Chapter 10

It was mid-afternoon before the three men left for town. We followed them into Bitter Springs and found that they were staying in the hotel. That was a good sign, since it indicated that they were not permanent residents. We also spent the night at the hotel and, by coincidence, found ourselves eating breakfast at the same time they did. We learned that they were leaving on the stagecoach for Santa Fe that morning, so we decided to join them. We could not have kept up on horseback, so we really had little choice in our next move.

Abi went back to the room to change into women's clothes while I went to the livery stable to sell our horses, mule, and tack. The bastard cheated me with the pittance he paid for our stuff, but I couldn't take the time to haggle with him. Abi and I got to the stage office just in time to buy the tickets, and we found that I would have to ride up top with the driver and shotgun guard because of the unusual number of passengers.

Six people rode inside on the benches and I was the seventh passenger. The other five passengers were our quarry and a husband and wife going to Sante Fe to visit her relatives. At least, Abi had someone to talk to, so she would not be too bored. Meanwhile, I was sitting on the roof of the coach and forced to hold on for dear life as we careened down hills, though going up hill was not too bad. At least, I had some overflow baggage to lean against. There were so many passengers that not all of the luggage would fit into the boot.

We had an interesting adventure about 10 miles passed the relay station. We were attacked by a gang of Indians who chased us on horseback. They were just having fun, so we had no real trouble escaping, though they did throw a scare into some of the passengers. Of course, if they had been able to capture us, they would have been the only ones having fun. We men would have been tortured to death, and the women would have been raped to death, so I guess the scare was appropriate.

This was a "through coach," so we did not stop for sleeping that night. The stage crew was changed four times, and the mules were changed much more often than that, but we passengers stayed with the coach for the entire journey. We arrived in Santa Fe about noon, and all of us passengers were in mighty sad shape. I agreed with Abi when she said that she hoped never again to be involved in such a trip.

All of us passengers staggered from the coach to the nearest hotel where we took rooms to sleep off our miserable ride. The men we were following also stayed at that hotel, so we were in no immediate danger of loosing contact with them. They checked in just ahead of us, so I heard them say that they planned to sleep the rest of the day and would meet for breakfast tomorrow before going to see the "boss."

We went to our room, and I had to snicker. Abi claimed that she was too tired and beat up from the stagecoach ride to even think seriously about sex. What I thought was funny was that I was about to say the same thing. We ached in places that we had never known we had, but, hopefully, a good 16-18 hours of sleep would fix that problem.

Oh, yes, it did! We both woke up quite rested and a couple of hours before breakfast would be served in the hotel dining room, so we had time to make up for the sexercise we had missed the night before. Both of us felt even better than usual after that session, so I hoped that boded well for our mission.

We were already seated when our quarry showed up, so we dawdled over coffee while they finished eating. Abi was wearing her men's clothes in anticipation of some sort of action today, so there was virtually no chance that the three men would recognize us. We stalled over coffee as long as we reasonably could, but we had to leave before our quarry if we didn't want to draw suspicion toward us.

We sat on opposite sides of the lobby as if we did not know each other and pretended to read the newspaper while we waited for the men to come out. Finally, they showed up. I guessed that Hudson was not an early riser, so they were stalling around before going to his office.