Too late, I realized I had not tied Kepi’s hands. That was my mistake. Somehow he must have wormed his way out from under the leather reins wrapping him to the tree & then undone the belt around his ankles. He had also taken his socks out of his mouth.
It only took me an instant to realize this. But in that same moment, my pa whirled around & pulled out his small revolver.
‘No!’ cried Kepi. ‘Chance– ’
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Before he could say more, my Pa’s revolver spat out three .32 caliber balls.
The Reb Road Agent stared down at three little holes & a dark stain spreading on his pale jacket right below the heart. The shots were still echoing in the mountains around us.
‘You shot me,’ he said, and then repeated. ‘You shot me!’
He said it with a half-smile, like he could not believe it had really happened.
He kind of sat down on the ground. Then he fell back onto the carpet of pine needles & stared up at the stars. His kepi had fallen off. He had curly hair.
‘Look at them stars,’ he said. ‘So many. Sparkling like little bitty silver ingots.’ Then he spoke no more.
I looked at my pa. ‘You killed him, Pa. You killed him dead.’
In the moonlight Pa looked deathly pale. ‘He might of hurt you,’ he said, staring at the corpse. ‘He might have hurt you.’
Over by the pine tree, a movement caught our eyes.
The leather traces binding Slouch to the pine had been loosened by his pard wriggling free. Slouch would have got free, too, but his bare right foot was tangled in one of the reins I had used to tie him. His hands were still bound behind him up & the socks were still sticking out of his mouth & his eyes were bugging out, too, as he stared wildly at us.
Pa sucked in a deep breath & picked up the double-barrelled shotgun from where it lay & went over to the tree.
Before I could say or do anything, Pa blasted him at point blank range.
BANG!
Slouch slammed against the tree & then slid down in a sitting position & then slumped forward, as dead as his friend.
‘Pa!’ I cried. ‘Why did you do that? We could have just left him tied up for the Law to collect. Or we could have made him show us where they have their shebang.’
‘He was about to get loose,’ said Pa. ‘Like that one.’ He pointed to Kepi with his chin. ‘Plus, after a trial they would have hung him by the neck till dead. It was a mercy I was showing him. Also, they are wanted Dead or Alive. Come on,’ he said, tossing the now empty shotgun aside. ‘Let us get those silver-laden horses out of here and find their shebang.’
I felt queasy. The champagne, which had been making me happy five minutes before, had turned sour in my gut. The high moon which had been smiling on our dance now seemed cold and distant. In its pale light I saw a gaping black wound in Slouch’s chest.
I felt like I might vomit up the jerky I had eaten a while earlier so I turned away.
Pa’s stomach was not as strong as mine. Over in the trees, he was being sick. I reckon he had not shot a man in a few years what with being behind a desk so much.
He wiped his mouth with his C.P. handkerchief & without speaking, he led the silver-laden stagecoach horses up towards the road.
I spotted the Reb Road Agents’ mounts further up in the black shadows of some pines. I untied them and chose the smaller one to ride. She was a little bay with a stringy tail. I put Kepi’s Henry Rifle in a saddle loop. I had to hike up my daffodil-yellow Merino wool dress underneath my belted sacque just so I could get my leg over her back. Thankfully, the velvet sacque covered my legs to just below the knees; it was getting real cold. I was shivery.
Taking the other Reb horse by the reins, I rode after Pa who was trudging the silver-laden stage-coach horses back up the steep mountainside. I glanced back once to see the still form of Kepi lying on his back in the dying firelight. I could not even see poor blasted Slouch. He was lost in the inky shadows.
Up by the road, I found Pa untying his big gray gelding.
He took a crude halter that the now-deceased Reb Road Agents had fixed over the head of the lead pack-horse & swung up into the saddle & set off west.
With Pa leading and me following, we had a convoy of nine horses, viz: the six stage horses, the two Reb horses & pa’s gelding. They were strung out in a line, moving between tall black pine trees on the moon-washed wagon road.
We rode in silence. In my head, I kept seeing my Pa shoot those two Reb Road Agents. They had tried to kill me, but I still felt bad they were dead.
I thought of Kepi with his bare feet & curly hair & wondering expression on his face as he looked up at the little bitty silver ingot stars.
