Morgan glanced back to see the dust the stage was raising; it would be ten minutes yet. He watched an ant edging its way along the perpendicular side of one of the rocks that concealed him. It was carrying something white many times its own size. He watched the ant struggling; often it almost fell, but it never let go of its burden.
He whispered to it, “When you get home you’ll find it wasn’t worth the trouble, you damned fool!”
At last he heard the stage, the squeal of wheels, the whip crack and shout from the driver. It occurred to him suddenly that Kate was there, not a hundred yards away. He heard a steel rim scrape on rock. The lead team came into his field of vision, then the coach itself, Foss holding the reins with a boot up on the brake, Hutchinson, the messenger, with one hand braced behind him for balance and the shotgun ready in the other, leaning forward to try to see around the bend.
“Pull up and reach!” Calhoun bellowed, and fired into the air. Pony leaped out before the leaders, who bucked and plunged sideways. Hutchinson half rose as Pony ran around toward him, a six-shooter in either hand; Calhoun laid the Winchester on Foss.
“Throw it down, God damn you!” Pony shrilled, and Hutchinson pitched the shotgun away from him.
“Box down!” Calhoun said.
Foss had his hands raised shoulder-high, his foot on the brake, his eyes squinted against the sun. Hutchinson dragged the strongbox out. Morgan heard him grunt as he lifted and dropped it at Calhoun’s feet.
“Let’s see what the passengers got,” Calhoun said. He flung the door open, and jumped back with his rifle leveled. Pony dragged the box away from the coach.
Morgan eased his own Winchester forward a little and grimaced as the sun caught fire along the barrel. He framed the door of the coach in the cleft of the rear sight, and gently raised the front sight blade beneath it. The blade danced, suddenly, as he saw Kate’s face sharply outlined in the window. A man in a black hat squeezed out the door and dropped lightly to the ground, raising his hands.
Morgan stared at the man’s face down his sights. It was a Cletus clearly enough, a tougher, meaner, harder version of Bob Cletus; he felt a weakening run through him and tensed his body against it as though he were clenching a fist. He lowered the sights to the man’s shirt front. Kate appeared, a white hand on the door frame, her head bent down so that her hat hid her face.
He stroked the trigger. The rifle jarred in his hands; the coach was obscured in smoke. Ragged and shrill through the crash of the Winchester came the scream, and through the smoke he saw Cletus pitch forward with his broad-brimmed hat rolling free like a cartwheel. A Colt fell from his outstretched hand. Kate jerked back inside the coach. One of the leaders bucked up, hoofs boxing the air, and there was a chorus of yells. Then suddenly the coach was moving, and Foss was thrown back hard upon the seat. Hutchinson ducked down and turned, and, a Colt appearing in his hand, fired at Pony — smoke drifting from the muzzle an instant before the sound of the report. Calhoun raised his rifle and fired, levered and fired again, and Hutchinson slumped. Now Foss was standing and his long whip cracked out alongside the leaders. The stage fled, the door slamming open and shut and Kate’s face showing once again in the window as the coach ran out of Morgan’s view, with a loose tarpaulin flapping over the boot.
Calhoun fired again, and then he and Benner stood gazing after the coach. Presently Pony went over to where Cletus lay, and, thrusting at his shoulder with a boot, turned him on his back. Neither of them glanced up to where Morgan lay hidden. They bickered over Cletus’s body for a while, went through his pockets, and then Pony went out of sight at a run. He reappeared, leading the horses. In a flurry of activity they raised and lashed the strongbox to the saddle of one, mounted, and started down the valley at speed.
Morgan sighed. The sun felt very warm on his back; his face was wet. He rose, stretched, untied the bandanna and wiped his face with it, staring down at the body sprawled on the ground below him, boots twisted together, arms outstretched and the glisten of red on the white shirt front. He felt the excitement slipping away.
He leaned on one of the rocks that had concealed him, and watched the high, tan plume run down the valley. Now he could also see the coach rolling slowly up the long grade toward the rim — the driver still standing and his whip arm working mechanically. Then he looked down at the dead man again. He wondered where Kate had had to go to find him.
“Damn you, Kate,” he said aloud. “Why can’t you leave a thing alone? It is done.” He said it as though he were pleading with her, but half-humorously; it caught in his throat. “It is done,” he said again, as though saying it could make it so.
Finally he turned away from the man he had killed. He made his way without haste back along the ridge and down the canyon where he had tied his horse. He buried the Winchester and the canvas jacket, and, in his black broadcloth, rode back along the stage road to Warlock. Before he reached town he cut over to the north side, where he left the horse in Basine’s little corral, and walked to the Glass Slipper.
As he entered through the alley he saw Lew Taliaferro’s dark, mole-spotted face watching him from the alley door of the Lucky Dollar. He tipped his hat and grinned, and would have spoken, but Taliaferro’s face disappeared and the door closed. He was still grinning when he went in through the back door of the Glass Slipper, and stripped off his dusty clothes and began to wash. But he should, he thought, have been more careful, especially since Taliaferro was down one faro dealer named Wax to him. Still, he knew, his luck was good. His luck would stand as long as he believed in it.
11. MAIN STREET
THE Bright’s City coach turned into Main Street with its body swinging far over on the thoroughbraces, the team running scared, and the coach sucking a whirlwind of dust behind it. It came fast down the street with the driver yelling, the popper of the whip snapping out alongside the lead team, and the shotgun messenger swaying on his seat with a hand clasped to his shoulder.
Schroeder, walking along before the Glass Slipper, stopped and stared. Then he spat his chew of tobacco into the street and vaulted the rail, coming down hard in the dust with his knees buckling. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted at Chick Hasty, who was standing in his dirty canvas apron before Goodpasture’s store, “Chick! Get the posse together! Get Pike!”
Hasty went around the corner toward the Acme Corral at a run. “The Doc!” Foss, the driver, yelled, standing now as he set the brake. The coach skidded and slowed, and came to a stop before the Assay Office, the lathered, muddy horses crowding and shifting together. Foss leaped down, and, with Schroeder’s assistance, helped down Hutchinson, whose sleeve was soaked with blood. They sat him on the rail; holding him, Foss said, “Threw down on us at Road Agent Rock. Shot a passenger, and the team took out, so we run for it.”
A crowd began to collect, men running up from all directions. Old Man Parsons halted his team of mules at the corner of Southend Street and Carl yelled at him, “Old Man, you are deputized. We are going out instanter!”
“One of them was Pony Benner, I hope to spit!” Hutchinson said, leaning limply against a post. The doctor came up, panting, his valise slapping against his leg as he ran; he and Sam Brown helped Hutchinson into the Assay Office.
The door of the coach opened and the pale face of a drummer appeared, his sidewhiskers standing out like the fur of a scared cat. He descended, followed by Pusey, the bank clerk, and they both turned to hand a woman down. She looked like a sporting woman, in her fancy clothes, but she did not carry herself like one, and the men on the boardwalk greeted her politely. Her face was chalk white beneath a hat covered with black cherries. Her eyes were black, her nose long and straight, her mouth reddened with rouge. There was a crescent-shaped court-plaster beauty mark at the corner of her mouth.