Overland Stage

by Paul Lederer

  ‘What about the wounded?’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ Cameron lied easily. ‘The driver, Kyle Post, was working with me all the time. Didn’t you guess that? An old friend of mine. He’s just waiting for his cut of the payroll. He won’t talk … assuming he’s still alive. The old couple at Calico – well, the Apaches are responsible for that, aren’t they? They don’t know a thing about this.’

  ‘There was an old woman, too.’

  Cameron managed to laugh out loud. ‘Sure! Why, Frank, that’s the girl’s aunt! She’s on our side as well. We were going to take our cut and head for Texas to live high. Don’t you see – I had my own plan, and it was a good one. I would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t interrupted it! But you have to tell your men in a convincing way that there never was any gold and so my scheming fell through as well.’

  ‘They’ll never believe me,’ Frank said moodily. This was a crucial juncture of the conversation. Cameron knew damned well that the comanchero didn’t completely believe him. Bell’s only concern was whether his men would buy into the story they were concocting. There was one weight on the scales which would turn the balance: avarice.

  ‘Frank,’ Cameron said earnestly. ‘I do know where the gold is. Sell the story to your men. Once we’re out of here, you’ll be the only one among us carrying a gun. I can’t buck you, and you know it. It’s worth the risk, don’t you think?’

  ‘Tell me again,’ Frank said, methodically considering the idea, ‘why am I now supposed to be going along with you?’

  ‘You weren’t paying attention, Frank. We both expected the payroll to be on this stage. We clashed. We were both tricked by the army dispatch officer. It wasn’t on this stage, therefore it has to be on the one following if the army is going to meet its payday at Fort Wingate. We are going to claim to have been bogged down if some patrol asks. And we are going to wait at Calico – until that stagecoach on our heels shows up. That’s our story.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Frank said dubiously.

  ‘I’m not crazy about it myself. I’m willing to listen to another scheme if you can come up with one.’

  ‘Not at the moment. Not off the top of my head!’ Bell was angry, but eager.

  ‘Look, Frank, it’s simple if brought down to the bottom line. You go with me and we split the gold. Or you tell your men the truth and I die and you get nothing … not even four hundred lousy dollars for your work.’ Cameron added in a mildly taunting tone, ‘Who’s in charge in this camp, anyway? Dockery? Or you? Won’t your warriors respect you enough to do what you say?’

  The questions seemed to sting Frank’s pride a little, but Cameron knew what the comanchero leader was thinking – Cameron was lying to him, but nevertheless Cam did certainly know where the gold shipment was stashed. Once Frank had his hands on that he could decide whether he wanted to risk a run for the border or split the take with his men. The first thing was to have the gold in hand.

  ‘Well?’ Cameron Black asked.

  ‘I still have to think about it.’

  ‘It won’t work as a cover story if we don’t reach Calico before the next stage arrives. There’s not that much time.’

  ‘No.’ Frank scratched at his stubbly chin. ‘I guess not.’

  Maybe it wouldn’t work at all. Cameron could see the wheels slowly turning in the bandit’s mind, weighing the consequences.

  ‘I don’t know if my men will buy it.’

  ‘You tell them right and they’ll have to, won’t they? If they don’t trust you, they have no payday at all for their efforts.’

  ‘I suppose.’ A stubborn light seemed to flicker in the depths of Frank Black’s eyes. ‘You’re right, though; what I say here goes. It has to, or I’ll lose control of them. They’re a rough bunch, Black, I can’t afford to lose control.’

  Or $12,000 in gold.

  ‘If you’re lying to me about knowing where that strongbox is, Black, I’ll kill you,’ the outlaw leader said in a quiet voice, his eyes searching first Cameron Black’s face and then the shadows of the cottonwood grove for anyone who might have been watching, listening.

  ‘You hardly had to tell me that,’ Cameron Black said.

  Then, after a lengthy pause, Frank Bell said with bold decisiveness, ‘I’ll have a talk with my men. Monty will be along to help you harness the team.’

