by Brett Waring
“But I have a case full of valuable samples!” protested the drummer, wincing as there was a fusillade of shots from up front and the stage slewed to a shuddering halt, tumbling passengers into a heap.
Outside, the driver reined down sharply as the first gunshots were fired into the air and the band of nine men came in from the front and both sides. The noise startled Link Somers fully awake and he sat up, instinctively groping for his shotgun. But, as his brain cleared—swiftly from long training—he stopped the movement towards the gun and stared down at the men milling about the coach. They were all masked—some of the bandannas only partly covered the men’s mouths—and they all had guns in their hands. Someone let out a wild yell that had drunken overtones. Link Somers frowned, saw two of the bandits swaying unsteadily in their saddles. By Godfrey! They were all drunk! And they sure weren’t acting like professional stage robbers. By now, a man who knew his business would have had the passengers out and lined-up and disarmed. These hombres could be shot from their mounts by passengers inside the stage.
Somers hoped like hell that no one would start anything. He was damned if he aimed to risk getting his head blown off on account of those passengers or the few dollars in the strongbox.
“Throw down your box, mister!” one of the bandits ordered and the words were slurred, confirming Somers’ suspicions that this was more a drunken prank than anything else.
The driver looked at him, licking his lips, face white with fear: he knew that usually the driver and guard were the first ones killed in a stage hold-up. Somers shrugged and carefully reached down under his seat and grabbed out the green-painted strongbox with the Wells Fargo legend on it in gilt. Hell, they hadn’t even ordered him to throw down his guns! These were rank amateurs. And that made them dangerous, coupled with their drunkenness. If he did make a move to get the drop on them now, someone could easily panic and start blazing away. Likely he would be killed and he didn’t aim to leave this life that way. So he threw the box down where it landed in a puff of dust. One of the bandits, a redhead whose face was almost totally exposed, climbed down and picked up the box, hanging it over his saddlehorn by the rope handle.
“This’ll be all the proof we need to show we really done it, Laramie!” the redhead said.
The swarthy man beside him growled at him and cursed him for using names but it was too late now. Both the driver and Somers knew who they were. Somers thought he had recognized that red-haired kid: they were the cowpokes who had driven the beef herd into Tucson and whooped it up so much that Marshal Tanner had kicked them out. Looked like they were still drunk and still celebrating ... Damn fools! They could get themselves killed!
“Everyone out!” Hank Nolan bawled, adjusting his bandanna mask as he wrenched open the coach door. He reached in and hauled out old Hernandes by his shirt front. The material ripped as he heaved the Mexican roughly past him, sending the old man sprawling to hands and knees. Like Somers, Nolan despised Mexicans.
Hernandes gagged for breath and struggled to get to his feet. The widow climbed out next and helped him to his feet. The cowboy, flushed some, stepped down and steadied the Mexican on the other side. The other passengers got out fearfully as Nolan ordered them to line up. Pepper and Coogan were up on top of the stage now and Pepper planted a boot against Somers’ back and kicked him out of his seat to land sprawling in the dust. The guard sprang up angrily and instinctively reached for his gun. Matt Hansen leapt his mount forward and kicked Somers on the side of the head, knocking him to his knees.
The driver climbed down hurriedly, hands held shoulder-high, indicating that he wouldn’t give any trouble. Somers got to his feet slowly and lifted his hands. His face was dark with anger but he made no more hostile moves, not even when Taco Dodd disarmed him and went around checking the others for guns too. When he had collected all the guns—one from the cowboy, a derringer from the drummer, and a small pepperbox pistol from the widow—Nolan lined up all the passengers, Somers and the driver. He walked down the line, looking at them closely. Then he stepped back as Pepper threw down a leather case that burst open and frilly, colored lace underwear spilled out into the dust. The drummer groaned.
Nolan picked up some of the clothing: a pair of pantaloons; a corset. He held them up and laughed. The masked men laughed with him and let out a concerted wild yell that had the passengers cringing.
