Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  The face belonged to Jimmy Wells. Wells’s eyes stared at him, blinking rapidly. Blood oozed out of Wells’s open mouth to dribble over the side of the deerskin-upholstered seat and onto Prophet’s rifle lying on the floor beneath Wells’s body. As the coach continued to jerk, turning sideways now as the horses danced and pranced, in frantic need to flee the shooting, the coach wheeled first to one side, then the other.

  Three wheels were moving but the left-front one was gripped motionless in the jaws of the surprisingly effective brake blocks.

  As the coach was jolted sharply sideways again, Wells rolled off the seat to Prophet’s right. The body landed atop the bounty hunter. The hot, yielding, bloody body jerked as more bullets punched into it. Prophet knew a January chill as he became aware that Wells had, without a moment to spare, just saved the bounty hunter from taking those bullets himself.

  And then the coach careened from side to side just before the left wheel dug into the ground. The coach pitched beneath Prophet like a rowboat being thrust up from below by a swell in a storm-tossed lake.

  “Jesus!” Prophet heard himself cry out as he watched his boots, framed by the open coach door, rise higher, higher, until his legs and ass and then his back, too, were hurled up off the coach’s floor.

  Mary screamed beneath him.

  Then their bodies and Wells’s body were entangled, and Prophet felt the raw punch of his own shotgun’s stock against his right jaw as the carriage careened onto its side. Prophet watched his legs climb up over his head until he and Mary and Wells were turning backward somersaults. Prophet grunted and Mary groaned as they landed on what was now the bottom of the carriage but which had been the left side only a second before.

  Prophet felt the door handle grinding against his right kidney.

  Mary lay against his left side, half on top of him. Wells was beneath him. He could see the man’s right leg beside his own.

  The carriage kept sliding along the ground. Dirt poured in through the windows. Prophet could hear the thudding of the horses’ hooves, the team’s shrill whinnying.

  Suddenly, the carriage stopped sliding. The hoof thuds died. The whinnies settled to whickers. A man was cooing to the team, as though trying to calm the frightened beasts.

  Otherwise, an ominous silence had descended on the now-still coach.

  Dust billowed.

  Chapter 10

  Mary lifted her head, shook it.

  She blinked against the billowing dust.

  Her hair had fallen from its bun and hung in a dirt-caked mess around her shoulders, a large, brass pin hanging from it, off her left shoulder. Her eyes met Prophet’s. He touched two fingers to his lips then felt around for his shotgun. He saw the butt jutting up from beneath Wells, who was curled against Prophet as though he were a young child taking a nap with Daddy.

  Outside, several pairs of crunching footsteps sounded.

  Wincing against the various aches and pains in his battered body, Prophet reached over Wells and grabbed the stock of the Richards with his right hand. Wincing again, not wanting to make any sounds, he slid the shotgun out from under the dead outlaw, tightening his grimace as the stout steel barrels raked against the coach’s wooden shell.

  His heart lurched, and Mary gasped, when there was a loud, hollow thud above him. Then another. He stared straight up toward what was a minute ago the coach’s opposite side and not its top, which it was now.

  Two men, both holding rifles, stood on either side of the closed door, squinting into the coach’s dusty shadows. Prophet had frozen when he’d heard the men leap onto the coach. Now he stared up at the hatted outlaws staring down at him, turning their heads this way and that, trying to see if anyone below them was moving.

  Prophet could feel Mary’s heart beating an anxious rhythm against his left arm. He held the shotgun in his right hand, barrel down, stock up. The man on the right staring down at him must have just now seen that Prophet’s eyes were open, and that the gut-shredder was in his hand.

  The man jerked with the recognition and aimed his Winchester down through the window to the right of the door. Prophet flipped the big popper in his right hand, clicked a hammer back, rammed his right index finger through the trigger guard, and squeezed.

  The blast was deafening inside the coach. Flames spat from the Richards’s right barrel toward the man aiming his Winchester through the window. The man’s head turned bright red as it was torn off his shoulders and thrown a good five feet straight up in the air.

