Chapter 4

"Damn it, Josh Murdoch, pay attention! Ever since Alice announced that she was going to have a baby, half the time, you've wandered around in a daze," Josh muttered to himself as he rode up to his lookout position on DP1. At least, he still had a job. When John Randall announced that he was expanding his stagecoach line, Josh thought that the route might change enough to make his job unnecessary. John had assured Josh that he would have a job as long as he wanted one was just not enough for Josh's peace of mind. Josh was a worry-wart about some things, and being an unemployed father was one of them. Oh, well, back to work on the job he still had.

Josh had really fixed up this place in the year he had been coming here to guard the stagecoach as it passed before him. He had arranged a feed box and a water trough for his horse and hauled in enough feed and hay to keep him happy for a few days. Josh didn't expect to be trapped in here under siege, but you never knew with the way the Indians and Mexicans had been acting lately. He always carried extra water and food with him as he moved from danger point to danger point, just in case. Being careful kept him alive!

This location was as much like a fort as one could wish for, with the way it was enclosed on three sides by high rock walls. The only approach was over open ground which gave him a good field of fire for his Henry carbine. Any man or animal who came withing a 200-yard radius of the only opening would be a perfect target. If he ever had to hole-up, this would be his place of choice.

"Damn! What's that?" he wondered as he caught a glimpse of smoke off in the distance toward Smithville. The stagecoach would be along in a few minutes in its run to Santa Rosa and it would be coming from the direction of the smoke.

"Now, what?" The coach was late by about 10 minutes. Joe, the driver, would never let that happen this close to a relay station. "OK, here it comes. But something is wrong! There's too many people on the the coach and the horses are not running as fast as they should be. Shit! There must be trouble!"

Suddenly, the lead horse on the right side collapsed, dragging down the rest of the team! The coach came to a grinding halt, running into the rear horses of the team. There was chaos at the coach! Josh ran out of his observation post to get a better view of what was going on. Then he saw the source of the trouble: about 30 Mexicans were charging their horses up behind the coach, shooting as they came.

The coach had come to a stop about 150 yards from Josh's "fort," and the people were now hunkered down behind it, shooting at the Mexicans as they came riding toward the coach. The Mexicans veered off when the coach people started shooting from cover; that was no place to charge in without adequate preparation.

Josh ran about half way to the coach and shouted, "Joe, send your people up here one at a time. I'll help cover them from here." Joe turned and waved at Josh. One of the passengers, a woman, pulled up her skirts and started running up the hill. When she reached Josh, he directed her to his "fort" and waved for the next person. Another woman ran up and Josh passed her along to the same place.

This time, when Josh waved, two men came up the hill, one supporting the other who could hardly walk, much less run. Josh directed them to follow the women and waved for the next person. Five more men came up the hill one at a time, including Joe, the driver, and Sam, the shotgun guard.

Ten people and a horse were about the reasonable capacity of Josh's fort, so it was a good thing that there were no more. There were now four rifles and one shotgun to defend the fort, but only enough room for two shooters at one time at the opening. Josh didn't know whether this was good or bad; it would depend on whether or not the Mexicans tried to charge and overwhelm the defenders with numbers. This latter wasn't likely, since these were bandits, not professional soldiers.

After he had gotten things sorted out and everybody settled down, Josh asked Joe for an explanation. "We were just pullin' up to the relay station when all hell broke loose! The station crew had just run out to change the team when the shootin' started from all directions, it seemed. Two of the team crew were killed immediately an' the fresh team ran off. Jess, over there, was shot in the thigh an' lost a lot of blood; personally, I doubt that he will make it. It was obvious that we were completely outgunned, so I yelled for everybody to jump on the coach an' we lit out. The team was pretty well tuckered out, so I knew that we would be lucky to make it this far. I knew that you would be here an' you had told me about your "fort," so I was just tryin' to get us this far before the Mexes caught us. I don't know why that lead horse collapsed when he did, but he saved our bacon by gettin' us this far."

"You were lucky to get here, all right! We've got plenty of water from that stream back there by the horse's trough. I've got enough extra food for about 2 days for this many people, if we're careful. We've probably got enough ammunition if we're careful with that, too. I don't think that the Mexicans will bother with us very long, since they're bandits and won't get much from us up here. Was there anything valuable in the coach?"

"Not really. There wasn't no cash box or anythin' like that. I think that they'll just ride off if we let them see that there's nothing in the coach worth stealin'. The women were the only passengers on this part of the run, so maybe they'll let us be."

"Well, Joe, I hope you're right. I don't want to fight a war if we don't have to."

The rest of the morning was spent sitting around talking. The two women tried to do what they could for Jess, but he died before noon; he had just lost too much blood. His body was laid out in the back of the fort and everybody tried to ignore it.

At one point, they saw a couple of the Mexicans sneak up to the coach and look around, but they did nothing to provoke an attack from the bandits. The Mexicans practically demolished the inside of the coach and the boot, looking for loot. After about 15 or 20 minutes of searching, the two bandits went back to the rest of the band with nothing to show for their efforts.

Late that afternoon, the Mexicans appeared to be setting up a permanent camp just at the edge of the cleared area at the bottom of the hill. The only water in the area came from the stream running through Josh's fort, so the bandits were going to be pretty uncomfortable if they tried to stay very long. Josh thought he might move things along if he could talk to the Mexicans, so he rigged up a white flag and waved it out the front of the fort. This brought a fusillade of fire from the Mexican camp, so he gave up on that idea.

They ate a light supper from the food Josh had on hand. He worked out a guard routine with two men on duty at one time, hoping that would be enough to keep the guards awake. The rest tried to get some sleep while things were relatively quiet.

During the night, the Mexicans had dragged off one of the dead horses from the stagecoach team and were butchering it at their camp the next morning. It looked like that was what they planned to have for supper.

Sometime during the day, Josh expected to see a search party show up from the next relay station to find out what had happened to the coach and passengers. Hopefully, they would see the situation and go for a large armed party to stage a rescue. Also, hopefully, the Mexicans would not try an attack before help arrived.

Around mid-morning, 10 or so of the Mexicans came up to the coach and, using it as breast works, began shooting at Josh's fort. When there was no return fire, several advanced on the fort. Josh and Joe waited until they were within about 70 yards before returning fire. They managed to wound four of the advancing Mexicans before the whole bunch, including those at the coach, turned and ran back to their camp. Was this a serious attack or just some fooling around by bored men?

Following the afternoon siesta, there was another attack similar in nature to the earlier one, but with more men. In fact, it looked like all of the able-bodied men from the Mexican camp. From the amount of powder smoke, Josh estimated that five men were firing from the coach while the rest charged up the hill.