“Well, damn it all ...” began Stretch.
“But you don’t need to fret about Fortuna,” Sheldon consoled him. “You stick to that map and the stage-route, and you won’t even catch a sight of the ol’ town.”
“Thanks again, Henry,” said Larry.
“Proud to help,” grinned Sheldon, as he waved farewell.
Into the early afternoon sunshine rode the Texans; ambling their mounts across the last two hundred yards of fertile ground at the desert’s western border.
~*~
Meanwhile, some distance to the south, other travelers prepared for the final stage of a long journey, a journey that had begun in Los Angeles and would end at the busy township east of the Big Amarillo—Vine City. There would be five passengers on this north-easterly run of the Kinstead Stage, all members of the same family. The depot manager paid them a compliment by remarking to his ticket-clerk: “Gentle-folk, Dave. Real gentle-folk.”
“Uh-huh,” grunted the clerk. “Plumb respectable.”
“Look at those three sisters,” muttered the manager. “Genuine ladies. You can tell they’ve been raised decent.”
“Two of ’em ain’t so purty,” commented the clerk. “But the young ’un now—ain’t she somethin’?”
“Pretty as paint,” agreed the manager.
“And Bart Darrance givin’ her the eye,” observed the clerk.
“We don’t have to worry about young Bart,” the manager assured him. “As well as being the best shotgun in our whole outfit, he’s a gentleman. He knows his place.”
The guard was stowing baggage into the boot and giving the Newbold family a thorough once-over, paying special attention to the youngest daughter. All people, including stage passengers, trusted Bart Darrance on sight, and small wonder. He was a lean, healthy, twenty-five-year-old, blond and good-looking, with an easy manner and a ready grin that inspired confidence. Many a nervous traveler felt that way, when meeting young Bart for the first time. The shotgun on the seat and the Colt strapped to his right hip spelled defiance to stage-robbers.
He stowed baggage and flicked many an admiring glance to the youngest Newbold. Her name was Sarah Ann, and her slim, well-molded figure was as much a cause for admiration as her pretty, oval-shaped face, framed by corn-colored hair and a demure poke bonnet.
The Newbolds were changing coaches in Bairdsville, the last town they would see before Vine City. And only the pert, bright-eyed Sarah Ann appeared to be enjoying this mode of travel. Her sisters, bulky Harriet and bulkier Elmira, were complaining almost as bitterly as the bulkiest Newbold—Lavinia—their large and assertive mother.
“Dust, filth and heat,” complained Lavinia. “That burning, merciless sun ...”
“We apologize for the Arizona heat, ma’am,” grinned the depot manager, “but you only got a couple more days of it to fret you. By tomorrow night, you’ll see the bright lights of Vine City.”
“And not a moment too soon!” snapped Lavinia. Theodore Newbold, head of the family and its only male member, was best described as a king without a crown. The observant Bart had already figured him for a typical hen-pecked husband, and with merciless accuracy. Theodore was small and self-effacing, a retiring wisp of negative masculinity in sober gray broadcloth and dusty derby. Thin gray hair straggled from under the derby. He stood forlornly by the depot entrance, listening politely to his wife’s conversation with the manager, never offering a comment. For the Newbold family, Lavinia handled most of the talking—and was proving it.
A lot of woman was Lavinia, overweight and oppressive, of forbidding demeanor, a monument of respectability in whalebone and bombazine. Her voice was loud and penetrating, as she vehemently condemned this arid territory, the alkali and the heat, the discomfort of coach travel and, in fact, the whole Kinstead organization. The depot manager was properly impressed.
“If it isn’t an impolite question, ma’am,” he prodded, “how come you fine city folks are travelling so far from home? You visiting kinfolks in Vine City?”
“My eldest daughter is to be married,” Lavinia informed him. She gestured grandly to the nervous, mousey Elmira. “We received a telegraph message stating that the bridegroom could not travel to Los Angeles for the wedding ...”
“My Orin,” Elmira shyly told the manager, “fell off a horse and broke his leg.”
“I guess they had to shoot him,” Bart cheerfully suggested.
Sarah Ann put a hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle. Lavinia and the older girls frowned at him. He shrugged apologetically, and pointed out, “That’s what usually happens to a horse with a broken leg.”
