Moore sat for a moment, watching the two raised left wheels spin themselves down. “What a damn mess,” he said to himself, still holding his side as he swung stiffly down from his saddle.
The coach's door had spilled open on the side facing the rock wall. The dog had been flung out of the tipped-over stage and hung by its collar and leash, its legs kicking in the air, scratching for the ground that lay four feet beneath it. Walking up closer, Moore aimed his Colt at the animal's head and fired. The dog made a sharp
yip
and hung silent and still.
“Poor . . . sumbitch,” a voice behind Moore said, causing him to swing his smoking Colt around. But upon seeing Carnes standing with a face and chest full of cactus needles, one bloody hand pressed to the side of his wounded throat, Moore let out a breath.
“You're lucky I didn't shoot
you
. . . walking up on me that way.” He saw the gun in Carnes' hand, pointed at his chest. They lowered their guns in unison.
Carnes limped forward, past Moore, toward the leaning stagecoach. His duster was shredded by the barrel cactus where he'd fallen. “Where's the loco sumbitch soldier that caused all this?” he said, gesturing his gun barrel back and forth. Along the trail both carpetbags and leather travel bags had busted open upon impact. The contents lay strewn about amid spilled mail, newspaper and magazines.
Colonel Tanner's raspy voice called out from a ditch running alongside the sheer rock wall, “Here I am, you saddle tramps.” He scrambled up onto the trail and stood facing them, holding the double-barreled shotgun with one hand, but with both hammers cocked and ready to fire. “Let us . . . continue on, then.”
The shotgun rose with a heavy kick as its first blast hit Carnes full in his chest, picked him up and hurled him backward to the ground. Carnes' Colt flew from his hand and landed in the thick brush off the edge of the trail.
Moore, even with his gun hand slick with blood, fired the last rounds in his Colt. One bullet hit the colonel squarely in his chest; the second shot nailed him in the forehead. But he didn't fall right away. Instead, he wobbled in place, pulled the shotgun's trigger and sent Henry Moore flying backward, a stunned look of disbelief on his face.
From around the curve in the trail, Buckshot Parks heard the shooting and instinctively flung himself behind the cover of a rock. “What does it take to rob a damn stage here?” he asked himself, staring from around the edge of the rock for a full two minutes before easing out onto the trail and venturing forward.
Having lost his Colt, rifle, hat, horse and boot heel, he limped around the curve, unarmed. He stopped and stood for a moment, staring at the dead, at the debris and at the dog hanging still and silent out the open stage door. “Holy Joe and Mabel,” he murmured, limping closer to where the stage leaned at a dangerous angle against the rock wall.
Stepping into the space between the open door and the dog, he took a knife up from his boot well. “I never seen anything like this in my whole worthless life.”
Parks cut the leash a few inches from the dog's collar and let the big cur drop to the ground with a thud, giving himself more room to look inside the stage. Stooping down, he peered inside at the two bodies, one of them staring blankly at him through a face covered with blood. “It wasn't our fault, if you want to know the truth,” he said to the dead blank face, “it was that crazy soldier. He wouldn't stop fighting for nothing!”
Walking back to where Moore's bloody body lay faceup in the dirt, Parks stooped down, picked up the empty blood-slick Colt, checked it and shook his head. He reached and checked Moore's gun belt for bullets and found it empty as well. He shook his head again and dropped the Colt where he'd found it. Then he pulled off the dead outlaw's left boot and looked it over.
Moments later, he stood up, wearing Moore's black left boot in place of his own heelless brown one. Leaving his broken boot lying in the dirt, he jerked the torn flour sack from around his neck and flung it to the ground. He stamped his feet, getting adjusted to the new boot, then walked among the strewn baggage, looking for the strongbox.
“There you are,” he said quietly, finally spotting the metal box lying on its side twenty feet from the stagecoach. “At least I'm going to get something out of all this.”
He dragged the box a few feet into the shade of a large trailside boulder and looked all around for something to pry open its brass lock. Seeing nothing, he scratched his head and started to sit down in the dirt and consider his next move. But before he could get seated, he heard the thunder of hooves coming fast from around the curve.
