She made an angry face, pulled off the ring, and slammed it into his hand. Tears slowly rolled down her cheeks. Dyer emerged from the back of the coach carrying the strongbox. He grinned a half-toothless grin and set it down.
Jeeter turned his attention to the driver and pointed Joshua's pistol at him.
“Key to the strongbox.”
The driver just nervously shook his head no.
Jeeter grinned. “Okay, I'll put a bullet in you and then shoot the lock off.”
Shaking, the driver reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a large key. He handed it to Jeeter, who unlocked the strongbox. There were a number of stacks of bills inside. Jeeter started counting stacks and dividing them, then handed a stack to each man. Next, they went through the luggage and got out all the valuables they could.
Finally finished, they all mounted up except Long Legs, who walked over to Annabelle, grinning.
Jeeter hollered, “Come on, Long Legs!”
Westbrook said, “Boys, look how good she looks in thet dress. Wonder how she looks unner it.”
Harlance said, “Boy, this is the West. You know we don't treat women thet way.”
Moss chimed in, “I'll have no truck with such talk. I'm pulling out. Come on, boy.”
He and his son galloped off up Copper Gulch Stage Road.
“Come on, Long Legs!” Jeeter said.
Long Legs was now motivated by lust.
He yelled, “Go ahaid. Ah'll catch up mebbe.”
Long Legs turned back, and now the stage driver got brave. There were not that many women in the West, and even if only out of practicality, some outlaws turned rapist were even strung up or shot by their own gang members. Most men were respectful to women no matter what. The stage driver stepped in front of Annabelle.
Longs Legs laughed, drew his pistol, and said, “Mister, I was gonna tie ya up, but ef ya wanna be a hero, ah'll jest shoot ya.”
The driver set his jaw and said, “That is the only way you'll git ta this young lady, son. Over my dead body.”
Long Legs stepped forward two steps and cocked the pistol, “Okay, ole-timer. Ya wanna play yer cards thet way, we'll do it.”
Annabelle stepped forward, saying, “Wait! I will cooperate, but you agree not to shoot anybody else.”
He laughed, saying, “Sounds good to me.”
“But not to me!”
Everybody turned and saw Joshua Strongheart standing over his own pool of blood, wearing Jeeter's shed holster and belt and holding the man's .44 in his right hand. It was pointed at Long Legs. Joshua's face was completely covered in dried blood, and he was swaying, but there was no mistaking the clear look in his eyes.
The bullet had sent a deep furrow down Joshua's skull, and he now had a horrible headache to go with it. As he had been taught, he pushed all that out of his mind and steeled himself to the task at hand.
He did not know, though, that Shaw and Dyer were riding back to help out Westbrook in case he got in trouble. They also thought about how beautiful the woman was and what easy prey she would be.
Joshua stared into the eyes of Long Legs, and the tall man got very nervous. Joshua could see that this man was trouble, wounded or not.
Westbrook said, “You're barely able ta stand, partner. Drop the hogleg, an I'll let ya live.”
“Mister, you'll never touch that woman while there is breath in my body,” Joshua said. “You gonna start the ball or are you gonna talk me to death?”
He saw the ears on Westbrook's magnificent paint horse shoot forward, alert to something coming down the stagecoach road behind him. He figured the gang had come back and was slowly moving up behind him.
Joshua made a decision. He fired, fanned the hammer back, and fired again, and saw a large stain of crimson in the center of Long Legs's chest as he fell back, dropping his gun. Joshua immediately went to the ground, rolling to his right, toward the bloody corpse of Chancy, but on his way down he felt a bullet slam into the back of his left shoulder, which spun him. He crawled forward quickly to Chancy's body, drew the cowboy's gun, and spun around, as another bullet slammed into his right thigh. He saw both Stumpy Shaw and Slim Dyer. One held a Winchester and the other a six-shooter.