I thought of Slouch with his eyes bugged out in terror & that black sucking wound in his chest. I wished I had not put a sock in his mouth. Maybe he could have begged Pa to give him a chance, like Kepi had.
I did not even know their real names.
That picture in my head should have turned my stomach sour but I was hungry again. Also, my legs were cold. I wished I had my soft long underwear & my buckskin trowsers & my pink flannel shirt & my blue woollen coat & my nice slouch hat that kept my ears warm. Then I thought of poor dead Kepi & Slouch & Ray & Dizzy. They were all four dead and cold by now. I reckoned I was lucky to be alive and should not be complaining, even in my head. I had been colder than this in my life. I guess living in a boarding house with a feather bed had made me soft.
We had gone barely a mile when the moon showed me a lightning-blasted pine tree on the left hand side of the road and a meadow beyond & below it.
‘Pa?’ I said. ‘See that tree and that meadow? That might be where they stashed the loot.’
‘By God, ye got good eyes,’ he said. ‘Do ye want to lead the way?’
I nudged my little bay mare forward. I could tell straightaway that she knew the path, so I gave her the reins and let her find the best footing.
‘My horse knows the way, Pa,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I reckon that is proof we are on the right track.’
‘Good thinking,’ he said. He sent the silver-bearing stage-coach horses down the track after me & took up the rear.
From time to time the moonlight showed me a path marked by scuffed pine needles and bare earth, but mostly I gave the bay mare free rein to guide us. She led me & Pa & those six heavy-laden horses along the edge of the meadow, close to the trees. All sudden-like, she turned left and passed between two towering pines and we were in another moonlit clearing with a cave like a gaping black mouth in the steep hillside straight ahead.
I smelled an old fire & saw some empty oyster cans & bottles off to one side & a pile of firewood & maybe a latrine pit. Over to the left I heard the gurgling of a brook. I reckoned this was the camp of the Dead Road Agents & that cave was their shebang.
My little bay mare was suddenly pulled up short. The lead horse behind her had stopped. He was snorting & tossing his head & as I had roped his halter to my pommel it made me stop too.
Behind me, the other pack horses started whinnying & snorting & I could hear Pa cussing in Scottish.
I smelled something faintly rank that always makes me think of my Indian Ma on account of she used to make hair pomade out of bear fat.
Now I knew why the horses were spooked.
And why they called it Grizzly Gulch.
Read on...
I must have passed out because everything went black for a time.
When I came to, I found myself still falling through the night.
Yes! I was still falling.
But I did not splat.
This confused me.
Then I had a notion of what was happening.
I was suspended between Glory and the Fiery Place!
I had tried to be a Good Methodist but now all my sins came rushing back into my memory, viz: I had killed a man & told lies & played poker & tried whiskey once & a Pousse Lamour cocktail another time & ignored every single one of my foster ma’s dying wishes. Also I had pranked the people of Virginia City for over nine months, making them believe I was a boy not a gal.
That might have been the worst sin of all, for they were my friends.
I reckon I was in a place called Limbo.
Methodists do not believe in that place, but Mr. Hazard O’Toole at the Shamrock Saloon across from my office is Catholic. He told me all about it.
He told me that Limbo is where you go to wait while the angels plead your case and the imps of the Fiery Place accuse you.
Gradually, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I perceived that I was not in Limbo. I was still in the high Sierras, surrounded by the looming black shapes of whispering pines. Why had I not splatted onto the ground?
Was I dreaming?
My arms were hanging limp. I moved my right hand over to pinch my left.
I pinched hard.
It hurt.
That meant I was not dreaming.
Then I realized that I was kind of tipped forward. I could feel something tugging my underarms & the seams of my coat sleeves straining tight. Someone was holding me up.
Someone… or something!
I knew there were bears in these mountains. Was it a man-eating grizzly bear holding me aloft?
If a prey animal is in trouble, he does one of three things.
No. 1 – He fights
No. 2 – He runs away
No. 3 – He freezes, so that he will not be seen or so that his enemy will think he is dead.
I could not fight. And I could not run away. So decided to use method No. 3 and ‘play possum’. Maybe the grizzly bear holding me up thought I was dead. Maybe he was not hungry enough to devour me in my velvet sacque & yellow-straw lighthouse bonnet with its silk flowers & ribbon & ruffles.