  ‘The girl?’ Black asked in a casual voice.

  ‘Hell, she’s nothing to me. I’ll have her brought to you.’

  ‘What about the little drummer man?’

  ‘He’s nothing to either of us, but he might aid the masquerade if we do things your way. If he doesn’t want to co-operate, we’ll dump him along the trail.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less,’ Cameron said, his heart lifting. The first part of a very dangerous plan had nearly been completed. As he had known it would, greed had won the moment. From here each movement would grow only more dangerous. He knew full well that Frank Bell would not hesitate to kill him, was in fact probably planning to do just that even now – after the gold was recovered. For now there was a window of hope as he preceded the comanchero from the cotton-wood grove back toward the camp where armed men of every persuasion had begun to gather to ask the inevitable angry questions. Foremost among them was Dockery who watched Cameron’s approach with bleary, murderous eyes.

  He would not forget the beating Cameron Black had given him. He had sworn he would kill Cameron no matter what the outcome of his meeting with Frank Bell might be. Cameron fully believed him. He was that sort of man.

  The rest of the comancheros might be placated, misled, commanded by their leader to stay behind, but Dockery would catch up somewhere along the trail, sometime, if it took him weeks, months, years.

  Monty and Cameron set about hitching the team to the abandoned stagecoach. Monty asked no questions, said nothing. The wheel horse seemed to recognize Cameron Black as he approached it in the corral. It stamped its forefoot as if anticipating trouble. This was an unreliable human, the animal appeared to be thinking.

  Within an hour the team stood ready, a fussy Axel Popejoy had been released to join them and slowly, so slowly, Eleanor Gates joined them, walking across the still muddy yard of the outlaw camp, shawl over her shoulders, long dark hair falling free.

  Frank Bell had arrived earlier and now, at Cameron’s shoulder, stood watching her arrival. The two men’s thoughts were widely divergent. Bell was planning his campaign – mollifying his men, recovering the strongbox filled with army gold, eliminating Cameron Black and any other opposition, making his lone run for the border.

  Cameron was thinking only of Eleanor. How pale and proud she looked, slender and appealing. Wiser now, perhaps, in the ways of the West, perhaps feeling a little more fondly towards Cameron himself. Or so he allowed himself in a moment’s fantasy to consider until he remembered why it was that the young lady from the East had ventured into this harsh land: to reunite with and wed her handsome young officer.

  ‘Let’s keep this moving,’ Frank Bell said between his teeth.

  ‘Sure. Did your men buy the story?’ Cameron asked, looking past Eleanor to the knot of milling comancheros, rough-looking men every one, all heavily armed.

  ‘I don’t know. They don’t trust anybody much. Dockery had a hungry look in his eye. I think he will be tagging along. He senses something.’

  ‘We’ll figure how to handle that when it comes up,’ Cameron said. ‘You’re right for now, let’s keep it moving before all of them start to question our intent.’

  Eleanor was nearly before them. She halted, half-smiled and said, ‘I see we’re starting over, the four of us.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Bell said. He no longer wore the spectacles he had hidden behind on the first leg of their journey, and his low-slung pair of Colt revolvers left no doubt as to who he actually was, if she had still held any uncertainty. ‘Come on,’ Frank urged them, ‘get aboard.’

  Eleanor looked into Cameron’s eyes search-ingly and asked, �
��May I ride on top with you.’

  ‘You won’t be comfortable up there,’ he answered.

  ‘I will be. More than …’

  Cameron looked to Frank Bell for permission. The comanchero leader said, ‘Whatever she likes! Let’s just get rolling, Black.’

  Cam nodded and assisted Eleanor up into the box. With her skirts it took a bit of maneuvering. Cam placed his boot onto the step and clambered up after her, accepting the reins from Monty. Then Frank Bell gave Cameron a last warning glance and climbed into the coach to sit facing Popejoy. Bell rapped twice on the roof with his fist, and with a shout, the crack of the whip, the lunge of the horses, the creak of their leather harnesses and the chink of the trace chains tightening, the stagecoach leaped into motion, the four-horse team of bay horses drawing the coach across the muddy yard of the outlaw hideout past the searching eyes of the watching comancheros.

