by Ralph Cotton
He slid the gun into its sleek-fitting holster and shoved the whole rig farther down into the satchel. He carried both wet pieces of luggage back to the coach.
When he opened the coach door and climbed in, Sam pitched the luggage on the floor and looked at Weir and the young dove. Weir sat slumped where Jenny had helped him sit up a little on the seat and leaned him against the backrest. He managed to hold the wet cloth to his forehead.
“I found these in the mud,” he said as the two looked at the dripping luggage, then at him.
“Oh! Thank you, Ranger Burrack,” Jenny Lynn said. “I don’t know what I would have done had I left my bag here. It has everything I own in it, modest though that may be.”
“The thieves must have let them fall from on top when they untied the strongbox,” Sam said. He gazed evenly at Weir as he spoke.
Weir returned his gaze, the wet cloth cupped against his battered face.
Finally he said in a strained, halting voice, “Too bad I didn’t have this . . . with me. I have a . . . gun in there.”
“Oh?” Sam said flatly.
“Yes, a fierce piece of equipment . . . I won it off a fellow a while back,” Weir said through split and swollen lips.
“Won it, huh?” Sam said with a questioning look.
Jenny Lynn sat quietly, watching with interest.
“Poker . . . ,” said the drummer. As he spoke, he lowered his hand from his head and made a gesture as if dealing cards.
Sam only nodded and stared at him.
“It might be a blessing you didn’t have it on, Mr. Weir,” Jenny Lynn cut into the looming silence. “It may well have gotten you killed.”
The drummer breathed in deep and closed his eyes in reflection.
“Yes, that may well be,” he said, raising the wet cloth back up to his head.
The three turned as the door opened and the shotgun rider stuck his face inside, rain running from the guttered brim of his hat.
“We’ve got both the coach horses hitched and ready, Ranger,” he said. “But your roan is acting ugly about the whole deal.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Sam stood crouched and stepped toward the open door. But as he started to step down, he picked up both the carpetbag and the man’s satchel. He handed them to Dawson. “Here,” he said, “tie these on top, give these folks a little more room in here.”
As Sam spoke, he turned and looked at the drummer to check out his reaction.
“Much obliged, Ranger,” the drummer said without hesitation, raising the wet cloth back to his face. “I feel safer you carrying a gun than I do myself, the shape I’m in.”
As Sam shut the stagecoach door and he and Dawson walked forward, huddled against a new round of blowing rain, the shotgun rider shook the leather satchel.
“You mean this hardware drummer has himself a gun in here and wasn’t even wearing it?” he said to the Ranger. He shook his head. “Why do you think he’d do something as stupid as that?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, staring ahead to where the roan and Long stood in a driving sheet of rain. The roan reared and whinnied and pulled against the reins in Long’s hands. “But I’m working on it.”
• • •
Night seeped into the black sunless sky almost without notice. The three horses pulled the coach upward onto a higher trail, skirting around a low hillside fraught with deep-cut ravines, sunken boulders and sparse piñon. In front of the two big coach horses, Sam sat atop the roan and led the team and the heavy coach upward. The roan had balked against stepping into the traces, but had finally settled and turned surly and silent as it pulled forward.
Heavy rain fell dart-straight around the Ranger, horses and rig, while on the black horizon the wind had drawn its breath inward, beginning to circle and fashion itself into a funnel, ground to sky. The sky itself roiled atop the mad twisting wind like some mighty beast picked at with a stick, until at length the taunting would once again send it raging mindless across a hapless drowning land.
“You’re doing good,” Sam murmured down to the roan’s dripping mane. His hand sloshed inside his glove as he patted its steaming withers. Looking behind him, beyond the team of likewise steaming coach horses, Sam saw the silhouettes of Long and Dawson standing blacker than the silver rain-threaded night around them, each coachman driven to occupy his seat only out of one’s respect for the other.
In a paler flash of lightning, the two coachmen saw the Ranger half-turned in his saddle looking back at them.
