“I am indeed.”
“But why? He saved our money, if not our lives.”
“He is as savage as the others,” Bixby said.
“I think he was courageous, even heroic,” Cynthia said.
“Of course you would think such a thing, my dear,” Bixby said. “As empty as your head is, you probably see him as a knight in shining armor. But I’m telling you now that someone who can kill as easily as he can is not someone with whom we need to associate. And I forbid you to speak to him again.”
“But Jay,” Cynthia said.
“Not another word. When we get to Phoenix, we shall go our way and, no doubt, he shall go his.”
“It isn’t as if I want to invite him over for tea,” Cynthia said. “But I do think that you are wrong in your judgment of him, and I agree with Mr. Hendel. I think we are obligated to him for our very safety.”
After leaving the aborted stagecoach robbery, Pogue Willis and Billy Meechum rode hard, dismounting occasionally to give the horses a blow. Even then they didn’t stop, but continued to walk, always putting distance behind them. They did pause briefly late in the afternoon in order to eat a few bites of jerky and to take a few swallows of water.
Meechum chewed on the leathery jerky, then took a drink of tepid water from his canteen. He spat the water out in disgust, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Here we are, drinking water that tastes like horse piss and chewing on jerky that tastes like saddle leather. You said we was all goin’ to get rich. Well, the only thing that we got was my cousin kilt, two of my pards dead. And for all that we got nothin’.”
“Quit your bitchin’,” Willis said. “You got out alive, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m alive, as long as I don’t starve to death or die of thirst,” Meechum said. “There’s got to be a town near here. Listen, Pogue, don’t you think there’s a town around here somewhere?”
“What if there is?”
“Well, if there is, I was thinkin’ we could go in an’ get somethin’ fit to eat an’ decent to drink,” Meechum said.
“You was thinkin’, was you? What makes you believe you have enough brains to think?” Willis asked.
“You got no right to talk to me like that.”
“Anytime you want to call me on it, why, feel free to try,” Willis said.
“No, you ain’t goin’ to goad me into pullin’ a gun against you, no matter how hard you try. Maybe I ain’t the smartest man around, but I got more sense than to do anything like that.”
“Then try to have enough sense to keep your mouth shut for a while,” Willis said. “I’m gettin’ just real tired of listenin’ to you.”
Meechum seethed with frustrated anger, but he said nothing.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Willis said. “We’re goin’ to Phoenix. I figure if we didn’t get the money while it was on the coach, then we’ll take it from the bank.”
“If we couldn’t get it from the coach, what makes you think we can get it from a bank?” Meechum asked.
“Stagecoaches are moving, banks are still,” Willis replied, as if that answered everything. “Get mounted, we have a long way to go yet.”
It was late afternoon by the time the coach reached Phoenix. As they were coming into town, the driver shouted down toward the passengers. “Phoenix! This is Phoenix, folks!” he called.
Matt put his hand on Moses’s forehead. He was relieved to discover that the driver had no fever.
“What?” the driver asked.
“I was just checking to see if you had any fever,” Matt said.
“Do I?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
“How do you feel?”
“My side is hurtin’ like hell,” Moses said. He smiled, then looked down at the bandage wrapped around his waist. “And I’m going to have one heck of a time explainin’ to my wife why I’m wearin’ a woman’s petticoat.”
Matt laughed. “If you’ve still got a sense of humor after all this, Moses, I think you are going to be all right.”
After he climbed down from the coach, Matt walked over and stood against the wall of the stage depot, watching as some men pulled the three outlaws off the top of the coach and laid them out on the wooden platform. The moment the bodies were laid out, several people went over to look down at them. The crowd grew quickly as more and more people, not only employees of the stage depot, but citizens from the city, began congregating to look at the morbid show.
Fortunately, the shotgun guard was spared that indignity, as they decided to keep his body inside the coach until the undertaker could call for him.
The sheriff, having been notified of the attempted stagecoach robbery, hurried down to the depot. He looked down at the three bodies, then after speaking to the driver for a few minutes, walked over to talk to Matt.