  The man’s headless body triggered the Winchester into the coach. The bullet tore into the left arm of Jimmy Wells, causing the dead man to jerk once more.

  The other man, on the coach door’s left side, widened his eyes and thrust his own Winchester through the window to the left of the door. Prophet tripped the gut-shredder’s second trigger and made both men who’d come to investigate the coach’s contents a matching pair of headless, blood-spewing, Winchester-wielding corpses.

  Only, the second man did not fire his own Winchester. As his head blew high toward the cobalt blue of the sky, his hand opened and the Winchester dropped down into the coach to land on Mary’s left knee.

  The girl grabbed her knee, groaning.

  Prophet dropped the Richards, grabbed his Winchester, which lay on the other side of Mary, and, jacking a round into the chamber, heaved himself to his feet to poke his hatless head through the coach’s door. Two men stood out in front of the coach, between the coach and the barn. The heads of the two dead men lay on the ground between the coach and the two outlaws like strange plants growing out of the finely churned dirt of the station yard.

  The headless bodies of the two men lay near the belly of the overturned carriage, in growing blood pools.

  The men were staring down at the heads in wordless revulsion.

  As they were jolted out of their stupors by the appearance of Prophet’s own head jutting out of the coach doors, they sprang forward, shouting and bringing their Winchesters to bear. They didn’t get a single shot off, however, before Prophet pumped a round from his own rifle into each, sending them spinning.

  Another man who’d been holding the team’s lead mount, now ran toward the coach, swinging wide of the team and sliding two pistols from holsters on his hips. Prophet ejected his second spent shell casing, seated fresh, aimed over the coach’s door, and fired.

  The bullet puffed dust from the man’s shirt, just beneath a billowy blue neckerchief with white polka dots. He kept running toward Prophet but lifted his head abruptly, the cords standing out from his neck as he gritted his teeth, triggering both his six-shooters into the air. He took one more running lunge then hit the ground and rolled up on top of one of the two headless corpses, where he howled with the agony of his wound.

  Prophet used his elbows to hoist himself up out of the coach. He jumped to the ground, looked around quickly, ready for another onslaught. But none came. Nothing now moved in the sun-splashed station yard. He looked down at the last man he’d shot, who was trying to reach a pistol holstered on the left hip of the headless corpse he’d fallen upon.

  Prophet gave a caustic chuff, dropped the barrel of his Winchester, and sent the fifth man packing with a single shot to his right ear.

  Lou ejected the smoking cartridge, seated fresh, and held the rifle at port arms, looking around, still wary. The team stood looking back over their shoulders at him, twitching their ears. They were still hitched to the overturned coach. Their harnesses were badly tangled, and one horse was down on his knees, whickering anxiously.

  Prophet swept his gaze back toward the cabin.

  Seymour and Plumb lay bloody and twisted where they’d been ambushed.

  Aunt Grace lay beyond them, facedown in the dirt. Her silk and taffeta traveling gown was a large, bloody rag. Her picture hat, also blood-splattered, lay several feet away, the breeze plucking at the ostrich feather plumes.

  Beermeister lay sprawled on his back several feet straight out from the steps rising to the shack
’s porch.

  A knock sounded from inside the coach behind Prophet. A thud and a scrape. Mary poked her head and arms out the door, spreading her arms and placing her elbows against the door and the frame to hoist herself up out of the overturned rig. She hardened her jaws and winced, grunting as she heaved herself up through the door.

  Prophet leaned his rifle against the belly of the coach then reached up, grabbed Mary around the waist, and settled her onto the ground. She winced again, favoring her left knee.

  “You all right?” Prophet asked her.

  She didn’t say anything.

  She looked around, dazed. Prophet knew how she felt. He was disoriented and dizzy, and there was a dull ache in his head. He and the girl had been rattled around pretty good inside the coach, likely had their brains scrambled.

  Mary turned toward the station cabin and froze, shoulders tensing. She’d discovered Aunt Grace.