  Cameron ran the horses until they were well out of sight of the encampment, then, looking back, he slowed them to a steady canter. He realized that he had been holding his breath and now he let it out and began to breath easier.

  ‘You were frightened,’ Eleanor said, above the hoofbeats of the team, the rush of wind.

  ‘A little,’ Cameron admitted. ‘No telling what those fellows might take a notion to do.’

  ‘I know.’ She placed her small hand on his arm. ‘I was scared to death.’

  Cameron found the wider lowland pass he had not been able to see in the darkness the night before and guided the team along it. Eleanor was silent for a long while. Occasionally she looked back with concern, but for the most part she stared ahead as the jouncing coach made its way westward once again, toward Calico. Toward Fort Wingate and her future husband.

  ‘There are things going on that I’m not aware of, aren’t there?’ she asked, after a few miles had gone by and they passed through a high-shouldered red rock canyon.

  ‘Yes, miss. There are,’ Cameron acknowledged.

  ‘Don’t you think you should tell me … so I’ll know what to watch out for?’ she asked, not looking at him, but at the wild country surrounding them.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Cameron said after a moment’s thought. ‘It’s like this, miss—’

  Eleanor interrupted. ‘After what we’ve been through together, please don’t call me “Miss”. “Ellie” will do.’

  Cameron smiled. ‘All right – Ellie – here is what is happening …’ He proceeded to tell her what he had done and what Frank Bell believed he had done. She listened with quiet wonder, her dark eyes dancing with amusement at one moment, with dread at others.

  At the end of his tale she barely managed to gasp, ‘My! You are a bold one, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe desperation makes a man bold. I knew that if they got that gold during the first raid they had no reason at all to consider letting us live. Why would they – witnesses against them?’

  ‘Surely a woman…!’ Eleanor began, aghast, but then she realized that her own fate would very probably have been much worse. ‘Oh,’ she added quietly. Then she said nothing else for long miles as the stagecoach rambled out of the hills and down onto the desert flats where the thirsty sands had already nearly soaked up the rain of the previous evening. The road was still damp enough that they raised no dust in their passing, but the horses had an easy enough time of it.

  Eleanor straightened up a little as she recognized the landmarks now and knew that the Calico Station lay just beyond the rise, and that trouble awaited them at Calico because Cameron Black had already made it clear that he had no intention of handing over the payroll to Frank Bell.

  Behind them, also, she now saw from time to time tiny shaded forms against the red desert. Shadows that might have been silhouettes of men on horseback following along in their wake.

  At least a few of the outlaws meant to make sure that they got their share of the gold shipment. Without meaning to, Eleanor found herself leaning closer to Cameron, holding onto his muscular arm as he guided the four-horse team home.

  EIGHT

  Frank Bell was feeling irritable. He didn’t trust Cameron. He wondered somberly if the bastard hadn’t conceived of some plan to have him ambushed by the people at Calico. He wondered how long his own gang would take to decide that perhaps they should follow along to see to their interests, despite the threat of an arriving army patrol. He wondered.

  ‘This fellow – his name is Black, isn’t it?’ the fat little drummer piped up, interrupting Frank Bell’s dark brooding.

  ‘Is it?’ Frank answered, his eyes only half open. The drummer was leaning forward intently, the stub of an unlit cigar gripped between his thumb and first finger.

  ‘I know it is. I heard you call him “Black”. Then I heard a couple of men talking about him.’ More confidently, Popejoy went on, ‘I recall that name. Mister, he’s a wanted man.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Bell said, without interest. He was riding in the rearward facing seat, his attention on the land behind them, wondering if Dockery would be following along, what he was going to do about him.