“Okay,” Nolan said, turning back to them. “You ain’t got anythin’ worth stealin’, so you got to give us somethin’ for our trouble, right boys?” The bandits gave another wild whoop of agreement. “Sure you have. You got to entertain us, so I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Aw, don’t spoil it for ’em, Hank!” Matt Hansen cut in, stifling a guffaw. “Let ’em guess as they go along. Take it a step at a time!”
“Good idea,” agreed Nolan, swaying a little unsteadily as he tossed the underwear down on the ground again. He cocked his gun and held it on the frightened group. “Right ... first thing, you start gettin’ undressed!”
Naturally, there were protests, gasps of shock, and the mother on her way to join her soldier husband, held her daughter’s face against her bosom as if to protect her. But there was no protection, no protest that the drunken bandits would listen to: the order was to undress and Nolan gave them to a count of ten to get started or he and his men would do the job for them.
The cowboy was the first to commence. He unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off, revealing his lily white torso. The young woman turned swiftly away, gasping. The widow looked at his corded muscles appreciatively and the other woman closed her eyes slowly. The drummer started next and when Nolan moved towards the soldier’s wife, she reluctantly began fumbling at her bodice. In ten minutes, they were all down to their underwear, the women shy and red-faced, huddling together; even the widow was afraid of rape as she looked into the drink-wet eyes of the bandits while they passed around their stone jug of whisky.
“Now that weren’t so bad, was it?” Nolan said, jug in one hand, gun in the other, his bleak eyes on the old Mexican who stood silently, his scrawny legs protruding from beneath the tail of the ragged shirt he was allowed to keep on because he had no underpants, a concession to the finer feelings of the womenfolk, Nolan claimed. “But it’s gonna get better. First off, you men start gettin’ dressed again. No, not in your own clothes, cowboy! In these!”
The bandits laughed as Nolan kicked the case of underwear samples towards the men. They began to protest but Nolan fired a shot into the ground near the old man’s foot and made him jump awkwardly and the others hurriedly picked up the garments. The cowboy, red-necked, turned to the drummer with a pair of pantaloons.
“Come on, mister, this is your stuff! Lend a hand and show us how to put it on!”
The bandits almost fell off their mounts with drunken laughter as they watched the antics of the men getting dressed in the unfamiliar, ill-fitting ladies’ underwear. Nolan picked a pair of frilly lace pink pantaloons for Hernandes and stood over the old man as he struggled into them. Then he got Coogan to lend a hand and they put a pair of corsets on the Mexican, hauling the string taut, with a knee in the middle of the old man’s back, until his eyes popped and the breath wheezed through his teeth. Then they did the same to the other two men.
They offered to help the ladies get dressed in the men’s discarded clothing but each said they could manage well enough and the drunken bandits stood back, laughing, as the women dressed in the baggy trousers, shirts and coats. They made them wear the men’s hats, too, roaring uncontrollably as Hernandes’ large sombrero fell down and almost completely hid the face of the girl. The driver and Link Somers were kept till last and made to dress in the underwear too. Somers was flushed with anger and embarrassment and wished now he had kept reaching for his shotgun as he had started to do when the stage had rolled to a stop. Going down fighting would have been better than this, he reckoned.
When they were dressed, the drunken men made them all parade up and down in front of them,
the men being instructed to move like women, in short, mincing steps, holding their hands out from their sides with little fingers crooked. Danby found lip rouge and face powder in the handbag of the widow and went from one man to the other, smearing it on their faces so that they resembled clowns.
“All right, I reckon that’s enough,” Matt Hansen said suddenly, tiring of it all. “We’ve got a long way to go. Let’s mosey. We’ve had our fun.”
The cowhands obeyed instinctively though reluctantly, but Nolan made no move to go. “I ain’t quite through yet!”
Hansen checked as he wheeled his mount away, his eyes cold over the top of his mask as he looked down at his foreman. “Okay, but don’t be long.”
He rode off and Coogan and Pepper followed. But Nolan motioned for Laramie, Wolsten, Dodd and Coogan to stay and Danby certainly didn’t intend to go yet until the very end anyway.
