Kiowa Rising
Kiowa Rising
When the stage to El Paso is ambushed by road agents, the only passenger able to take a lead in resisting the bandits is retired provost marshal Talbot Rogers. Not only must he lead the other passengers to safety, he also finds himself carrying word to an army base about an imminent Indian uprising. With a band of outlaws dogging his steps and a young girl to protect, it will be a race against time for Rogers to warn the outpost of Fort Williams about the danger about to engulf it.
By the same author
Blood for Blood
Chisholm Trail Showdown
Writing as Simon Webb
Comanche Moon
Badman Sheriff
A Town Called Innocence
Showdown at Parson’s End
Writing as Harriet Cade
The Homesteader’s Daughter
The Marshal’s Daughter
Saddler’s Run
Teacher With a Tin Star
Pony Express
Writing as Brent Larssen
Death at the Yellow Rose
Fool’s Gold
The Vindicators
The Forgiveness Trail
Writing as Fenton Sadler
Whirlwind
Assault on Fort Bennett
The Vigilance Man
Writing as Ethan Harker
Incident at Confederate Gulch
Chilcot’s Redemption
Writing as Jethro Kyle
Fugitive Lawman
Invitation to a Funeral
Writing as Jay Clanton
Saloon Justice
Quincy’s Quest
Writing as Clyde Barker
Long Shadows
Writing as Ed Roberts
The Rattlesnake Code
Writing as Bill Cartwright
McAndrew’s Stand
Kiowa Rising
Jack Tregarth
ROBERT HALE
© Jack Tregarth 2017
First published in Great Britain 2017
ISBN 978-0-7198-2236-0
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Jack Tregarth to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Chapter 1
On a fine summer’s evening in 1859, a bright red Concorde stagecoach was bowling briskly along a dusty track in northern Texas. The Butterfield mail coach was heading south-east, towards El Paso, although there was little chance of reaching that town for a few days yet.
The unofficial motto of the Butterfield company was ‘Always room for one more’ and judging by the three men perched precariously on the roof of the stage, this worthy, commercial principle was being sedulously adhered to. Inside the coach, eight more passengers were sitting so closely packed that their knees were dovetailed together. These men and women were a mixed crew. Tucked in one corner, squashed almost breathless by a generously built lady of mature years, was a colourless and insignificant-looking little man of perhaps five-and-forty years of age. He had boarded only a few hours earlier and promptly fallen asleep. Now he had awoken and, as the stage rattled its way along through the barren landscape, this man eyed up his fellow passengers and did his best to read their characters.
Seated opposite the man in the corner was a young fellow of lusty and virile appearance. He was, by the look of him, about twenty-five years old and sported not one but two pistols, which bounced up and down on his thighs every time the coach went over a bump. Sheer ostentation, thought the little man to himself. One pistol is plenty and enough, always providing you know how to use it. He dismissed the young man facing him as being most likely a show-off and braggart. Bully and coward too, I shouldn’t wonder, he thought shrewdly.
Next to the youngster was a married couple, solid and respectable types. Farmers, perhaps.
The man occupying the corner seat next to the window, diagonally across from him, was a harder study. This individual was probably about the same age as he himself, which was to say forty-six. Most noticeable was the peg-leg which stuck out awkwardly across the floor of the compartment.
As he was sizing up the strange figure, the other man looked up sharply and caught his eye. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met. In that instant, Talbot Rogers decided that the two of them were of the same ’breed. The other man seemingly came to a similar conclusion, because his lips twitched slightly and he gave an almost imperceptible nod in Talbot’s direction. Then he turned away and gazed out of the window.
Having satisfied his curiosity about the three men and one woman on the opposite seat, Talbot Rogers was about to repeat the exercise with those sharing his own side of the coach. Before he was able to do so, there came a sharp but distant crack, which he guessed to have come from the rocky hills which lined the track along which they were careening.
‘Rifle,’ he said instinctively. ‘Maybe half a mile over there to the left.’
The words were scarcely out of Talbot’s mouth, when the coach juddered and slowed. Then came the hollow boom of a scattergun right above their heads. The man with the wooden leg said in a conversational tone of voice, ‘That’ll be the messenger riding shotgun, up yonder. Though what he hopes to accomplish with a scattergun at that range is a mystery to me.’
Talbot had been thinking precisely the same thing and he realized that he had been right about the man with the false leg; they were indeed two of a kind. The fat woman sitting next to him exclaimed, ‘Lord a mercy, what are we to do?’
‘Nothing much to do, ma’am, other than to wait on circumstances,’ said Talbot reassuringly.
‘Is it Indians, d’you think, or what?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Bushwhackers, more likely,’ ventured the man with the wooden leg. ‘I’ll hazard a guess and say as they’ve shot one of the horses, so’s to slow us down a mite.’
