A Texas Hill Country Christmas (10 page)

As the coach rocked along, Arley Hicks was still excited about what had happened the night before and kept talking about the killing. Finally, Donald Purcell glared at the young cowboy and snapped, “Can't you just shut up about that dreadful business? You're upsetting my wife.”

Mildred Purcell's face was pale and drawn, and her lips were pursed in disapproval, Smoke noted, but she didn't seem that much more upset than usual. From what he had seen, that was pretty much her normal expression and attitude.

“Beggin' your pardon, ma'am,” Arley said to Mildred as he took his hat off.

“That's quite all right, Mr. Hicks,” she told him without looking at him.

“It's just that Mr. Jensen here's famous, and now I get to tell folks I was there—or at least close by—when Smoke Jensen killed a no-good owlhoot. You can't blame a gent for bein' a mite excited about somethin' like that. I'll have me a good story to tell in the bunkhouse—”

“You're still going on about it,” Purcell gritted.

“Oh. Yeah, reckon I am. Beg pardon again.” Arley swung around so he was facing Smoke and Sally. “Just how fast was your draw when you shot that fella, Mr. Jensen?”

“Fast enough to save Roland's life,” Smoke said. “That was all I was worried about.”

“Yeah, from what Floyd and Tom said, that varmint was about to slice the poor feller open from gizzard to gullet!”

Purcell reached out, grabbed Arley's shoulder, and jerked him around.

“That's enough!” he exclaimed. “I've asked you politely—”

“You best take your hand off me, mister,” Arley said quietly. Smoke heard the menace in the young cowboy's deceptively mild tone. He saw Arley's hand move toward the opening of his coat and figured there was a knife or a pistol in his waistband. The worried frowns on the faces of Langston and Mrs. Carter told him they had the same hunch.

“That's enough, both of you,” Smoke said, his voice firm with command. “Arley, we've hashed it all out enough. And Mr. Purcell, you need to understand that we're not back East now. Folks have different attitudes about most things out here.”

“Including life and death?” Purcell asked in a challenging tone.

“Yes, sir. Maybe that more than anything else. Westerners know how many things there are in the world that can kill you, and we're used to running into them from time to time.”

“I prefer civilization, where life is safe,” Purcell said stiffly.

“Oh, it's not safe there, either,” Smoke said with a smile. “Folks just do a better job of pretending it is.”

A strained silence descended on the coach. Herman Langston broke it a few minutes later by asking Arley to name all the spreads where he had worked. The young cowboy seemed glad to do so, and he had a colorful story about every ranch.

With that tension eased, the journey went more pleasantly again. The coach's motion even began to lull Smoke into a half-sleep.

That drowsy state was shattered by the sudden blast of gunfire.

 

 

The terrain was so hilly through here that when the road had been built, the men who'd put it in had used dynamite to blast openings through some of the ridges that left steep banks on both sides, mostly fifteen to twenty feet tall. The different layers of earth could be seen in those ridges, which were topped by juniper, mesquite, scrub brush, rocks, and cactus.

On top of the west bank of one of those cuts, Karl Gunderson swallowed and asked nervously, “You sure about this, Harlan?”

“What? Yeah, of course I'm sure. I ever steer you wrong, Karl?”

As a matter of fact, Harlan had made a number of questionable decisions over the years, but there was no way Karl was going to bring those up to his brother. Harlan was still a mite touchy about Tioga deserting them. Karl didn't want to give him an excuse to really get mad.

“No, no,” Karl said quickly. “Your plans always work.”

Harlan nodded, completely confident that this robbery would go off just fine.

He and Karl were on this side, hunkered far enough back from the cut's edge so they couldn't be seen. Jed Lavery and Simon Dawson were on the east bank. Grady Kirk was up ahead, waiting in some trees just past the cut.

The plan called for the men on the banks to open fire on the stage as it rumbled through, killing the driver and guard, then Grady would spur his horse out into the road and catch the team's harness before the horses could bolt. Once the coach was stopped, Harlan would call on the passengers to throw out their guns and get out, and if they refused, the men on the banks would just pour lead through the vehicle's flimsy walls until everyone inside it was dead.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Harlan cocked his head to the side and said, “Listen. Hear that?”