“There’s the wide cut right ahead, see it?” Long called out as distant thunder rumbled.
“He sees it,” Dawson grumbled beside Long. “He’s been seeing it. We can’t miss it ’less the trail’s washed out.”
“Don’t even say that, joking,” Long replied under the pouring deluge.
“I ain’t joking,” Dawson said in a lowered voice.
“I see it,” Sam called out in reply, turning forward, his sombrero low and dripping water. As he spoke he saw the wide black void flash on and off again, turning purple-blue in the fleeting ribbon of light. Closer now he caught a glimpse of the gray grainy cliff sprawled jagged and shiny against the night high above them. From inside the black void, he heard the steady crushing roar he’d heard for the past half mile.
A runoff, he told himself; and no sooner had he recognized the sound than Long had called out this very thought from the driver’s seat.
“A big one at that,” Long had said. “I know this cut. A high ledge runs all along this side of it.”
Good enough. . . .
They had sighted the wide cut in the trail forty minutes earlier in the streaks of light. From there, as they had neared the wide break in the hillside, the roar of hard-rushing water had guided them through blackness between intermittent streaks of lightning as surely as all sound guides the blind.
Watch the edge, Sam reminded himself, catching a glimpse of the rocky outer trail edge as lightning blinked on and off teasingly. The sound of the hard runoff grew closer, more intense as he rode the roan forward. Knowing now that the roaring sound guiding him would mislead him if it resounded above any washout lying closer across the flooding trail, he slowed the roan and felt the team horses and coach slow down behind him.
“By dang, he’s gotten us there,” Dawson said in relief, seeing the wide break ahead of them in the recurrent flash of light. Feeling a cold silence from the seat beside him, Dawson added quickly, “The two of yas, that is.”
“Hmmph,” said Long, water running freely from the guttered front brim of his drooping hat.
“Brake them while I check ahead,” Sam called back to the coach seat.
“It’s set,” said Long, as soon as he’d pulled back hard on the brake handle and hitched the team’s reins around it.
Stepping down from his saddle in a flash of lightning, Sam caught a glimpse of one of the missing coach horses standing in the trail, its eyes locked on him, its back and nostrils swirling steam upward in the downpour.
“Another horse up here,” he called back, keeping his voice measured and above the rain to keep from spooking the animal.
He walked back to the roan, took down a coiled rope and moved forward in the darkness, catching another glimpse of the animal in the next flash of lightning. When he reached the horse, he heard its iron-rimmed hoof take a wary step away from him, closer to the raging water below the ledge behind it.
“Easy, boy, you don’t want to go that way,” he whispered soothingly, moving forward slow and steady, not stopping to ask the horse’s permission.
By the time the horse took another step away, the Ranger had his wet gloved hand flat on its neck, a loop uncoiled and ready to slip over its head. The big horse was calm enough. But the animal wasn’t taking up with him, and Sam knew this was no place to argue the matter. He lowered the loop away from the horse; the horse tossed
his head away from his hand. Sam watched him shuffle off through the pouring rain. A few feet away, the big animal stopped and looked back from the mouth of the ledge Long had told him ran around the length of the deep, narrow hill canyon. The horse blew a nose full of steam, turned and walked out of sight.
“All right, you lead,” Sam said, unheard in the pouring rain. He followed the horse onto the ledge and walked out twenty feet, judging the width of the ledge against that of the stagecoach, seeing the edge, seeing the rain flicker silver, falling out of sight into the black raging water below.
Turning from the edge, he saw not one but two dark steaming horses in the next flicker of light. Then he saw a third as he turned and walked closer.
“Well, now, look at you,” he said, low, evenly as he let out three coils from the wet rope and stepped forward slowly. “I’m betting all three of you would like to get out of here . . . get back with your pards?” Lightning flashed. He stopped and stood in the pouring rain, rope in hand. The horses gathered and start walking to him.
“That’s what I thought,” he said quietly as the rain turned sidelong on a rising gust of wind.
