‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ Randy said. ‘As I told you, I found this horse wandering the plains. As far as I know, it’s never been ridden – by me or anyone else,’ he told the dubious man. ‘Now, where did you say I could find this Mae’s place?’

  It was not until he had eaten and was wrapped snugly in bed beneath a low ceiling in one of Mae Lincoln’s boarding house rooms with the tormenting wind periodically rattling his window that Randy Staggs realized he should have paid more attention to the stable-hand, asked a few questions about the men who had arrived in town with HF-connected horses and made themselves ‘unwelcome’. It had to have been Van Connely, Shawnee, and the rest of the crew, driving the stolen horses toward some unknown destination.

  But, Randy reflected, what good would it do him to know their direction of travel, if anyone knew it? A lone man without even a horse trying to follow Van Connely’s gang across the wild country was a reckless idea, and likely to prove fruitless if not deadly.

  No, he thought, tugging the blankets up more tightly under his chin. The thing to do was to let them go for now and follow through with his promise to Skyler Lynch: take the little bit of gold money left over from the buying of horses and deliver it to Kate Lynch. One of the twenty-dollar pieces he had already had to break to provide himself with food and lodging, but he thought that neither Skyler himself nor Kate could fault him for that.

  He had met Kate only once, down on the Pocono after Skyler had recruited him to ride along on the trip to Happy Forester’s distant ranch, and he had little memory of the girl. She had dark hair, was slender and large-eyed. They hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words, these the conventional pleasantries of meeting.

  She would need the money soon enough, no doubt about that. Skyler had told Randy that he was investing everything he had in this last attempt to bring the Pocono ranch to profitability. A woman alone with no livestock would not last long on that poor ranch. She would be struggling just to buy food, if she was not already doing so. Seeing to her needs was more important than chasing madly after the murderer, Van Connely and his gang. He would have to let them go on their way.

  For now.

  FOUR

  The light shining through the window of Randy Staggs’s window was clear and bright. The glass seemed nearly blue with its illumination. He opened his eyes to watch dust motes swirling across the room, tiny golden flecks. Sitting up, he reached first for his hat – an old Western custom – then for his jeans which he slid into with only an occasional complaint from his travel-weary legs. Boots and shirt were drawn on next, and he walked to the window to stare out at the slovenly little prairie town. Beyond it he could see melting snow, now showing patches of brown earth here and there as the morning sun touched it.

  He frowned as he considered his situation – he still had no idea of how he could reach the Pocono. True, he could have spent more of Skyler’s money buying a horse, but he was unwilling to chip more out of Kate’s small inheritance. It was going to be hard enough to tell her that her father was dead, that this was all the money she had in the world. Taking in a deep, slow breath, Randy stepped out of the small room and walked toward the scent of coffee in the dining area beyond.

  There were five men there already, finished with their breakfast and sipping coffee. Two of them were fur traders Randy had met briefly the night before who were waiting for the weather to clear. These two had shared one of the other rental rooms in the boarding house. He nodded to them and sat himself in the corner of the low-beamed room, observing as he waited for coffee to be brought to him.

  Two of the other men were roughly dressed, obviously local people from the way they gibed with the waitress and with Mae Lincoln herself, who bustled about with a big blue-enamel coffee pot gripped with a kitchen towel. The matronly Mae served Randy and asked if his room had suited him, then bustled away toward the kitchen in the rear. More men were arriving, stamping their boots on the boardwalk outside to try removing the mud and slush from them. Greetings were exchanged all around as the local men met each other.

  In a corner sat a stranger like Staggs. He wore tall fringed boots and had a pair of fringed gauntlets resting on a chair beside him. His hair was corn-yellow, his mustache long and tinged with gray. His eyes seemed to be watching everyone even though he kept them fixed on his coffee mug.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Randy asked out of curiosity, nodding toward the man as Mae returned to top off his cup of coffee.

  ‘Him?’ She glanced that way. ‘Don’t know his name – one of the new line drivers, I think.’

  ‘Stagecoach?’