  ‘I saw a reward poster back at Fort Lyon. I’m the sort of man who pays attention to these things,’ the drummer said, leaning back, smiling ineffectually. Again he leaned forward and said more quietly, ‘Five hundred dollars, the poster was offering for his capture.’

  ‘That so?’ Frank Bell murmured. He could see no riders behind him. He wished that the land were its usual arid self so that he could pick up any dust if there were horsemen following.

  Axel Popejoy felt that he wasn’t making his point.

  ‘The two of us,’ he insisted, ‘if we turned him in – why we could split that reward, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Why the two of us?’

  Feeling that he had now caught Bell’s interest, the salesman continued even more eagerly, ‘Why, I’m the one who’s putting you smart on this, right? And,’ he said, nodding toward Bell’s holstered twin Colts, ‘you’re the one who’s armed. He hasn’t got a gun. What can he do if we overpower him at Calico Station and hold him for the army?’

  Frank Bell smiled only inwardly at the little drummer’s total ignorance of the situation. Annoyed, Frank nevertheless considered one thing: the fat little man could possibly come in useful if a situation evolved where Frank needed a distraction. Hell, it was even possible that with a gun in his hand the drummer might actually be convinced to shoot down Cameron Black. One never knew. He decided to string Popejoy along for the present.

  ‘You do keep your eyes open,’ Frank said with mock amazement. ‘Knew him from that wanted poster, did you? Maybe, friend, you and I can work together. Two hundred and fifty dollars is quite a bit of money.’

  So was $12,000, Frank Bell was thinking.

  The coach rolled along swiftly over the red earth desert. The right rear hub continued its intermittent complaints. Cameron Black had thought of pausing to grease it at the outlaw camp but, as Bell had told him continually, they were better off just getting away from the comanchero stronghold during the moment of opportunity they had been afforded. There had been no time for greasing hubs or packing a picnic lunch. If the men back there began talking among themselves they might begin to see things differently.

  That thought wasn’t comforting. For all of his talk, Cameron had no idea if there was an army patrol riding out to meet them or not. Perhaps having a stagecoach a day late was so common as to be unremarkable. It must happen frequently, he pondered: a broken axle, a horse dead in its harness, unforeseen delays in lading.

  He forced himself to quit thinking about this. It made no difference. He could not count on the army to help them out of his predicament. It was all up to him, all of it: getting help for the wounded waiting at Calico; taking care of Frank Bell; escaping the men on his back-trail. Making sure that Eleanor got to her destination safely!

  He glanced down at the crown of her head. She was leaning against his arm as the stage jolted on, her long dark hair wind-drifted and polished to obsidi
an by the high-riding sun.

  Lieutenant McMahon, you are the luckiest man alive.

  He lashed the horses unnecessarily, and when Eleanor sat up in surprise she saw the grim set on the lean man’s face, the concentration in his eyes. She tilted away from him now and folded her small hands in her lap as the team raced onward toward Calico Station.

  The horses were slowed on the grade stretching up toward the shallow valley where Calico stood. Frank Bell, growing more tense now, pounded on the roof on the stage.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Popejoy wanted to know.

  ‘Stopping the coach.’

  The drummer’s round face was alive with a sort of predatory expectation. ‘Are we going to do it here? Take him down?’

  Frank Bell didn’t answer. Instead he leaned far out the window and shouted above the rush of the wind and the thudding of the horses’ hoofs. ‘Pull up, Black!’

  He had to repeat himself three times before he caught Cameron’s attention. The brake was smoothly applied and Cam held back on the leads to the horses, frustrating them once again. They had been sure that rest and water were only half a mile away. As the coach slewed to a halt, Frank Bell jumped out, landed awkwardly and shouted with some anger at Cameron.

  ‘Who taught you to drive? Loop those ribbons around the brake and climb down, Black. We’ve got to talk.’

  Eleanor glanced at Cameron with concern but with implicit confidence. He nodded to her. ‘It’ll be all right. He can’t make any move just yet.’

  Swinging to the damp red earth he met Bell who lifted his chin slightly. ‘Let’s step away for a bit.’