellow behind him seemed to sense his thoughts, for Mulvehill heard the oily click of a weapon being cocked.
“You won’t make it,” the voice said. “Now hand over that pistol.”
Mulvehill drew his Colt from the holster with finger and thumb, then took it by the barrel and extended his arm back. He felt it taken from his hand.
“Now where’s the swag?” the voice asked.
“What swag?” Mulvehill hedged.
“Don’t be stupid. This morning you robbed the stage not an hour after you saw me. I worked hard for that stage, and by God I’ll have the take for it.”
Mulvehill let astonishment creep into his voice. “Was that you? I thought you was just clearing a slide! Anyway, I didn’t rob no stage.”
“Then why the hell did you light out cross-country?”
“Well, I only said I didn’t rob no stage today. I have in the past, I admit, and I was hoping to avoid the towns around here. Then I saw you behind me and figured you had to be the law, or a bushwhacker. I surely do apologize and I’m glad to be proved wrong.”
A short silence followed this speech, then the voice said, “Mister, I’ve heard some liars in my time; hell, I got pretty good at it myself. But you’re about the smoothest I’ve heard yet. Turn around.”
Mulvehill turned slowly and got his first look at his captor. In the gloom, he could barely make out the fellow standing a few yards away, too far for a sudden jump to take him by surprise. On the other hand, it might just be dark enough to make a run for it. He didn’t relish the prospect. He figured his chances would be about even that the fellow would hit him with the first shot, but that was better than standing still and getting shot for sure.
“So you were aiming to hold up the stage, were you?” he asked. If the fellow kept talking, he might be less alert.
“Where’s the swag?” the fellow asked again.
“I ain’t got it.”
“Never mind,” the fellow said. “It’s got to be on your horse. I was hoping you’d lead me to it, but I suppose I’ll find it soon enough if I just shoot you.”
“Hold on,” Mulvehill blurted. “No need to do that, it’s on my horse, sure enough. Shall we go get it?”
The guy waggled Mulvehill’s revolver in a you-first gesture, and Mulvehill led the way back up the hill past his ambush site. On the far side, a pile of enormous boulders butted together to form a sheltered space where his horse was tethered—and beside it stood the fellow’s bay mare.
“Your mount’s got sense,” Mulvehill commented. “When the shooting starts, she goes looking for a safe spot and a friend.”
“Where’s the swag?”
“Saddlebags.”
“Get it.” The fellow kept Tom covered whilst he collected the reins of his horse, but Tom felt disinclined to make any sudden movements. Time enough for that later, if the situation got desperate enough. He flipped open one bag and removed a lumpy cloth sack and nine smallish leather pouches.
“Gold’s in the pouches,” Mulvehill said, “And the sack has the cash money and the jewelry from the passengers.” Plus a two-shot Derringer pistol I took from one of them, he thought. Let me show you.
“Not all of it,” the lean fellow said, fishing in his own saddlebag and pulling out an empty cloth sack much like Mulvehill’s own. “You missed about four dollars and a gold watch worth about two.” He tossed the balled-up sack towards Mulvehill and said, “Tell you what. Give me five of the gold pouches and the money; you keep the other four and the jewelry.”
Already reaching into the sack for the Derringer, Mulvehill stopped and gaped. “What? Why?”
“I figure I worked harder for my share, so I get the odd pouch of gold,” the fellow said. “As for the money, you owe me a new hat.”
Mulvehill worked this over for a moment, then said, “I don’t want to sound as though I’m complaining, but it sounds to me like you mean not to shoot me.”
“Put the stuff in my sack.”
He did, five tightly packed leather pouches of gold still bearing the labels of their former owner, and a poke full of bills and coins. The Derringer he left at the bottom of his own sack. “Smart thing to do,” he said, “would be to take it all and put me down. Didn’t I try to do for you? Yet here you are, leaving me alive with half the take. Ain’t you afraid I’ll come after you again?” He tossed the now-heavy sack back toward the fellow who still covered him with his own revolver.
The guy shrugged and scooped up the sack left-handed. “Might could be you will. But then when I shoot you, it’ll be self-defense, won’t it?” He tucked the sack back inside his saddlebag.
Mulvehill just stood, thunderstruck, the Derringer forgotten. “Didn’t I try to plug you half an hour ago?” he demanded. “Why the hell didn’t you shoot me in ‘self-defense’ right there when you got the drop on me?”
The fellow turned and made a left-handed draw from the holster on his right hip, pointing both weapons at Mulvehill. Mulvehill flinched, waiting for the shot, but the man only paused a moment before tossing his gun, the one from his own holster, to the dust at Mulvehill’s feet. Mulvehill stared a moment, then stooped and picked it up, the butt and frame of a revolver with the cylinder and barrel missing.
“What’s this?”
“That’s what’s left of my pistol,” the fellow said. “I raised my hat atop it to draw your fire, and you shot half the gun clean away. I guess I was damn lucky you didn’t kill me with your first shot.”
Mulvehill kept looking from the shattered pistol to the lean man, then back again, with his mouth hanging open, until neither of them could stand it any longer. They both dissolved in gales of laughter.
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