“The horse wasn’t hurt,” frowned Elmira. “It was poor Orin that broke his leg.”
“My mistake,” shrugged the guard.
“Elmira,” scowled Lavinia, “this man is a mere underling. You’ll not encourage him to converse with us.”
“No, Mama,” said Elmira.
“So,” guessed the manager, “the whole family’s headed for Vine City so Miss Elmira and her man can get wed on schedule—that the idea, ma’am?”
“Exactly,” nodded Lavinia.
And Bart Darrance was thinking, ‘Sure—exactly. Elmira’s last chance at getting herself a husband, and too bad for Orin. I bet he thought he was off the hook. I bet he was glad to break a leg—if he broke a leg.’
“Baggage all aboard?” asked the driver.
“All aboard, Tom,” nodded Bart. “All right, folks you can climb in now.”
“Any of you folks wanta rub my rabbit’s foot—for luck?” grinned the driver.
His name was Tom Shackley. He was forty-eight, scrawny, bald, genial and somewhat prone to superstition. He was also as ugly as a gargoyle and a compulsive talker, but Bart called him friend and was very fond of him. As Tom offered the furry good-luck piece to Sarah Ann, Lavinia boomed a reprimand.
“Barbarism!” she barked. “How dare you offer that—that thing—to a Christian woman? Superstition is sinful!”
“If that’s a fact,” the clerk quietly remarked to the manager, “then old Tom Shackley is the worst sinner this side of the Rockies. Most superstitious jasper I ever knew is Tom.”
“You could say he’s in the grip of it, Dave,” sighed the manager. “I’ve seen him near faint from shock, when a black cat crossed his path. And you remember the time somebody busted a mirror in Kennedy’s Bar? Tom kept hollering about seven years of bad luck ...”
“Didn’t mean no harm, ma’am!” Tom hastened to assure the big woman. “Cut off my arm afore I’d harm a hair of the little lady’s head ...!”
“Look to your duties,” Lavinia warned him. “The welfare of my daughters is my responsibility.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am,” mumbled Tom Shackley. “All aboard—uh—if you please.”
A few moments later, the stage Tolled out of Bairdsville bound for Last Chance Wells, the final switch-station on the route to Vine City. Beyond the Wells was the big Amarillo and tomorrow’s tiring journey and, for the Newbolds, an appointment with destiny.
For, at this same time, Cleave Elrigg and his five unsavory cohorts were entering the desert. They had successfully erased their back-trail, thanks to the Indian savvy of Jud Bush. Now, they were ready to risk their lives in a desperate bid for continued freedom.
Chapter Two
Point Of No Return
All that remained in the first waterhole was an eight-inch deep puddle at its very center. The escapees stumbled into the depression with their boots dragging, their eyes wild and their clothes in tatters, and it had taken only four hours of sun and thirst to reduce them to this condition.
Bringing up the rear, Cleave Elrigg took a firmer grip on his carbine and weighed his chances of survival. They had become animals, he reflected. Of the six, he was the only man thinking clearly and, therefore, the natural leader. The heat and hunger had panicked his five cronies. Not until the others had quenched their thirsts did he trudge to the puddle, lie prone and sink his face into the ac
rid water. He drank deeply, rolled over and rose to a sitting posture and, with a mighty effort, summoned up a grin.
In his mid-thirties, he was tall and powerfully built, arrogantly handsome, despite his unkempt black hair, drooping moustache and matted beard. He wore, like the others, the regulation prison garb—faded blue overalls, hob-nailed boots and a floppy-brimmed hat.
“We’re still alive,” he remarked, “and we’ll stay that way. High time you jaspers quit griping. Finding this water was a real break.”
“Take another look at that puddle, Elrigg,” growled Wes Morrow. “Empty already. So now what?”
“Head for the desert, you said,” jeered Arnie Vincent. “They’d never think of taggin’ us into the desert. We’ll stay alive, you said. All right, big man, tell us how we’re gonna stay alive!”
Elrigg wrapped his arms about his knees and surveyed them intently. He knew them well, knew their strengths, their weaknesses. The break-out had been a spontaneous, disorganized thing, unplanned and unrehearsed. He hadn’t chosen these five roughnecks as his allies. He had made the first move; they had followed.