Karl licked his lips and asked, “Hear what?”

“The stagecoach,” Gunderson replied impatiently.

Karl frowned for a couple of seconds, concentrating so hard he looked like something was paining him. Then he nodded and said, “Yeah. Horses. And wheels. Got to be the stagecoach.”

Harlan looked away so his brother wouldn't see him roll his eyes. He checked his Winchester. Fully loaded, with a round in the chamber.

They had to time this properly. The cut was at the top of a slope, so the stagecoach wouldn't be traveling very fast when it got here. The outlaws hidden on top of the banks had to stay out of sight until they were ready to open fire, so the driver wouldn't spot them and whip up the team to a faster pace as he went through the cut. But they couldn't wait until the coach had gone past them. Harlan listened intently, knowing that he had judged the right moment to strike by the sounds.

“Harlan, I—” Karl began.

“Shut up,” Harlan snapped. “Not now, Karl.”

“Sorry,” Karl muttered.

Harlan heard the thud of hoofbeats getting louder, the creak of the wheels, the rattle of harness....

“Now!” he called. He leaped to his feet, rushed forward to the bank's edge, brought the rifle to his shoulder, and started shooting.

 

 

Mildred Purcell screamed as the gunshots boomed. So did her husband. Smoke was sitting on the left-hand side of the coach, on the forward-facing seat, and his Colt was already in his hand as he leaned toward the window.

“Arley, if you've got a gun, cover the other side!” he barked.

The young cowboy reached inside his coat and pulled out an old Colt Navy. He lunged across the middle seat to the window on the right-hand door.

Smoke looked up, spotted two men on the cutbank on his side blazing away at the stagecoach with rifles. He leaned out far enough to draw a good bead and fired three swift shots that were deafening inside the coach.

One of the men on the bank dropped his rifle, doubled over as he clutched his belly where a slug had ripped into him, and plunged over the edge. He turned a somersault in midair and crashed onto the road on his back about ten feet behind the coach.

The other man on that side spun halfway around from the impact of a slug and stumbled back out of sight.

On the right side of the coach, Arley had just opened fire when he suddenly grunted and fell back from the window. He dropped the Navy, which clattered onto the floorboard.

Without hesitation, Sally bent down and scooped up the gun. Arley lay on his side on the bench, right hand pressed to his left shoulder where blood welled between his fingers. Sally leaned forward and to the side, in front of Mrs. Carter, and thrust the revolver's barrel out the window. She fired off the remaining rounds as fast as she could cock the gun and squeeze the trigger.

Smoke heard Floyd Horton yelling at the team, urging them on to more speed. He knew what was going on as well as he would have if he could see the whole thing. Outlaws had laid an ambush on both banks, intending to murder Horton and Burke and stop the stage. Possibly because of the rapid way Smoke had cut down their numbers, the desperados had failed so far. Horton was still alive.

And now it was a race.

 

 

Harlan Gunderson cursed sulphurously as the stagecoach swept past the spot where he and Karl were standing and blasting away at it. The coach hadn't stopped, hadn't even slowed down. In fact, it was going faster now as the jehu shouted at his team and slashed at them with his whip.

Harlan hadn't counted on somebody inside the coach being such a gun wizard. Lavery was lying dead in the road, and Dawson was down on the far bank, badly wounded from the looks of him. And somehow the driver on the coach seemed to be untouched by all the lead that had flown around him.

The guard couldn't say the same thing. He was slumped on the seat, the side of his head covered with blood where he'd been hit.

“Come on!” Harlan shouted to Karl. “We gotta catch up!”

He turned and started running along the top of the bank with the rifle held at a slant across his chest. His long legs carried him swiftly and kept him not far behind the coach. The problem was that he couldn't shoot at the driver while he was running like this.

Then Grady Kirk spurred out into the road at the end of the cut and opened fire on the stagecoach with his pistol. The driver's instincts made him haul back on the reins in the face of this unexpected attack. The coach slowed, allowing Harlan and Karl to catch up with it. Karl had lagged several yards behind his brother, and he was puffing and panting like a steam engine as they slowed.

