Chapter Eight: Trouble on the Stage
No one was actually very happy on Friday morning, but most everyone was smiling. Matt, Bill, and Doc all walked Kitty to the stage. Jim Buck was already up on the high seat, Everett Carver next to him with a shotgun. Thaddeus Jones, of snake-shooting fame, was sitting inside the stage, a second shotgun in his hands. Jones was yawning a bit as he'd spent a wakeful, but well paid, night on a chair at the end of Kitty's upstairs hallway.
Emil Wohlheter, the big German blacksmith, was finishing his examination of the stage. "There is nothing wrong here, Marshal Dillon," he told Matt in his deeply accented voice. "I have checked efery wheel, and efery axle, and checked the shoes on efery horse. There is nothing at all wrong with this coach, Marshal." Matt shook his hand and thanked him.
Jim Buck, high above him, looked down, shaking his head, "I could have told you that, Matt. I check out this coach before every run."
"I know you do, Jim, but today we just needed a few extra precautions." Matt replied placidly, watching as Moss Gimmick finished examining all six horses and tracing each piece of the reins and rigging. He didn't say a word, just nodded once at the Marshal and headed back to the livery.
A glowering Chester, who'd arrived from Hays the evening before bringing reinforcements in the form of one of Frank Reardon's deputies, was standing across the street with a rifle, sharp eyes peeled across the rooftops and alleyways for any sign of unusual activity. He was still angry with Mr. Dillon for choosing Jones to accompany Miss Kitty inside the coach.
Two other passengers, a middle-aged rancher, Virgil Riker, and his wife, stepped up into the coach. Bill handed Kitty's carpet bag up to Jim, and he and Doc helped her into the stage. Matt had just turned from his perusal of the street to give her a smile where she sat by the window when a shot hit the dust just inches from the doorway of the stage and another scraped along the roofline. Matt had his gun out before the sound of the first shot faded. "Take 'em out, Jim!" he yelled, smacking the rear horse sharply with his hat. The last thing Kitty saw as the coach rumbled galloping out of town was Matt and Chester both running for an alley beside the Bulls Head.
Once out on the track, Jim slowed the stage horses to a steady canter and they rolled on without incident to the Owl Creek station, two hours out of Dodge. Everett stayed on watch atop the stage while Jones checked the inside of the station and the privy behind. When the station master and his wife reported no visitors, no strangers, and no unusual incidents, Kitty was allowed to visit the facilities with Mrs. Riker in tow while Everett stood guard a careful two steps away outside. Jones sat with Riker and the ladies inside the station while the other men changed horses and again double checked wheels, axles, whiffletree, horses, and rigging.
They followed the same procedure at the next station. At the third, where there was a dinner break, Jones refused to let Kitty eat anything with the others. After using the privy, he marched her back to the coach where the two of them ate from a basket prepared by Ma Smalley and loaded onto the floor of the coach with her own hands under Jones' watchful eyes. Since he allowed her only water from his own canteen, and none of the coffee prepared at the way station, Kitty was dozing restlessly when the ruckus began.
Jim saw the trees pulled across the road and knew he'd never make it over the obstruction. The three masked cowboys who pulled in from behind them had chosen their place well. There were trees close to the road on both sides, and a man with a shotgun sitting on a high branch had Jim and Everett covered before the coach was even at a standstill.
"No one turns around, and no one moves," the man in the tree warned them in a loud voice. "Throw those guns to the ground and no one gets hurt." Before the guards even had a chance to consider there was a masked rider with a pistol pointed straight at Kitty's head telling them, "No reason for the lady to die, gents, but if any of you makes one move that I don't like then she does. Otherwise, we'll let her go soon as the trial is over. Your choice."
Jim, Everett, and Jones let themselves be disarmed without resistance, and Riker surrendered his six gun as well. One of the masked riders came up close to the coach door and opened it wide. "Right here in front of me, little lady," he said, pulling Kitty through the door to sit in front of him on his saddle. A movement from Jones caused the rider on the far side to shoot through the window, burying a bullet in the basket at Jones' feet. The man holding Kitty lifted a gun, but she grabbed his hand as it went off, directing the bullet into the door.