Joshua knew he had to save the woman no matter how many bullets hit him. Instead of firing wildly, he forced himself to stand. He fired first at Dyer, the rifleman, and hit him in the right hip, and then a second shot hit Dyer right on the face, tearing his lower jaw off. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell back dead. Stumpy Shaw looked over and was terrorized by the sight of his dead riding partner, and he fired as quickly as he could, one bullet hitting Joshua in the upper left arm. Joshua pointed, aimed, fired, and the bullet hit Shaw in the right cheek, breaking the cheekbone and tearing the man's ear off. Strongheart limped forward, fanning the hammer back to a cocked position, and he squeezed a shot from the hip that hit Shaw's upper torso center mass.
Shaw thought to himself. “I'm dead,” and that was his last thought, as his back slammed into the rocks.
Now Joshua turned, and barely able to walk, he started toward Long Legs.
Annabelle ran forward, tears streaming, “Oh, Mr. Strongheart. You have been shot over and over.”
He grinned. “They are just little holes in me. Don't worry.”
Then he fell forward into her arms in a faint. His weight took both of them to the ground. She tried to lower him as gently as she could while falling with him on top of her. He opened his eyes, and was an inch from her face. They stared briefly into each other's eyes, and he smiled.
“Annabelle,” he said, feigning shock to tease her. “We just met.”
He stood, and she grinned, jumped up, and helped him rise up on wobbly legs. She immediately started tearing shreds from her petticoat and bandaging his wounds. Smiling, Joshua pushed her aside.
“Excuse me, ma'am,” he said, walking toward Long Legs lying on the ground, holding his bloody chest.
He smiled weakly up at Strongheart, saying, “Mister, ya kilt me. Will ya gimme your word, you'll take good care a mah horse? Ah even got a bill a sale on him in mah saddlebags, an' Ah'll sign him over ta ya. Ah am a rotten skunk. Always was, but Ah jest cain't die, partner, knowin' he is jest gonna wander off. He was the only good thang Ah ever had in my life. You'll never find a better horse'n ole Gabriel.”
Joshua said, “Mister, I give you my word. What do you want on your headstone?”
Westbrook grinned. “Jest leave me in the rocks. Coyotes got ta eat, too. At least Ah can do one good thang in mah life.”
Annabelle stepped up next to Joshua, holding him up by the upper body.
She said, “Mister, you will be buried properly and read over. Any man who cares that much about his horse at least deserves that. I give you my word.”
Long Legs stared up at her.
He spoke weakly as blood started coming from his mouth, “What Ah tried to do to ya? Ma'am, you are a lady ef Ah ever saw one.”
He smiled at her and that is how he died. He lay there unmoving, eyes staring toward Annabelle and a smile on his lips.
Strongheart's legs gave out, and he dropped in place into a seated position. Annabelle started tearing petticoat strips again. She wrapped the first around his bicep, but the driver held his hand up and rushed to the stage, where he climbed up into his seat. He reached down and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and an oilskin bag.
Tossing them down to her, he said, “Ma'am, pour that whiskey on his wounds first, and I got clean bandages in there from the doc down ta Pueblo.”
She started doctoring Joshua, and the driver ran into the trees toward the spring. He came out of the gulch with Orville Reichert, who was rubbing his wrists and moaning and groaning but did not seem too bad.
Joshua had fainted again, and when he opened his eyes, he looked up at the beautiful face of Annabelle. She saw him awake and smiled. She was still bandaging him. He felt himself falling into a pit of blackness.
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Strongheart opened his eyes and there was a fire. He looked at the faces around him. The two men were drinking coffee and the fire shined on Annabelle's face. She was cleaning blood off a cloth. He felt himself slipping into blackness again.
Joshua's mother sat on the edge of his bed and smiled at him when he opened his eyes.
“Where am I, Ma? What happened?” he said.
Smiling softly, she said, “You are in bed, Joshua. You have had a very bad experience, but the doctor said you will be fine with rest. Do you remember what happened?”
The fourteen-year-old boy looked down at his body under the goose down quilt. He was naked, and he could see four straight lines going down his right rib cage on an angle and crossing over onto his belly under his navel.
