THE BUILDERS OF this particular stage coach had patterned it after the Concord, but as imitators they were less than flattering. Old and worn before being put into use on this new line, it creaked and groaned like a lost ghost. The wide strip of leather which served as springs on the Concord had not been replaced, merely omitted. Every jolt of stone or rut came up through the wheels to the passengers.
Montana had climbed aboard at Philipsburg, feeling conspicuous and ill at ease both in his best suit and his new role. They had stopped briefly at Butte, its scattered shacks and desultory operations all but lost in the fastnesses atop so massive a hill. Traces of gold were mixed with silver ore, neither being in sufficient quantity or quality to return more than a meager living to the miners. Two passengers had boarded, one waving a hand in disdainful but discouraged farewell.
“I don’t know where I’m going, but anywhere else is bound to be better,” he said. “Had me a couple of dozen claims, I’d been crazy enough to buy for ’bacca money. Unloaded the bunch on a tenderfoot for enough for stage fare out. None of them worth shucks. What silver there is is crowded out by a mess of copper. The blasted stuff ruins everything. Butte’s done for, finished.”
A drummer had been aboard at Philipsburg, an intrepid species who braved the hazards of such transportation along with the doubtful hospitality of the hostelries along the way. The other, who boarded at Butte, seemed vaguely familiar, but he rode with hat pulled low, face largely swathed by a muffler. Despite a wistful gleam in his eye, he declined, along with Montana, the drummer’s hospitable invitation to share a dwindling bottle of courage.
Such comfort as the bottle might provide was not misplaced. Abbott could detect little improvement in the road beyond his initial journey, as they twisted and climbed toward the summit. About the only merit of this new route lay in halving the distance by comparison with the northern route. And that was worth the discomfort. Montana found himself driven by an unaccustomed eagerness, even as he reminded himself that at best he pursued a will o’ the wisp.
His fellow-passengers had one trait in common. As if both repelled yet fascinated, they kept glancing over the side at towering ledges, or the more abrupt and dizzying drop-offs. The drummer closed his eyes, shivered, then hopefully repeated the process.
“It’s a world upside down—spilled in the sky,” he observed, and looked about for approval of so apt a description. “But frightening, gentlemen—plain scary is the word, to flatlanders such as myself. Do you concur, Mr.—er—Mr.—”
“Butterkind,” the ex-miner supplied, with an eye on the bottle. Bulging eyes receded into fleshy folds as he shrank from the admission. “Hanoverian Butterkind, a moniker to blast a baby or damn a devil. A name foisted upon me by well-meaning though short-sighted parents. Almost removes the fear of death, even in such places.”
The third passenger refused to be drawn. His loose-fitting, somewhat threadbare overcoat bulged suspiciously under his left arm. Visible weapons were conspicuously lacking.
“I’ve known worse names,” the drummer returned. “Mine ain’t one to brag about. Chitneyworth. But you find all kinds.” He looked at Montana. “Since we’re just a friendly little group spang between heaven and hell—”
“Abbott,” Montana supplied wearily. “Bill Abbott.”
The drummer twisted for a better look, then thrust out a hand.
“Abbott? Now I know you. You’re Montana. I saw you over in Missoula, not so long ago.”
Montana shrugged acknowledgement.
“Yeah, sure, I been hearing about you. Reckon you’re going over to the Legislature, ain’t you? Sort of a deputy representative or something? To be a go-between for the Governor and the Democrats?”
“Such an idea is news to me,” Montana said, rather stiffly.
“No secret, what you and some others have in mind,” Chitneyworth insisted. “And a damned poor idea, if you ask me.” The liquor was turning him quarrelsome. “No decent, self-respectin’ Democrat would work with a Black Yankee Republican, no matter what.”
“Not even for the common good?”
“No good ever came of sidin’ with the devil. I’m a Democrat and proud to be one. Born one. Expect to die—”
He paled and clutched at the side of the coach as it lurched and rocked, perilously close to going off the road and into depths which could only be guessed at. To Montana’s relief he fell silent, then the badly winded team pulled to a stop at what appeared to be the crest. The driver called down.
“Stretch your legs if you like, gents. We’ll take a breather, ’fore we head down. It’s worsen’ comin’ up,” he added cheerfully.
They took advantage of the opportunity to alight and move about. A reasonably flat interval of road marked the summit, though with higher ridges up-thrusting at either side. It had been quite a feat to have clawed even a passable road at this point in the long barrier of the Rockies. No other feasible route was likely to be found in either direction.