"No! No more shooting. I'll go with them," she yelled. "Thaddeus you tell Matt not to follow me. I don't want anyone else hurt."
"That's a smart decision, miss," called the man in the tree. "Now you gents all step out the far side. Other lady goes up on the box. Nothin' bad's gonna happen as long as everyone behaves. You two on the box, help that missus climb up and then you get down on the far side as well. First one who makes a move I don't like, the lady takes a shot."
The rider holding Kitty had already retreated a ways down the road behind them. From that viewpoint she watched as Mrs. Riker was installed in Jim Buck's place and Jim and Everett stepped down the far side of the coach. The remaining riders walked the four men a few yards off the road and made them lay down on the ground. The other man climbed down from his post in the tree and walked over to use both barrels of his shotgun on the rear wheel of the coach – destroying the wheel and causing the axle to crack as the wheel fell. He then unhitched his horse from back in the trees, mounted, and headed towards Kitty. As the other horses retreated towards them as well, Kitty saw both Thaddeus and Jim begin to move, and heard two shots from one of the riders hit the coach where Mrs. Riker was still sitting bolt upright in front.
"I told you fellas not to move as long as you could hear our horses." the shootist sang out towards where the men were again flat on the ground. "I can still shoot that nice lady right through. Now do as you're told!"
And that was the last that Kitty saw as her captor kicked his horse into a canter and headed out east of the road. The other three riders came behind, single file Before long, one of the riders, Kitty thought it was the one from the tree, moved up to lead the file, and ten minutes later, yet another rider moved up in front of him. They went on in this way for perhaps an hour, when Kitty, riding in front again, noticed them angling towards a stand of cottonwoods in a creek bed ahead. The rider who now came up to the front of the file was a stranger to her, riding a broad-backed Appaloosa mare. His face wasn't masked, although the other riders had kept their masks in place.
Kitty's rider drew up to a gnarly old cottonwood with branches sticking out flat left and right. He shifted Kitty until she was sitting pillion on a wide limb, tipped his hat to her, and pulled his horse away. The unmasked rider pulled his horse up close to the branch and swung Kitty up in both arms. He wasn't as big a man as Matt, but his strength surprised her. Holding his horse tight with his knees, he lifted Kitty easily and settled her at the front of his saddle.
"Any shooting?" he asked.
"Nothing that wasn't planned," the head rider answered. "I had to take two shots towards that lady on the box."
"Hit anything?" asked the man on the Appaloosa.
"Just what I aimed at," the man snorted, "There's a carpetbag and a leather valise both with bullet holes in them."
The man holding her kicked his horse into the creek bed and they started off slowly upstream. Kitty saw over his shoulder that the other riders were making a mess of the creek bank, riding back and forth over it and around under the trees. As they moved out again, she watched the column of horses parallel her own ride down the creek to the east, passing each other in turn, before the creek bed finally turned south and she and her new mount moved with it. Kitty turned to face forward, crooking a leg around the saddle horn, and feeling the man's hands steady her as she moved. They rode on silently, but the arm curled around her body continued to move gradually but gently until his left hand was laid against her breast, and the right hand holding the Appaloosa's reins was resting lightly between her legs just where her right thigh lifted around the horn.
Kitty sighed. "Mr. Reardon, I think we need to talk."
"You go on ahead and call me Frank, miss." he replied, "I'd say we're bound to be friends."
"Well, Frank, that was certainly my first thought. You go ahead and call me Kitty, and you go ahead and move your hands."
"Yes, ma'am," Frank responded with enthusiasm, but the way he moved them wasn't quite what Kitty had in mind.
She found herself gasping just a little, and it wasn't quite all with laughter. Kitty caught her breath, and started again, "Frank, Matt tells me you're the best friend he ever had."
"Proud to hear that, Kitty. He's certainly the best friend I've got. Known him since we were mustered out from the Union army and started riding home on the same trail." Frank's hands hadn't stopped their soft rubbing against her breast and thigh.
"So were you planning on staying friends with him after today, Frank?" she enquired, keeping her voice level but making it hard.
