“Do you know Mr. Bellefontaine?” Falcon asked.
“Yes, my husband is a mining engineer and he works for Mr. Bellefontaine.” She paused for a moment. “For now.”
“For now?” Cody asked.
“Yes. My husband has been offered employment in the lead mines back in Missouri. And with the recent Indian incidents, he has decided to accept the offer. And, though I shouldn’t be telling tales out of school, Mr. Bellefontaine is not the most—pleasant of men.”
“Mama, you don’t go to school,” Gary said.
“What?”
“You said you shouldn’t be telling tales out of school. But you don’t go to school.”
Mrs. Kirby smiled at her son. “No, I don’t, do I? How foolish of me.”
The way station at Ten Sleep was in the shape of the letter T, with the cross of the T running east and west. The dining room was in the front, the west wing was a bunk room for the men passengers, and the east wing was a bunk room for female passengers. The driver, whose name was Bo, and the shotgun guard, named Hank, had quarters in the barn, but they ate at the table with the others. Hodge Deckert and his wife Ethel ran the way station. Hodge took care of the livestock and Ethel did the cooking. They lived in a room at the bottom of the “T.”
“Mrs. Deckert,” Cody said, rubbing his stomach as he pushed away from the table. “That’s about the best thing I’ve tasted in a month of Sundays.”
“Oh, but you haven’t had your pie yet,” Ethel said. “I made a couple of apple pies.”
“Pie? Well, I can’t imagine anyone wanting apple pie after a meal like this. You can just save the pie for the next stage to come through, I’m sure no one here wants any.”
“I do,” Gary said.
“You? You want some apple pie?” Cody teased.
“Yes, sir. I like apple pie.”
“Oh, so because it is apple pie you want it. If it was cherry pie, or blueberry pie, you probably would not want any, would you?”
“No, I like cherry pie and blueberry pie too,” Gary said.
“All right, Mrs. Deckert, I guess I’ll have to have some pie too. I sure wouldn’t want Gary to eat all of it by himself.”
“Oh, I don’t think I could eat all of it,” Gary said, and the others laughed.
After the meal, Mrs. Kirby and her two children went into the room that was reserved for them and the stage crew went out to the barn, while Falcon, Cody, Ingraham, and Hodge Deckert sat out on the front porch, watching the play of light as the sun set behind the distant Absaroka Mountain range.
Cody, Ingraham, and Deckert smoked their pipes, Falcon rolled his own cigarette.
“Mr. Deckert, what have you heard about any Indian trouble?” Cody asked.
Deckert took a long puff of his pipe before he answered, as if thinking about the question.
“Well now, it’s just real strange,” he said. “The only Injuns we’ve got close to us are the Crow, and it’s been more ’n twenty years since we had any trouble with them. High Hawk is the chief of the local tribe, and he has always been friendly to the whites. But over the last couple of months, there’s been some incidents. A couple of prospectors was found scalped, then, I understand there was some Injun hunters kilt, then a white family was kilt, the husband, wife, and their boy. Scalped they was, all three of ’em. And that seemed to set off the whole town.”
“Has the army been called in?” Falcon asked.
“Don’t know as they have. What I think happened was Bellefontaine, you’ll prob’ly meet him when you go into DeMaris Springs, or if you don’t meet him, you will sure hear about him. He seems to be the cockof-the-walk there. Anyway, what I was sayin’ is, Bellefontaine put together a posse, I think, and they kilt a couple of Injuns, and left a note on one of ’em. I don’t know as anything has happened since then.”
“What about Mean to His Horses?” Cody asked. “Have you heard of him?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him. And from what I’ve heard of that red devil, it ain’t only his horses he’s mean to.”
Suddenly the loud cry of a child interrupted their conversation, and then they heard Mrs. Kirby call out.
“Gary!”
The crying continued and, curious, the four men went back inside, just as a distraught Mrs. Kirby came from their room.
“Oh,” she said. “Gary was jumping on the bed and he fell. I’m not sure, but I think he may have broken his arm.”
“Ingraham, you’re a doctor,” Cody said. “Why don’t you take a look?”
“I was in medical school, but I didn’t finish,” Ingraham said. “But I will take a look.
All went into Mrs. Kirby’s room, where they saw young Gary sitting on the floor, crying and holding his arm. It was immediately obvious that a bone was broken, because of the protrusion just above the wrist of his left arm.
“Let me take a look at it, Gary,” Ingraham said. He sat down on the floor beside Gary and looked at the arm,
