The ladies gave him sympathetic looks and one of them arranged her travel case so the Dandy could prop his leg on it. The Dandy had a cane, yes, but Bren Early had seen the man walk out of the Benson station to the coach without a limp or faltering gait. Then one of the ladies asked him whom he had served with.
The Dandy said, “I had the honor of serving with the Texas Brigade, Madam, attached to General Longstreet's command, and received my wound at the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864. Exactly twenty-five years ago last month.”
Bren Early listened, thinking, Ask him a question, he gives you plenty of answer. One of the ladies said it must have been horrible being wounded in battle and said she was so thankful she was a woman.
“It was ill fate,” the Dandy said, “to be wounded in victory while giving the enemy cold steel, routing them, putting to flight some of the most highly regarded regiments in Yankeedom. But I have no regrets. The fortunes of war sent a minié ball through my leg and an Army wagon delivered me to the hospital at Belle Plain.”
“Whose wagon?” Bren Early said.
The Dandy gave him a superior look and said, “Sir?”
“You are only half right in what you tell these ladies,” Bren Early said. “You did meet six of the most respected regiments in the Union Army: the Second, Sixth and Seventh Wisconsin, the Nineteenth Indiana and the Twenty-fourth Michigan. You met the men of the Iron Brigade and if you ever meet one again, take off your hat and buy him a drink, for you're lucky to be alive.”
“You couldn't have been there,” the Dandy said, still with the superior look.
“No,” Bren Early said, “but I've studied the action up and down the Orange Plank Road and through the woods set afire by artillery. The Iron Brigade, outnumbered, fought Longstreet to a standstill and you, if you were taken to Belle Plain then you went as a prisoner because the Confederate line never reached that far east.”
The Dandy looked at the ladies and shrugged with a weary sigh. See what a wounded veteran has to put up with?
Bren Early had to hold on from grabbing the mincing son of a bitch and throwing him out the window. With the ladies giving him cold-fish looks he pulled his new Stetson down over his eyes and made up his mind to sleep.
Lulled by the rumbling racket of the coach he saw himself high on a shelf of rock against a glorious blue sky, a gentle breeze blowing. There he was on the narrow ledge, ignoring the thousand-foot drop directly behind him, swinging his pick effortlessly, dislodging a tremendous boulder and seeing in the exposed seam the glitter of gold particles imbedded in rock, chunks of gold he flicked out with his penknife, nuggets he scooped up from the ground and dropped into canvas sacks. He saw a pile of sacks in a cavern and saw himself hefting them, estimating the weight of his fortune at $35 an ounce…$560 a pound…$56,000 a hundred pounds…He slept and awoke to feel the coach swaying, slowing down, coming to a stop, the three ladies and the Dandy leaning over to look out the windows. The driver, or somebody up above them, was saying, “Everybody do what they say. Don't anybody try to be brave.”
The ladies were now even more excitable and nervous and began to make sounds like they were going to cry. The Dandy gathered his hatbox and travel bag against him and slipped his right hand inside his waistcoat.
The voice up top said, “We're not carrying no mail or anything but baggage.”
And another voice said, “Let's see if you can step off the boot with your hands in the air.”
Shit, Bren Early thought.
His revolvers were in his war-bag beneath his feet, stowed away so as not to upset the homely, twittery ladies, and, for the sake of comfort. What would anybody hope to get robbing this chicken coop? The only important stop between Benson and points west was Sweetmary, a mining town; and he doubted a tacky outfit like this stage line would be entrusted to deliver a payroll. No-he was sure of it, because there was just the driver on top, no armed guard with him, not even a helper. Cheap goddamn outfit.
A rider on a sorrel came up to the side of the coach, Bren seeing his pistol extended, a young cowboy face beneath an old curled-brim hat.
“You, mister,” the young rider said to the Dandy, “let me see your paws. All of you keep your paws out in plain sight.”
Another one, Bren Early was thinking. Practiced it and it sounded good. Times must be bad.
Looking past the sorrel Bren could see two more riders beyond the road in the scrub, and the driver standing by the front wheel now, a shotgun on the ground. The rider on the sorrel was squinting up at the baggage, nudging his horse closer. He dismounted then and opened the coach door to look in at the petrified ladies in velvet and the two gentlemen across from them. Someone behind the young rider yelled, “Pull that gear offa there!”
Making him do all the work while they sit back, Bren thought. Dumb kid. In bad company.
The young rider stepped up on the rung and into the door opening, reaching up to the baggage rack with both hands. His leather chaps, his gunbelt, his skinny trunk in a dirty cotton skirt were right there, filling the doorway. Bren thinking, He's too dumb to live long at his trade. Hoping the kid wasn't excitable. Let him get out of here with some of the ladies' trinkets and the Dandy's silver cane and think he's made a haul. Bren had three twenty-dollar gold pieces and some change he'd contribute to the cause. Get it done so they could get on with the ride.
Sitting back resigned, letting it happen, Bren wasn't prepared-he couldn't believe it-when the fifty-year-old Dandy made his move, hunching forward as he drew a nickle-plated pistol from inside his coat and shoved the gun at the exposed shirt-front in the doorway, pointing the barrel right where the young rider's shirttail was coming out of his pants as he reached above him.
Bren said, “No!” grabbing at the Dandy's left arm, the man wrenching away and coming back to swat him across the face with his silver-tipped cane-the son of a bitch, if that was the way he wanted it…Bren cocked his forearm and back-handed his fist and arm across the man's upper body. But too late. The nickle-plate jabbed into the shirtfront and went off with a report that rang loud in the wooden coach. The young rider cried out, hands in the air, and was gone. The women were screaming now and the Dandy was firing again-the little dude son of a bitch, maybe he had raised hell at the Wilderness with his Texas Brigade. He was raising hell now, snapping shots at the two riders until Bren Early backhanded him again, hard, giving himself room to get out of the coach.
He saw the young rider lying on the ground, the sorrel skitting away. He saw the driver kneeling, raising the shotgun and the two mounted men whipping their horses out of there with the twin sounds of the double-barrel reports, the riders streaking dust across the scrub waste, gone, leaving the young rider behind.
Kneeling over him, Bren knew the boy was dead before he touched his throat for a pulse. Dead in an old blood-stained shirt hanging out of his belt; converted Navy cap-and-ball lying in the dust next to him. Poor dumb kid, gone before he could learn anything. He heard the Dandy saying something.
“He's one of them.”
Bren Early looked up, seeing the driver coming over, reloading the shotgun.
“I had a feeling about him and, goddamn it, I was right,” the Dandy said. “He's the inside man. Tried to stop me.”
Bren said, “You idiot. You killed this boy for no reason.”
The driver was pointing his shotgun at him, saying, “Put your hands in the air.”
3
Sweetmary: June, 1889
Mr. and Mrs. Dana Moon got out of the Charles Crooker Hotel in Benson after two honeymoon nights in the bridal suite and coming down to breakfast to feel everybody in the dining room looking at them and the waitress grinning and saying, “Well, how are we this morning, just fine?” They loaded a buckboard with their gear, saddles, two trunks of linen, china and household goods, and took the old stage road west, trailing their horses. Why stay cooped up in somebody else's room when they had a new home in the mountains with an inside water pump and a view of practically the entire San pedro Valley?