Chapter 4
By the time the Ranger led the three coach horses around the mouth of the ledge onto the trail, the wind had come back howling and strong. Gray lashing sheets of rain blew the tails of the Ranger’s slicker sideways along with the horses’ manes and tails as man and animals struggled toward the stagecoach, where the other two team horses and the roan stood in the howling darkness, their heads ducked low.
Hearing the sound of the horses’ hooves clomping toward them beneath the howl of wind and the rip of rain across the coach roof, Dawson pulled the window canvas back an inch with his hand and squinted into the squalling storm.
“I’ll be dipped in duck fat,” he said, seeing the black forms of the Ranger and horses against the gray sheets of rain.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny Lynn asked from the other seat, the sleeping drummer’s head on her lap.
“Nothing at all’s wrong, little lady,” said Dawson with a beard-shrouded grin. “Ranger Burrack has gone and found our horses for us!”
“You must be crazy,” said Long, leaping over to the window beside him. The two stared out through the turbulence for a second. Then they looked at each other. “No, you’re right, Maynard!” he corrected quickly.
“Dang right I’m right,” said Dawson, pulling his wet hat down tight and hugging his collar up around his cheeks.
“I’ve got to . . . get up from here,” the sleeping drummer said through blue swollen lips. “Papers need signing. . . .”
“No, you don’t, Mr. Weir,” said the young dove. She pressed him back down as his arms flailed aimlessly. “You stay right there and go back to sleep.” She leaned down close to his battered face and spoke sternly. “Do you understand me, mister?”
“I do . . . now,” said the groggy man. “Wake me in St. Louis. . . .”
“He’s babbling like an idiot,” said Dawson, the two wet coachmen looking down at the purple swollen face in the woman’s lap. They both shook their heads in sympathy.
“Come on, pard, we’ve got a job of work to do,” Dawson said finally. He threw open the door and splashed down into the mud to help Sam with the horses. Long noticed the concerned look in the young woman’s eyes.
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he said. “With our horses back, we’ll lie low till first light and get on up out of here.”
“But—but will we be all right, I mean, up here on the hillside?” the woman asked. “What if the trail washes out from under us?”
“We’re better off up here, for now, ma’am,” said Long, tugging his wet hat down tight around his head. “Lower lands are already flooded out down there. “No, we’ll be all right here.” He gave her a smile that looked strained as he backed out of the coach in a crouch, splashed down into the mud and forced the door shut behind him.
“The hell is . . . he talking about?” the battered drummer asked in a half-conscious voice. He swung his head back and forth on the young dove’s lap.
“Shhh, easy, Mr. Weir, don’t worry about that,” Jenny Lynn said soothingly.
“Who—who am I . . . ?” he asked, his words trailing as they left his poorly performing lips.
“You are Mr. Tunis Weir,” Jenny Lynn said evenly, distinctly, as if teaching a slow student. “Remember . . . ?” She pressed a hand on his chest. “It’s important you remember as much as you can—your name, who you are, where you’re from.”
“I am Tunis Weir . . . ,” the drummer recited groggily. “I am Tunis Weir, from . . .” He stopped, a blank expression on his face, his mental capacity failing him.
Jesus. . . .
Jenny Lynn bit her lower lip and held back a tear. Patiently she took a deep breath and started all over.
“Illinois, Mr. Weir,” she said. “You are Tunis Weir from Chicago, Illinois. You sell hardware supplies across the Western frontier.”
“And we . . . know each other, then?” he asked.
“No. I read a letter from inside your coat pocket,” Jenny Lynn replied.
“Oh yes, I do . . . I remember now,” the drummer said, his recall coming back at her prompting. He managed to pat a bruised hand on his lapel pocket. “I’m a hardware drummer.” He tried to open his swollen eyes a little wider. “And you are a dove?” He tried to form a smile, but his swollen lips wouldn’t allow it.
“Yes, I am a dove,” Jenny Lynn said acceptingly.