I must have been dazed with terror to imagine such a foolish thing. By and by I realized it could not be a grizzly bear holding me so still. Or even a person.
It was one of them whispering pines.
Yes, I was caught by tree.
My velvet and fur-trimmed sacque must have puffed out as I fell through the air and got caught on a branch.
There was no sound except the wind in the pines and further off the jingling and snorting of horses.
The horses! Had they survived? What about Ray, who had been up on the driver’s box with me?
If only I could see!
I reached my arms up over my head and after some groping I clasped on to the branch holding me. I could feel it through the satin-lined velvet fabric of the sacque which was straining under my weight.
It felt brittle and prickly, like an old branch. A dead branch.
Crack!
That was the sound I heard as I found myself tipped forward a little more. My efforts to free myself had caused the branch that was holding me to bounce up and down a little. It was going to break and send me hurtling to the rocky gorge three thousand feet below!
I considered yelling for help but then I reasoned that the only other people for miles around were two Road Agents and one Pinkerton detective, viz: Mr. Ray G. Tempest. The road agents might be nearby. And the Pinkerton detective was probably dead.
So instead of yelling, I sent up an arrow prayer to the Lord.
‘Dear Lord,’ I prayed, ‘please forgive me for pranking my friends and help me to be a good girly-girl, if that is your desire. Only save me in my moment of need! Amen.’
As if in answer to my prayer, some pearly white rays poked up through the inky black branches of a pine tree below me. Those rays were like the halo of a saint, all fanned out. A moment later a light shone in my face. It was the moon, rising in the east and shining up through the gulch.
That blessed moonlight showed me that it was indeed the branch of a fir tree holding me.
I looked down.
Hallelujah! I was only about six feet off the ground.
(But I still might have broke my neck if that branch had not caught me.)
The next question was: how to get down?
Crack!
I could use the weakness of the branch.
I flapped my arms to make the branch bob up and down.
CRACK!
My plan worked. I fell the six feet but landed awkwardly on account of I was wearing those button-up boots and not my usual moccasins. The ground was padded with pine needles, which cushioned my fall, but it also sloped gently down so I rolled a few times. The prickly savior branch dug into my back but thankfully it did not pierce the daffodil-yellow frock nor break my skin.
I got up on my hands & knees and straightened my wig & bonnet & pulled the branch out from under my sacque.
Hallelujah! My little 4-shot Muff Deringer was still firmly in the hidden pocket. I took it out & cocked it & crept down towards the sound I had heard earlier, viz: the sound of horses snorting & voices in the pines.
I am used to sneaking in the dark & when I put my mind to it I can go over crispy leaves & crunchy pine needles without making a sound. I crept forward, as silent as a cat on a velvet cushion.
Presently I came to where I could see the flickering yellow light of a fire.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Here is the picture the golden firelight & the silvery moonlight showed me:
One papier maché torso wearing a pink shawl & a flower-bedecked sunhat on her watermelon head & balanced on the ground as if sitting before the fire with her back to me.
Two Reb Road Agents sitting at the fire facing the dummy & also me & reading letters.
Three wheels scattered in various places around them.
Some pieces of a busted up old Concord Stage & a tangle of reins & a whippletree & some other tackle lying between me and the Reb Road Agents.
Seven letter-sacks sitting near them.
Eight horses standing whole and unharmed, loosely tethered a pine.
Seventy-eight gleaming bricks of silver piled up beside the fire.
This is what that picture told me:
The stagecoach had crashed but the whippletree had broke loose from the singletree & all the horses had survived. I could see the drop was not as steep as I had feared, though it was still enough to cause the coach to roll over a couple of times and break up, probably on account of the heavy silver bars inside. The Reb Road Agents had obviously come upon the site of the wreck as they pursued us. They had seized all the silver bars and were now relaxing.
I could see no sign of Ray.
I reckoned he was dead.
The decoy stage full of guards and also my pa riding behind were probably ten miles further along the road. Maybe more.
I was on my own.
