But there was no time to dwell on the condition of the shot man. The second of the three riders was sweeping down on Longarm. He was the man who had been riding abreast of the coach. His path was almost straight south, bringing him directly at Longarm. Longarm knew he’d better drop the man in a hurry because he was in an ideal position to hit one of his mules. He sighted on the rider when he was still a full three hundred yards away and fired once, levered, fired again, saw the man sag in his saddle and drop his rifle, and held up as the rider tried to stay in the saddle and direct his horse away from Longarm and his mules. Longarm could not chance it. He waited patiently till the man came within fifty yards, and then zeroed in on the man’s chest and shot him out of the saddle. It was not the kind of act he was given to, but odds were the man wouldn’t have made it anyway, wounded and with no help available out on the big prairie. He swept past the man, who was no more than ten yards away, lying on his side. He could see it was the pudgy man, the one they had called Frank. That meant that the remaining rider was the smallest of the three. It would make him the hardest to hit.
Longarm glanced ahead. He could see that the third man had taken a lesson from what had happened to his two companions. He was riding south, away from the coach, but he was not closing toward Longarm. Instead Longarm heard him fire and saw the smoke and heard the sound of the bullet. The man was firing at his mules. There was no doubt about it. Longarm looked ahead. He was rapidly catching up to the coach. It could not have been more than a half a mile ahead. The wounded mule was still going strong, and neither animal seemed to have been bothered by the gunshots. He saw the man, riding parallel to him, raise up for another shot. With a quick move Longarm reached up with the coach whip in his left hand and slapped the near leader on the left side of his face. The team instantly veered to the right.
The riding suddenly got rougher, but it completely took the rider by surprise. He had been shooting from a comfortable distance, and now all of a sudden, his quarry had turned into the hunter and was racing toward him at a fearsome speed. Longarm got his rifle up to his shoulder and waited. He saw the rider wheel his horse and start back toward the coach. It was too long a shot to try to hit the man. The distance was easily three hundred yards. Longarm led the man a trifle and fired. He hoped to hit the man but he knew, more likely, that he was going to hit the horse. He hated it, but there was no choice.
An instant after he fired he saw the horse stumble, but the rider pulled him back up by the reins. Longarm’s rifle was empty. Watching the rider, he felt down in the tub until he located the box of cartridges and then rapidly loaded three into the chamber. He cocked the rifle with the lever action and then sighted down on the man, who was now riding away from him. It was a quartering shot, but he had a good piece of the man’s back to shoot at. He fired and saw the man slump forward in the saddle. He quickly levered in another cartridge and fired again. This time the horse went down hard, landing almost on his head and rolling over. The man was not flung free.
But Longarm had no time to observe his handiwork. He had to get the mules pointed back north. He figured they’d covered a half mile running almost due east. With his right hand he reached forward with the coach whip and lightly tapped the off leader on the right cheek. The team swerved around to the left, although not quite enough. He pulled on the left reins, and the team swung into the tracks of the coach. He was close enough now that he could see into the interior of the stage even though it was shaded by the canvas covering. Since they’d let him off someone had put down the canvas on both sides. From his distance he peered into the coach, but couldn’t make out any figures. He supposed that the doctor was driving the stage. There were no trailing horses to indicate that a fourth man had joined them. He supposed it was the three men who had killed the driver and the guard. Likely they had thought it necessary, though, Longarm thought grimly, they most likely wouldn’t have agreed that their own deaths were necessary. He didn’t feel so bad about shooting the wounded bandit when he thought of the unnecessary killing of the guard and driver.
He was rapidly overtaking the stage—too rapidly. He saw a wink of light from inside the shaded stage and heard a wind-shattering shot go over his head. Someone from inside was firing at him. He had to assume it was Rita Ann. She was probably shooting at him with his own derringer since, so far as he knew, they did not have a rifle. He immediately swung the team out to the left. The mules pulling the coach were struggling to make it up the grade, barely able to keep a trot. But Longarm’s mules, with their light load, paid it scarcely any mind. He kept going left until he was a full hundred yards to the side of the coach. The going was rougher, but it was better than getting a mule shot.
With every step his team was gaining on the coach. Soon he was near enough that he could see a small part of the figure up on the driver’s seat. As he had expected it was the doctor. As he drew abreast of the coach, the doctor shot him a frantic look and pulled a revolver out of his pants. With his right hand he fired across his body, snapping off two quick shots. They were well wide, and at such a distance there was little chance of the doctor being able to do much damage with a revolver. But Longarm didn’t want to leave even that much to chance. He calculated they didn’t have much further to go to the relay station, and he wanted control of the stage before they got there. Regretfully he took up his rifle and aimed toward the stage. He had the pleasure of seeing the doctor throw his arm over his head and duck down.
But Longarm wasn’t going to shoot the doctor. Unfortunately, he was necessary to the capture of Carl Lowe. Racing along parallel to the coach Longarm sighted carefully, and shot the near leader in the head. The mule dropped instantly, causing the other nine mules to become entangled in the harness and each other and bringing the stage to an almost immediate stop. Longarm drove on, dropping them a safe distance behind him. He could see mules kicking and rearing in the traces and see the fool of a doctor standing up in the driver’s box and lashing at them with the reins as if they were supposed to untangle themselves, get rid of the dead mule, and start up again.
Longarm, using just the reins, was able to circle his team back to his right. He drove a big arc around the stage, watching the doctor, watching the back to see if Rita got out, watching to see if there was anyone on board with a rifle. He knew they had a shotgun because the guard carried one, but he wasn’t worried about a shotgun.
And now was to come the hardest part of his trip as he circled behind the stage and commenced to once again come up on the coach’s left. He was going to have to bring his team to a stop, and he wasn’t sure he altogether knew how to do that. It was going to require some serious cooperation from the mules, and he wasn’t sure that such a commodity existed in a mule.
With the mules going in an easy lope, he got hold of the reins and untied them from his gunbelt to have better control, then gradually began to apply backward pressure. To his amazement the mules responded almost as if they weren’t half wild and crazy. By the time he came abreast of the stage they were at a slow walk, and with just a little more pressure he brought them to a halt.
After more than two hours of speeding along in the bathtub, the sensation of being motionless was nearly confusing. Most of him still felt like he was moving, though it was plain to his eyes and his senses that he had stopped. He looked off across the desert, through the shimmering heat, at the coach. He calculated it was about a hundred yards away, perhaps a little less. There was no sign of the doctor or Rita Ann, or anyone else for that matter. The mules pulling the stage had quieted down and were simply standing, snarled in the harness, most of them with their heads down, their flanks heaving. His own mules were standing restlessly, stamping a foot now and again and mouthing their bits around. He kept a little back pressure in their mouths to let them know that he was content to be stopped for the time being.