  She started walking toward the dead woman. Prophet reached out to stop her but then lowered his hand. Who was he to intervene?

  Mary strode slowly over to stand staring down at Aunt Grace. She dropped to her knees and placed her hand on the dead woman’s shoulder. Prophet thought he heard her sob, and was surprised. He hadn’t seen her show any emotion at all, or even much expression, for that matter.

  “Aunt Grace,” she said in her odd, Indian-flat tone.

  She rolled the old woman over onto her back. Prophet saw her shoulders tighten as she gazed down at the old woman’s eyes staring up at her, glassy in death.

  “Aunt Grace,” Mary whispered, as, sitting back on her heels, she drew the old woman’s head onto her lap and cradled the woman’s torso in her arms, ignoring the blood that nearly covered the corpse.

  Mary’s shoulders jerked as she lowered her head and sobbed quietly.

  Prophet turned away, allowing the grieving girl some privacy.

  Finally, trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain, pondering his next course of action, he strode over to the front of the shack. After checking to make sure Beermeister was dead, he walked up the porch steps and looked through the cabin’s open door.

  “Anyone here?” he called.

  There was little inside but wooden tables and chairs and a range and cupboards built from old shipping crates. A couple of pots were smoking on the range. The windows were steamed. The rank, pungent odor of burned beans permeated the place.

  Prophet walked inside. As he strode into the kitchen area behind a makeshift bar of pine planks propped on beer barrels, he saw a fat, dark, mustached man in an apron lying on the floor near the dry sink.

  Diego Bernal ran the place. Had run the place, Prophet corrected himself. Lou hadn’t known him well, but he’d known that a wife and daughter had once lived here with Diego, helping him run the station for the stage line, but the wife had met another man and run off. Not long later, the daughter had met another man and run off, as well.

  Well, Diego was gone now, too. The gaping hole in his back was where a bullet had exited his husky body, likely after shredding his heart. The man’s fat, brown left hand still held a wooden spoon crusted with dried bean juice.

  Prophet cursed and with his rifle barrel nudged the burning pot off to the side of the stove.

  He headed back outside.

  Mary was still cradling her dead aunt’s head on her lap, rocking slowly while she very quietly, almost under her breath, recited the Lord’s Prayer. Her dirty hair hung in thick tangles around her head, screening her face.

  “. . . Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .”

  Prophet dropped down the porch steps, crossed the yard to the barn.

  He found the two drovers lying dead in the corral, likely where they’d been getting the fresh team ready for the stage when the outlaws had struck. They were Bobby Nash and Tom Coates—both good men though Coates could get mean when drunk and even meaner when he was drunk and losing at stud poker. The horses stood statue-still on the far side of the corral from the two dead men, who lay about ten feet apart, one on his belly, one on his back, ankles crossed, staring through half-open lids at the sky.

  Prophet walked back outside and stood pondering the overturned carriage and the horses. The right wheeler was still on its knees. Prophet tramped over to the coach, shucked his bowie knife, and went to work cutting the tangled ribbons and unhitching the team. The wheeler gained its feet and cut loose with what sounded like an exasperated whinny.

  “Yeah, me, too, feller,” Prophet grunted, patting the horse’s rump.

  When he had the team freed, he led them by pairs into the corral and removed their harnesses, hames, and collars. Before they’d died, the hostlers had filled the stock troughs with fresh water and forked hay into the crib fronting the corral, so the tired, jittery horses were taken care of.

  Now, the coach . . .

  Prophet walked back out into the yard. The sun was teetering over the western buttes, and long, heavy shadows were beginning to consume the hollow in which the station sat. Mary was still slumped over her dead aunt. She must be getting stiff and cold, kneeling like that in the dirt with the sun going down. Prophet considered going over and ushering her into the cabin, but decided to leave her alone with Aunt Grace for the time being.

  He considered the coach.