There came a second rifle shot and again the stage shuddered, beginning to slow down even more. Talbot Rogers said, ‘That’ll be another of our horses done for. Best to do now would be for the driver to rein in, and him and his partner to throw down their weapons.’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than he heard the driver shout something and then there was a scraping of iron as the brake was applied.
There wasn’t, to Talbot’s mind, the apprehension of any great danger. Like as not, a half dozen men would come riding up directly and relieve them of all their cash money and any jewellery that the ladies might have on display. He noted the seed-pearl ear bobs on the farmer’s wife sitting opposite and wondered if she would have the wit to remove them and place them in her bag. The woman at his side was dripping with various rings, necklaces and bracelets, but they were so many and varied that Talbot guessed that they were all of them probably no more than Pinchbeck and paste.
There is no action so foolish or wicked that somebody, somewhere will not undertake it, and although Talbot Rogers had already gauged that this current affair would most likely end with little more than a slight inconvenience to the travellers in the mail-coach, he could not have predicted that one of the men riding atop of the stage would take it into his head to make a fight of it. It was against all reason, but there it was. Just as the stage was grinding to a complete halt, some of the men clinging to the roof commenced firing.
Sitting next to the driver was a hot-headed young man who had only recently been discharged from the army. When the first shot was fired at the coach, killing one of the horses drawing it, his instinctive reaction had been to raise his own weapon and return fire. At a ra
nge in excess of 800 yards though, he might as well have used a pea shooter as the sawn-off scattergun with which he actually let fly. His action, although making not the slightest difference to the man with the rifle who was crouched up in the rocks overlooking the road, set a very bad example to two of the passengers riding the roof. No sooner had the driver’s companion loosed off a shot in the general direction of the hills, than they drew their own pieces and began scanning the horizon for targets.
Soon after the first of the horses had been shot, another rifle shot came from the hills and at the same moment, those on the outside of the coach saw four riders emerge from a gully and begin cantering towards them. Whereupon the most incautious of the men on the roof snapped off a couple of shots towards the approaching men, guessing quite correctly that they were bandits, intent upon robbing the stage.
All that the inside passengers knew of the affair was a sudden cacophony of pistol shots from overhead and away to one side. Automatically, they all began huddling down, away from the windows, lest a stray ball should come flying through. As it happened all the fire from the attackers was directed at the men on the roof and in the driver’s seat.
The coach swayed and veered off the road. As it did so, there was a resounding, splintering crack from beneath, which Talbot took to be one of the axles breaking on a rock. By the time that they came to a halt, the driver and guard were dead and so was one of the men who had been riding on the roof. Of the remaining two, one had taken a flesh wound and the other, who had not even taken out his own gun, was quite unscathed.
The woman next to Talbot Rogers said breathlessly, ‘Heavens, what’s to do now? Are we all to be murdered?’
‘I wouldn’t say so, ma’am,’ replied Talbot quietly. ‘You must expect to be robbed, but other than that, I don’t see any harm befalling us.’ They could see from the window that four riders had now reined in by the coach. All had neckerchiefs pulled up over their mouths and noses and gave the impression that they were not men to be trifled with. The man with the false leg said in a low voice, ‘Don’t any of you folk play the fool now. These boys’ll be good and mad and it won’t do to provoke ’em.’
Truth to tell, none of the men and women in the compartment looked in the least as though they were looking for a confrontation. Apart from Talbot and the fellow with the peg-leg, they all appeared terrified out of their wits by the turn of events. Talbot Rogers noted with quiet satisfaction that he had been spot on in his estimation of the young man’s character. The poor young fellow was pale and trembling with fear. Just as I suspected, thought Talbot to himself, coward, as well as a braggart.
From outside came a harsh command for them to come out with their hands held high. ‘If we see so much as a twitch from anybody, as looks like a move towards a gun, then ’fore God, we’ll kill every mother’s son o’ you!’ the speaker promised.
There was little to be done, other than to open the doors and climb down as slowly and cautiously as could be.
Nobody had the least doubt that the man who had issued the warning, meant just precisely what he had said.
Up on the dusty rocks overlooking the road, Ramon Mercador sat at his ease. Not yet thirty, Mercador was a veteran of various obscure wars in Central and South America. He was renowned for his prowess with a rifle and was invariably allotted the task of bringing down the horses in enterprises of this sort. Hitting a moving horse at half a mile was something that Mercador could do in his sleep. Having halted the coach, he now saw no urgency in making his way down to join his comrades in their task. The brief gun battle was over and it looked as though things were now well in hand. Pulling out his tobacco pouch, Ramon Mercador rolled himself a cigarette and settled down for a leisurely smoke.
