CHAPTER ONE
Hours of jolting, swaying misery ended suddenly as the stage came to a harness-jangling halt. It remained still until the following dust cloud caught up and covered the four passengers inside with a coat of fine, mustard-colored grit.
The driver climbed down, stepped to the window and stuck his shaggy head inside. A patch made from a scrap of tanned leather covered his right eye.
“Town coming up, folks, but this stage don’t stop there,” the man said. “Fact is no stage stops there. We go on through Holy Rood at a gallop, so hold on tight an’ say your prayers if you got ’em.”
Shawn O’Brien had been lost in thought, deep in heartbreaks of the past, but now he stirred himself enough to say, “Why is that? Why all the hurry?”
“Because Holy Rood is a downright dangerous place to be, young feller,” the driver said. “Especially if you got a sin to hide.”
“Hell, we’ve all got a sin to hide,” a passenger said.
He was a pleasant-faced man who wore the broadcloth finery and string tie of the frontier gambler, his black frockcoat now a uniform tan from trail dust.
“Then repent for yer sins an’ hold on like I told you,” the driver said. “This here stage is barrelin’ through that damned town like a deadheading express.”
“Oh, dear,” said a small man with the timid, downtrodden look of a henpecked husband. “When we left Silver Reef, Wells Fargo didn’t inform me that my life would be in such peril.”
“Hell, they never do.” The driver grinned. “Holy Rood ain’t on the map as far as Wells Fargo is concerned.”
The gambler grinned at the little man. “What sin are you hiding, mister?” The humor reached his eyes. “Looking at you, I’d say whiskey and women are your downfall.”
“Good heavens no,” the man said. “My lady wife would never allow it. She bade me promise on our wedding eve that my lips would ne’er touch ardent spirits nor my loins join in unholy union with those of another woman.” The little man seemed to shrink into his seat. “She’s a stern, unbending woman, my wife, much given to the virtues of Holy Scripture and liberal doses of prune juice.”
“Then I guess you’ve nothing to fear,” the gambler said. “Hell, man, you’re a shining example to all of us.”
His eyes moved to the girl sitting next to the little man. She’d seemed pretty in the Silver Reef boomtown, but hours in the stage had taken its toll. Now she looked weary, hot and uncomfortable and smelled musky of perspiration and stale perfume.
“What about you, missy?” the gambler said. “You got a little sin to confess?”
A hot breeze gusted through the stage window, carrying dust and a faint odor of sage and mesquite.
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask a lady,” Shawn O’Brien said. “I reckon you should guard your tongue, mister.”
The gambler had to crane his head to look at Shawn. And when he did, he wished he hadn’t.
The young man’s handsome, well-bred face bore a mild, almost amused expression, but the gambler read a hundred different kinds of hell in his blue eyes. He’d seen eyes like that before across a lot of card tables, the I-don’t-give-a-damn look of the seasoned gunfighter.
By the nature of his profession the gambler was a cautious man and he tacked on to a more favorable course.
To the girl, he said, “The gentleman is correct, of course. I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you, ma’am. That was far from my intention.”
The girl had a beautiful smile, white teeth in a pink mouth. “No offense taken,” she said. “You asked a most singular question, sir, and my answer to it is that I cuss sometimes.”
“I rather fancy that any cuss from lips as sweet as yours must be mild indeed,” Shawn said.
“Well, I do say hell and damn when the occasion demands it,” the girl said.
“And I say a hell of a lot worse than that, young lady,” the stage driver said. “And you’ll probably hear it when we hit the main street through Holy Rood. So hang on, everybody, and let’s git this here rig rolling.”
He rubbed a gnarled hand across his mouth. “You see a poor soul with his head on the chopping block, don’t look no further, huh? It ain’t a sight fer good Christian folks.”
Without another word the driver disappeared and the stage creaked and lurched as he climbed into the box. A whip cracked and the six-mule team shambled into motion.
“Yeeehah!”
The whip snapped again and the mules took the hint and stretched into a gallop.
“What did he mean about a poor soul’s head on a chopping block?” the little man said. “That was a most distressing thing to hear.”
His voice hiccupped with every jolt of the stage and his knuckles were white on the carpetbag he held on his lap.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the gambler said. “Stage drivers are like ferrymen, crazy as bullbats. I ain’t never met a sane one yet.”
“It was a strange thing to say, all the same,” Shawn said.
“I’ll allow you that, mister,” the gambler said. “’Twas a strange thing to say. . . .”
 
 
A couple of minutes later it was the girl who first saw them . . . the yellowed skulls that grinned atop tall, timber posts bordering both sides of the wagon road.
The girl opened her mouth to say something, but the words bunched up in her throat and wouldn’t come.
The timid little man spoke for her.
“My God, what kind of town is this?” he said, his voice breaking. “It’s signposted by the devil himself.”
Shawn stuck his head out the window.
Skull after skull flashed past, most yellow, a few still red and raw, a macabre march of the mutilated dead.
The driver stood in the box, his whip cracking over the backs of the straining mules, and the stage rocked and pitched like a barque in a storm.
Shawn tried to count the skulls, but soon gave up. There were just too many of them.
Gunshots slammed beside him and the girl let out a high-pitched shriek of surprise and fear.
The gambler leaned out the window and cut loose with a short-barreled Colt. After the hammer clicked on the empty chamber, he sat back in the seat and said, “That isn’t decent, the skulls of dead men lining the road. I tried to shoot some of them off.”
“Hit any?” Shawn said.
“Not a one.”
Above the rumble of the wheels and the pound of the mules’ hooves, the driver yelled, “Town comin’ up! Hang on, folks!”
Shawn looked out the window again. A dozen yards in front of him a large, painted sign read:

WELCOME TO HOLY ROOD
A Blessed Place
~
Come Worship with Us

Then the stage hammered into the town’s main drag, its attendant dust cloud rolling along behind, trying desperately to catch up.
Shawn was aware of a wide street lined on both sides with timber buildings, all of them painted white, and the strange fact that there was not a soul around.
Then disaster struck . . . an unforeseen incident that would soon plunge Shawn O’Brien and the other passengers into a living nightmare.