“All set!” Yancy hollered from under the coach, crawling out with the grease pail in his hand. “The horses are tied secure and the axles and hubs greased.”
Wild Bill, atop the box with the reins in his gloved hands, nodded at the burly blacksmith. “’Preciate it, Yancy. It’s going to take Overland time to clear the stage road at Devil’s Slope. You boys hang on here. It’s high time this boil was lanced, and it soon will be.”
Jimmy, his wounded leg stretched out straight, occupied the box beside Wild Bill. Hickok had ordered Joshua to ride inside the coach with Charlene—an order he didn’t have to repeat. Lovesick little pup, Bill thought, although he also had to admit that he couldn’t blame the kid. As women went, Charlene Durant rated aces high. But again he felt the niggling certainty he knew her from somewhere.
Bill was about to crack the popper of his blacksnake when Burl, standing guard on the roof, called out:
“Rider coming from the east, Wild Bill! I think I recognize that buckskin he’s riding … Hell yes, it’s Lanny Johnson, an express rider from the Overland office in Rapid City. Best hold up a minute.”
The rider, his horse lathered from the pace, hailed Wild Bill with the usual, “Touch you for luck?” and handshake. He reached up from the saddle, just below Bill’s level, and handed him a folded yellow telegram.
“It’s from Allan Pinkerton in Denver,” Lanny explained. “Mr. Langford said to tell you he’s been in regular touch with him. Giving him details to check out.”
“So Leland knows about the rockslide?”
“I’ll say he knows! Stages are backing up there until a work gang clears it.”
Wild Bill nodded his thanks, then unfolded the brief message and read it. His brow was suddenly troubled although that passed quickly as he became more thoughtful. He folded the message and stuck it in the pocket of his canvas duster. “Thanks, Lanny.”
“Bad news?” Jimmy said beside him.
“Can’t see any way to call it good,” Bill replied. “And it might be damn bad.”
Jimmy shook his head. “You ever give a straight answer in your life, Bill?”
“No,” Bill declared straight, and both men laughed.
“What’s the telegram say?” Josh demanded, hanging out one of the windows.
“It says mind your own damn beeswax, junior,” Wild Bill called back. And before the kid could pester him some more, Hickok cracked his whip and shouted the team into motion.
“I figure Urbanski has had time to rabbit by now,” Bill advised Jimmy. “But watch careful when we draw near those cutbanks.”
“What, you think I’ll sleep if you don’t nag me, mother?” Jimmy shot back. “Lord, how could a fool this big be so famous?”
“Besides,” Bill added with a sly grin, “according to your dream, I’ll cop it in Deadwood over a poker table.”
“Bad luck to talk about it,” Jimmy dismissed him, losing his grin, which made Hickok laugh louder.
“Cow plop,” he teased his friend. “So what if your dream’s true, hanh? When you meet the man who’s going to live forever, please send me his name.”
“I’ll send you a cat’s tail if you don’t shut up.”
They kept up their verbal sparring even as they passed the cutbanks without incident. For perhaps twenty miles the coach covered mostly level terrain, once-lush grass now browning with the autumn frosts. Twice they spotted herd cattle in the distance, some Longhorn stock but most of them the newer Shorthorn and white-faced Hereford breeds.
“Dust puffs up ahead,” Jimmy remarked sometime around midmorning. “Way up ahead—seen ’em yet?”
Bill shook his head and took his field glasses off the board seat beside him. “Now I do. Hard to say how many men since they’ve got remounts sending up dust, too.”
“Might not even be them,” Jimmy suggested, though he didn’t sound convinced.
Thus distracted, both men had paid scant attention to an old abandoned manure wagon that sat rotting about two hundred yards off the trail to their right, in an old cornfield now stubbled with short, dry stalks. Bill had seen it and given it a cursory inspection. But with no horse in sight, nor any place to hide one, he didn’t rate the wagon as a serious threat. That was one of his few mistakes on this entire mission, he realized later in useless hindsight.
Not until Jimmy suddenly remarked, “Check out them cows at three o’clock, Bill. One of ’em’s a blood bay horse,” did Hickok abruptly reclassify the wagon as a threat. But even as he did, Sandy Urbanski rose on one knee, and Bill heard the powerful fwip of the crossbow releasing.
The explosive arrow drilled into the box on Jimmy’s side, and then glowing chunks of wood peppered Wild Bill and Jimmy like canister shot.
“Jerusalem!” Jimmy exclaimed, struggling to pivot so he could get off a shot. But his wounded leg was virtually useless for bending. Not only that, but his shirt was on fire in two places.
Bill swiped at Jimmy, pushing him down so he was a smaller target and to smother the flames. Dropping the reins, he pivoted half right on the board seat and opened fire on the wagon with his Winchester. The weapon kicked into his shoulder repeatedly, brass casings glinting in the sunlight as they sprayed out the ejector port.