Harlan brought the Winchester to his shoulder again and was about to drill the driver, who seemed unsure what to do as Grady charged the coach. Before Harlan could pull the trigger, though, the guard suddenly reared up on the seat. That took Harlan by surprise, because he'd thought the man was dead.

Before the outlaws could react, the guard thrust his weapon toward them one-handed and fired both barrels of the coach gun. Beside Harlan, Karl said, “Uh!” and took a quick step back.

Harlan looked over at his brother, saw the bloody ruin where the buckshot had caught Karl in the belly and chest, and roared, “No!”

“H-Harlan . . .” Karl managed to say before he sat down hard and then died, rolling onto his side.

Down in the cut, the guard had dropped the shotgun and collapsed again. A man stood in the open doorway on the coach's far side, leaned out, and blew Grady Kirk out of the saddle with a well-placed shot.

“Go!” he shouted to the driver, who whipped the team again and made the coach surge forward as Kirk's horse danced out of the way.

“No!” Harlan yelled again. They weren't going to get away with this, not with killing Karl. He dropped the rifle and sprinted along the bank after the coach. The fury he felt gave him incredible speed. He was about to run out of bank, so he did the only thing he could.

He left his feet and sailed out over the cut in a desperate leap, his long duster catching the air and billowing out behind him like the wings of a giant bird.

Smoke had holstered his gun and was about to climb out of the coach and up to the driver's box to check on Tom Burke and give Floyd Horton a hand when he saw the huge shape plummeting down from the sky. The man's boots struck the coach roof and jolted it so hard because of his weight that Smoke's grip on the side of the door was knocked loose. Off balance the way he was, he toppled out of the coach.

The only thing that saved him from falling in the road was a desperate grab with his other hand that caught the handle of the door as it flapped back and forth in the wind. Smoke twisted and hung there with just the toes of his boots still inside the coach. That and the perilous one-handed grip was all that held him up.

The outlaw who had jumped from the cut bank to the stagecoach had fallen to his knees when he landed on the roof. He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around Horton's neck from behind, and started choking the driver. Horton dropped the reins and pawed at the arms clamping down on his throat like iron bands, but he couldn't budge them.

The team had never come to a complete stop. Now, spooked and wild-eyed from all the gunfire, they started running hard again. As the road came out of the cut, it sloped downhill, so the coach began to pick up speed.

“Smoke!” Sally cried. He looked up and saw her leaning toward him as she held out a hand. Herman Langston was behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist. That familiarity with a married woman, normally unforgivable, was understandable under these circumstances. They were trying to get Smoke back into the coach.

Smoke flung his other hand up and clasped wrists with Sally. She was a strong woman, and with the drummer bracing her she was able to haul Smoke up from his precarious position. He got his feet inside the coach and wrapped his arm around the window frame as he let go of Sally's wrist.

They weren't out of danger, though. The way the stagecoach was careening down the hill with no hand on the reins to slow the horses, the vehicle might veer off the road and crash at any time. That outlaw was doing his best to choke the life out of Floyd Horton, too.

Smoke pointed up to let Sally know what he was doing, then reached for the brass rail that ran around the edge of the coach roof. He couldn't try a shot because there was too great a risk of hitting Horton. Instead he got a foot in the window, held on to the rail, and heaved himself on top of the coach.

A few pieces of baggage were lashed in place up here. Smoke clambered over them, drew his gun, and struck at the man who was attacking Horton. The coach lurched just as the Colt fell, and instead of hitting the man in the head and knocking him out, as Smoke intended, the blow slammed into his shoulder instead. The man bellowed in pain and anger, let go of Horton, and twisted around to swing a powerful arm at Smoke in a swift backhand.

Smoke pulled back to avoid the hit, but the outlaw's arm struck his forearm and knocked the gun out of his hand. The man threw himself at Smoke, crashed into him, and drove him backward.

Smoke landed with his shoulders at the back edge of the roof with his head hanging over the canvas-covered boot. The outlaw tried to knee him in the groin, but Smoke writhed aside at the last second and took the vicious strike on his thigh. Roaring curses, the outlaw knelt astride Smoke and began raining punches down on him.

Smoke jerked his head from side to side to avoid most of the blows, and as soon as he got a chance he shot up a short punch of his own that caught the man on the chin and rocked his head back. That gave Smoke an opening to grab the outlaw by the throat and heave him to the side.

