Novel 1969 - The Empty Land (v5.0) Read online

  There would be none, of course. Anybody who wanted this coach would have been planted here hours ago, just waiting. He knew that and Burke knew it, and they only hoped, by moving fast, to come upon them before they were quite set and in position.

  The coach drew abreast of the two men and Sides caught at the open door and swung in. Matt noted that he sat facing the rear. Matt swung up, and after a moment he quietly told Burke what Pike Sides had said.

  Burke was as puzzled as Matt was. “There’s something here,” Burke said, “something I don’t read.”

  He walked the team another quarter of a mile and then the downward grade steepened and he started them at a trot.

  “No whip, no yells,” Matt cautioned, “unless you see them.”

  “You think it will be Meadows?”

  “Maybe…and if Pike’s telling the truth we may get hit twice.”

  Burke’s face grew taut. “I don’t like that, Matt. I don’t like it at all.”

  The coach picked up speed. Matt was thinking of the trail ahead. There were a dozen places, at least a dozen, where it might happen.

  As they raced down the long hill he was thinking of Dandy Burke. The stage driver accepted the idea that they might be held up, but that they might be stopped twice worried him. It was a matter of the odds, Matt supposed. You could win once or twice, but you could not expect to win them all.

  *

  FROM THE TOP of a ridge a watcher with field glasses had picked up Matt Coburn, and with a mirror he had flashed the signal to Harry Meadows.

  “Wrap it up, boys.” Meadows said, and walked to his horse. “We’re passing this one up.”

  Scarff swore. “You’re going to pass this one up? Are you crazy? A hundred thousand dollars?”

  “What’s money to a corpse?” Meadows eyed him coldly. “I say the odds are wrong. I say we don’t do it. As of this minute, Scarff, the job is yours if you want to do it. I want no part of it, but if you go, don’t come back. Not ever.”

  Scarff hesitated, sorely tempted. “Damn it, Harry, I didn’t mean—”

  “I hate to lose it, too. But take it from me, Matt Coburn won’t go easy. I’ve seen a man like him soak up lead the way a sponge soaks up water. And when he goes he’ll take somebody with him. I don’t want it to be me.”

  “What’ll we do?” Kendrick asked.

  “We’ll leave now, and we’ll ride for Sacramento Station. We’ll stay outside there in the cedars and watch what happens. If there’s a chance, we’ll take it.”

  They started, and with fresh horses and a start of five miles on the coach they made it easily. Harry Meadows was a man who knew the country, and he led them into a tiny copse well back of the station but within two minutes’ riding to the station door. And the view there was good.

  “Four riders,” Scarff reported after a minute. “And they’re no cowhands. Those men are loaded for bear meat, and riding some real horse flesh.”

  Harry Meadows stared at him. “You mean somebody else is going to try? But how could they know?”

  He crawled up on the rock from which the station yard could be plainly seen.

  The station was a long, low building. Close by were corrals, and the ruins of a stone building that had been a previous station, burned by Indians.

  The horses were tied in plain sight, and they were certainly no ordinary horses. The men who rode those mounts wanted something with speed and bottom, and these were superb animals.

  Only one man was in sight. Harry Meadows leveled his glasses at him, and then swore. Scarff said, “What is it, boss?”

  “That’s Tucker Dolan down there.”

  Scarff lifted his head, staring down at the dark figure that leaned against the doorpost, watching the yard. Tucker Dolan had been a deputy sheriff up in Oregon, and after that in Idaho. He had also been a hired gun for the big cattle outfits back in Texas. He was no outlaw, but his activities had often skirted the very edge of crime.

  Meadows handed the glasses over to Scarff. “Somebody you know,” he said.

  A second man had emerged from the door, a toothpick between his lips. He was a slim man with catlike movements…Bob Longer. Another tough man, another gun for hire, an occasional outlaw who had never been caught at it. Scarff had made a cattle drive up from Texas with him. He was a hard man, and a disagreeable one, a good worker, but a trouble-hunter.

  “What the hell is this?” Scarff wondered out loud.

  “Somebody wants a scalp,” Meadows said, “and by the power they’ve got, they must want Coburn.”