“Then we could . . . ?” His words trailed again, but his hand tried to reach her bosom.
“Please don’t, Mr. Weir,” she said, pressing his hand down away from her. “This is no time to be fooling around. My only concern this night is to get you back on your feet. We’re on a bad spot here.” She scooted around beneath him and tugged upward on his shoulders. “Since you are coming around some, maybe it’s best you sit up on your own for a while—clear your head a little?”
“I—I believe you’re right, Jenny Lynn,” he said, sitting up with her help and slumping against the back of the seat. “I certainly took a bad beating, didn’t I?” He let out a long sigh.
“Yes, you did, Mr. Weir,” the woman said. “I’m glad you’re starting to remember that much, at least.”
“Things will come back to me,” the drummer said, closing his swollen eyes.
“I know they will sooner or later,” the woman said, straightening her dress on her lap where he’d been resting his head.
• • •
Outside in the wind-whipped rain, the Ranger and the two coachmen began hitching the three horses back into their places. Sam unhitched the roan and led it aside so he could rehitch it in the front spot. From there he could sit atop it and lead the coach forward around the mouth of the ledge. Along the ledge he’d find a place close up against the rocky wall that would provide some shelter from the hard brunt of the storm.
In a lingering flash of lightning, Sam stared into the two coachmen’s wet dripping faces as they hitched the fifth horse into position.
“Ready for your roan, Ranger,” Long shouted through the wind and rain. Thunder crashed loud and hard up above them in the flooded ravine. The earth shook hard beneath their feet.
“Holy cats!” Long shouted with a start. “That one had some muscle and claws in it!”
Sam stood still, listening intently beyond the roar of wind, rain and rushing water. Even in the raging storm, the horses grew skittish at the feel of the earth trembling violently.
“Easy, now, easy,” Dawson said, settling the animals. To Sam, he shouted, “How’d you manage to find these boys anyway?”
“I didn’t find them,” Sam shouted in reply. “They found me.”
“Still, you must’ve done something right,” Dawson said as the Ranger pulled the reluctant roan over into place.
“Just l
ucky,” Sam said, listening in the direction of the last hard slam of thunder. The sound seemed to be holding on, still grumbling far up the ravine atop the raging runoff water.
“If it’s luck, I hope you don’t run out of it,” Long shouted.
“Here’s hoping,” Sam replied, still listening, not liking the sound of whatever was going on up in the ravine.
With the roan in place, the two coachmen started to turn and trot back to the coach. Sam had stepped up in the stirrups and started to swing his leg over the roan’s wet saddle when he heard the rumble he’d been listening to grow louder, deeper. As he stopped and stood in the stirrups, another hard crash caused the earth to shake violently beneath them. But this time there was no thunder, only the hard slam of earth against earth, followed by the same terrible sound resounding far up the ravine.
“Hold it!” Sam shouted, stepping down from the frightened roan’s side.
The two coachmen had heard and felt the same thing. They froze in place.
“What in God’s name is that?” said Long, almost to himself.
No sooner had he spoken than the three heard a terrifying ripping and breaking of trees and rock barreling toward them down the ravine ledge. As they stared into the black darkness, twenty feet away they saw the black rocky edge of their trail rip away and fall crashing into the raging flooded ravine.
“Holy God!” shouted Dawson, he and Long staggering to keep from falling, seeing even in the rain and darkness the trail width lessen by a full five feet as if carved away by some large unseen saber. “The trail’s washed out on us! The whole cut’s collapsing!”
Seeing quickly that the trail had suddenly become too narrow to turn the coach, Sam shouted, “Get the people out! We’ve got to make a run for it!” Even as he spoke, he stooped and jerked a long knife from his boot well. With no time to unhitch the spooked and rearing horses, he sliced wildly, freeing them from every tether he could find. As the team of horses reared and stepped in place in spite of their fear, the roan tried to turn and bolt away. But Sam held its reins tight.
