Savagery of The Mountain Man

Chapter Six

Los Brazos

An article in a Western newspaper gave hints for those who traveled by stagecoach, and the proprietors of the Sunset Stage Line had it printed up on flyers to be handed out to the passengers as they bought their tickets. Pearlie, who had been a shotgun guard for the stage line for nearly six weeks now, leaned back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest as he watched the passengers take the little handbill, then find a seat in the waiting room to read the material.

Helpful Instruction for Stagecoach Passengers

1) When a driver asks a passenger to get out and walk, you are advised to do so, and not grumble about it.

2) If the team of horses runs away, remain seated and let the skilled and experienced driver handle it. Passengers who attempt to jump from the rapidly moving coach may be seriously injured.

3) Smoking and spitting on the leeward side of the coach is discouraged.

4) Drinking spirits is allowed, but passengers should be generous and share.

5) Swearing is not allowed.

6) Sleeping on your neighbor’s shoulder is not allowed.

7) Travelers shouldn’t point out spots where murders have occurred, especially when “delicate” passengers are aboard.

8) Greasing one’s hair is discouraged because dust will stick to it.

As he had written in his last letter to Smoke, Sally, and Cal, the Sunset Stage Coach Line was a small company that ran only from Los Brazos to the railroad depot at Chama. The coach departed Los Brazos at eight A.M., and at an average speed of eight miles per hour, would arrive at Chama just before noon. It would leave Chama at one P.M., and arrive in Los Brazos just before supper.

Although you could crowd nine passengers into the coach, it would be making the journey today with only five, the passenger manifest consisting of a man, his wife and child, a banker, and a territorial mining official. The official was an overbearing man, impressed with his position and authority. He had already let the ticket agent and the driver know who and what he was, and how important it was that he reach Chama in time to take the two o’clock train.

“It is vital business for the territorial government of New Mexico,” he insisted. “I’m not sure you quite understand the significance of that, but as an official representative of the territory of New Mexico, it is imperative that I not be impeded.”

“You are due to arrive by noon,” the ticket agent said. “I’m sure we will be able to get you there by two o’clock.”

Just outside, the hostlers were hitching up the team and readying the coach for the trip. The driver, a man with white hair and beard, stuck his head in through the door.

“How many today?” he asked.

“Hello, Ben. Looks like five, unless someone else comes before we leave,” Pearlie said.

Ben pulled a pocket watch from his shirt pocket, opened the face, and examined it.

“Well, if anybody else is plannin’ on makin’ the run, they’d better get themselves here in a hurry,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll be waitin’ here till tomorrow.”

“Your team is all hitched up, Mr. Dooley,” one of the hostlers called to him.

“Thanks, Mike,” Ben said. “Pearlie, you go ahead and climb up to your seat. I’ll get the passengers loaded.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pearlie used one of the horizontal spokes of the front wheel to climb up into the high seat. Scooting over to the left, he looked down into the boot and saw both a double-barreled shotgun and a Winchester, 44.40 rifle. Breaking down the shotgun, he saw that both barrels were loaded. He closed it, then let the hammers down. The rifle was loaded as well.

A moment later, Ben came out of the depot with the passengers and stood by the door as they boarded. That done, he climbed up beside Pearlie, released the brake, picked up the reins, and snapped them against the back of the team.

The coach left the depot with the team moving at a rapid trot. Ben always did this, holding the trot until they were well out of town. Not until then would he slow the team to a more sustainable gait.

Shortly after he came to work with the stage line, Pearlie asked Ben why he did that.

“It’s to make a show for the people in town,” he said. “Most folks, when they see the stage leave town like that, have the idea that we keep the speed up all the way to where we are goin’. That way, if they’re thinkin’ on goin’ somewhere, the idea of usin’ a stage ain’t all that hard for ’em to take. But if they was to see us leave at a slow walk, they would, more than likely, want just about anything other than a long, slow stagecoach ride.”

Pearlie chuckled. “I reckon there’s some truth to that when you think about it.”

“Of course there is,” Ben said. He leaned over to spit out the quid of chewing tobacco he had been working on.

Ben was married and had a daughter who was just a little younger than Pearlie. When Pearlie first came to work for the stage line, Ben hinted that his young shotgun guard might take an interest in Mindy. Mindy was a pretty girl, and any other time, Pearlie might have been interested. But the loss of Lucy was still too fresh. Pearlie told Ben about Lucy, and how she had died. Ben understood, and never brought up the subject of his daughter again.

