A Holdup on the Tombstone Stage by James A. Tweedie

There’s more stories about stagecoach robberies than you can shake a stick at, and some of them might even be true, but though I don’t want to bore you with another one, I’m going to tell it to you anyway only because of Frederick Mead who got a bad reputation for doing what, at the time, seemed to be the right thing.

It was early June 1883—mebbe it was the third or mebbe it was the fourth, I can’t recall, but it was a Tuesday—and I’d been driving a stagecoach with passengers and the Wells Fargo money box between Tucson and Tombstone for near two years, getting the job when Joe Harper up and quit after getting shot in the arm during a holdup that went wrong when the six-horse team bolted at the shot and pulled the coach straight over the bandit who was supposed to be holding the reins. The bandit what shot Joe took off, and by the time Joe and his shotgun messenger got the horses and passengers settled down, he’d lost so much blood the doc up in Tucson near had to take off the whole arm to save the rest of him. In the end he got to keep the arm, but he quit driving the stage, and that’s how I come to get the job.

But I wasn’t meaning to bore you about old Joe Harper ’cause you can find him in Tucson, and he’ll be happy to tell you a whole heap of stories straight out, so I don’t need to tell those stories anyways. And that’s why I was going to tell you about Frederick Mead because it’s Fred’s story, but he won’t tell it even if you ask him, but since it’s also my story, here’s how it played out.

Now, Robert Burt had been my shotgun messenger for two years, and he was good at it. During those two years he’d been shot at six times, fought off four holdups, killed two robbers, and wounded at least three others and only lost the money box once when one of the passengers riding on the roof turned out to be one of the gang and thumped poor Bob on the back of his head before he knew it was coming.

Anyways, when he comes to, he says he feels dizzy, and he’s stayed dizzy ever since. He’s so dizzy he can’t ride on the top-side of a coach or shoot a gun straight anymore, so Wells Fargo fires him, and he moves to Colorado, and as far as I know, he’s still dizzy all the time.

And that’s how Fred gets hired as my new shotgun messenger and that seventeen-hour Tuesday ride from Tucson to Tombstone back in June of ’83 is his first day on the job.

Now Fred’s a good man, and I take a liking to him right off, but he’s making me nervous because he keeps talking about what if “this” happens or what if “that” happens, and I want the man with the shotgun to be sure of himself and not hem and haw when things happen because they happen all the time, and when they do, they happen right quick, and that’s not the time for the man sitting next to me with the gun to start asking questions.

But that’s how it is with Fred, and since he and me are now a team, I’ve got to trust that he’ll come through when the highwaymen show up—which they do three or four times a year or close to it.

So, off we go from Tucson with I-don’t-know-how many thousands of dollars in gold and silver coins fresh off the press from the Carson City Mint that we’re taking to the Wells Fargo office in Tombstone where they’ll exchange the coins for somewhere near six thousand dollars in silver bullion, which is all they put in because elsewise the box would be too heavy to move.

Fred’s already been trained on the route, so he knows where the dangerous places are when we slow down up a steep hill or drop into a deep place where men can be standing ten feet away and you can’t see ’em till they step out with guns pointed at your head.

But today the training is over, and it’s the real thing, and Fred still doesn’t seem sure of himself, and it’s making me nervous since my life is more or less in his hands, and if he does something stupid, it could turn out bad like it did for Joe and Robert, not to mention Bud Philpot, who wasn’t stupid at all, but was killed two years ago in March when he was driving ten passengers and a Wells Fargo box out of Tombstone. Some say it was Doc Holliday what shot Bud and that the Earps covered for him and that the Tombstone shoot-up had to do with the Clantons knowing all about it and the Earps wanting to shut ’em up once and for all before they had a chance to use it against them.

I knew—or know—all those men and figure it could have been either one way or the other, but all I can say is that I felt safer when Johnny Behan was Sheriff than I ever did with Virgil Earp as marshall or with his gang of brothers.

Well, it turns out we get to Tombstone without any trouble, and when we pull up at the Wells Fargo Office on Allen Street our eight passengers get off while the Tombstone agents heft the money box from the front boot and take it inside for the night so they can make the exchange and do all the paperwork that goes with it.

Once the box is out, we take the coach to the company corral three blocks west at Third and Fremont and check in across the street at Fly’s Boarding house where there’s a room Wells Fargo leases for visiting bankers and folks like us who ride the stage.

