“You’ll do well in Durango,” Longarm told him. “Both of you working and all.”
“You know anything about the Durango Daily newspaper that I’m to work for?”
“No.”
“I was lucky to get a job in the same town as Esther. Real lucky.”
“Maybe the lucky ones are the people that were fortunate enough to hire a pair like you,” Longarm said. “That’s the way that I’d look at it.”
“Thanks. And I want you to know that, if we’re attacked, I won’t do anything cowardly or stupid. I’ll do exactly what you say, Marshal. I’m well aware that this is your field of expertise, not mine.”
“Glad to hear that you understand that,” Longarm told the earnest young man. “And stop worrying so much and enjoy the scenery, which will be pretty spectacular tomorrow.”
“We will.” Trent excused himself and went into the big log cabin that combined passenger sleeping quarters with a kitchen.
Longarm lingered outside, enjoying the scent of pines and the first stars of the evening. Soon Miranda came out to join him, and she took his hand in her own and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“I was just wishing on a star that we don’t get hit by that gang. Not with you and that young couple on board.”
“What will happen will happen and it will all work out for the best,” Miranda told him. “I don’t feel a bit afraid. Not with you beside me.”
Longarm inhaled a deep lungful of the clean mountain air. He was flattered, but still worried.
Chapter 5
They left the stage station at dawn when the air was crisp and there was a thin layer of ice on the water trough. The new team of horses was feeling frisky in the frosty morning air, and they were a handful to harness. All four animals wanted to run as soon as they left the station, and Charley let them, so that his passengers were hanging on for their lives as they shot through the pines and up the narrow, winding road heading southwest. All that day they struggled up the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the day after that rolled down into a lush cattle-ranching paradise where some of the biggest ranches in Colorado were to be found. The Roes were in awe of this Colorado high country, and Longarm could see that Miranda was equally impressed by the high mountain forests, ragged peaks, and vast pine-ringed valleys. Sometimes, Longarm and Trent Roe took turns riding shotgun on top, where the pine-scented air was a tonic. It was during one of those times that Longarm quizzed Charley Blue about the stagecoach gang, hoping to learn everything he could in order to be as well prepared as possible.
“Marshal, I’ve never been driving when this stage has been attacked and robbed. However, I expect that my luck … or theirs … is about ready to run out. If those murderin’ jaspers get within range of my rifle, they’ll wish they’d have stayed away!”
Charley’s rifle was nothing but an old single-shot Civil War antique that had seen far better days. There was, however, no doubting Charley’s sincere belief that he could whittle down the odds in a big hurry.
“It appears to me that you have been driving these coaches for a lot of years,” Longarm remarked, noting how skillfully the driver handled this high-spirited team.
“Yeah, I went to California back in 1851 to get rich in them cold Sierra rivers, but got pneumonia instead. I almost died, and probably would have if an Indian gal hadn’t taken pity on my old hide and nursed me back to health. She was a Pomo Indian. I married her, but she died a few years later, and that like to broke my heart. Mik-ta was the finest woman God ever made. I started drivin’ coaches back and forth between Sacramento and the gold fields. Was a friend of John Sutter too! But then he got ruined.”
“I understand that Sutter was once considered to be the richest man in California.”
“Oh, he was! John Augustus Sutter owned thousands of cattle, sheep, and horses. Had hundreds of Indians workin’ his orchards and fields. He was the biggest-hearted man that I ever knew, and that was part of his problem. He gave too much away! Why, he even sent supplies and men up to help rescue some of them poor folks in the Donner Party.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yep. Sutter was a good man, but his downfall began the day that he and John Marshal discovered gold beside their new sawmill on the American River. After that, everything he touched turned to dust. The Forty-Niners swarmed over his lands like famished locusts, and they cleaned him out. All his hired help ran off to get rich in the rivers, and Sutter had no one to help him protect his property. And then too, I hate to say it, but the man was a slave to drink.”
“When did you leave the California gold fields and come to Colorado?”
“I arrived in 1858 with about fifty thousand other miners stampeding to the Pikes Peak gold rush. Went to Central City and worked in the mines for a couple of years. When I wasn’t down in a mine, I panned the streams, but I spent my gold dust faster’n I could pan it. Prices went crazy. You never seen such a bad collection of thieves as was in Central City! And there were the usual cold-hearted whores, gamblers, pickpockets, and cutthroats. Worst bunch of scum that ever collected anywhere on Earth, and I was right smack in the middle of ‘em all. Got fed up with it and got tired of eatin’ irregular.”
“Mining is a hard life,” Longarm agreed.
“It’s a man-killer.”
“So what did you do next?”
“Got me a job as a mule skinner driving ore wagons, but I just hated them stubborn bastards.”
“They can be ornery.”
“Oh, hell, yes, they can! Now a horse, they can be mean, but they’re not smart so they don’t get the drop on you very often. But an ornery mule will plot his revenge over some little thing you might have done like tanning his backside. He’ll wait and wait and then, when you’re least expecting it, he’ll nail you to the barn door with his hooves