Nolan bundled everybody into the coach, except the old Mexican. They had to shove and squeeze to fit everyone aboard as it was one of the smaller Concords, and they jammed the doors tight with wedges hastily cut from a nearby branch. Laughing, Danby and Laramie turned the team around and got the coach facing back down the steep grade, the way it had come. Nolan held the scrawny arm of the old Mexican in a vice-like grip and dragged him over to the front wheel. The old man stared at him soberly, his leathery face comical with its smeared lip rouge and powder.
“Now, you old son of a bitch,” Nolan growled. “You climb up there and you drive this here coach all the way back to Tucson, you savvy? You try to stop anywhere and we’ll be close by and we’ll shoot you out from under that greasepaint, savvy?”
“I—I never drive,” Hernandes stammered, shaking violently.
“Then you’re about to learn, ain’t you, greaser?” snarled Nolan. “Now climb up there and get goin’ before I blow your head off!”
The old man started to climb awkwardly up the wheel spokes towards the seat but it was obvious that he was too frail and weak. Cursing, Laramie stepped forward and lifted the old man bodily, depositing him roughly on the driver’s seat.
“Now, pick up them reins!” Nolan ordered, seeing the passengers craning their necks at the windows in the jammed doors as they tried to see what was going on.
The old man picked up the mass of rein ends awkwardly and began to sort them out into pairs. But before he had done so, Nolan and the others let out a chorus of wild yells, loosed off a half-dozen shots into the air and Laramie leaned from his saddle and slapped one of the rear horses across the face with his hat.
The team lunged and hit the harness with a jolt that almost unseated the old Mexican and then the team was away, dragging the swaying coach after it. Hernandes fought to pick up the rein ends he had dropped, hanging tightly to those he still held. But the horses were out of control, frightened by the gunfire and the yelling. They hit the downgrade and gathered speed and the stage bounced over a rock and swayed and rocked. The cowpokes doubled up with laughter, at the image of the passengers wearing each other’s clothes, thrown into a tangled heap between the seats. The stage lurched and swayed on, still increasing speed. The cowpokes fired off one. final volley, reined around and, sharing the whisky jug, sent their mounts racing after Hansen and the others.
It had been a good prank, they reckoned.
Hernandes’ eyes were bulging in his head as the stage raced down the slope and the mountainside became a blur to him. He tried to sort out the reins to exercise some control, but the team was bolting and even if he knew which reins were which he would not have had the strength to control them. The cowboy, splendid in his lace underwear and smeared facial makeup, was trying to squeeze out of the window so that he could climb to the top of the stage and lend the old Mexican a hand. He knew if he didn’t that the team could well overturn the coach taking a bend too fast or, worse, go clear off the trail and over the edge of the mountain.
But he was still clawing his way up to the top when Hernandes dropped all the reins and threw himself back in the seat, one hand clawed like a talon into his bony chest, face contorted in unendurable pain, his breath rasping in his throat, the skin under the make-up taking on a bluish tinge. There was a strangled rattle coming from his throat that the cowboy heard even above the roar of the wind in his ears and the thunder and creaking of the runaway stage.
“Judas! Look out!” he yelled and threw himself bodily out of the window to hit the trail hard and roll as the stage swayed past the point of balance on a bend and tilted, spinning wheels leaving the trail.
Then it crashed over onto its side and Hernandes’ body was flung for several yards as the stage rolled and wood splintered and dust boiled up. The horses were dragged off their feet and their threshing and whinnies added to the din. The passengers yelled and screamed and the coach upended and splintered, flinging luggage and people all over the mountainside as it skidded on along the trail on its side, spinning, shattering, a wheel flying away into the trees with a humming sound only to smash to matchwood against a cedar twenty feet above the ground.
As the dazed and bleeding cowboy staggered to his feet, coughing in the dust as he stumbled forward on rubbery legs, he saw the huddled body of Hernandes at the base of a tree, his eyes wide and staring, mouth open like a black hole in his slack face.