  ‘Yup,’ Mae said with evident pride. ‘We’ve finally gotten big enough that they run through here – every Wednesday and Friday.’ She hurried away again. Randy rose with his coffee cup and made his way across the room. As the stagecoach driver looked up, Randy nodded and took a chair.

  ‘Mind if I sit down here?’

  ‘Help yourself. What can I do for you?’ the keen-eyed stage driver asked.

  ‘I’m trying to make my way back to the Pocono country. I was wondering if your route takes you that way.’

  ‘End of the line is at Colton. Do you know where that is?’

  ‘Roughly. I know it’s nearer to where I’m going than here.’ Randy smiled.

  ‘I can’t sell you a ticket,’ the driver said. ‘I believe they do that over at the general store.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could afford one,’ Randy said.

  ‘Down and out, are you?’ the mustached man asked with a frown.

  ‘The next thing to it,’ Randy admitted.

  ‘I see. That’s always tough – especially out here.’ He sat thoughtfully appraising Randy for a long time before he asked, ‘Have you got any army experience?’

  ‘No. I was with the Texas Rangers for two years, though.’

  ‘Even better,’ the driver said, resting his forearms on the table as he leaned forward. ‘I thought you had that sort of look about you. Look, mister, I’ve been sitting here since dawn waiting for my helper to show up. He might’ve got caught in the storm. I’ll let you go along to Colton – if you’re willing to ride shotgun. There’s been some trouble down in the Gower Hills and I could use someone. What do you say?’

  ‘I’d say this is my lucky morning,’ Randy said sincerely. He introduced himself and the driver took his hand.

  ‘I’m Barry Hampton. How soon can you be ready to leave, Randy?’

  ‘How about now?’

  The driver glanced at his pocket watch. ‘I’ve just got to give any last-minute passengers another five minutes. Then we’re on our way.’

  There were no last-minute passengers. In fact there were none at all waiting at the coach which sat behind the stable. Randy could see the red-painted coach with its yellow wheels through a small back door, see the rumps of a bay horse. He looked around, motioning to Hampton.

  ‘One minute,’ he said, and the stage driver went out to check his rig. Randy found the stable-hand in a back office. There he paid for the black’s feed of the night before.

  ‘You’re riding on the stage?’ the man asked in puzzlement.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well … what do you want me to do about your horse?’

  ‘Keep it, sell it if you can. I don’t care.’

  ‘You can’t just leave your horse!’

  ‘I have to – I don’t care what you do with it. It’s no use to me – I can’t ride it, can’t eat it, and anyway it isn’t mine,’ Randy said. He said it with conviction, but when he walked out into the stable area, there was that black devil, its head over the stall, eyeing him with that same evil glance. The eyes reflected something else, Randy thought – disappointment? It’s stupid to ascribe human emotions to animals, besides, Randy had to be going, and what he had said to the stable-hand was true.

  Behind the building someone whistled shrilly – Barry Hampton had a schedule to meet, and he was eager to be rolling.

  The land was damp, raw, and cold with snow covering the earth in the hollows and the shadows. Ahead the barren, cactus-stippled form of the layered Gower Hills stood like low sentries against a pale morning sky. That way, Randy Staggs knew, lay Colton, a small but prospering town not that far from the Pocono country. If he could reach Colton, he was sure he could find a way to reach the Lynch ranch and give Kate Lynch her father’s last gift to her.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ Barry Hampton muttered. Randy saw that the stagecoach driver, always vigilant, was now glancing behind the swaying coach and Randy, too, looked that way, his hands tightening on the borrowed express gun he held.

  ‘What do you see?’ he asked Hampton.

  ‘A horse, but it seems it’s riderless.’

  Randy narrowed his vision and as the coach rolled on, he could make out the animal running at speed. Following the stage. A black horse with a white blaze and one white stocking. Randy Staggs grumbled a curse.

  ‘What is it?’ Hampton, always on the lookout for trickery, asked. ‘Whose horse is that?’

  ‘I suppose it’s mine,’ Randy answered sourly. ‘It must have broken out of its stall and decided to follow us along.’

  ‘Your horse?’ Hampton said, giving Randy a dubious glance. ‘Then why aren’t you riding it?’

