Savage Territory

Chapter Sixteen

There were six passengers in the coach: Bixby, Cynthia, Hendel, Matt, a whiskey drummer, and a young man who was returning to school at Tempe Normal. Matt was napping when he heard a loud shout, then the unmistakable discharge of a double-barrel shotgun as well as several pistol shots.

Matt awoke with a start.

“Oh, what is it?” Cynthia asked, her voice edged with fear.

Though Matt hadn’t seen anything, when he heard gunshots and loud guttural voices outside, he surmised at once what was going on. He loosened the pistol in his holster.

A masked man’s head suddenly appeared in the window. He stuck a gun inside.

“Ever’one out of the coach!” he shouted.

“See here! What is this?” Bixby shouted indignantly as he stepped down from the coach. “Do you know who I am?”

“You are the man I’m robbin’,” the gunman replied. He brought his pistol down sharply over Bixby’s head. Bixby groaned and fell back against the coach, though he didn’t fall down.

“Jay!” Cynthia cried out in alarm.

“Anybody else?” the gunman challenged. “Maybe you folks didn’t hear me when I said everyone get out of the coach.”

Another gunman came around to join the first. He was also wearing a mask.

“Philbin’s dead,” the second gunman said. “The shotgun guard killed him.”

“We get the money pouch?”

“We’ll clean these folks out first,” the second gunman said. He took off his hat. “Folks, what I want you to do is pretend you are in church and the plate is being passed. I want you to put all your money and valuables in this here hat. If you try and hold out on me, I’ll shoot you. We’ll start with you, mister,” he said to Bixby, who, though streaks of blood were sliding down from the wound on top of his head, had managed to stay on his feet.

Bixby took out his wallet and put it in the hat.

“Your pocket watch, too.”

Grumbling, Bixby disconnected his watch from his vest and dropped that in the hat as well.

“Hurry up down there!” someone called from the top of a large rock. Glancing up, Matt saw two masked men standing up there, looking down at the proceedings.

“We’re hurryin’, we’re hurryin’,” the gunman with the hat said.

“That bauble you’re wearin’ around your neck looks real pretty there,” the robber said to Cynthia. “But it’s goin’ to look even prettier in my hat.” He giggled at his own joke.

When he got to Hendel, Hendel dropped in his own wallet and watch without complaint.

“You folks are doin’ just real fine,” the robber said. He stopped in front of Matt, but Matt had nothing in his hand.

“How come you are standin’ here empty-handed?” the robber said. “What have you got to give me?”

“Just a bullet in the stomach if you don’t give these folks their money back and ride away from here,” Matt said.

“Ha! Hey, Oliver, did you hear what this fella just said?”

“Just shoot him and be done with it,” Oliver said.

“Yeah, I reckon that’s best,” Cantrell said. He cocked his pistol.

What happened next happened so fast that it surprised everyone, robbers and passengers both. Even though both robbers were holding pistols pointed in the general direction of the coach passengers, Matt drew and fired so quickly that both were dead before either realized they were in danger.

Looking up to where the other two men were standing, Matt raised his pistol, but both dropped down out of sight on the other side of the rock. Matt climbed the rock and looked for them, but by the time he reached the top of the rock, they were already too far away for a good shot.

Putting his gun away, Matt climbed back down to the stage. Bixby, Cynthia, Hendel, and the other two passengers were gathered around the bodies of the two men he had shot. The body of the robber the guard had shot was lying on the road in front of the coach.

The guard was also dead, slumped over the edge of the seat with his arm hanging down. His shotgun was lying on the ground alongside the left front wheel, the stock of the gun red with his blood.

The driver was also slumped forward.

“How bad are you hit?” Matt called up to the driver.

“I don’t rightly know,” the driver answered, his voice racked with pain. “All I know is it hurts like hell.”

Matt climbed up on the wheel to take a look. The driver was holding his hand over his side. Matt moved the driver’s hand to one side, then breathed a sigh of relief.

“It looks like it cut a pretty good crease, but it didn’t poke a hole in you,” Matt said. He looked at the seat just behind the driver and saw a bullet buried in the front of the coach. Taking out a pocket knife, he pried out the bullet. “And it didn’t stay in you,” he said, holding the bullet out for the driver’s inspection.