It was obvious that the old Mexican would never see his daughter now.
Three – All Stops Out
“Judas priest!” breathed Clay Nash as he read the report Chief of Detectives James Hume, had handed him. “What the hell did they figure they were playing at?”
Hume waved out the match flame he had just used to light his cigar and stared at his top operative through a pall of smoke. “By all counts they were drunk as skunks. Thought it was one big joke.”
“Some joke!” growled Nash, tossing the papers onto the desk. “One dead, four injured, wrecked stagecoach, loss of luggage, stolen express box.”
Hume nodded slowly. “And it doesn’t end there. The passengers are suing the company.” His voice hardened and his cold eyes pinched down. “Claim they weren’t given the protection they had the right to expect.”
“Link Somers,” Nash said slowly, nodding. “Yeah. Kind of a bad showing on his part.”
“He’s been fired at Tucson but it don’t alter things. He was there to protect the strongbox and the passengers. He did neither; didn’t lift a hand.”
Nash frowned. “Find it hard to savvy, when he had such a good rep.”
“That was the trouble. He figured that run was beneath him; not enough in it; not worth riskin’ his neck to save the few dollars in the strongbox; figured the passengers were just ‘ordinary’ and could look after themselves.”
Nash’s mouth tightened. There was no sympathy in his tone when he spoke. “Man like that’s better out of the company. Only thinkin’ of himself. Anyone identified these cowpokes who did it?”
Hume frowned. “That’s the funny part. Most folks knew they were the bunch that drove in a herd of beef but no one knows where they’re from. Cattle agent says there were several brands on the steers. They said they were from Triangle H but no one’s heard of it and it ain’t in the Brand Register.”
“Don’t mean much. Plenty of ranches don’t get into the Register.”
“Sure, Clay, I want all stops out on this one. The money, of course, don’t matter. What does is that the old Mexican, Hernandes, is dead, even if he did die of a heart attack. And we’re bein’ sued to hell and gone like I said.” His gaze sharpened as he added quietly, “Except by Hernandes’ daughter.”
Clay Nash stiffened, paused in the process of rolling a cigarette. “She ain’t?”
Hume shook his head. “Merida Hernandes. Lives in Flatrock. Claimed the body but no mention of a writ.”
Nash continued rolling the smoke. “Queer. Maybe she’s got enough money of her own.”
“Nope. Don’t have much at all. She could sure use any compensation, I understand. Look into that aspect, Clay, but give the tracking-down o
f these hombres top priority. You need any help, just holler. You’ll get all you need on this one.”
Nash fired up his cigarette, standing and reaching for his flat-crowned hat on the edge of Hume’s desk. He was a six-footer, and then some, maybe only an inch or so more, but, with his lean muscularity and a kind of narrow face, hawk like, a shock of brown hair, tousled, he looked even taller. His shoulders were broad, straight across, like he had a board under his denim shirt, and his waist was lean, belly flat and iron-hard, hips narrow and legs long and solid. He wore a single gun, the cutaway holster rig hanging from a separate lug of leather that had been sewn onto the cartridge belt, letting the holster hang down a few inches below his waist so that the gun butt was about level with the inside of his wrist when he walked. The base of the holster had a couple of split-end rawhide thongs dangling from it but they were not tied around his thigh at the moment.
He looked a dangerous man, even in his casual range clothes. Something about the cold grey eyes maybe, the square set of the iron jaw. His face wasn’t normally as severe as it was right now, but then he didn’t get assignments as grim as this one all the time either. It wasn’t on a grand scale, by any means, but maybe it was the very fact that it was the result of nothing more than a drunken prank that made him so determined to nail these men.
One thing Clay Nash couldn’t abide and that was stupidity, and the hold-up of the Tucson-Tombstone stage and its subsequent events was the stupidest prank Nash had heard of in a long time. Sure, cowpokes got drunk and did crazy things; they endangered lives at times, but mainly their own, or those of their pards; they kept it among themselves. They might get into a brawl and smash up a store or bar or someone else’s property, but once they had sobered up, they made good.