I focused all my attention on the Reb Road Agents. The one with the slouch hat was older. He was smoking a pipe & reading a letter. The one with the kepi was younger. He was swigging from a bottle of champagne & reading a letter. I noticed they had an open letter-sack beside them.
I wormed forward to the trunk of the tree closest to their fire.
I was close enough to hear them talking.
‘Hey, darlin,’ said Kepi to the dressmaker’s dummy. ‘Listen to this: Dear Ma, It is Bonanza here on the Comstock. They struck it rich in the front ledge in Gold Hill the other day. Tell little Pete and Edward they must come and join me. I have got a job working for the Yellow Jacket mine. It is hot and tiring but I get four dollars a day and I have feet. Give Betty my love and tell her she will not have to wait much longer.’ He took a swig of champagne & then he tossed the letter into the flames.
‘Hey!’ I got a good one, said Slouch. ‘It is a love letter from a gal to her betrothed: Oh Roderick I count the hours until I see you again.’ He was making his voice all high like a lady’s. ‘I have not heard from you in three weeks and I fear you have stopped caring for your sweet Elspeth. Are the girls prettier in Frisco? Please write to me, dear one!’
He also tossed his letter in the fire.
I was outraged. They were burning letters from sons to their mothers & lonely gals to their sweethearts!
Silver could be replaced, but not letters.
I had to stop them!
But how?
Read on!
I had been looking over the edge but now I turned to look ahead. Sure enough, there in the gloaming were two men standing either side of the road.
‘Halt!’ they cried, and both put up their hands, palms forward, in the universal gesture that means stop. They wore butternut-colored uniforms which meant they were Confederate soldiers, AKA Rebs.
I swore under my breath, using language unfit for publication.
Pa’s Plan had failed.
‘Don’t cuss!’ said Dizzy out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Remember, you are supposed to be a helpless little girl. It is our only chance.’
He was right! If I played a convincing girly-girl, they might take pity on us & let us go & we could get the silver to safety. Then we could alert Pa and the guards in the other stage of their whereabouts.
The team slowed and stopped. I noticed Dizzy did not push the footbrake forward.
‘Good evening, y’all,’ drawled one of the men. He held a Henry rifle and wore a small, round, slope-top hat with a visor. I think folk call it a ‘kepi’.
Kepi said, ‘I am gonna have to ask you not to make any sudden-like moves.’ His rifle was pointing at Dizzy.
‘Heck, you don’t want to bother with us.’ Dizzy’s voice cracked a little. ‘It is only me and my little girl here and some children back from a picnic. You can see their sleeping schoolmarm there in the window. Surely you will let us pass?’
The reins in his left hand were trembling but I felt strangely calm. Maybe it was because I could not see the Road Agents clearly. Or maybe it was because they sounded so polite.
I reckoned I should play the part of a little girly-girl.
‘Grandpa?’ I said in my high girly voice. ‘Are those men going to rob us?’
‘Not if you cow operate,’ said the other man. He wore a slouch hat & his voice was deeper than Kepi’s.
He cocked his piece and said, ‘My pard is just gonna have a little peek inside your coach while I cover you. Y’all seem to be riding pretty low, like you are maybe carrying a lot of silver.’
‘We ain’t got nothing of value,’ said Dizzy. ‘Just them kiddies, like I said.’
While they were talking, I had started to sneak my gloved right hand inside the secret pocket of my sacque to get at my Muff Deringer.
‘Hands where we can see them, Missy,’ said Kepi politely.
I froze. Then I took my (empty) hands out of my sacque.
‘Raise ’em high,’ said Slouch.
I could not believe this was happening. Did I not look girly enough?
I had to convince them! But how?
I reckoned a girly-girl would whimper.
‘Oh, grandpa,’ I quavered. ‘They are going to kill us!’
‘Cheese it, brat!’ growled Slouch Hat. He pointed his big revolver at me.
So much for the Reb Road Agents having a soft spot for little girls!
The one with the Kepi was about three paces from the stagecoach when Dizzy grabbed his black leather whip & yelled, ‘Hi-yi!’
Three things happened real quick.
No. 1 – With a report like that of a gun being fired, Dizzy’s whip knocked the Henry rifle right out of Kepi’s hands.
No. 2. – Our team of horses started moving.