Montana noticed that the driver was sweating, despite the sharpness of the air at this altitude. The ground was bare, though a storm might blanket the pass with snow at any time, adding to the road’s hazards, if not blocking it until the following spring.
Abbott walked back, to look down at the twisting trail by which they had ascended, then returned at the driver’s hail. His fellow passengers were already inside. About to follow, he checked, looking more closely at the left rear wheel. Having worked with stages, he had made a habit of noticing details, to always make as sure as possible against the hazards of such roads.
A twist with thumb and fingers confirmed his suspicion. The nut which held the wheel in place was barely hanging, so loose that a few more turns of the wheel would run it off—at about the spot where the road fell steeply away. Shortly after, of course, the wheel would follow.
It was possible that the nut had gradually worked loose as they traveled. Possible, but highly unlikely.
“Wait a minute,” he called to the driver, then pointed and explained. “This nut is just ready to drop off.”
The driver came off the box with a jump, still clutching the reins of his four horses, and now there could be no doubt that he was sweating with nervousness. It was apparent that his apprehension sprang from more than the imagined perils of such a road.
“Damn lucky that you noticed,” he commended, and confirmed Abbott’s suspicion. “I’d admire to know who managed so dirty and stinkin’ a trick—”
He swept the interior of the coach with a baleful glare, only to shake his head regretfully.
“But it couldn’t a been any of them,” he decided. “Nobody’s that big a fool, to fix it so a wheel’d drop off and send the whole kit and caboodle tumblin’ to hell—not when he’s along for the ride!”
That seemed a reasonable supposition, though Montana reflected that a man who was alert and expectant of such a catastrophe might jerk open a door and let himself safely out before it was too late.
Scrubby trees and brush grew almost beside the road, the builders having cleared away only the most hindering. These, along with some massive boulders which studded this high country, afforded hiding places. Someone might have slipped up while the team rested, to give the nut a few quick turns.
He took a wrench and tightened the loose nut, then tested the other wheels. The driver’s grin was ghastly.
“Hang tight when we go on,” he warned. “We got a gold shipment in the boot—and it looks like somebody sure as blazes aimed to have it!”
Abbott had speculated on that possibility. He pondered whether to offer to ride shotgun alongside the driver, then decided against it. He had no clearly defined reason, only an increasing hunch. But that was a feeling, a sort of sixth sense which, like most old-timers, he respected.
Presently the road began an abrupt descent, narrow, perilous at every twist and turn. And here the driver, flinging normal procedure and caution to the winds, kicked the brake loose, yelled at his team, and sent them to a plunging downhill run.
That he understood the hazards his sweating face and palms had already testified, but clearly he preferred those over which he had some measure of control, to a hold-up along such a stretch. With it would be the likelihood that an order to halt would be augmented by a blast from shotgun or rifle, aimed to topple him from the box. The loosened nut on the wheel was a grim clue.
Robberies, more often than not accompanied by deliberate killings, had been almost a commonplace only a few years before. Outlaws from half a continent had converged on the booming gold camps like bees on honey, organizing a union of the lawless, led by the redoubtable sheriff of Virginia City, Henry Plummer.
They had instituted a reign of terror, ended only when the outraged citizenry had organized against them. The Vigilantes had decimated their ranks, decorating many a tree and pole with ghastly fruit.
Even so, there remained plenty of men, made reckless by the lust for gold or the desperate need of it, to still make occasional attempts at rich hauls. And all too often with success.
Butterkind and Chitneyworth had emptied the bottle, clearly wishing for another. All three had eyed Montana uncertainly as he took his seat inside, the muffled man yielding the seat nearest to the door with obvious reluctance.
Whether it was real or simulated terror which set a pea-green cast across puffy cheeks and eyelids was of no great concern, for such a ride would strike terror to anyone. They took a turn on two wheels, with chasm-like depths yawning, the stage jerked back from hurtling destruction only by the pull of the wildly running horses. The miner and the drummer clung desperately to each other, eyes tightly closed.
The third man was visibly frightened, but he kept his head held erect, and in that moment the profile was familiar, and Montana remembered. He’d seen this man riding, swerving away near the foot of the pass on his previous trip this way, the same man he’d seen outside Helena the previous summer.
Eggers lifted a hand in what might have been a desperate clutch for a hold, but which could as readily have been a signal. On a bluff above the road a crouching figure with leveled rifle hesitated, then drew back.
Hamilton Eggers seemed to subside, in a sort of relieved dismay. His look had been too brief for certainty, but Montana had the strong impression that the gunman was the same as had waited above the canyon road for the coming of James Ashley; then in bitter frustration to loose his bullet at Montana, to the ruin of a perfectly good hat.