“Damn it!” He scanned the site once more for any usable guns. But seeing none, and knowing the horses were approaching fast, he cursed again and ran into the cover of brush off the edge of the trail. He flattened himself just in time to catch first sight of four cowhands swinging into sight around the long curve.
They reined their horses down hard in a cloud of trail dust and stared all around at the dead, at the leaning stagecoach and at the strongbox lying in the dirt.
“Dang!” said one of the cowhands. “It's the Cottonwood Flagstaff coach! Somebody has robbed the hell out of it!”
“Injuns!” another rider shouted, grabbing his battered range Colt from its holster and spinning his horse in a circle as if not to be caught off-guard.
“Take it easy, Holly,” said Jet Mackenzie, the oldest of the four and their former trail boss. “This doesn't look like the work of Indians.” He eyed the strongbox lying in the dirt a few feet away. “It doesn't even look like robbery, far as that goes.”
“Yeah?” said another cowhand, Jock Brewer. “Then what do you suppose put holes in these ole boys, woodpeckers, thinking they's trees?”
Mackenzie realized his mistake. He stared at Brewer, noting that the coolheaded young Texan appeared to be the only one besides himself who was unshaken by the sight of dead men lying amid the debris from a wrecked stagecoach. “I'm just saying something ain't right, is all, Jock,” he said firmly. “Wouldn't you agree?”
Brewer spit and grinned and ticked his head. “Oh, I'd say âsomething ain't right' is a fair enough assessment.” He tapped his horse forward, stopped close to the leaning stage and looked down at the dog lying in the dirt beneath the open door. Blood lay in a puddle surrounding the animal's big spotted head.
“Careful, Jock,” Mackenzie cautioned him.
“Right,
boss
,” Brewer said with a touch of sarcasm. “You want to come hold my hand?”
Mackenzie said straight-faced to Tad Harper, the youngest of the four, “Tadpole, go over and hold Jock's hand.”
“I'm there,” Harper said in earnest, all set to give his horse a boot forward.
But Mackenzie stopped him with a raised hand. “Hold up, Tadpole, that was a joke.”
Mackenzie and Brewer had a short laugh. But Holly Thorpe only looked around suspiciously through his wire rims, his Colt still in hand. “Real funny,” he said in a stiff, solemn tone. “Let's tomfool around and get ourselves killed.”
“I said, âtake it easy, Holly,' ” Mackenzie repeated to the wary cowhand, this time in a firmer tone. But he turned more serious as he swung down from his saddle and led his horse over to where Jock Brewer sat staring all around the leaning stagecoach.
“What do you make of it?” Brewer asked.
“Oh, it was a robbery all right,” Mackenzie deduced, looking at the bodies, one of the dead wearing a black boot, a broken brown one lying discarded in the dirt beside him. He stooped and stepped in between the open door and the rock wall, and looked inside. He grimaced at the sight of the two dead men in business suits.
“Anybody alive in there?” Brewer asked from atop his horse.
“No,” said Mackenzie. He backed away from the open door and looked at the dead colonel lying in the ditch alongside the trail. He again noted the strongbox lying unopened in the dirt. “I'd say all these stagecoach folks decided to shoot it out with the robbers and this is the outcome. Everybody ended up dead.” He shrugged, still a bit bewildered.
At the sound of a heavy thump between the stagecoach and rock wall where Mackenzie had just been standing, they all turned, their guns coming up cocked and ready. But they all breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that the body of one of the dead passengers had given way, fallen out of the leaning stage and dropped onto the ground.
“Jeez,” said Mackenzie, looking at the bloody, blank face staring aimlessly across the land, “we best get word to the law in Albertson about this.”
“Yeah, sure,” Brewer said absently, his attention drawn to the stagecoach's rear freight compartment. He stepped down from his saddle, walked over to it and began inspecting it curiously.
A few yards away, guns still in hand, Holly and Tadpole had stepped down from their horses for a closer look at the strongbox. “You think there was nobody left alive to open this money box?” Tadpole asked.
“That's what I think, maybe,” said Mackenzie.
