“A stage driver,” Wild Bill told Jimmy and Joshua, “earns just enough to keep the wolf from the door. Yet, it’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the West. Low pay, high risk—just like being a lawman in a cow town. He-yah!” he shouted, cracking his blacksnake to coax the team up a long incline.
A late-afternoon sun was losing its warmth and casting long, slanting shadows over the denuded hills surrounding them. This area had been stripped of trees to provide timber supports for the mining industry.
Even though Wild Bill’s eyes no longer picked up details at long distance, he could still easily read the terrain. And he didn’t like what he was reading now.
“Jimmy?”
“Yo!”
“My old scouting bones tell me that low ridge off to our left is trouble. Is it within rifle range, you think?”
The sharpshooter nodded. “Easy. ’Bout five, six hundred yards, Bill.”
“That’s beyond most men’s effective range. But not trained snipers.”
“I could make it easy,” Jimmy affirmed. “Almost twice that, even, if I had my old Big Fifty.”
“Kid,” Bill called up to Josh, “flatten down again. And hold on. We’ll be putting on some speed.”
Jimmy prepared by checking his rear sight and raising it a little to adjust for windage at that distance.
“If they start plinking at us,” Hickok told him, “I won’t be useful for making out any muzzle flash or smoke. Try to locate it, Jimmy. Now, hang on.”
Bill turned his head to the left and shouted below: “We’re picking up the pace for a stretch, folks! Keep away from the windows, especially on the driver’s side.”
This team had now been in the traces since morning. But they were well-grained and watered, and the pace had not been too grueling. Experience told Bill they still had plenty of bottom. He laid to the whip, relying on the noise to chuck them up to a strong run.
“Gee up! He-yah! Hee-YA!!!”
Joshua, facedown behind the top seat, held on to the running rails for dear life. He was surprised at finding out just how fast a stagecoach could get rolling, and what an infernal racket it made at top speed. The jangle and clatter of traces and tug chains, the thunder of iron-shod hooves, the splitting crack of the whip as well as Bill’s full-throated shouts—it all made talking impossible, not that he had anything to say. Not with this huge lump of fear in his throat.
There was also the powerful rocking and swaying of the braced coach—he had the eerie sensation that he was adrift on a raft in a storm-tossed sea.
They were perhaps halfway past the low ridge when Joshua decided that, once again, Wild Bill was playing it too safe—just as he had done earlier at the stand of willows. Maybe Bill was getting more edgy because—
Thwap!
An entire corner of the box, only inches from Wild Bill’s left thigh, literally exploded in shards and splinters of burning wood. One splinter flew back and pierced Joshua’s right cheek.
Thwap!
More shards and splinters sprayed Wild Bill and Joshua. But there was no sound of gunfire. God Almighty, the journalist thought as he fought down a welling of panic. Was somebody firing small artillery shells?
Then Josh spotted an arrow buried in the box. At the same time, the first sounds of a rifle firing reached Josh’s ears. He looked up quickly and thought he glimpsed a brief spark of muzzle fire.
Evidently Jimmy had spotted it too. The fearless shotgun rider, ignoring his own risk, went up into a dangerously exposed kneeling-offhand position. He began levering and firing, levering and firing, keeping it hot for the gunners on the ridge.
Warm brass casings glinted in the sunlight as they were ejected, clattering and rolling all around Josh’s head. Apparently Jimmy’s shots were having some effect—no more bullets or those god-awful arrows were striking the coach. But Wild Bill was again taking no chances—not until the ridge faded behind them did he slow his merciless whipping of the team.
“I think we’re out of their trap,” he told the others as he reined in the exhausted team behind a protective knoll.
“All right down below?” he called over his shoulder.
“We’re all fine,” Saville’s voice replied. “Although Miss Durant looks a bit peaked.”
Wild Bill was already calm enough to grin at that.
“Damn, Bill, you called it like a gang boss,” Jimmy admired, already thumbing reloads into his repeater. “If you hadn’t whipped the team up, all three of us might be looking up to see daisies.”
