“You are Apache, aren’t you?” Johnson asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“You are Apache, and you ask if you have done something to offend me? I’m offended just by having to ride in the same coach with your kind.”
“Well, hell, Mr. Johnson, if you don’t want to ride in the coach with her, I can take care of that,” Falcon said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You say you don’t like riding in the coach with an Indian?”
“I do not.”
Falcon opened the door. “Then why don’t you just get out?” he asked.
“What?”
Falcon reached across the stage, grabbed the drummer by his collar, jerked him off his seat, then pushed him through the open door.
“Hey!” the man shouted as he fell from the stage.
“Oh, my!” Timmy’s mother said, putting her hand over her mouth.
Timmy laughed.
From outside, they could hear Johnson shouting. “Stop the stage, stop the stage!”
Either the driver or the shotgun guard heard him, because the driver started shouting at the team.
“Whoa! Whoa there!” he called.
The stage rolled to a stop.
A few seconds later, Johnson appeared alongside the coach, covered with dust and breathing heavily from the run, but otherwise none the worse for his ordeal.
“What the hell happened?” the driver asked. “How did you fall out of the coach?”
The drummer pointed toward Falcon with an angry expression on his face. Falcon looked back at him. Falcon’s face was as devoid of expression as if the two were strangers in a casual encounter on the street.
“I ... I,” the drummer started, then he sighed. “I don’t know what made me fall out. I must’ve leaned against the door, I guess.”
“Well, hell, Johnson, you’ve ridden my stage enough times to know better than that. Be more careful from now on,” the driver said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. I can’t be stopping every mile or so just to be picking you up.”
“I’ll ... be more careful,” the drummer said. He looked pleadingly at Falcon, who, without a word or a change of expression, opened the door.
“Thanks, ” Johnson said as he climbed back inside.
The stage got under way again, but Johnson pulled his hat down over his head, leaned back, and pretended to go to sleep.
CHAPTER 5
Back in the Calabasas jail, Fargo Ford was lying on the bunk with his hands folded behind his head, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him.
“Easy pickin’s, you told us,” Dagen growled. “There wouldn’t be nobody around at six in the mornin’, you said. There won’t be nobody there but just the expressman and his wife,” you said.
“Yeah, well, how the hell was I to know that the sheriff and both deputies would be there havin’ breakfast?” Fargo replied.
“You’re supposed to know things like that,” Dagen said. “That’s why you’re the leader.”
“Anytime you want to be the leader, Dagen, why you just be my guest,” Fargo invited.
“Yeah,” Ponci said. “How ’bout you leadin’ us, Dagen? You can lead us right up to the gallows!” He laughed out loud.
“Shut up, Ponci. That ain’t funny,” Dagen said. Almost unconsciously, he put his hand to his collar and pulled it away from his neck.
Ponci laughed again, but when Fargo heard the sheriff talking, he put his hand out as a signal to the others to be quiet.
“Shh,” Fargo said.
“What is it?” Ponci asked.
“Be quiet, I want to listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“To what the sheriff’s got to say. Now shut up,” Fargo ordered with a low hiss.
“Wilcox, keep an eye on things until Baker gets back,” Sheriff Ferrell was saying from the front of the office. “I’m going down to the Western Union and send a wire off to Judge Norton up in Tucson.”
“I’ll keep an eye on things, Sheriff,” Deputy Wilcox said.