Up on the box, Pearlie rode silently while the driver worked the horses. Ben had named the horses and he was constantly talking to them, cursing one of them for slacking off, praising another for doing well, often playing them against each other.

“Well now, Rhoda, what do you think? Do you see how Harry is showin’ off for you? You aren’t going to hurt his feelings now, are you? Come on, pick it up, show him what you can do.”

Because Ben was busy with his horses, Pearlie was left alone with his thoughts. He wondered what was going on back at Sugarloaf. Did they miss him? Would they welcome him back when he returned? He had already given notice that this would be his last week, that he was going back home.

Home? Was Sugarloaf home?

Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Sugarloaf was home. It was certainly more of a home to him than anyplace else he had ever lived in his life.

A few years earlier, Pearlie had been a gunman, hired by a man who wanted to run Smoke off so he could ride roughshod over those who were left. But Pearlie didn’t take to killing and looting from innocent people, so he quit his job. He had stopped by to warn Smoke of the plan against him, and to tell him that, because he wanted no part of it, he would be leaving the valley. To Pearlie’s surprise, Smoke offered to hire him.

Since that time, Pearlie had worked for Smoke and Sally. He stood just a shade less than six feet tall, was lean as a willow branch, had a face tanned the color of an old saddle, and a head of wild, unruly black hair. His eyes were mischievous and he was quick to smile and joke, but underneath his slapstick demeanor was a man that was as hard as iron, as loyal to his friends as they come, and very nearly as good with a gun as Smoke was.

There were three other stagecoaches in Chama when Ben hauled back on the reins and set the brakes at the conclusion of their journey. Like Pearlie’s coach, the other three coaches represented towns that had no railroad of their own, and so their main routes were back and forth from their towns to the depot in Chama.

A couple of hostlers who worked for Sunset met the coach as it arrived, then unharnessed the team and led them off for a twenty-four-hour rest. Before the coach started back, a new, fresh team would be connected.

Pearlie laughed the first day when they started back because, when Ben started talking to the teams, calling the horses by name, he saw that he was using the same names.

“They don’t mind, they’re just horses,” Ben explained. “And if I use the same names for all of them, it makes it easier for me to remember.”

Pearlie couldn’t argue with that.

The drivers and shotgun guards of the stagecoaches always took their lunch at the Railroad Diner. They were free to go somewhere else if they wanted to, but if they ate at the Railroad Diner, their meals were paid for by their respective stage lines.

The drivers generally ate at one table and the shotgun guards at another. Pearlie was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the guards, so he fit in well with them, and generally enjoyed his visits with them.

Today, two of the other guards were in the middle of an argument when Pearlie joined them.

“He ain’t nowhere near as good,” one of them said.

“The hell he ain’t,” the second guard said. “I’ve read books about my man. I ain’t never read nothin’ about your man.”

The guard shook his head. “First of all, he ain’t my man.”

“Well, he’s the one you’re sayin’ is so good.”

“Hello, Mack, Zeb. What are you two talking about?” Pearlie asked.

“Zeb says that Snake Cates is a better man than Smoke Jensen,” Mack said.

“No, now, I ain’t said no such a thing,” Zeb said, holding his hand out in denial. “I ain’t talkin’ about who is the better man. There ain’t no doubt in my mind but what Smoke Jensen is the better man. Fact is, I ain’t never heard nothin’ bad about him. All I’m a sayin’ is that iffen it was to come down to a gunfight betwixt the two of ’em, I think Snake Cates would win.”

“What makes you think that?” Pearlie asked.

“Well, think about it. Near’bout ever one knows that Snake Cates kills folks for a livin’. What I mean is, if somebody has someone he wants kilt, why, all he has to do is pay Cates enough money and Cates will do it. Hell, there ain’t no tellin’ how many men he’s kilt by now. But this fella Smoke Jensen, now, I’m sure he’s good ’cause I’ve heard a lot about him. But he don’t go around killin’ people as a job, does he? So, when you get right down to it, that means Snake Cates would more than likely kill Smoke Jensen if they was to get into an outright gunfight,” Zeb said, finishing his explanation.

“What do you think, Pearlie?” Mack asked. “Iffen the two of them was to get into a gunfight, which one do you think would win?”

“I don’t know,” Pearlie replied. “But I tell you this, don’t sell Smoke short.”