  If he could get it back on its wheels, he and Mary could ride the rig on to Jubilee the next morning, with the bodies of Aunt Grace, Beermeister, Mort Seymour, and J. W. Plumb strapped to the roof. He’d leave the bodies of Diego Bernal and the two hostlers in the barn. The stage line could decide what to do with them. Prophet didn’t have time to bury them. It would be dark within the hour, and he had to get Mary into the cabin and see to her comfort, maybe get some food into her, if she felt like eating after what she’d seen and been through.

  A strange apprehension still held its chill hand against Prophet’s sweaty back. The gang was dead. He didn’t have to worry about them anymore. Still, a concern nagged at him:

  What had they been after?

  What had they been after that had been worth dying for?

  The stage hadn’t been carrying a strongbox, and its four passengers couldn’t have been worth the trouble the gang had gone to, even with one of the passengers being a pretty girl. If they’d been desperate for a woman, they could have found one in Jubilee or farther east in Deadwood, only a half-day’s ride away. Prophet knew there were hogpens, low-rent parlor houses of a sort, not far from here in Wyoming.

  It didn’t make sense.

  The bounty hunter looked around at the buttes that appeared more menacing now as the early-evening shadows slid across them, filling in their gaps and fissures and long, meandering erosions. A breeze rose, moaning around the bluffs, making the darkening cottonwoods whisper foreboding secrets, picking up a few handfuls of dust here and there about the yard and swirling them.

  The water bucket hanging under the porch roof swung to and fro, its chain squawking shrilly.

  The dead lay where they’d fallen—the grisly result of the sudden violence in the wake of which a thick silence hung with burgeoning menace as the night threatened. Old superstitions and Southern-born hoodoo anxieties stirred Prophet. He had to drag the dead out of the yard. He didn’t like to think he was afraid of ghosts, but he was.

  First, the carriage.

  He walked over to where the coach lay on its side, near the two headless corpses and the last man Prophet had shot. His gaze caught on the carriage’s yellow-painted, blood-splattered belly, which faced him. He frowned, studying what had drawn his attention—an irregularity in the otherwise smooth, slightly convex housing.

  He moved still closer to the coach, squatted before it, and ran his hand down the belly and over the steel handle protruding from it. He gave the handle a tug. It didn’t move. He brushed some of the splattered blood and dried mud away from the panel around the handle and found a lock.

  He stared at the small, round lock beneath the handle, soundlessly moving his lips, pondering.

>   Finally, he walked over to where J. W. Plumb lay and went through the man’s pockets. From the dead shotgun messenger’s right pants pocket he withdrew a two-inch-long key connected to a length of braided rawhide. He walked back over to the coach, poked the key in the lock, and turned it.

  There was a faint click. Prophet pulled the handle. Out came a steel drawer.

  It slid at an angle about seven inches down from beneath the carriage’s belly and then straight out, parallel with the belly’s housing. Prophet stared, lower jaw hanging in surprise, at the three canteen-sized canvas pouches that slid out with the box, nestled inside it like little, fat pigs in a manger.

  The box kept sliding out from the compartment built into the undercarriage. Prophet was so intent on the canvas pouches that he didn’t see the end of the drawer until, leaving the compartment, it dropped to the ground with a heavy, clanging thump. The drawer was constructed of solid steel. It was roughly two feet wide and four feet long—about the same size as your average strongbox.

  That, apparently, was what this was.

  A hidden strongbox.

  Chapter 11

  A hidden strongbox made sense.

  The trail from Cheyenne to Bismarck was notoriously treacherous, teeming with robbers of every stripe. Most strongboxes rode atop the coach, in plain sight. Someone was using their thinker box when they came up with the idea of building a hidden compartment beneath the coach’s floor for carrying the box, which had become a drawer.

  Obviously, Seymour and Plumb had lied when they’d told Lou they weren’t carrying a box. Which was understandable. You don’t go to the trouble of a hidden box and then tell everyone it has money in it.

  But when had they picked up the three coin sacks? Had they carried them all the way from Camp Collins, which was the southern end of the line, or had they picked them up at the train depot in Cheyenne, before rolling on to the hotel to pick up Prophet and the other passengers?