The second carbine was being toted by Luke Trenton, the only member of the group who could be described as a friend of Elrigg. He was a lean, saturnine man of similar age to Elrigg, an ex-cardsharp who, after killing a fellow gambler in a knife-fight, had been convicted of manslaughter and sent to Pima Valley to serve a ten-year stretch. Elrigg was sure he could depend on Trenton—otherwise Trenton would not have been handed that second carbine.
Morrow and Vincent were a couple of heavy-set, slow-witted stage-robbers, short on imagination and apt to flare up at the slightest provocation. They would have to be handled with caution. Wayne Fields was a loner, taciturn and unfriendly, a hungry-looking killer with pale blue eyes, bulbous nose and sagging underlip. At his trial, prosecution and defense had wrangled for many hours, but the issue was never in doubt. Fields had murdered his wife. The ugly word “sadism” had been used freely by the prosecuting attorney.
The sixth man was Judson Bush, in whose veins flowed the blood of Apache ancestors. He was pudgy and swarthy, with lank black hair and smoldering dark eyes, and almost as taciturn as Fields. From the moment of their violent exit from the prison camp, Bush’s Indian savvy had been put to good use. He had become their guide and they had shaken their pursuers off their trail.
“Be more water,” he gruffly consoled them. “I can find it.”
“Question is,” grunted Morrow, “can you find it before we all die of thirst?”
“What do you want from Jud?” challenged Trenton. “A written guarantee?”
“We gain nothing,” drawled Elrigg, “by losing our tempers. I’m ready to discuss this situation calmly. How about the rest of you? Do we plan for our survival—or do we swap insults?”
“You’re the boss, Cleave,” muttered Trenton. He eyed the others challengingly. “That’s something everybody had better get straight.”
“Okay by me,” growled Vincent. “If Elrigg can pull us outa this fix, I’ll abide by his orders from now till doomsday.”
“Let’s use our heads,” Elrigg suggested. “It’s my hunch we’ll run into other travelers in this desert. Remember that trail we crossed an hour ago? Wheel-ruts, and plenty of them, proof that rigs of some kind cross the desert regularly.”
“Stagecoach, maybe?” prodded Trenton.
“Why not?” shrugged Elrigg. “A desert-crossing is no great problem for a coach. A six-horse team can tote ample water, as well as passengers and baggage.”
“Make your point, Elrigg,” frowned Morrow.
“It’s simple enough,” drawled Elrigg. “We have our liberty, a couple of carbines and some ammunition. So far, that’s all we’ve achieved—and it isn’t enough. We need more than water, my friends. How about food? We have to eat. And transportation. How far can we travel on foot? It might take us a week to reach the territory east or north of the desert, if we last that long.”
“So what do we do?” asked Trenton.
“So we’re going back to that marked trail,” Elrigg told them. “We’re going to follow it towards the east, assuming we’ll find other waterholes along the route. And there’ll be a stage—sooner or later—you may be sure of that. Maybe headed east, maybe west. A stage drawn by six horses.” He grinned blandly, as he added: “One for each of us.”
“That’s what I crave,” muttered Bush. “A horse under me.”
“Uh-huh,” nodded Trenton. “Any way you look at it, our best bet is head for the regular trail and jump a stage.”
“You can leave the shotgun to me, Elrigg,” grinned Morrow. “I got a special hate for a shotgun.”
“When the time comes,” frowned Elrigg, “we’ll play it safe and sure, working to a plan. Is that clear?”
“Fair enough, Elrigg,” shrugged Vincent.
“All right,” said Elrigg. “On your feet.”
They trudged from the hollow and on across the arid flatlands, towards the winding trail used by the east and west-bound coaches of the Kinstead Line.
~*~
The overnight stop at Last Chance Wells was a grueling experience for the Newbolds. Lavinia and the elder girls complained incessantly, thus winning the permanent enmity of Zeke and Clara Bowes, the rough-hewn couple who ran the switch-station. Sarah Ann accepted the austere cuisine, enervating heat and cramped sleeping arrangements with as much stoicism as she could muster. Her father, as usual, suffered in silence.