“What do you mean by don’t sell ‘Smoke’ short?” Mack asked.

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”

“I mean the way you said ‘Smoke’ as if you know him. You ain’t goin’ to try an’ tell us you know him, are you?”

“No,” Pearlie said. “I’m not going to tell you I know him. All I’m saying is, if it came right down to it, I wouldn’t bet against Smoke Jensen.”

“There you are, Zeb,” Mack said. “Pearlie agrees with me.”

“Ha! And that’s supposed to change my mind, because Pearlie agrees with you?”

For the rest of the meal, Pearlie made no more contributions to the conversation. He had never told anyone of his relationship with Smoke Jensen, and he really didn’t plan to tell anyone. He had no specific reason for keeping quiet about it, though he knew, intuitively, that if he did tell someone, he would face two types of people. The first group would be those who would attempt to get a rise out of him by heaping scorn on Smoke Jensen. The second group would be those who didn’t believe him, and they would be just as uncomfortable to be around as the first.

Because Pearlie did not participate in the conversation, the subject soon changed so that, by the time they were all ready to leave the diner to make their return run, there were no arguments and they were laughing and joking together.

“So, this here feller,” Zeb was saying, “went into a bank pullin’ his wife along with him. ‘Look here,’ he says to the bank teller. ‘Iffen I was to give you forty dollars, would you give me two twenties?’

“‘Why, yes, I would,’ this here bank teller answers.

“So this feller, what he done is, he pushed his wife up in front of the teller and he says, ‘This here woman is forty years old. I’d like me two twenty-year-olds, please.’”

Zeb laughed hard at his own joke.

“I don’t get it,” Danny said. Danny was the youngest of the shotgun guards.

Now all of them laughed even harder.

“Mack,” one of the drivers called from the other table. “Time for us to be gettin’ started back.”

“Yeah, us, too,” another driver said, and the four drivers and four shotgun guards left the restaurant to the good-byes of the regulars who ate there every day.

“Pearlie? Can I speak to you for a moment?” Ben asked as they walked from the diner back to the coach. The new team had been attached and the six horses stood waiting in their harness.

“Sure thing, Ben,” Pearlie replied.

“Can you use a gun?” Ben asked.

“Well, sure I can, if I have to,” Pearlie replied. He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be much good in this job if I couldn’t now, would I?”

“The reason I asked is, you might want to be particularly ready for this trip.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ve just been told that there is over ten thousand dollars in cash in the strongbox,” Ben said. “It’s for the New Mexico Mining Company, cash comin’ back to ’em for the last shipment of gold they sent out.”

“We’re goin’ to be carrying ten thousand dollars?”

“That’s what the dispatcher told me.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It sure is. Of course they’re tryin’ to keep it quiet, but when there’s that much money, it has a way of getting out. So I think you better be on your toes.”

“Thanks for the warning. I will be,” Pearlie said.

Pearlie thought about the money they were carrying. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money, and the truth was, there was a time in his life, before he met up with Smoke, when ten thousand dollars would be a big temptation to him.

He looked over at Ben as the older man concentrated on driving the team.

Pearlie wouldn’t have to hurt Ben. All he would have to do is point his gun at the driver, reach down into the boot, pick up the strongbox, then jump off the coach.

“No!” he said aloud.

“What?” Ben asked, startled by Pearlie’s unexpected outburst.

“Oh, nothing,” Pearlie replied. “I was just thinking aloud, that’s all.” Thinking thoughts he had no business thinking, Pearlie told himself. There was no way he would ever do anything like that. In fact, there was no way he would have ever done anything like that, even when he was at his wildest.

Still, if he wanted to foil a holdup attempt, it probably didn’t hurt to think like the outlaws. Take this route, for example. He knew that if anyone had a notion to jump the stage, the best place to do it would just ahead of where they were right now, where the canyon walls squeezed in so tight alongside the road that the coach would have to move at a snail’s pace.

Pearlie looked through a gap in the canyon ahead, and as he did so, he saw two men who seemed to have an intense interest in the progress of the coach. It also appeared that they did not want to be seen, as they would peek around the edge of a large boulder, then jerked back quickly, then peek again, repeating the process. The amount of time they were exposed to view was so brief that, to any but the most experienced eye, they would have gone unnoticed.

“Ben, I just saw them,” Pearlie said.

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because they are watching us and they don’t want to be seen watching us. They are waiting up at the bend.”