After dinner we head off to the Oriental Saloon for some cards and a drink or two. Fred comes along but says he doesn’t play cards and doesn’t drink liquor, so it doesn’t turn out to be as much fun as I’d hoped.

While we’re there I notice three men sitting at a nearby table nursing their drinks for the longest time while every so often sneaking looks in our direction. Whether they have anything to do with happens the next day or not, I can’t prove it, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they do.

The next morning we’re up before breakfast. We get the coach and six fresh horses from the corral and head back to the office where the agents refill the money box with silver bullion, and we load up nine new passengers to take back to Tucson. The coach holds six folks comfortable or nine if they’re friendly, but any more than that and someone has to sit on the floor or on the roof, which some men prefer anyway because it’s less stuffy and because they’re more comfortable with having me and Fred as company than the folks underneath.

So, with the sun just up and two men on the roof we start off on the ride back to Tucson.

Near on to Benson, we climb up the same slope where Bud Philpot’s stage was shot up, and there in front of us is a cowboy riding a horse down the hill like he’s on his way to Tombstone.

Now Fred, he knows the history of the spot near as well as I do, what with his training and all.

“What if he’s a bandit?”

“You shoot him afore he shoots you,” I say.

Fred does not look comforted by my reply.

As the coach continues to slow on the uphill grade and the man draws closer, I would swear—even with the scarf he’s wearing over his mouth—that he’s a twin brother to one of the men I saw lookin’ us over at the Oriental Saloon the night before.

So I yell out, “Hold on tight!” and whip the horses to move as fast as six can go while pulling a heavily-loaded stagecoach up a hill.

It turns out that there are bandits waiting for us, but our sudden speed throws their timing off as we blow past the rider and two men who step out of the rocks with pistols drawn.

As we leave them behind in a cloud of dust, I hear Fred ask, “Now what?”

And here I am near to death with straining every muscle I’ve got trying to keep these dang horses under control so the coach doesn’t go off the road and tip over, so I get all impatient and start yellin’ at Fred.

“If I have to tell you what to do, you’re no good, and if you’re no good, I’m gonna throw you off the wagon for dead-weight, so just shut up with the damn questions and do what you gotta do!”

So, Fred, he crawls onto the roof with the shotgun and tells the two up-top passengers to keep their heads down and move up to where he was sitting, and then how he manages to hold on with all the bouncing and swaying I have no idea, but he lies down and keeps the shotgun pointed at the road behind the wagon in case the bandits come after us.

There’s five men, two women, and a child down below, and I can hear the kid screaming and crying while the women try to hush him up by telling him to be brave, and I know the horses will be winded long before we get close to Benson, and, to be honest, at that moment I’m not feeling very brave myself.

“Here they come,” Fred yells.

And sure enough, I look back and see them gaining on us until they come up to shotgun range, and then they pull up and follow us at speed.

So, Fred’s shotgun’s keeping ’em back, but he can’t do anything about them following us.

Pistols are no good at this distance, either, but when I hear a bullet whizzing by my ear, I know that at least one of them’s got a rifle.

I think of the passengers below with the women and the kid, and I’m thinking those rifle bullets might be aimed at Fred and me, but at this distance and from a horse, one of them bullets is as likely to hit the kid as it is to hit me.

I remember that Bud wasn’t the only person to die when his stage was bushwhacked because what with all the shooting that went on that day, one of the up-top passengers was killed too.

We’re going so fast that the wind near takes my hat off, but Fred turns around and crawls over, and even though I told him to stop asking questions he asks the same one I’ve been asking myself for the last ten minutes.

“How long can the horses keep this up?”

“Five minutes or less,” I say, knowing full well what that means.

“Then the hell with it,” says Fred. “Unless the cavalry shows up over the next hill, they’ve got us dead and done, and my shotgun’s not gonna do anything more than get me killed and maybe you, too—and maybe some of the folks ridin’ with us. I say we quit and let ’em take what they can and leave us be.”

One of the men next to me is as white as a sheet and says, “Do what he says, please! Don’t let ’em keep shooting. For God’s sake, I’ve got my sister and nephew in the coach and….”

That was enough for me, and in any case, if Fred wasn’t gonna shoot, there wasn’t any reason to keep on going anyhow.

So, I pull back on the reins, and the horses are more than willing to slow to a trot, to a walk, and then come to a stop altogether.

