Ordeal of the Mountain Man Read Free

now as he stared down his talkative second in command from under the wide brim of the flat-crown, black Stetson he habitually wore cocked at a rakish angle.
    â€œNever mind who. The point is he will buy anything we bring him. I want you to take over here for now and wait for word on the horses. I’m going on up to Muddy Gap to see that everything is ready for their arrival.”
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    Another branch of the Reno Jim Yurian gang had grown bored waiting for the fabled horse herd to come to them. Like Yancy Osburn’s men, they chose to engage in some casual criminal activity to pass the time. The Bighorn and Laramie Line coach to Muddy Gap lumbered right up to them before the shotgun guard realized they had ridden into trouble.
    â€œStand and deliver!” demanded a swaggering, barrel-shaped highwayman with a gaudy ostrich plume in his floppy, chocolate brown hat.
    â€œLike hell,” roared Rupe, the shotgun guard, as he brought down his 10 gauge L.C. Smith and let go a load of 00 buckshot.
    His shot column took the hat from the arrogant bandit and pulped his face with thirteen of the seventeen pellets. Immediately three of the holdup men leveled their six-guns and slip thumbed through a trio of rounds each, which shot Rupe to doll rags. Beside him, the driver slapped the wheelers’ rumps with his reins to no avail as he took one of the shots intended for Rupe in his left forearm.
    Muscles and tendons, strong and rangy from years of working a six-horse team, contracted and drove the broken ulna bone out of the driver’s arm. He yowled and sat helplessly while two robbers caught the headstalls of the leaders and stopped the coach.
    â€œEverybody out. Show us what you’ve got.”
    A cawing voice of censure came from inside the coach. “Young man, that’s a disgusting, vulgar thought. Shame on you.”
    Laughing outlaws surrounded the vehicle. “You must have been a schoolmarm, ’m I right?”
    Guffawing, a freckle-faced, redheaded bandit touched the brim of his hat to the descending dowager. “It’s been my experience that schoolmarms are most familiar with that famous challenge of the youngens ma’am. You know? ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ It was a lot of fun doin’ that, as I rec’lect.”
    Examining him with cold, blue marble eyes from above jowls made enormous by excessive, snowy facial powder and carmine rouge, she snapped in tightly controlled outrage. “You are a most disagreeable young man.”
    â€œI reckon I am. After all, I do rob stages for a livin’. Hardly a recommend to the better element of society, ’m I right?”
    Looking as though she might faint dead away, she fanned herself with a black-gloved hand. “Spare me from such depraved trash.”
    Anger flushed what could be seen of the outlaw’s face. “I ain’t trash. You get that straight, you old bat.”
    To emphasize what he had said, the redheaded bandit stepped in close and popped her in the chops. That proved too much for one of the male passengers. He leaped forward and drove a hard right into the gut of the impudent thug, who bent double and gasped for air. The defender of womanhood followed with a clout behind the ear, which dropped the young highwayman at the feet of the woman he had assaulted. Immediately a shot cracked over the heads of the passengers and the would-be rescuer fell dead on the spot.
    Sobbing, the woman turned away. The bandits worked quickly after that. They relieved the passengers of all valuables and took the strongbox, missing the shipment of bullion the stage carried. Like the Wells Fargo team, the horses were run off when the highwaymen left.

Two
    A thin, white spiral of smoke came from the chimney of the Iron Kettle, the best eatery in Muddy Gap, Wyoming Territory. That it was the only public eating house in town, outside the hotel, the proud city fathers preferred not to