“Damn, you are probably right. I’ve been thinkin’ all along that if they was going to hit us, more than likely they would do it here. We’re goin’ to be easy targets when we go through the pass.”

“Or they will be,” Pearlie said.

“What do you mean?”

Pearlie reached down into the boot for the rifle. “I’m goin’ to hop down here,” he said. “You go on through as if you don’t suspect a thing. I plan to cut across the top here while you keep goin’. Slow down just a little bit to give me time to get into position. If I’m lucky, they’ll be so busy keepin’ an eye out for the stage that they won’t see me comin’.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Ben said.

“I’ll climb up on that rock just ahead,” Pearlie offered.

“You keep your head down, young feller,” Ben said with genuine concern.

“Don’t worry, I will. And if everything goes all right, I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Right,” Ben answered.

Pearlie climbed up onto the top of the stage. Then as they passed particularly close to the canyon wall, he stepped off the stage onto a rock. From the rock, he climbed on up to the top, then crouched low as he ran across the top of the canyon wall. A moment later, he saw the two men exactly where he thought they would be. Both had their guns drawn, and both were looking toward the opening in the canyon where the stagecoach would appear.

“You two boys mind tellin’ me what you’re doin’ here?” Pearlie called out to them.

“What the hell? Who are you?” one of them yelled. When the two men turned around, Pearlie recognized one of them as the shotgun guard whose firing had led to Pearlie taking this job.

“Drop your guns, both of you,” Pearlie ordered.

It looked for a moment as if the two men considered shooting it out with Pearlie, but he had a bead on them and they knew that, at the very best, at least one of them would be killed. After a quick glance at each other, they dropped their pistols, then put their hands up.

“Get on down there on the road,” Pearlie ordered, motioning with the rifle.

As the two men climbed down onto the road, Pearlie went down behind them, all the while keeping them covered. In the distance, Pearlie could hear the whistles and shouts as Ben worked his team through the narrow pass and around the curve.

When Ben saw Pearlie standing in the road in front of him, with his rifle covering two men who held their hands in the air, he pulled the coach to a stop.

“I’ll be damn,” Ben said, as he saw the two men. “Dempster, is that you?”

“Hi, Ben,” the former shotgun guard said quietly.

“Pearlie, I reckon you remember Bob Dempster, don’t you?”

“I remember him,” Pearlie answered.

“Dempster, I can’t believe you would have robbed me.”

“I know you was responsible for me a-losin’ my job,” Dempster said. “I was just takin’ what I figure is owed me, that’s all.”

“You’re the one that caused you to lose your job,” Ben said. “You was drunk more times than you wasn’t. I kept warnin’ you. If I’m goin’ to have someone lookin’ after me, they damn well better be sober.”

Ben reached under the seat and threw down two pair of hand shackles. “Get these on ’em, Pearlie, then get ’em up on top of the coach. I’ve had these things for nigh on to five years, and I ain’t never had to use them before.”

“Here!” one of the passengers in the coach called out. “You don’t intend to take those men on this stage with decent folk, do you?”

“We got no choice, mister. We can’t leave ’em out here,” Ben called back. “They’ll be ridin’ up on top of the coach. You’ll never see them.”

“I want you to know that I intend to make my protest known about this,” the passenger said.

Ben leaned over and spit out a quid in the general direction of the irate passenger. The passenger had to jerk his head in quickly to keep from being hit.

“You do that,” Ben said.

Working quickly, Pearlie put the shackles on the two would be road agents, then ordered them up onto the top of the coach. Once they were on top, he loosened their shackles just long enough to pass the chain through one of the luggage guards. Then he reconnected them before joining Ben on the driver’s seat.

“You ready?” Ben asked.

“I’m ready,” Pearlie replied.

Ben nodded, then whistled at the team, and the coach continued on its way.

It was late afternoon when the coach pulled into town. Because the coach was the town’s major physical connection with the outside world, it always garnered attention. That was partly because Ben made his arrivals, just as he made his departures, with the horses pulling the coach along at a rapid trot.

Today, though, the coach attracted even more attention as it was very obvious that there were two men shackled to the roof of the coach. And one of them the townspeople recognized right away.

“Hey! That’s Dempster!” someone shouted.

“Dempster, what are you doin’ up there?”

“You remember Dempster, don’t you? He used to be a guard for the stage. Now they got him shackled up there on top.”