He thought for a minute and remembered that he and Dan had been out hunting for an elk or mule deer for the family coffers. They had split up and decided to work both wooded sides of a large draw. The ridges were steep, and they kept fairly abreast of each other's location by using bird whistles occasionally.
Dan was following a set of tracks from what appeared to be a large buck, which he knew probably was bedded down somewhere above the head of the draw. This was something old bucks frequently did, so they had a sweeping view of anything approaching up the draw and strong breezes to carry scent to them. They also could get over either ridge in case of trouble. Dan also knew that big bucks did this instinctively and could not actually reason such things out.
Joshua was following a narrow game trail through the trees and went around a bend silently and slowly and froze. There before him not twenty feet away was a large tom mountain lion on top of a fresh deer carcass. The doe's neck was broken and twisted in an odd way. The big cat had just about finished eating the entrails. Strongheart knew that was the first part of a deer that cougars ate after making a kill. The lion looked at Joshua, laid his ears back, and bared his fangs, hissing. A low growl began in the big cat's chest, and then Joshua saw the big tail start swishing back and forth. He knew from his hunts with Dan and with Lakotas in the villages that swishing the tail back and forth like that was what mountain lions did right before making a charge. They normally shied away from humans, but he had come upon this one eating a fresh kill, which the cat would protect.
Joshua slowly raised his rifle and aimed at the lion's forehead. It was too close to aim at his chest and take a chance on only wounding him. A cougar like that could cover more than twenty feet in one leap. His muscles were tensing, and Joshua took a deep breath and let it out halfway. The cat sprang, took two big strides, and leapt at his face. The shot rang out and the lion hit the ground after crashing into Joshua, his left front paw scratching Joshua where the marks were now. They bled some but were only bad scratches and not deep cuts like his father Claw Marks had gotten from the grizzly. The cat crashing into Joshua was two hundred pounds of dead weight, and landing on top of him, it knocked the wind out of Joshua, plus his head snapped back and slapped into a log. The sky spun around in circles as he panicked and fought to regain his breath. Then everything went black. Dan found him with the dead mountain lion on top of him.
He awakened in his room at home with his mother babying him, and it became one of his warmest memories. Like most males of any age, Joshua loved getting babied by his mother when he was hurting. On top of that, he had stood in there in the face of danger and done what was needed, while maintaining a cool head. We develop poise and confidence in life from little successes, and this was a big success that was important in Joshua's personal development.
His mother bathed his head with cool water, and he closed his eyes. It was so soothing. He opened them again and looked into the deep, bright blue eyes of Annabelle Ebert. His head was in her lap, and she was rubbing his face with a cool, wet piece of petticoat.
She saw his eyes open and smiled warmly, saying, “Welcome back to the living. You had a very bad fever and were delirious. Your fever broke. How do you feel?”
“Starved,” he said. “How long have I been out?”
“Since yesterday,” she replied.
He shook his head and blinked his eyes, then stood up, moaning as he did so. He had never been so sore or hurt so much in his life. He had a bandage on his leg, one on his shoulder and back, and another on his upper arm. He looked at all his bandages and smiled at her.
“Did you patch me up?”
“Yes,” she said. “The driver helped me. We had to take two bullets out of you, but fortunately they were easy to get to. You need to lie down though.”
“I can't,” he replied. “I have got to get after those men. I have to get that money belt.”
She said, “Mr. Strongheart, you can always replace money.”
He interrupted. “Mrs. Ebert, call me Joshua, please. I didn't have any money in that. I had a letter from the President of the United States to a general in Oregon State. I am a secret courier for the Pinkerton Agency.”
“Why does that not shock me? And call me Anna or Annabelle,” she said. “I know, then, nothing I say will change your mind.”
“No, ma'am.”
She said, “Maybe they will see the letter and turn it in somewhere.”
Strongheart grinned at her.
“Okay, I guess that is silly,” she said. “Just hopeful.”
He said, “Even without the money belt, I have to get my holster back. No choice.”
“Why no choice?” she asked.
He said, “I gave my word to my ma on her deathbed that I would always keep that gun and knife. The gun and holster were left to me by my stepdad, and the knife was left to me by my father.”