“Chuck up the team!” he called to Jimmy. “Urbanski took a chance leaving his horse so far away. But he knows damn well we can’t get at him across that open ground.”
Jimmy spirited the team on while Wild Bill kept up his fire, forcing Urbanski to cover down close. But as the range lengthened and the angle went against Bill, Urbanski got in one last lick: Hickok heard a sickening thump, then a hideous death shriek from the sorrel horse tied at the back of the coach. Urbanski had managed to sink an exploding arrow deep in the horse’s right flank, killing it almost instantly.
The dragging weight slowed the coach, and Jimmy quickly reined in, heaving into the brake. With Jimmy covering, Joshua leaped quickly outside and freed the dead animal from the coach.
Not long after they started rolling southwest again, Joshua called up topside: “I see their game, Bill! Urbanski’s following us way back. The other two are up ahead. Classic pincers.”
“Pincers,” Wild Bill agreed. “They’re going to try a rolling squeeze. They haven’t got enough manpower to just rush us in the open. But they’re going to count on their speed and maneuverability. Plink away at us, then close in like wolves on a buff.”
“I’m going to work on Urbanski,” Jimmy vowed, hauling himself up onto the roof behind the box and flattening down. “If I can’t hit the son of a bitch, least I can keep him shy.”
“Joshua!” Bill called down. “I need you to poke your head out the left-side window now and then, give me a report what’s up ahead. Jimmy’s occupied to our back trail. But don’t leave your head hanging out in the wind, boy. Just poke it out, look, get it back inside. Charlene?”
“Yes, Bill?”
“Come forward off the seat, and get as low on the floor as you can. There’s going to be shooting behind—”
But even before Wild Bill could finish, a round punched through the back of the coach. Charlene shrieked, then quickly reported it was all right, just close.
“Too damn close,” Jimmy agreed, squeezing off a shot at Urbanski. “Maybe I can drop his horse.”
But Urbanski had plenty of experience running down conveyances, and he knew just how far he needed to drop back to thwart a good shooter on a wildly rocking coach. He had put his crossbow aside now in favor of a rifle, and the three-hundred-grain bullets found the coach with discouraging regularity.
As quickly as his rifle emptied, Jimmy reloaded from his bandolier. But he was forced to halt, after his third reload, when the rifle over-heated, due to rate of fire, and a casing hung up during ejection. Jimmy cleared it while Wild Bill heard another bullet go whiffing past his right ear.
As if on a blood scent, Urbanski sensed trouble and sank steel into his gelding, spurting closer for a better shot. Wild Bill heard the hoofs drumming faster behind them and called to Jimmy: “Heads up! He’s closing!”
Wild Bill side-armed his rifle up to Jimmy’s position, and the sharpshooter, despite using a sight adjusted for Bill’s aim, was able to drop Urbanski’s horse with his second bullet. At that speed, the rider catapulted over the animal’s head, hit the trail hard, then bounced along like a sack of rags until his momentum wore out.
“Hell, he’s still alive,” Jimmy complained, but before he could drop a bead on Urbanski, the savvy survivor scurried back behind his dead horse.
“It’s all right, you done good, Jimmy,” Wild Bill praised him. “Hell, I’m starting to enjoy this.”
~*~
Eventually realizing that Urbanski had gone down, the two men out front split wide on the flanks, circling around to take him a remount and thus losing more time.
“To hell with that,” Bill decided suddenly, tossing the reins to Jimmy again. “Haze those flankers off for me, James,” Bill added as he started down off the box. Jimmy had freed the stoppage in his rifle by now, so Bill grabbed his Winchester back.
With pursuit broken, Bill had reined in the team to blow, so it was quick work to slip behind the coach and untie the lineback dun he had selected back at Martin’s Creek Station. This horse was the natural “cow pony” of the American West, prized for its ability to dodge and cut.
Jimmy couldn’t keep those flank men off forever, so Bill hurried, not bothering with saddle or rigging, just leaping on bareback and clutching fistfuls of mane. He held his Winchester under one arm, lowering himself over the horse’s neck to reduce target.
Bill wore no spurs, but urged the lineback to a powerful gallop, breaking the line of approach by hurling his weight to right and left, sending the mount sharply swerving.
Urbanski, still hunkered behind his dead horse, kept up an unrelenting fire at Wild Bill. The lineback flinched when a slug grazed its flank, but then drove powerfully forward, lowering its weight and lengthening its stride. Now Wild Bill slid down the left side of the horse, hanging on with one arm and one leg, using just his left hand to bring his rifle up.
Bill was hurtling at his enemy, barely able to sustain a line of fire. Urbanski, his hard-bitten eyes now engulfed with panic, came up in a crouch and loosed several shots at Wild Bill’s horse.
Perhaps twenty yards out from Urbanski’s position, Wild Bill heard the sickening thud of a bullet impacting, felt the lineback shudder in midstride. To avoid being trapped under the falling horse, Wild Bill let go and pushed off with one muscular leg.