  Two more men, unknown to the watchers, came out of the station, and after a heads-together conference one of them walked toward the corner of the corral, while the other stepped around the side of the house and waited there, out of sight from the road.

  Meadows and his men heard the stage coming. “Are we in or out?” Kendrick asked.

  “Out,” Meadows said, “unless they take the gold. If they do that we hit them, quick and hard, from ambush.”

  “Them?”

  “Right after a fight, in which they’ll get hurt, they won’t be expecting anything. We’ll move against them.”

  Scarff did not like it, but he said nothing, and neither did the others. They had learned to trust Meadows’ judgement.

  Of the presence of Harry Meadows, and his men, Coburn knew nothing. He had his shotgun in his hands and ready when they swung into the yard. He knew Tucker Dolan at once, and he also recognized Bob Longer. And there were four horses, which meant two others somewhere about.

  Half turning, he pounded three sharp blows on the top of the stage, and then as the stage drew into the yard he told Burke, “Out from the buildings, Dandy. Stop her right here. If I go down, hit them with the whip and take her out of here.”

  The stage swung up, the following dust cloud closing in and settling around it. In one easy movement, Matt Coburn swung to the ground.

  “Hello, Dolan,” he said. “It’s been a coon’s age.”

  Tucker Dolan was surprised. He had had no idea that Matt Coburn would be riding shotgun. “I didn’t know you were in this part of the country,” he said.

  “We’re changing horses, Tucker. You interested?”

  “I don’t know what you’re carrying, Matt, and you know I’m not riding the owl-hoot. I came to meet a passenger of yours.”

  Madge Healy! Why?

  The stage creaked ever so slightly. A shifting of weight inside? Or somebody getting down?

  “I hope it isn’t trouble, Dolan. I wouldn’t want that. Our passengers are to be delivered in safety.”

  Tucker Dolan straightened up from the door where he stood and walked just to the edge of the awning shadow. Bob Longer took a long, easy step to the right.

  “Is Madge Healy aboard?” Dolan asked.

  The stage door opened, and Madge stepped down. She held her purse in her left hand. Her right hand gathered her skirts. All of this Matt saw from the corner of his eye.…Did that hand among the folds of the skirt hold a gun?

  “Yes, gentlemen? Is there something I can do for you?”

  “You have some papers, ma’am,” Tucker Dolan said. “We were sent to pick them up.”

  Dunning and Kearns were getting down. Charlie Kearns’s face was drawn and stiff. Dunning seemed merely curious.

  “Any papers I have,” Madge said, “are my own. The property they represent was bought with my own money, by me. Nobody—and I mean nobody—has any rights or share in them.”

  “I ain’t here to argue, ma’am. I was sent to get them papers. I aim to do just that.”

  “An’ we can do it,” Longer said. “We got the edge.”

  Two more men had stepped into view. Meadows had not known them, but Matt Coburn did. Claim-jumpers, strike-breakers, thorough toughs. Medley and Parsons. He knew them both.

  Pike Sides stepped from behind the stage. “Maybe not, Bob,” he said. Without turning his head, he went on, “Coburn, if they open the ball, I want Longer an’ Parsons.”


  Matt Coburn still held the shotgun. It was loaded with buckshot, and he knew what it could do to a man. “Madge Healy is my passenger, gentlemen,” he said; “she is Wells Fargo’s passenger. I don’t know who paid you, but whatever you’re getting it won’t be enough.”

  “I figure you must be packin’ Wells Fargo gold,” Dolan said, “or they wouldn’t have you on the box, Coburn. Now, we don’t want any part of your gold. We ain’t holdup men. We don’t even want the Lady. We just want them papers.” And he added, “One man has died for them, a’ready.”

  “Sorry,” Coburn replied. “I have told you that Miss Healy is a Wells Fargo passenger. Now, gentlemen, I am through waiting. This coach has a schedule and we are going to keep to it. Dolan, this is an express gun, if you haven’t noticed. At this range I can cut you right in two, and there isn’t a thing in God’s world could save you. Even if you got a bullet into me, or two, I’d still have your guts spread all over the ground there.