“Damn,” the driver said. “That’s as close as I ever want to come to getting’ shot dead.” The driver looked over at the shotgun guard. “Poor Pinkie. He wasn’t as lucky.”

“The robbers are gone. Do you feel up to driving?”

“Yeah, I reckon so,” the driver said.

“We need to get you patched up first,” Matt said.

“You know somethin’ about doctorin’, do you?” the driver asked.

“I’ve patched a few bullet holes in my day,” Matt replied. “A couple of them on myself. I wonder if you are carrying anything we can use as a bandage.”

Cynthia, who was tending to the wound on Bixby’s head, looked up toward Matt when she heard him say he needed something for a bandage. “I can give you something to use as a bandage,” she called up to him.

“What have you got that you could possibly give him?” Bixby asked.

“Just watch,” Cynthia replied.

Reaching up under the hem of her skirt, she began to wriggle around a bit.

“Cynthia, stop that!” Bixby ordered. “You are disgracing yourself!”

After a few more moments of wriggling, she pulled a large piece of silk from under her skirt.

“How about this?” she asked Matt. “A silk petticoat.”

“Cynthia!” Bixby gasped. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Jay,” Cynthia replied as she handed the slip up to Matt. “I have two more on.”

Up on the driver’s seat, Matt unbuttoned Moses’s shirt, then pulled it away from him. Some of the coagulating blood had caused the shirt to stick to the wound, and Moses winced in pain when the shirt was pulled away.

“I know that probably stung a bit,” Matt said. “But the truth is, sticking to your wound like that is probably what saved your life. It acted like a bandage and it stopped the bleeding. If it hadn’t, you might have bled to death.”

As Matt worked to apply a bandage to the stagecoach driver, the drummer and the young student pulled the masks off the dead robbers.

“Look at them,” the student said. “They are mean-looking, aren’t they?”

The whiskey drummer chuckled. “They’re mean-enough-lookin’ all right, but I’d say these boys picked the wrong coach to try and rob.”

“They did that, all right,” the student said.

“Wait a minute,” Matt said, looking down at the three bodies. “I know these men.”

“You know them?” Hendel asked, surprised by the announcement.

“Sort of. I don’t actually know them by name,” Matt said. “But I’ve seen them before.”

These were the same men Matt had encountered at Ian Crocker’s ranch almost two months earlier.

“I would imagine they were up to no good then as well,” the drummer said.

“You are right about that,” Matt replied.

“What are we going to do with them now?” the student asked.

“Well, if you two men will give me a hand, we’ll lift them up onto the roof of the coach. I hate to lay the shotgun guard out there with the others, but we don’t have much of a choice.”

“You can put the shotgun guard inside the coach with us,” Hendel suggested.

“What? How dare you make such a suggestion?” Bixby shouted, angrily. “Anyway, there is no room for him inside.”

“There will be,” Matt said. “I intend to finish the trip by riding up here with the driver.”

“You will not put that dead man in the coach with us! I will not allow it!” Bixby said.

“You won’t allow it?” the driver called down. “Mister, I’ll have you know that as the driver of this coach, I am in charge. Me. Not you. Now, either Pinkie rides in there with you, or you can ride up on top of the coach with the dead outlaws, or you can walk. It’s up to you.”

“Your employer will hear from me, my good man! You can count on that,” Bixby said.

“Oh, Jay, for heaven’s sake. Be quiet, will you?” Cynthia said. She was cleaning his wound and she pressed down hard on the bump.

“Ouch!” Bixby called out. “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

“Don’t give her any ideas, mister,” the whiskey drummer said, and the student laughed out loud at his joke.

“Well, I’ll be!” Bixby said, his face turning red in anger and embarrassment over being the butt of a joke.

Both Cynthia and Hendel managed to hide their smiles.

With the bandage applied to the driver’s side, Matt climbed up onto the top of the coach, then called down to the drummer.

“You two start passing them up to me, I’ll lay them out up here.”

“I’ll help,” Hendel offered and, over the next few minutes, the three dead outlaws were lifted up to the top of the coach, then laid out side by side. After that, the student climbed up and helped Matt pass the dead guard down to Hendel and the whiskey drummer.

“Now we have to get the log moved,” Matt said.

Once the log was moved, Moses picked up the reins, gave the team a whistle, and they resumed their run into Phoenix.