  ‘We have never reached an understanding about that,’ Randy replied. ‘Don’t give it a thought – it’s bound to give it up after a while.’

  Barry Hampton nodded and returned his concentration to guiding his team over the slushy land toward the forbidding landscape ahead. The driver said nothing, but Randy could guess at his thoughts. Hampton had begun this leg of his trip wary of robbers. Now with the unexplained horse appearing, he must have been wondering if it was not some thief’s clever plan – rob the coach and have his well-trained horse at the ready to make his escape on.

  As they reached the gray hills, Hampton was forced to slow the horses for the upgrade. Snow clung to every crevice in the rocks. Nopal cactus sprouted abundantly. Otherwise there was no flower, bush, or tree along the road. The horses labored up the road into the gap. The shadows of the bluffs fell chillingly over them as they climbed higher.

  ‘I thought I saw sunlight on metal,’ Barry Hampton huffed through his yellow mustache. ‘Watch that patch of rocks to the south.’

  Randy nodded silently and lifted the shotgun higher, cradling it in the crook of his aim, his eyes searching the indicated rock pile. He hoped that Hampton was mistaken. He had finally found a way to make his journey southward, finally gotten himself fed and rested. He wished for nothing less than a gunfight.

  But as Barry guided the team past the rocks and began to take the bend in the trail beyond, two men popped up. One behind them, appearing like a shadow from the stacked rocks, the other directly in front of the coach, legs spread, rifle at his shoulder and leveled at them. Randy decided to take that one first.

  ‘Stand and deliver!’ the holdup man shouted theatrically, and Barry whipped his team forward as Randy cut loose with the left barrel of his double-twelve shotgun. The would-be robber was blown backward to sit hard on his rump and then roll onto his side as the stagecoach’s wheels rolled over him.

  Behind them the other man had mounted a hidden horse and now was driving down on them. Randy knelt on the seat of the swaying, lurching coach and loosed another load of double-ought buckshot from his express gun. He scored a hit – he could tell by the way the robber twisted in his saddle – but it was not a killing shot, and Randy ducked as he fumbled for two more shotgun shells. Cracking the weapon open he ejected the two still-smoking brass shells and reloaded.

  The rider behind them was firing with his handgun. The wild fury of his attack made Randy think the robber was frustrated and angry. His recklessness put an end to the attack. Holding as steady as he could as the coach rumbled on, Randy cut loose with both barrels and the man was blown from the saddle to hit the ground rolling and tumbling. His strangely-familiar horse side-stepped away, slowed and halted, its head hanging.

  ‘Get him?’ Barry whose attention had been on his driving, asked.

  ‘About as good as a man could be got,’ Randy said, reloading again. Four ounces of double-ought buckshot assured that the man would not be rising from his wounds.

  Barry Hampton nodded and began drawing back on the reins, slowing his team. Randy looked at him questioningly as the horses halted on the sunny crest of the hill.

  ‘We should search them,’ Barry said. ‘The stage line and the local law always are interested in who might be pulling these hold-ups.’

  ‘All right,’ Randy agreed, although he was not eager to paw over the two dead men. Barry looped the reins around the brake handle and slid to the ground. Randy following him, noticing a single sentinel pine growing upslope from where they had halted, a golden eagle circling against the clear sky.

  Together they walked to where the man who had taken a double load of shotgun pellets lay twisted against the earth. Randy still carried his weapon at the ready, listening, searching the barren landscape for others of the gang, if others there were. Barry crouched beside the dead man, patted his pockets and then toed him, rolling him onto his back. Randy caught his breath as the dead face appeared, dead eyes staring up at the morning sunlight. Barry Hampton looked at him curiously.

  ‘Do you recognize him?’ he asked from his crouching position.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. His name is Tioga. We worked horses together once.’

  What was Tioga doing up here trying to rob a stage? Had Van Connely and the rest of the gang decided to cut him out of the profit to be made from selling the herd?

  They walked back to the first man who lay on his side in the mud. Randy already knew before he too was rolled onto his back: it was Shell Bodine, another of the horse thieves.

  ‘Nothing in his pockets either. Not a nickel. You knew him as well?’ Barry asked, tugging his hat down to shade his eyes.