Bill glanced back at Josh. “Christ! You hit, kid?”
Josh felt the blood running down his cheek. But the wound wasn’t deep. “Nah. Just a splinter.”
“Wash it with calomel,” Bill suggested. “There’s some in my bedroll.”
But Josh wanted answers. “What in Sam Hill were those first shots, Bill? Look! They blew fist-sized chunks out of the wood. It’s still smoldering.”
“Exploding arrows,” Bill replied tersely. “I’ll explain later, Longfellow. Right now I got to go calling.”
Hickok was peeling off his duster as he spoke. Josh watched him quickly buckle on his spurs of fancy Mexican silver. He tossed his gloves and the reins to Jimmy, laid the whip on the box.
“After I ride out, keep the coach rolling at a walk until the team’s done blowing. Then hold ’em at an easy trot again. We need to make the next way station before it gets too dark. I’ll meet you on ahead.”
Wild Bill looked at Joshua. “Your nerves look steady. Wash that cut out, then c’mon down on the box and take Jimmy’s long gun. You’ll ride the hot seat until I get back.”
Joshua’s reporter instincts made him eager to fire off more questions. But Wild Bill had already leaped down off the box and moved behind the coach.
“Toss down one of the saddles and bridles,” he called up. “Don’t hit me with the damn thing.”
While Joshua unlashed one of the narrow-cantled cowboy saddles, Wild Bill untied the sorrel from behind the coach. The sorrel had taken to Bill instantly back at Martin’s Creek Station, and now it bumped its nose against his chest in greeting.
Hickok efficiently and quickly rigged the animal and cinched the girth, then checked the latigos. The stirrups needed adjusting for his legs, but they’d have to do.
This saddle had no scabbard, so he secured his Winchester with the cantle straps. He stepped up into leather, reined the sorrel around toward the ridge, and tickled its flank with a spur. The gelding responded instantly, quickly reaching a strong gallop.
Wild Bill knew he couldn’t risk directly approaching the ridge—his eyes wouldn’t allow it. But he had spotted a series of low draws and dry washes that should provide cover in case the ambushers were still on the ridge. He reined the sorrel down to an easy lope and entered the first draw.
A few times the ground leveled, exposing him briefly, and Bill borrowed a defensive riding posture he’d learned from fighting Sioux and Cheyennes. He slid off to the right side of the horse, gripping it high around the neck with its body between him and the ridge.
Only about ten minutes after he’d ridden out, Hickok rounded the end of a rocky spur and spotted them: two riders retreating at an unhurried pace, obviously not expecting trouble.
“My eyes are weak,” he told the sorrel as he swung down, landing cat-footed, “but we’ll give ’em a little kiss so they know we’re thinking of ’em.”
He ground-hitched his mount, then quickly untied his rifle. Bill knew he couldn’t assure hits on the men, and he usually tried to avoid shooting horses. But Leland and the U.S. government had requested gun law. And as those exploding arrows proved, Gil Brennan’s hardcases played rough and dirty. It was important to get on their nerves early and answer blow for blow.
He dropped into a prone position among a scattering of boulders and laid a bead on one of the horses. The brass butt-plate of his Winchester kicked against his shoulder, kicked again, and both horses went down. Bill’s lightly oiled mechanism snicked flawlessly as brass casings rattled against the rocks, the sharp cracks of the ’73 echoing out across the open terrain in a series of rapidly diminishing chuff sounds.
The surprised dry-gulchers were more interested in taking cover than in firing back. But Wild Bill’s vision was at the limit of its dependable range now—a fact that frustrated him greatly despite his legendary aplomb.
“A couple years ago,” he almost apologized to the sorrel, “I could have wiped both those snakes out of the saddle instead of punishing their horses. I ain’t bragging this mission—it’s damned humiliating is what it is. I’ve about had my belly full of Gil Brennan and his Bowery thugs. Let’s vamoose, boy.”