In dawn’s first light, as the family filed from the station and across the dusty yard to the waiting coach, Tom Shackley attempted a pleasantry.
“All aboard for the last push to Vine City. Worst of it’ll soon be over, folks. Don’t take us longer’n a day to cross the Big Amarillo.”
“Another day,” frowned Lavinia, “in this rattling, good-for-nothing vehicle.”
“I’ll be bruised from head to ...” began Harriet.
“That will be enough, Harriet,” chided her mother. “Ladies do not discuss the location of their bruises.”
“You don’t need to tell me anyhow,” Tom cheerfully assured Harriet. “After drivin’ a Kinstead stage all these years, I reckon I know where a passenger gets bruised most.”
Harriet blushed. Lavinia glowered at the driver, who promptly retreated to the front of the vehicle, after which Theodore Newbold began the formidable chore of assisting his womenfolk aboard. First Lavinia, to the accompaniment of much grunting and gasping, then Elmira and Harriet, and, finally, the smiling Sarah Ann. As he took her arm, she patted his cheek and murmured:
“Don’t worry about me, Father. I can manage.”
Bart Darrance materialized beside her, nodded courteously to Theodore and took her arm.
“With your permission, Miss Sarah Ann ...?”
“By all means!” she beamed.
He raised her and deposited her in the window-seat, then moved back to assist her father. Theodore climbed in wearily, took the seat opposite his youngest, bowed his head and folded his arms. Bart swung up to the seat, rested the shotgun across his knees. The Bowes’ called a farewell which he acknowledged with a friendly wave. Tom gathered his reins, kicked off his brake and yelled to the team.
“Hi—yaaahh ...!”
And the eastbound rumbled away from Last Chance Wells and into the desert.
They settled down to a steady clip, after hitting the regular route. Tom performed the juggling act of transferring a cigar from his vest pocket to his mouth, without losing control of his team. Bart scratched a match for him, cupping his hand about the flame.
“You ever see such a family?” challenged Tom. “Real high-born city folks, all the way from Los Angeles.”
“I was in Los Angeles a couple years back,” Bart recalled. “It grows fast, so I guess you could call it a city.”
“I got four young ’uns, all boys,” Tom confided, as though Bart wasn’t already aware of this, “and a wife that don’t take no lip from them—or from me. But I gotta s
ay this for Chloe. I gotta say she ain’t half as ornery as Old Ma Newbold.”
“Say it,” grinned Bart, “and be grateful.”
“That man of hers,” sighed Tom, “sure is a sad hombre. Well, with her bull-roarin’ at him all the time, why wouldn’t he be? Travelin’ all the way to Vine City to give the bride away, huh?”
“That ought to be quite a wedding,” mused Bart. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Mrs. Newbold bullies the preacher, all through the service.”
“Them gals ...” frowned Tom.
“We ought to feel sorry for them,” Bart suggested.
“Well,” shrugged Tom, “two of ’em are gonna be just like their ma, I reckon.” He grinned slyly. “But that young ’un—what’s her name?”
“Sarah Ann,” said Bart.
“Figured you’d know her name,” prodded Tom, “on accounta you been lookin’ her over.”
“The day hasn’t dawned,” drawled Bart, “when I won’t take a second look at a pretty woman. And she’s something special.”
“How’d you like to court her,” challenged Tom, “and end up wed to her—with Old Ma Newbold for your ma-in-law? That’d be fun—I don’t think!”
“Amigo,” frowned Bart, “that pretty little filly will stay single the rest of her days, unless she breaks loose from her hog-voiced momma. Any man would turn and run, and you couldn’t blame him.”
“That’s a fact,” Tom warmly agreed. “That’s a doggone fact.”
In the mid-morning, after Tom halted his team beside the first waterhole, Bart climbed down and went to the left side window of the coach to address the passengers. The expensive travelling gowns of the women wore a layer of alkali.
“If anybody wants to climb out and stretch ...” began Bart.
“How long do we wait here?” demanded Lavinia.
“Just a few minutes,” Bart told her.
“Not long enough to eat?” frowned Elmira. “I declare I’m starved.”
“It’s better we don’t eat till the noon stop,” Bart explained.
Larry and Stretch 10 Page 2
