The Book
Chapter 4John Billups and three other men were camped about 10 miles east of where Doc was sleeping in the two-room cabin.
They had a campsite a short distance from the creek and a good fire going with a large pot of beans cooking.
As they sat around the fire to eat, Billups wanted to go over the plans once more.
"That stage is due by here at 9.15 tomorrow. It is carrying a strong box with money from the bank in Dodge City headed for Hays. They will almost certainly have someone riding shotgun. "Zander," he looks up at the short man with a slight mustache on his upper lip, "he is your responsibility. You will hide in those bushes back there and take him out as they come around that curve. The rest of us will come down from the other side of the road there." He assigns tasks to the other two men, everything is planned down to the last detail. "If anyone gives us trouble shoot 'em otherwise we just turn the stage horses loose and leave. It will take them a day or more to walk back to Dodge, we'll be far away by then. Remember leave the passengers alone unless they cause trouble, we want to be in and out fast. I just want the money that's in the strong box. Everyone understand?"
Three heads nod in agreement.
Next morning the four men break camp early, horses are saddled and the men take up their positions to wait for the stage. At last they hear pounding of the horses hooves as the animals gallop towards the bend in the road. The stage is moving at quite a speed now and because of the roughness of the road the man hidden in the bushes is finding it hard to get a clear shot at his target. Eventually he fires. The man riding shotgun nosedives from the box where he is seated and hits the prairie floor with a loud thump. The driver sees other riders appear from the right hand side of the road ahead of him and realizes he has no way out so pulls the stage to a stop. The highwaymen rein in their horses as they approach. Bandanas cover their faces.
"Throw down your strongbox," one of the three men came forward and seemed to be giving the orders. The driver complied, not believing that any bank's money was worth his life.
"You passengers stay put and no one gets hurt," he continued as he got down from his horse and walked over to the strongbox, gun in hand. The man who had been doing the shooting had ridden down to join the others and was waving his gun in the general direction of the occupants of the coach. The driver watched as one of the other men got down from his horse and started to unhitch the team. One by one he removed the animals from the harnesses and hit them on the hindquarters so they took off into the distance.
The leader stood back and fired at the lock on the strong box. As he did so the shotgun rider managed to turn on his side, grab his pistol and fire at the man who had shot him. Chaos followed with shots being fired from the stagecoach and returned by the masked riders. The robbers began to feel at a disadvantage. The injured one managed to get on his horse and two of the other men panicked and joined him as they turned their horses and took off away from the stage in the general direction of Hays. The last man left was Billups - the leader. He was still thinking of the fifty thousand dollars in the strong box. That moment's hesitation cost him his life as a single shot rang out from a rifle the driver had hidden under his seat.
The driver climbed down from the box and walked over to the man who had tried to rob him. He picked up the man's gun, stuck it in his belt then turned him over with his foot. The man was dead. He went on to check on his shotgun rider. Sadly he was dead also. The passengers, three in number, emerged from the coach as the driver walked towards them.
"Look's like we got a couple of men to bury, then we better decide what we are going to do, those horses will be in the next county by now." The dead man's horse had taken off after the others when the guns started firing.
Later the driver laid out the situation to his passengers. They were about twenty or thirty miles from Dodge and slightly further from Hays. If they stayed where they were and set up camp for the night there would be a stage coming about noon tomorrow that would be headed back towards Dodge. If anyone wanted to wait on the next stage to Hays it would probably be late tomorrow afternoon before it showed up. The stage they had been riding wasn't expected to arrive in Hays till tomorrow morning so no search party would be here for a couple of days at best.
TBC