“Want me to shoot this ole lock off of here?” Harper offered.
“No,” Mackenzie said firmly. “Leave the strongbox exactly like it is. You go fooling with it, next thing you know we'll get ourselves accused of something we had no part in.”
“Aw, heck, Mac,” said Brewer, “anybody that knows us knows that we're not thieves. There ain't no way in the world we'd ever get accused of having a part in something like this.”
Mackenzie stared at Brewer as he said to Harper, “All right, Tadpole, go ahead, shoot the lock off. Shoot a whole bunch of times so anybody near here will hurry in and catch us doing itâmaybe figure we're the ones did all this.”
Tadpole started to point his range Colt at the lock on the strongbox. But he stopped and gave Mackenzie a confused look. “Was that another joke?”
Still staring at Brewer, Mackenzie said, “Yeah, sorry, Tadpole, that was another joke.” But this time neither he nor Brewer laughed.
“We could be in a bad spot here, couldn't we?” Brewer said quietly between the two of them. As he spoke he finished loosening the last strap holding the canvas freight cover in place.
“Yep, I'm thinking that we could,” said Mackenzie, “if we don't play this thing right.”
Brewer stopped what he was doing and started to refasten the straps he'd just loosened. But without the straps holding things in place, the canvas cover sagged, then spread open enough for several bags, bundles and small wooden crates to spill out onto the ground.
“No harm done,” said Mackenzie, seeing Brewer give him a look of apprehension. “Leave it like it is. We'll say we found it that way.”
“Right,” said Brewer, and he stepped back away from the freight compartment.
“I'm wondering how we should do this,” Mackenzie pondered, rubbing the whisker stubble on his chin.
“Two of us rides to Albertson, two of us stays right here,” Brewer offered.
“That's what I thought,” Mackenzie said. “But whoever stays here has got a lot of explaining to do if somebody shows up before the other two gets back.”
They stood in silent contemplation for a moment. Finally Holly Thorpe said, “I say we ought to all go, tell what we saw here and get it over with.”
Mackenzie stared down at the loose dusty ground and gave a troubled look. “We've been here,” he said. “We've left the tracks to prove it.”
“I say we leave and go on about our business like we never saw anything,” Tadpole Harper threw in.
The three looked at him, a bit surprised at Harper offering his thoughts on the matter.
“That's right,” Harper added. “These folks are all dead. Us riding to Albertson ain't going to bring them back to life. This territory is quick to stretch a man's neck. After that it don't matter much if they find out we were innocent.”
“Tadpole's right,” Holly agreed. “I'm danged if I want to even answer all the questions we've already brought upon ourselves by finding this.”
“Doggone it!” said Mackenzie with a grimace. “This stagecoach never gets robbed. Why now, of all the
danged
times?”
“Oh my goodness!” said Harper, jumping back suddenly as if he'd seen a snake. He pointed at the ground beneath the freight compartment where stack upon stack of green American dollars had began falling one after another into a widening pile on the ground.
The four formed a half circle and stepped closer, staring amazed, guns still in hand. “This just gets worse by the minute,” said Mackenzie, giving Brewer a look.
“Yeah,” said Brewer, “I never seen so much money in my life.”
Chapter 4
When the bound stacks of money stopped falling, Mackenzie, Brewer and Harper stepped in closer. Brewer and Harper stooped down around the pile. Holly Thorpe stepped farther away, his range Colt still up, cocked and ready. He stood with all four horses' reins in his other hand, his wary eyes scanning the area surrounding them from behind his wire-rims.
“Howâhow much money is this?” Brewer asked no one in particular. He picked up one of the bundles and examined it, thumbing the bills.
“Lot and lots,” Harper replied absently, scooping up some of the bundles and letting them fall from his hands.
While the two pondered over the money, Mackenzie opened the canvas freight cover the rest of the way and looked inside. Beneath a false bottom panel that had jarred loose, a large leather-bound carpetbag lay on its side, its top gaped open from the impact of the stage wreck. Inside the bag lay more stacks of cash.
“Uh-oh, guess what I've found here,” he said, dragging the bag from amid the rest of the overturned freight and pulling it out.