Even before he hit the ground hard, Wild Bill’s brain was calculating. He let his rifle go, and because he had already loosened the riding thongs, he remembered to clap his hands to his Colts and keep them in the holsters while he tumbled and skidded to a stop.
Skin rubbed off hard as he scraped along, but Wild Bill never even came to a full stop before he shot up to his feet, drawing his pistols.
But he never had to fire one bullet. Fear now had Urbanski by the wits. He stood up, turned, and began running desperately to stay out of short-gun range.
Urbanski’s right foot suddenly plunged into a prairie-dog hole, and he went down to the ground hard, his Winchester Yellow Boy flying from his hands and crashing down too. And thanks to that worn sear Urbanski had kept neglecting, it discharged almost point-blank in his face.
Hickok flinched when he heard the hideous screaming, saw Urbanski writhing furiously like a snake trapped under a wheel, clutching his ravaged face. When he flopped over on his back, Wild Bill winced at the damage: That high-power slug had blown half Urbanski’s lower jaw off, including most of his lower teeth.
Bill took pity and finished him quick with a slug behind the ear.
That shot also broke the back of the gold heist plot. Both men on the flanks, seeing Urbanski die like a dog in the road, split up and retreated back to the north country and the shelter of the Black Hills. They were finished—Bill knew now that Brennan must be dead. And with Urbanski soon to be colder than a wagon wheel himself, there was no one left to ramrod another gang.
Seeing Bill’s downed horse, Jimmy turned the team and went back to pick up their driver. Josh leaped out and ran on ahead.
“Bill!” he called out. “You all right?”
As Josh came up beside him, breathless from running, Wild Bill pointed over his shoulder without looking back. “I’m a sight better off than Urbanski,” he replied.
“Man alive!” Josh nattered on, so excited he could barely keep his words in order. “You were unbelievable, Bill! It was a classic charge, you—”
Wild Bill cut the kid off by raising one hand. The coach had almost reached them. Charlene’s pretty face hung out the window, worried sick.
“Tell me straight,” Bill said quickly. “You’re in love with her, are’n’cha?”
Josh started, taken completely aback, then answered Bill’s question by flushing crimson. Over the past year, Josh had developed “cases” for several of the beauties in Bill’s ample stable. But even Hickok recognized that Charlene was different.
“I’m not faulting your taste, Longfellow,” Wild Bill said as he drew the telegram from his pocket and handed it over to Joshua. “But before you start thinking matrimony, might be a good idea to read this. It’s from Pinkerton.”
The excitement of their running battle now bled from Joshua’s face as he read the disturbing news:
JAMIE: GENERAL DURANT CONFIRMS DAUGHTER NAMED CHARLENE. BUT SHE’S HAPPILY MARRIED TO A CLERGYMAN IN MONROE, MICHIGAN, NOW MRS. CHARLENE BRANDENBERG. CAUTION ADVISED.
Josh stared at Wild Bill, his face blank. “Then ... who is this woman?”
“More to the point, kid, what is she?”
“Brennan,” Joshua said, not making it a question.
“My first thought, too,” Wild Bill said. “But if she was hired by him, why didn’t she make her play and kill me? She had the chance. Now it’s too late.”
“What are you two telling secrets about?” Charlene demanded as Jimmy pulled the stagecoach up.
“Mainly,” Bill told her amiably, “we were trying to guess your real name. I make you for a Sally or maybe an Abigail?”
The woman who called herself Charlene Durant flushed deeply, staring at the telegram in Joshua’s hand.
“Who told you?” she said in a weak voice.
“Sally?” Bill pressed. “Abigail? Darlene?”
“It’s Clarissa,” she confessed. “Clarissa Charbonnet.”
“Well, God kiss me,” Wild Bill muttered, at the same time that Joshua met his eyes and exclaimed, “Man alive! It is her! The long hair fooled me.”
“That’s where I saw you before,” Wild Bill told her. “It was in St. Louis, back in ’71. A play called The Merry Widow.”
“My last public appearance,” she admitted. “Obviously both of you already know why.”
As did half the people in America. The Merry Widow, a wildly popular comedy about a gold-digging widow, had made Clarissa a household name. But when she fell in love with the leading male actor, who was married, the resulting affair and scandal got her banned from the stage. She became the favorite “painted Jezebel” of the press, hounded everywhere she went by “decency committees.”
“So you headed west to start over,” Wild Bill said. “What in the hell made you pose as Durant’s daughter? How’d you even know about her?”
“We went to boarding school together near Chicago, then later she became one of my biggest admirers, and we corresponded regularly. I was frightened to travel by myself. I hoped that claiming the general was my father might ... dissuade disreputable men from ...”
She trailed off, but her point was clear enough.
Joshua was grinning, relief evident in his face. Jimmy, completely in the dark, stared down at all of them. “We going to hold a camp meeting here?” he demanded. “Or get this damned gold to Denver?”