On the top of the coach, Fred, he stands up straight with his shotgun pointed at the sky, and then he slowly bends over, empties it, and drops it onto the road stock down so the bandits can see it.

Then he stands up again with his hands in the air, and me and the two men next to me do the same.

I want the passengers to know what’s going on so I call out, “We’ve stopped, and we’re going to be robbed.” Then, after thinking about it for a bit I shout, “Don’t anyone try to be a hero. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Cries of “Yes” and “Yes, sir” ring out from under my feet, and the kid starts bawling again.

Two of the bandits come up on each side while the third unbridles the horses from the coach. One holds two pistols pointed in my direction while his partner opens the door to the coach and orders everyone outside.

The two women and the kid are told to sit on a nearby fallen tree, and the men are told to turn their backs and raise their hands while the bandit removes two pistols and a hunting knife the men are wearing.

The man with the guns pointed at me orders us four top-siders to climb down one at a time and stand with the others.

When we’re all lined up, one stands guard while the other two locate the Wells Fargo box and try to pull it free, but at near five hundred pounds, it weighs too much for them to lift. One of them pulls out a knife and tries to break off the lock, while his two partners start acting all nervous and trigger-itchy as they search the road for trouble.

The man with the knife starts cussin’ up a storm, and when he gives up on getting it open, he starts firing his pistol at the big padlock on the front of the box. When that doesn’t do anything, he starts shooting at the box with his other pistol, and wooden splinters and bullet fragments start flyin’ everywhere, and when one of them hits his partner in the neck, there’s even more swearin’ and yellin’ until the third bandit shouts, “Leave it! It’s too heavy to carry on a horse, and since we can’t get it open, I say we’ve gotta give it up and take what we can get afore we go.”

So, two of them takes a hat and fills it with whatever money and jewelry they can find on the passengers. Then the baggage gets thrown down from the wagon, and when everything inside gets strewn all over the ground, it leads to some embarrassment for the ladies.

The bandits are just starting to divide up the loot when a string of supply wagons comes down from the north, so the three men jump on their horses and head south so fast they leave the pistols, shotgun, and knife lying on the ground between the rear wheels of the coach.

Fred warns the wagon drivers about the bandits while I re-harness the horses and the passengers repack their bags.

When we get to Benson, I send telegraph messages to Tucson and Tombstone telling what happened, and when that’s done, we change horses, climb back onto the coach, and finish the trip without being robbed a second time.

In Tucson, when those boys from Wells Fargo hear what happened, they ask old Fred if he’s not going to protect their stuff, then what’s the use of paying him to hold a shotgun on his lap that he’s not going to use?

So, they up and fire him on the spot—which I don’t think is fair—and that’s why I’m telling you this story in the first place, so if you hear someone say that Frederick Mead’s a coward or some such thing, you can set them straight because now you know better.

The only funny thing about the story is that the money box and the padlock were shot up so bad that the Wells Fargo boys in Tucson couldn’t open it to get the silver out. They were so hot about it that they were ready to blow it up with a stick of dynamite, which was something I’d have given up a week’s pay to see, so I was mighty disappointed when I heard they got it open with a crowbar.

Now I’m waiting for them to hire and train a new shotgun messenger to ride with me, and to tell the truth, I can’t decide whether I’d rather have one more like Bob or more like Fred.

——————

James A. Tweedie has lived in California, Utah, Scotland, Australia, Hawaii, and presently in Long Beach, Washington. He has published six novels, four collections of poetry, and one collection of short stories with Dunecrest Press. His award-winning stories and poetry have appeared in regional, national, and international print and online anthologies. He has twice been honored with a Silver Certificate award from Writers of the Future and was awarded First Prize in the inaugural Edinburgh Festival Flash Fiction Contest. He is a regular contributor to Frontier Tales and Saddlebag Dispatches.

He recalls moving from San Francisco to Logan, Utah, in 1979 and being both baffled and amused when he was asked, “What made you decide to move out West from California?”

In that moment, he learned that “the West” was not just a direction, but a cultural space infused with traditions and tales embracing a heritage of mountain men, pioneers, Native Peoples, cowboys, homesteaders, prospectors, ranchers, railroads, and a host of conflicts that stretched and expanded the United States into the country it is today.

His favorite corner of the West is the Sierra Nevada, where he has hiked and fly fished since he was old enough to walk.