“Your team is all hitched up, Mr. Dooley,” one of the hostlers called to him.
“Thanks, Mike,” Ben said. “Pearlie, you go ahead and climb up to your seat. I’ll get the passengers loaded.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pearlie used one of the horizontal spokes of the front wheel to climb up into the high seat. Scooting over to the left, he looked down into the boot and saw both a double-barreled shotgun and a Winchester, 44.40 rifle. Breaking down the shotgun, he saw that both barrels were loaded. He closed it, then let the hammers down. The rifle was loaded as well.
A moment later, Ben came out of the depot with the passengers and stood by the door as they boarded. That done, he climbed up beside Pearlie, released the brake, picked up the reins, and snapped them against the back of the team.
The coach left the depot with the team moving at a rapid trot. Ben always did this, holding the trot until they were well out of town. Not until then would he slow the team to a more sustainable gait.
Shortly after he came to work with the stage line, Pearlie asked Ben why he did that.
“It’s to make a show for the people in town,” he said. “Most folks, when they see the stage leave town like that, have the idea that we keep the speed up all the way to where we are goin’. That way, if they’re thinkin’ on goin’ somewhere, the idea of usin’ a stage ain’t all that hard for ’em to take. But if they was to see us leave at a slow walk, they would, more than likely, want just about anything other than a long, slow stagecoach ride.”
Pearlie chuckled. “I reckon there’s some truth to that when you think about it.”
“Of course there is,” Ben said. He leaned over to spit out the quid of chewing tobacco he had been working on.
Ben was married and had a daughter who was just a little younger than Pearlie. When Pearlie first came to work for the stage line, Ben hinted that his young shotgun guard might take an interest in Mindy. Mindy was a pretty girl, and any other time, Pearlie might have been interested. But the loss of Lucy was still too fresh. Pearlie told Ben about Lucy, and how she had died. Ben understood, and never brought up the subject of his daughter again.
Up on the box, Pearlie rode silently while the driver worked the horses. Ben had named the horses and he was constantly talking to them, cursing one of them for slacking off, praising another for doing well, often playing them against each other.
“Well now, Rhoda, what do you think? Do you see how Harry is showin’ off for you? You aren’t going to hurt his feelings now, are you? Come on, pick it up, show him what you can do.”
Because Ben was busy with his horses, Pearlie was left alone with his thoughts. He wondered what was going on back at Sugarloaf. Did they miss him? Would they welcome him back when he returned? He had already given notice that this would be his last week, that he was going back home.
Home? Was Sugarloaf home?
Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Sugarloaf was home. It was certainly more of a home to him than anyplace else he had ever lived in his life.
A few years earlier, Pearlie had been a gunman, hired by a man who wanted to run Smoke off so he could ride roughshod over those who were left. But Pearlie didn’t take to killing and looting from innocent people, so he quit his job. He had stopped by to warn Smoke of the plan against him, and to tell him that, because he wanted no part of it, he would be leaving the valley. To Pearlie’s surprise, Smoke offered to hire him.
Since that time, Pearlie had worked for Smoke and Sally. He stood just a shade less than six feet tall, was lean as a willow branch, had a face tanned the color of an old saddle, and a head of wild, unruly black hair. His eyes were mischievous and he was quick to smile and joke, but underneath his slapstick demeanor was a man that was as hard as iron, as loyal to his friends as they come, and very nearly as good with a gun as Smoke was.
There were three other stagecoaches in Chama when Ben hauled back on the reins and set the brakes at the conclusion of their journey. Like Pearlie’s coach, the other three coaches represented towns that had no railroad of their own, and so their main routes were back and forth from their towns to the depot in Chama.
A couple of hostlers who worked for Sunset met the coach as it arrived, then unharnessed the team and led them off for a twenty-four-hour rest. Before the coach started back, a new, fresh team would be connected.
Pearlie laughed the first day when they started back because, when Ben started talking to the teams, calling the horses by name, he saw that he was using the same names.
“They don’t mind, they’re just horses,” Ben explained. “And if I use the same names for all of them, it makes it easier for me to remember.”
Pearlie couldn’t argue with that.
The drivers and shotgun guards of the stagecoaches always took their lunch at the Railroad Diner. They were free to go somewhere else if they wanted to, but if they ate at the Railroad Diner, their meals were paid for by their respective stage lines.
The drivers generally ate at one table and the shotgun guards at another. Pearlie was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the guards, so he fit in well with them, and generally enjoyed his visits with them.
Today, two of the other guards were in the middle of an argument when Pearlie joined them.
“He ain’t nowhere near as good,” one of them said.
“The hell he ain’t,” the second guard said. “I’ve read books about my man. I ain’t never read nothin’ about your man.”
The guard shook his head. “First of all, he ain’t my man.”
“Well, he’s the one you’re sayin’ is so good.”
“Hello, Mack, Zeb. What are you two talking about?” Pearlie asked.