  “Now, I’m not worried about Pike Sides. You all know him, and we know you. You’re a tough, game lot of boys who could cut us up considerable. Nobody would win the fight, unless it would be Wells Fargo an’ Miss Healy here.

  “But suppose you did win? No matter what your reason, or whether you touched the gold or not, you’d be outlaws, and they’d hang you. Wells Fargo wouldn’t sit still about it. And suppose Miss Healy should get shot? That they’d surely hang you for.”

  Tucker Dolan hesitated. Every word Matt had said was true, and he knew it. He also knew what that shotgun could do, and he had been giving it some thought. No man in his right mind bucks a deck so stacked against him.

  “All right,” Dolan said, “you’ve got us over a barrel. But that boy Madge Healy killed was the nephew of a mighty important man, and as her husband’s heir, those papers belong to him.”

  “You’d better get some legal advice,” Matt replied. “In the meanwhile, you boys just mount up and ride out of here.”

  Bob Longer laughed cynically. “Ride? Who rides? Who’s got who? The minute you put down that shotgun I’m going to cut you into doll rags.”

  “Pike!” Matt spoke sharply and tossed the shotgun, which Pike caught deftly.

  “All right, Bob,” Matt’s tone was even. “I’m not holding the shotgun now.”

  Bob Longer looked across the intervening thirty feet at Matt Coburn. This was the old bull of the woods. This was the man they said was the toughest, the fastest, the gamest of them all. Longer went for his gun.

  The watchers saw him move, the listeners heard only one sound. Bob Longer felt the quick, sharp tug at his shirt pocket. His gun was moving. In his mind a single thought: he was going to kill…he was going to kill…to kill…kill…

  And then he was dead.

  There was the acrid smell of gunpowder; wind rustled the leaves of a cottonwood beside the stage station. One of the horses tugged nervously at the bit, rattling his harness.

  “He wasn’t going to stand, Dolan,” Matt said. “He was making a fight of it.”

  “Yeah,” Tucker Dolan said bitterly, “but if you’d kept that shotgun he’d still be alive.”

  For an instant Matt Coburn stood perfectly still. “He was asking for it,” he said then.

  “That he was,” Dolan agreed, “an’ he would have killed somebody or been killed by somebody, no matter what. Only you needn’t have done it.”

  Matt Coburn faced around on him. “Are you riding, Dolan? Are you other boys riding out of here?”

  “Yes, we’re ridin’,” Dolan said.

  He walked up to his horse, followed by the others. As they mounted up, Coburn indicated Longer. “What about him?”

  “You bury him. He’s your meat.”

  When they were gone Madge Healy walked across the yard to the station and sat down abruptly at the first table inside the door. Her knees were shaking, and she felt faint and sick.

  Matt Coburn held out his hand toward Pike and the gunman tossed him the shotgun. “You’re quick,” he said, “mighty quick.”

  Coburn did not reply. Horses were being brought up and Dandy Burke was busy. Dunning was sitting at the end of the overhang, elbows on his knees, head hanging.

  “You’ll get over it, boy,” Charlie Kearns was saying. “Over in Pioche I saw three get it in no more time.”

  Coburn held the shotgun in the hollow of his arm and punched two empty shells from the six-shooter.

  Pike saw them. “Two? Two?”

  “Look at him,” Coburn said.

  Pike Sides walked to the dead man and rolled him over. There were two holes over the heart that could have been covered by a silver dollar, or even a poker chip. He swore softly. The two shots had been fired so close together they had made but one sound.

  Matt Coburn stepped inside and sat down beside Madge, placing the shotgun on the table before him. From where he sat he could see the whole yard, and the approaches to it.

  “Hadn’t you better tell me about it, Madge?”

  There was a cup of coffee in front of her. The waiter brought another for him, then went quietly away.

  “I never had anybody, Matt. I never had anybody at all. When I was a youngster my aunt just used me to make money enough so she and Ed could stay drunk all the time. Nobody ever kissed me good-night, Matt. Nobody ever tucked me in. They just worked me.

  “Well, I held out money my aunt didn’t know about, enough from the coins they threw at me, so that I bought the horse to get away on. I had forty dollars left, I hired Mrs. Finnegan on spec, and Joe the same way.