  ‘Yes I did,’ Randy said. ‘At least well enough to identify. You see we had some trouble down the road,’ and he went on to give Barry a brief sketch of the trail drive and murder of Skyler Lynch.

  ‘So you think it was a falling-out among thieves; these two never got their cut from Van Connely?’

  ‘That’s all I can figure. If they had gotten their money, they’d be celebrating somewhere, not out trying to rob the Colton stage.’

  ‘I guess you’re right, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your friend’s still with us,’ Barry Hampton said, and Randy turned to see the black stallion standing a short distance off. ‘Do you want to try to throw a noose over its neck and tie it on behind?’ the stage driver asked.

  ‘Only if you need some entertainment for the rest of the day.’

  Barry laughed. ‘No, I guess I don’t. Let’s get going then. I still have a schedule.’

  It was on a Saturday with a colorless sky spread overhead that Kate Lynch lifted her head to see the lone rider approaching the ranch. The two horses in the pole corral lifted their heads to study the newcomer as well. It was still cool, and smoke rose from the chimney of the stone house to drift and dissipate over the live-oak trees in the yard. Kate, who had been crouched tending to her poor effort at a flower garden, stood, dusting her hands together. She wore a tan-colored divided riding skirt and a peacock-blue blouse.

  She waited, squinting into the distance, hoping to see other men following this single rider, but he was alone. Hesitantly she started across the yard. She thought she had seen this man before, but could not immediately name him. Young, but not so very young, he had dark hair that curled out where it escaped his hat, slender build with broad shoulders, even features and striking blue eyes. He rode a black horse with a white blaze and one white stocking. A beautiful animal, it moved at an easy long-legged gait. Its dark coat was like liquid obsidian; its muscles rippled beneath the skin. The lone rider approached her, halting the horse, tilting his hat back.

  ‘Kate Lynch? My name is Randy Staggs. We’ve met once before – your father brought me over for dinner.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I remember now. You were going along on the ride north with him.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But where is…?’ she lifted her eyes to the distance.

  ‘That’s something we have to talk about,’ Randy said in a tone of voice indicating he did not wish to talk about it. Kate shuddered slightly. A cold feeling was creeping over her.

  ‘All right. Come inside and sit down. I have some coffee boiling.’

  ‘Thank you. Mind if I put my horse up first.’

  ‘Put him in the corral – he’s a fine-looking fellow, isn’t he?’ she said admiringly.

  ‘Yes. He’s not really mine. As a matter of fact, he probably belongs to you,’ Randy told her. ‘That’s another thing we need to talk about.’

  ‘Unsaddle him, then,’ Kate said, her voice trembling a little. ‘I’ll see to the coffee.’

  Randy swung down and led the black to the corral. Uncinching his saddle, he reflected on Kate Lynch. She was smaller than he remembered. She had a pretty face, a full underlip and slight overbite which he found appealing. Dark hair just barely reaching her shoulders, a nicely modulated voice. And those nearly black eyes seeming fearful, proud, and confident at once. Randy wondered if she were part Indian. He could never remember Skyler Lynch saying a word about the girl’s mother.

  Slipping the bit from the horse’s mouth, he released it into the corral. The black horse backed away from him uncertainly as if it suspected it was about to be abandoned again.

  Randy had never thought he would end up riding the horse, contrary devil that it was. But afoot again in Colton, he had decided one morning to do something with the animal. It was that or give it up for dog meat. They had had a rugged time of it, from the first rope Randy had looped over the black’s neck.

  It had fought tooth and nail. When, on the second morning, Randy had actually managed to climb into the saddle, the black had crow-hopped, side twisted, reared up and jolted him down with both of its forelegs locked. Spinning, it had thrown Randy three times that day. Stiff and sore, he had tried again on the third morning to mount the horse. He sat in the saddle waiting for the dynamite to go off, but surprisingly the black had given up on tricks. Somehow something had seeped through into the horse’s mind, convincing him that this man wasn’t going to hurt him; he just wanted a ride. It learned to mind the reins quickly and now it carried Randy proudly as if it had achieved great skills.

 

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