Even after the death of the three men who had been riding the outside of the stage, the robbery could have passed off peacefully with no further bloodshed, if only one of the bandits had been able to focus his mind entirely on that end, without being distracted by other longings. When they stepped out of the stagecoach, the riders invited all the men to throw down their guns, which were then gathered into a little heap. Talbot, who looked about as menacing as a clerk in a grocery store, was not carrying a pistol at his hip. The men who were robbing them had dismounted and one announced that his friend would be coming round with a leather saddle-bag and that the women should cast into this every piece of jewellery that they were wearing or had concealed about their persons. The men were similarly told to put all their money in the bag.
‘And let me catch any one o’ you holdin’ back so much as a cent and I’ll kill that man with my own hands,’ said the leader of the band.
Now that they were all out in the open, Talbot was able to look over the people who had been sharing his bench during the journey. His heart sank when he saw that in addition to the fat woman who had been sitting next to him, there was a man travelling with a young girl whom Talbot took to be his daughter. She was little more than a child; so young that she had not yet begun to put up her hair. She could have been no more than fifteen or sixteen at the most. By the look of her, this girl was young and innocent enough to find the experience of being robbed in this way a novel and exciting one, for she gazed around with shining eyes, perhaps thinking how she would turn the adventure into a story to tell her school friends.
While one of the bandits went from passenger to passenger with his bag, collecting money and valuables, one of the other men noticed the girl and went over to her.
‘Well, ain’t you the pretty one?’ he said and raised his hand to touch her cheek. Her father moved forward and before anybody knew what was happening, was knocked brutally to the ground by the man who was showing such interest in his daughter. The others from the coach watched helplessly, not knowing how matters might develop.
As for Talbot, he knew very well what would most likely happen next. These villains would hoist the girl over one of the saddles, ride off with her and use her as they saw fit.
The man who was evidently the leader of the outfit came wandering over and said to the one who was pestering the girl, ‘What’s this? Somethin’ to share around?’ The odd thing was that when he later thought about the scene, all that Talbot was able to recollect about this fellow was that he had around his neck a garish scarf or neckerchief, which was bright yellow in colour.
For answer, the other man moved behind the girl and then clamped his hands around her; one on each breast. She gave a shriek of horror and her father made as though to leap to his feet. The third member of the gang, who had noticed that something interesting was happening, came up at that moment and lashed out with his foot, sending the girl’s father sprawling back in the dust. Of all the crimes that he had encountered in his long career, none ever filled Talbot Rogers with more loathing and contempt than the rape of women. He viewed it as the lowest and most unmanly action possible.
Imperceptibly, Talbot Rogers moved a little closer to the group clustered around the young girl. As he did so, he glanced across to the other passengers, none of whom seemed minded to do anything helpful. He caught the eye of the man with the false leg and directed his gaze meaningfully to the heap of pistols which the robbers had confiscated from their victims. The man gave the merest nod, which Talbot took to mean that he would be ready when the action began. Why he felt that of all the men who had been on the coach that this was the only one who would be any use in a straight fight, Talbot could not have said. But he was in the habit of trusting his instincts and they had never yet played him false.
There could be no doubt now that three of the men who had waylaid the stagecoach had rape, as well as rapine, on their minds. The one who was collecting money and jewellery kept looking over to the others, presumably anxious that he wasn’t left out of the fun. The girl herself looked as though she was on the point of fainting. The one who had first molested her was running his hands over her body from behind, while his two comrades looked on, laughing and making coarse jokes about letting the badger loose.
Out of the corner of his eye, Talbot was pleased to observe that the man with the wooden leg was already diving towards the pile of weapons which had been taken from the passengers. For a man with such an impediment, he surely moved fast. The man Talbot had shot fell sideways at once, like a felled tree, a gout of blood spurting from his ear. Without hesitating for the least fraction of a second, Talbot turned and shot the nearest of the other bandits, sending the .44 bullet straight through the man’s right eye. Just before he fired this second shot, he was aware of shooting starting away to his right and assumed that the fellow with the peg-leg was in action.
Having used both barrels of the little muff-pistol, Talbot Rogers was now unarmed and could only hope that his enemies were in a similar condition. He whirled around, expecting at any moment to hear the crash of gunfire and to feel perhaps the sickening impact of a ball striking him in the chest, but there was dead silence. Even so, he dived down at the pile of pistols, snatched one up at random, cocking it with his thumb as he did so, and then turned warily to see if any targets presented themselves.
Four or five men lay prone on the ground and it took Talbot a few seconds to figure out the play. All the bandits seemed to be dead and he scanned those standing, looking for the fellow with the false leg. Then he saw him, lying on his back a dozen feet or so from Talbot. Talbot stood up and went over to him, but he could see at once that nothing could be done. There was a small hole in the front of the man’s shirt and judging from the position of it, he must have taken a ball right through one of his lungs. From Talbot’s experience, he guessed that blood loss would kill the fellow in no more than ten or fifteen minutes.