No. 3. – The man wearing the Slouch Hat shot Dizzy with his big Army revolver.
BANG!
Dizzy did not make a noise. He only slumped against me. The reins started to slide through his gloved fingers.
Quick as a streak of chalk, I grabbed the reins. ‘Hi-yi!’ I cried, and gave them a flick. ‘G’lang! G’lang, you sons of blanks!’
By the side of the road, Kepi looked up from where he was scrabbling to recover his rifle. He rolled out of the way just in time to avoid getting trampled.
The horses had to strain to get the heavy coach moving. They seemed to be wading through winter molasses.
‘Come on, you sons of blanks!’ I bellowed again. I was leaning way over to the left on account of Dizzy was slumped against my right side.
We had just passed the road agents when something batted my bonnet forward & Dizzy jerked against me & at the same time I heard three more loud reports.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
They had shot him again!
I flicked the reins & yelled, ‘Git!’
I forgot to say ‘G’lang!’ and ‘Hi-yi!’ but the horses were moving faster now. I reckon the shots had spooked them as much as my hollering and cussing. We finally crested the hump in the road and were heading downhill. Now the six steeds were running at top speed. It was almost dark and the tall black pine trees either side blotted out the purple sky. I have eyes about as sharp as a telescope but even a telescope cannot see at night. I could hardly make out the road ahead.
I had to trust the horses, like Dizzy had told me.
I kept hold of the ribbons but let them go slack.
Yes, I gave those horses free rein.
The team curved left, following the road, and the curve made Dizzy slump against me even more.
I could hardly breath & I was in danger of being crushed by his bulk so I gave him a little shove. But I must have pushed too hard for now he was slumped way over to the right, leaning over the side and in danger of tumbling out!
I held the reins in my left hand and grabbed at Dizzy’s sleeve with my right.
I caught the cuff of his jacket sleeve just in time!
I knew if his jacket cuff slipped out of my grasp he would tumble over the side of the stage and off the mountain!
I needed help.
‘Ray!’ I cried. ‘Help!’
No answer.
I used all my lungs to holler, ‘RAY!’
‘Wha?’ came his slurred voice from down below. ‘Wha’s happening?’
‘The Reb Road Agents struck! They shot Dizzy. I think he might be dead.’
The horses were going fast now.
Too fast.
I reckon they were spooked.
There was a bend coming up with a three thousand foot drop on the right-hand side.
‘Help!’ I cried. ‘Ray! PA!’
(I do not know why I shouted for Pa as he was about an hour ahead of us.)
As we took the bend, the coach listed to the right. I reckon if we had not been carrying a ton of silver we would have been driving on two wheels.
Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw Dizzy twitch. Then his sleeve was jerked from my fingers.
He flew out of the driver’s box & went sailing into the thin air above that three thousand foot drop.
Then he was gone.
A moment later, Ray’s head appeared beside the coach! He was hatless and his red bandana was pulled down around his neck. He was clinging to the slender iron railing around the roof!
‘What happened to Dizzy?’ I cried.
‘Dead weight,’ he shouted back. ‘Thought it was better to ditch him.’
‘He might of still been alive!’
‘Whoa!’ cried Ray. ‘Slow her down!’
He was still hanging off the side of the coach. Even with all those silver bars as ballast I was pretty sure I felt the two left wheels lift off the ground for a moment!
‘Get up on top!’ I hollered. ‘You are throwing the stage off balance. It will fall over and we will be kilt!’
‘Stop the coach!’ he cried. ‘We cannot outrun them.’
He gave himself a heave & was suddenly up in the box beside me.
He tried to pull the reins from my hands but I held on tight.
‘Don’t!’ I cried. ‘They are spooked but they know this road.’
‘Let go, you d-mn blank!’ He called me a bad word and I was so astonished that I let him take the reins. But he was not expecting me to let go and he jerked them violently to the right.
Too violently.
I saw the horses thundering straight off the edge of the road towards a three thousand foot chasm.
It was my stagecoach-going-over-a-precipice nightmare coming true.
But this was no dream.
This was really happening.
Suddenly we were in the air & my stomach & lungs were all up in my throat & time slowed down & we were falling, falling, falling.
Then everything went darker than the inside of a black bear on a moonless night.
Read on...