Frank's hands paused, and his voice was curious, "You thinkin' you might have something to say that could bring about that effect, Kitty? Matt and I've been ridin' together a long time."
"And I'd surely hate to see that change, Frank," she said calmly, "But I'm tellin' you right now that it would."
Frank rode on without speaking for a few paces, and his hands moved back where they belonged. He pulled up his mare where the creek ran shallow over a sandy ford. "You're gonna get your feet a little wet here, Kitty. You just pull up your skirts so they stay dry. I'm going to get down and then lift you up behind the saddle. You want to sit astride or sideways, ma'am?"
"We going to have run for it, Frank?" she asked.
"Not likely but it's always possible. We've got another couple hours to go, and we'll be comin' out of this creek in about half a mile where there's a road that crosses," he told her.
"Then I'd better sit astride. Gives me a better seat if you have to go for it." Kitty answered, pulling her skirts and petticoats up around her knees. Frank stepped down into the water and then lifted her down beside him and helped her re-mount and swing a leg over behind the saddle. He looked forward and stroked the Appalossa's neck while Kitty shuffled about a bit pulling her petticoats under her to pad the horse's rump and leaving her skirt swinging free enough to cover her legs. "I'm set, Frank," she said, and he swung up before her.
"You have my apology, ma'am," he told her with quiet sincerity, "Matt and I didn't have much time to plan this and we spent most of what time we did have on the details. He told me you were the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and I can surely understand that, but then he said I was the only one he'd be willing to trust to see you cared for properly, and, well, miss, seein' as he was smiling pretty broadly at the time, I suppose I just didn't quite understand that the right way."
Kitty hooked her hands in the side of Frank's belt and relaxed into the steady motion of the mare. "No need for an apology, Frank. We'll just leave that behind us. How'd you and Matt get all this set in that little time you had together in Hays? Never seen a stage robbery go off so smooth."
Frank laughed, and Kitty found herself liking that warm and ready laugh. "We didn't plan it in Hays, Kitty. We planned it out a hundred nights out on the trail, before and after we took to the law. We just had to agree on the numbers and the places. Matt took care of finding the holdup men – I've no idea who they were – and of telling the men on the stage just enough to have them act right."
"The riders were boys from Jake Worth's spread up north of Dodge." Kitty told him, "Matt must have stopped there on the way down. I recognized two of them. The young one who took me up with him was Jake's nephew, and the man in the tree was his foreman." She sat quiet for a few minutes, and then went on, "So you needed a place with trees beside the road on both sides, and a creek not too far away, and a road crossing that creek that has enough traffic to hide your horse's prints, but not so much that we're likely to meet anyone. And that road has to lead to someplace we can hide out until next week."
"You are a smart woman, Kitty Russell," Frank told her.
"I know that moving single file, and trading leads, makes it hard to tell how many riders there are, and I can see how you picking me off the tree and then riding along the creek is going to make it almost impossible to tell there was a trade off, but how are Jake's boys going to cover that single file trail?" Kitty wondered.
"I believe that Matt's rancher friend is planning on moving some cattle this afternoon," Frank replied. "That file of cowboys will move on into the herd and drop out one by one with some other riders."
They both laughed this time, and Kitty figured that if you wanted to know the best way to rob a stage, then you could do worse than asking a couple of experienced lawmen.
Kitty found herself nodding just a little as they moved down the stream. Frank pulled up where a rutted road made a shallow ford. "There's a hat and a shawl in that left saddlebag, Kitty. Might be good for you to cover up that bright hair just in case we do meet someone on the road. Kitty pulled out a broad calico sunbonnet and a wide grey shawl. She donned the sunbonnet with a sigh, but without complaint, and wrapped herself round tightly with the shawl. They turned west along the road, and she appreciated the warmth of the shawl as the sun sunk lower in the afternoon sky. Frank's arm reached back once against her thigh to catch her as she dozed, and his quiet voice, reminding her strikingly of Matt, said, "You just go ahead and lay your head against me, honey, and work those hands nice and tight into my belt. You've got nothin' in the world to fear from me, Kitty." And so she did.