Using a bow, Delshay stood up, drew the string back, then let the arrow fly. He and the others watched it flash quickly through the air. It hit the man in the back, right between the shoulder blades. The arrow did not drop him, though, and he spun around with a surprised and pained expression on his face, reaching around, trying to grab the arrow, trying to pull it out. Looking up, he saw Delshay and the other Apaches standing no more than fifty yards away.
“Martha! Injuns!” He shouted. He started back toward the house but, with the need for silence gone, Delshay and the others opened up on him with rifles. He went down before he made it to the back porch.
From inside the house, they heard a scream.
Jumping up, Delshay ran toward the house with the others close behind.
“Mama, what—” The young boy’s call was cut off by the sound of a gunshot.
Delshay leaped over the body of the rancher, then ran up the steps and burst through the kitchen door. He stopped in surprise at what he saw. There, lying on the floor, was a boy who looked to be about six or seven. His eyes were open, but unseeing. There was a hole in his forehead, from which a small trickle of blood oozed.
A woman was sitting on the floor next to the boy. Her eyes were wide in fright and she was holding a pistol to her temple.
“Woman, why did you kill the boy?” Delshay asked.
The woman didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled the trigger and blood, bone, and brain sprayed out from the entry wound. Her arm dropped to her side, the pistol clattered to the floor, and she fell over against the body of her son.
“She killed herself,” Chandeisi said, stating the obvious. “She killed herself and her child.”
“Yes,” Delshay replied.
“But I don’t understand. Why did she do that?”
“It is what white women are told to do,” Delshay said. Stepping over the body, he grabbed a handful of bacon and a biscuit and shoved it in his mouth.
Along the Maricopa-to-Phoenix road
Pogue Willis was sitting on a rock eating cold beans from a can. Burt Philbin had climbed up onto the ledge a little earlier and was looking toward the south. Deermont Cantrell and Billy Meechum were playing a game of mumblety-peg, and Abe Oliver had walked over into a little patch of woods to relieve himself.
“Hey, Pogue, I can see the dust,” Philbin called down. “The stage is a-comin’.”
Willis took the last mouthful of beans, wiped the spoon clean on his shirt, then stuck it in his pocket. He tossed the can over his shoulder and it landed with a soft clanking sound. He stood up and brushed his hands together.
“Come on down, Philbin,” Willis called. “Meechum, Cantrell, Oliver, you three get over here.”
Meechum, Cantrell, and Oliver came over to join Willis as Philbin came down from the ridge.
“Now, do all of you have it straight as to what each one of you is goin’ to do?” Willis asked.
“Yeah,” Philbin said. “We pull a log across the road to stop the stage. When it stops, you and Meechum will be up here on the rock keepin’ an eye open while I brace the driver and shotgun guard and Oliver and Cantrell pull all the folks out of the coach. We’ll take whatever money they got, plus the money pouch.”
“Right,” Willis said. “Any questions?”
“Yeah, I got a question,” Oliver said. “You ain’t never said how much money you think this here coach will be carryin’?”
“Who knows how much it’s carryin’?” Willis answered. “That ain’t nothin’ you can ever tell till you open the money pouch and look.”
“Yeah, but how much do you think?”
“How much money you got now?” Willis asked.
“About half a dollar,” Oliver answered.
“More than likely the coach is carryin’ more than half a dollar,” Willis said, and the others laughed.
“Look here, Oliver, you don’t want to do this, you just ride on out of there now and I’ll take your share,” Philbin teased.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t goin’ to do this.”
“Yeah, I thought you might come around.”
“All right, enough talkin’. Get the log across the road,” Willis said. “Ever’one get ready.”
Aboard the Sun Valley stagecoach
The team was pulling the coach down a slight downgrade so that the coach was moving at a fairly brisk pace. The driver, Moses Turner, was handling the ribbons with a very delicate touch.
Hal “Pinkie” Floyd, the shotgun guard, saw it first.
“Moses!” he said. “Look up! There’s somethin’ a-layin’ across the road up there.”
“Damn. It’s a log,” Moses said as he started hauling back on the reins. “It wasn’t there this morning. How did it get there? There ain’t no trees nearby to fall across the road like that.”
“I don’t know,” Pinkie said. “But I sure don’t like the looks of it.” Pinkie picked up the shotgun, broke it down to make certain it was loaded, then snapped it back and held it, barrels up, with the butt on the seat right beside him.
“Whoa!” Moses called to the team. He put his foot on the brake as the coach slowed to a stop.
“Son of a bitch! It’s a holdup!” Pinkie said as three masked riders appeared on the road. He raised his shotgun to his shoulder.
Chapter Sixteen
There were six passengers in the coach: Bixby, Cynthia, Hendel, Matt, a whiskey drummer, and a young man who was returning to school at Tempe Normal. Matt was napping when he heard a loud shout, then the unmistakable discharge of a double-barrel shotgun as well as several pistol shots.
Matt awoke with a start.
“Oh, what is it?” Cynthia asked, her voice edged with fear.
Though Matt hadn’t seen anything, when he heard gunshots and loud guttural voices outside, he surmised at once what was going on. He loosened the pistol in his holster.
A masked man’s head suddenly appeared in the window. He stuck a gun inside.
“Ever’one out of the coach!” he shouted.
“See here! What is this?” Bixby shouted indignantly as he stepped down from the coach. “Do you know who I am?”
“You are the man I’m robbin’,” the gunman replied. He brought his pistol down sharply over Bixby’s head. Bixby groaned and fell back against the coach, though he didn’t fall down.
“Jay!” Cynthia cried out in alarm.
“Anybody else?” the gunman challenged. “Maybe you folks didn’t hear me when I said everyone get out of the coach.”
Another gunman came around to join the first. He was also wearing a mask.
“Philbin’s dead,” the second gunman said. “The shotgun guard killed him.”
“We get the money pouch?”
“We’ll clean these folks out first,” the second gunman said. He took off his hat. “Folks, what I want you to do is pretend you are in church and the plate is being passed. I want you to put all your money and valuables in this here hat. If you try and hold out on me, I’ll shoot you. We’ll start with you, mister,” he said to Bixby, who, though streaks of blood were sliding down from the wound on top of his head, had managed to stay on his feet.
Bixby took out his wallet and put it in the hat.
“Your pocket watch, too.”
Grumbling, Bixby disconnected his watch from his vest and dropped that in the hat as well.
“Hurry up down there!” someone called from the top of a large rock. Glancing up, Matt saw two masked men standing up there, looking down at the proceedings.
“We’re hurryin’, we’re hurryin’,” the gunman with the hat said.
“That bauble you’re wearin’ around your neck looks real pretty there,” the robber said to Cynthia. “But it’s goin’ to look even prettier in my hat.” He giggled at his own joke.