The man fell against the railing and toppled over it, but he snagged it with a hand and a foot and clung there. Smoke rolled over, came up on his knees, and glanced back and forth between the outlaw who was struggling to pull himself back up onto the coach and the road ahead of them, which took a fairly sharp turn at the bottom of the hill.

If the coach hit that bend in the trail at the speed it was going now, there was a good chance it would turn over. Smoke had no choice except to try to slow it down.

He scrambled up to the driver's box. Tom Burke had slipped down into the floorboard and lay there either unconscious or dead. Floyd Horton had passed out from being choked and lay slumped across the seat. Smoke shoved the senseless driver aside and slid down onto the seat.

The loose reins coiled and writhed on the floorboard next to Burke like a nest of snakes. Smoke reached down and grabbed them, then straightened and hauled back on the leathers. The horses were still spooked, but they responded immediately to a human touch on the reins. They started to slow down.

Something hit Smoke from behind with such force he would have pitched forward off the seat if an arm hadn't looped around his neck and held him up. As that arm closed on his throat and cut off his air, he knew the outlaw had managed to climb back onto the coach and was trying to choke him to death, just as he had done with Horton.

As Smoke's head began to spin from lack of breath, he reached back and caught hold of the man's duster. Smoke was immensely strong, as his unusually wide shoulders indicated, and his position gave him a little leverage. He bent forward and pulled with all the strength he could muster. The outlaw let out a startled shout as Smoke heaved him up and over. The man came down on the singletree attached to the front of the coach, tried to get hold of it, but slipped off and fell under the hooves of the still galloping team. Smoke felt the jolt as two of the wheels rolled over him.

Smoke had been forced to drop the reins to deal with the outlaw. He lunged for them again and caught them just as they were about to slither out of his reach. Straightening, he planted his boot soles against the floorboard and pulled back on the reins with his left hand while he used his right to lean on the brake lever. The team slowed again and the coach shuddered to a stop about ten feet short of the turn that likely would have wrecked it.

Smoke looped the reins around the brake lever and dropped quickly off the box. He jerked the door on that side open and said, “Sally, are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she told him as she leaned out to give him a reassuring smile. “Bounced around quite a bit, but that's all. Arley's the only one who's wounded.”

“How's he doing?”

“I think he'll be all right. It looks like the bullet went through cleanly. Mrs. Carter and I are trying to stop the bleeding.”

“You get back to that, then. When you get a chance, check on the driver and the guard. I need to make sure none of those outlaws are still alive.”

Smoke had lost his Colt in the struggle with the man who had jumped on top of the stage, so he went to the boot at the back, untied the canvas cover and pulled it aside, and reached in to get his Winchester that was stored there along with quite a bit of baggage. He knew the chamber was empty but the rifle was fully loaded otherwise. He worked the lever up and down so it was ready to fire, then walked grimly back up the hill toward the first body lying in the road.

He could tell before he got there that the man was no longer a threat. Several hooves had struck him in the head, battering it into a shape that was barely human. That would have been enough to kill him even if the stagecoach's iron-rimmed wheels hadn't crushed his midsection. Smoke's lips tightened as he looked at the grisly remains.

He went on up the hill, retrieving his Colt when he spotted it lying on the road on the way. The man who had ridden out and tried to stop the stage was dead, too, with a single gunshot wound to the chest, as was the first man who had toppled off the bank when two of Smoke's slugs punched through his belly.

That left two more men, one on each bank. Smoke found places where the banks had collapsed a little and climbed up to check on them. Both were dead, the man on the east bank from one of Smoke's bullets, the other on the west bank shredded by the buckshot from Tom Burke's shotgun.

Smoke wondered briefly if they had any connection to the man he had killed at the stagecoach station in Morgan Mill. Chances were he would never know, since none of them were left alive to tell the tale.

When he got back to the coach, he found that Floyd Horton was sitting up, shaking his head, and rubbing his throat.

“Are you all right, Floyd?” Smoke asked.

“Yeah,” the jehu rasped. “Be a mite hoarse for a while, but I'm fine. Can't say the same for Tom.”