  “I made money, lots of it. I never spent much, and finally I bought a hotel and a ranch and some stock in eastern steel mills, and then I bought some mining stock. I got control of the Blue Duck.”

  Matt looked at her sharply. “The Blue Duck? You?”

  “Yes. Willard & Kingsbury wanted it. Their lease ran out and they had been stealing from me, and they had just struck a big pocket of high-grade ore. They supposed that I didn’t know.” She looked at Matt. “I never had reason to trust anyone, Matt, so I’d had them spied on. One of the miners who worked for them was also paid by me. They discovered it somehow, and they murdered him, and when I would not renew their lease and put guards on the mine, they tried it another way.

  “Willard had a nephew back east. He was no good, and never had been, but they sent for him to come out. He met me and he was nice. I had no idea who he was. He talked sweet to me, and I married him. All he ever wanted were the deeds, the permits, the property I had, the options I had. He got those and he ran away.”

  “He tried to, you mean.”

  “He did…but I had a friend who saw him, who knew what he was taking, and who stopped him. He was an old man, and my husband drew a derringer on him and tried to kill him, but he was a very tough old man, and he killed my husband and brought the valise back to me.”

  “The Negro?”

  She looked at him, hesitated, then said, “Yes. I said nothing because there are people who might have hung him for it, right or wrong. He protected me; I protected him.”

  “Some folks think you killed your husband.”

  “That’s their problem.”

  “And yours?”

  “Getting to Carson City and filing some of these papers. I have a lawyer there, a good one.”

  He studied her for a moment. “How old are you, Madge?”

  “Nineteen…going on forty. Nobody looks out for a girl alone, Matt. She looks out for herself, and you know what kind of a world it is.”

  He finished his coffee. “You’ll be all right to Carson, Madge. We’ll see you through.” He paused a moment. “Is Pike Sides working for you?”

  “He was one of the guards at the mine. After my husband was killed and I found out who he was and what they were trying to do, I had Pike come to meet me here. I thought I needed a bodyguard.”

  “You were right.”

  He got up. “It’s time to go, Madge. We’re moving out.”

  The body was gone, the tea
m was hitched up, Kearns and Dunning were seated in the stage. Dandy Burke was standing by it, and Pike Sides was loafing under the awning’s shade.

  Matt helped Madge Healy into the stage. Sides followed but Matt hesitated, letting his eyes go up the mountain slope. Earlier there had been a gleam from up there, as if sunlight had reflected off field glasses.

  There was nothing now. Of course, it might have been a bit of mica, or even quartz.

  Matt swung to the seat and Burke turned the team, pulling into the trail.

  Matt looked back. For the first time he thought about Bob Longer. He had not wanted to kill him, and he need not have accepted that challenge…so why did he do it?

  Tucker Dolan was right. He could have kept the shotgun and there would have been no shooting.

  Chapter 10

  *

  THE STORY OF the shooting reached Confusion before the stage got to Carson City. Matt Coburn had killed Bob Longer—an attempted kidnapping, some said; others said it was a try at robbing a passenger. The fact loomed large that Coburn had killed another man.

  Laurie Shannon had the story from Joss Ringgold over coffee in the ranch kitchen.

  “Joss, is Harry Meadows still hiding out over in the mountains?”

  “No, ma’am. He pulled his stakes. About the time the stage left.”

  “Will he try to stop the stage?”

  Joss hesitated. “No. I don’t believe so. He will give it some thought, then he’ll pull back and tell himself no—it’s too dangerous.”

  “Because of Matt?”

  “Matt Coburn’s quick on the shoot, ma’am. Maybe too quick.”

  She sat silent, staring at her coffee cup. “What’s he coming to, Joss? You know about men like that.”

  He shrugged. “Each one’s special in himself, but once a man starts to use a gun he has to watch himself. He gets jumpy. He has enemies, he has reputation-huntin’ kids to think of, and he knows he’s fair game for any man with a gun.

  “Matt’s a good man, but he’s a hard man in a hard country. There’s many a time when if you wait for the other man to draw you can get killed. When things are like that, sometimes a man figures to get them before they get him.