Chapter 2 #2
He crossed the wide dirt expanse of Main Street just as bank manager Orville Ainsworth stepped outside the bank, locking the doors.
“Closing up early today, Orville?”
The middle-aged and rather rotund man glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Goin’ home early to give my wife a spell from watchin’ the new baby.”
“How’s she doin?”
“Which one? My wife or the baby?” he queried with a laugh. “Both sweet and sassy as ever!”
Nathaniel moved on. Cedar Bluff was growing. This year they’d seen six new families move into the area. The couple who owned the town mercantile, Spencer and Maddie Talbot, had just added another room to their corner store along Main Street and First.
His mother’s boarding house, situated on the northwest side of town, was nestled in a grove of oak and cottonwood trees, behind which the river wound from west to south.
She usually had at least one if not all three rooms for rent filled, and this was the first time since last fall that any had been empty.
She had done well the past few years, and knew the brief rest would be good for her.
He made his way down Main Street, past Doc Fillmore’s office, the man’s shingle hanging from the eaves in front of his office creaking lightly in the afternoon breeze.
“Hey Sheriff!” the doctor called from an open window.”
Nathaniel lifted a hand. “Hey Doc, everything okay with you?”
“You betcha!”
He moved on, heading for the livery stables at the far eastern edge of Main Street. He counted eight horses standing in the corral, a couple of drowsy mares resting with one hoof raised and tails lazily swishing at flies.
The stagecoach should be arriving soon. Jackson Gibbons, the owner, would help change out horses and then send the stagecoach on its way west toward Amarillo or south toward Lubbock.
He didn’t see Jackson, so turned around and headed back into town along the south side of the street to finish his rounds.
Shouts from beyond the livery disturbed the quiet of late afternoon. He paused and glanced over his shoulder to find two riders approaching town at a run, slowing only when they entered the town proper, wary of passersby and children running across the street to get out of their way.
“Sheriff Cross!”
One of the riders pulled his horse up to an abrupt halt, causing the gelding to rear upward. “The stagecoach has been attacked!”
Nathaniel recognized Seth Dascom, a young ranch hand working on David Anderson’s ranch about seven miles northeast of town.
The man was skinny as a bean but strong as a bull and tough as leather.
Seeing him shaken and pale gave Nathaniel pause.
The other horse came to a stuttering stop not two feet from Nathaniel, the mare snorting hard and eyes wild.
The cowhand in the saddle was unfamiliar to him. He turned back to Seth.
“Where?”
“Four miles, out near the eastern edge of the ridge. The horses are gone, the stagecoach is busted, and there’s bodies!”
Nathaniel turned immediately and ran toward the sheriff’s office. His buckskin gelding was almost always saddled during the day, ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice. Seth and the man with him followed, their horses blowing and skittish as they waited out front while he entered his office.
He strode toward the rifle rack beside his desk and retrieved his Winchester ’76 and a small leather bag filled with extra cartridges before heading out the back door.
His .45 Colt revolver with its seven-inch barrel was already in the holster on his hip, plenty of cartridges in his belt plus those in the cylinder.
As he hurried out the back door to the corral, his buckskin caught sight of him, ears shifting forward and anxious to go.
“Take it easy Gideon,” he said, opening the gate to the corral.
The horse’s muscles bunched beneath him as he mounted and settled himself in the saddle.
Before the animal was even halfway out of the corral, he lunged forward, nostrils flared, head held high and tail feathered as he chomped at the bit to get out and run.
Nathaniel gave the horse his head and charged past Seth and the other cowhand as he shouted over his shoulder. “Coming along?”
He sped behind the buildings on Main Street, behind Amos Shepherd’s blacksmith shop, and then the saloon flashing by on his right, one of the last structures on the far south side of town.
The prairie opened before him, his mount stretching into a gallop and then an outright run as Nathaniel gave Gideon the lead.
The gelding hadn’t been out today and so he understood the horse’s need to move, to flex his muscles and fly.
Seth’s horse appeared a short distance off to his left, the other cowhand on his right as the trio raced east. Who was dead?
Was it Roger Millicent, the usual stage driver, or a different man?
What about the man who rode shotgun? Did he know him too?
He hadn’t asked Seth how many passengers had been on the stage.
His heart pounded as his horse churned up huge clods of dirt and fresh spring grass, the ground passing in a blur, the wind tugging at his hat. He lifted a hand and pressed his hat down harder on his head, focused on what he might find and what he was going to do about it.
“There it is!” Seth shouted, pointing.
Nathaniel saw the accident about three hundred yards ahead and off the trail.
The horses and stage had left the two-track road that led into town.
He imagined the horses running all out, the stagecoach bouncing and jostling from side to side and stretching the limits of its leather springs.
He could practically hear the driver shouting at his horses to run faster while the shotgun rider fired his rifle at the attackers.
Then the scrub got rougher and the stagecoach had busted a wheel or an axle.
As he and the two cowhands rode closer, he slowed his gelding to a trot and then a complete stop about fifty yards away, his gaze passing over the landscape. No sign of the stagecoach horses or the outlaws who had attacked it.
“Over there,” Seth said, pointing.
He urged Gideon closer. A short distance away from the stage, he saw the first body, a short figure of a man lying face down, a splotch of blood in the middle of his back.
His heart sank. Roger. He clamped his jaw tight and held back his emotions as he rode toward the second body, maybe twenty yards away, a slender, taller man lying on his side.
He sighed. Kurt Hinman. Both good men, both now dead.
The stagecoach was upright although tilted at a crazy angle, the right front wheel broken in half and digging into the ground, the rear wheel showing severe cracks. He moved closer to the stage, walking his horse around it, trying to peer into the windows, but the curtains were drawn.
He dismounted, ground tying his horse while Seth followed suit. The other cowhand remained mounted, rifle in hand and eyeing the distance around them for any signs of returning outlaws.
Heart pounding, not sure what he would find inside the coach, he reached for the door handle, twisted it and flung it open. To his dismay, it looked empty, at first. Then, in the shadowy space on the floor between the bench seats, he saw a woman lying on her side.
He climbed into the coach, taking care not to step on the woman.
From what he could see, she was on the younger side and wore a dark lavender calico dress.
A shawl was half wrapped around her shoulders, the other half draped across the floor in front of her.
Hair the color of corn silk had come undone and tangled around her shoulders and down her back.
“Lady?”