Burke was stretched out on the ground with a folded blanket under his head. Sally knelt beside him as she tried to wipe some of the blood away from the wound on his head.

“He's alive,” she told Smoke. “It looks like the bullet just left a deep graze on his head, but I can't tell if it cracked his skull. He needs real medical attention.”

“It's only about ten more miles to Stephenville,” Horton said. “We'll put him in the coach and make him as comfortable as we can, then get him there right away.”

The other passengers had gotten out of the coach, too. Arley Hicks had a crude bandage tied around his left shoulder and that arm was in a makeshift sling, but he didn't seem to be in too bad of a shape. Herman Langston was fine, and the Purcells were badly shaken up but otherwise unhurt.

“Wait a minute,” Donald Purcell said. “Will there be room in there for the guard and the rest of us?”

Horton's eyes narrowed as he said, “I'm gonna forget you said that, mister. The ladies can ride inside. There's room for the rest of you on top of the coach.”

“On top?” Purcell repeated. “Oh, no, I paid for my passage—”

“Tom Burke took a bullet trying to keep you safe,” Smoke snapped. “You'll help us get him in the coach and then climb up there and keep your complaints to yourself.”

Purcell opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but he didn't say anything else. His wife just gave him a contemptuous look and said, “Give them a hand, Donald, like Mr. Jensen told you.”

Langston said, “I suppose we'll leave the bodies for the sheriff?”

“Or the coyotes and the buzzards,” Smoke said. “Doesn't much matter to me who gets to them first.”

 

 

The stagecoach station in Stephenville was a block away from the courthouse square. A man in a suit and top hat was pacing back and forth in front of the building when Horton brought the coach to a halt.

“There you are!” the man exclaimed. “I expected you earlier.”

Smoke was riding on the seat next to Horton. He said, “Who are you, mister?”

The man ignored the question and rushed to the back of the coach. He fumbled with the ties on the canvas cover and then threw it aside. His hands shot into the boot and brought out a small valise that he clutched to him like it was something precious.

By this time Smoke had climbed down from the box. The station manager and a couple of hostlers came out to greet the stage, too.

“Tom Burke's inside the coach, got a bullet wound on his head,” Horton said. “Somebody best fetch the doc right away.”

One of the hostlers rushed off to do that while the manager said, “Good Lord, Floyd, did you get held up?”

“Yeah, they jumped us in one of those cuts a few miles this side of Morgan Mill.”

“They didn't steal anything?”

“No. In fact, the varmints all wound up dead.” Horton nodded toward Smoke. “Thanks to Mr. Jensen there.”

The man holding the valise tried to step around Smoke, who blocked his path and said, “Wait a minute, mister. I asked who you are, and now I want to know what's so important about that bag.”

“That's none of your business,” the man snapped. “Now, get out of my way—”

Horton moved up beside Smoke and said, “I'd listen to this hombre if I was you, mister. You're actin' like what's in that bag is important enough to make a gang of owlhoots come after this stage.”

The man glared at them and said, “Well, if you must know, I'm the president of the bank here in Stephenville, and I arranged for a shipment of cash to be brought in—”

Smoke didn't let him finish. He pulled the bag out of the protesting man's hands, undid the catches, and opened it. Inside were bundles of greenbacks.

“Who knew about this?” he asked disgustedly as he shoved the valise back into the man's arms.

“Why . . . why, just Mr. Ferguson and myself—”

“You didn't tell the law, or the folks who would be responsible for getting that cash here safely?”

“I thought it best to tell as few people as possible.”

“Blast it,” Horton said. “If I'd known we was carryin' all that loot, I would've brought the stage on into town yesterday evening. Didn't seem like there was any rush, though.”

“And your secrecy almost got some innocent people killed,” Smoke added.

The banker drew himself up and said stiffly, “I was just conducting my business as I saw fit, and you've no right to chastise me for it.”

Sally had climbed down from the coach by now. She put a hand on her husband's arm and said, “Let's go, Smoke. I want to make sure Mr. Burke gets the attention he needs, and Arley could use having that shoulder wound looked at, too.”

Smoke nodded slowly and turned away. Sally was right. There were more important things to take care of than punching that stuffed-shirt banker in the mouth.

But it sure was tempting.