Thunder on the Plains (18 page)

Someone knocked lightly on the door, bringing her back to reality. “Everything is ready in the boardroom, Miss Landers,” came Tod's voice. She thought how much easier it might be to ride for the Pony Express and face Indians and outlaws and the elements than to have to face the board of Landers Enterprises.

“Tod.”

“Yes?”

“Get me some stationery, would you? I want to write a letter right away.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Tod left, and Sunny sat down again, glancing at the letter from Durant. She picked it up and opened it.

Dear
Miss
Landers, I again express my deepest sympathy for your loss, a loss felt by many, many people, including myself. I am sorry if I am speaking too soon, but it is vitally important for me to know if you intend to continue your father's work in support of the Pacific Railroad Company, now that the problems over your inheritance have been settled.

Mr. C. P. Huntington, part owner of the Central Pacific out of California, is making his own efforts at a transcontinental railroad, and we must stay on top of this or the Central Pacific will be awarded the rights all to itself. I have managed to get a bill introduced into Congress for our own railroad, to be called the Union Pacific; but with a war going on, there now is a problem with rising costs. I have discovered that the price of rails has soared from $55 a ton to $115! I am still having trouble convincing investors to buy stock in the Union Pacific, and Huntington is having the same problems, so he is not ahead of us yet. There is so much to discuss. Please contact me at your earliest opportunity and let me know if I can depend on your continued support.

Again, my deepest sympathies, and my apologies for interrupting you in a time of sorrow; however, time is of the essence, and your beautiful, charming presence could have a great effect on influencing certain congressmen who were close to your father. I feel a vote will be taken in the next few months, and we must work together to make sure a railroad bill is passed.

A
sincere
friend, Thomas Durant.

She set the letter aside and leaned back in the chair again, thinking what a contrast the two letters were, representative of the two places in her heart. One place was more like a fantasy, the other, naked reality. Tod came back inside and laid some stationery on her desk.

“Send a wire to Mr. Durant telling him I will be arriving in about four days,” she told him. “I'm glad I had already decided to go and try to meet with him. His letter says it's urgent that I do so.” She sighed. “I just hope I haven't been away from things so long that I have hurt the political work for the railroad.”

“I'll send the wire,” Tod told her, leaving her again.

Sunny picked up the blank envelope he had brought her. “First things first,” she muttered.
Mr. Colt Travis
, she wrote,
c/o Pony Express, Fort Kearny, Nebraska
.

Colt waited while the mail was sorted. At Fort Kearny it had to be checked to make sure which mail went on to Fort Laramie. At Laramie it was checked again for what would be ridden into Cheyenne and Denver and what would go on to Fort Bridger and beyond.

“I'll be damned,” Stanley said to him, pulling at his red beard. “Here's one for you. Who the hell do you know in Chicago, boy?”

Colt took the letter. “Sunny,” he said quietly. He looked at Stanley. “Just an old acquaintance, somebody I helped guide to Fort Laramie a few years back.”

“Well, you'll have to finish your run before you read it. Time's wastin'.” The man shoved the necessary mail into the rainproof Pony Express pouch, and Colt slid Sunny's letter inside his buckskin shirt. He grabbed the bags and hurried outside, slinging the bags over the front of his saddle. He mounted the horse in one swift, graceful movement, quickly tying a rawhide cord around the mail bags before riding off at a hard gallop on one of the many swift ponies owned by Russell, Majors, and Waddell.

The journey began, a job he had grown to love and wished would not end when the telegraph was finished. The constant riding of the past weeks, the danger, the responsibility, all had helped him keep his thoughts from painful memories. He charged across the Nebraska Plains, quickly leaving the fort behind, enjoying the feel of the wind in his face.

Sometimes he thought riding hard was just another outlet for his anger, as though he could run from the memories by riding as hard and fast as possible. There had even been times when he screamed, letting go of the reins and opening his arms, begging God to just strike him down and end his agony.

He galloped over soft sod, sometimes following the ever-lengthening telegraph lines. He touched his pocket, making sure Sunny's letter was still there, hardly able to believe she had written back to him. It made him ride even harder, eager to get to the end of his run so he could read it. It gave him a good feeling to know that somewhere there was one person who remembered him and cared enough to answer a letter. How strange that someone who lived in a city like Chicago, someone who could probably buy the whole city, should write to a lonely drifter with nothing more to his name than his horse and the hundred and twenty-five dollars he had made so far riding for the Pony Express.

It was the first of August, and terribly hot and humid. Already his horse was lathered, the constant run hard on an animal in such weather. The relay stations were set up every ten to fifteen miles so that it took only fifteen to twenty minutes to reach the next station, where he would get a fresh horse.

Man and horse rose and fell with the undulating hills, one small dot against the massive landscape of green and yellow. Colt leaned into the wind, smiling at the thought of Sunny writing to him. He tried to guess how long he had ridden—ten minutes? Fifteen? He couldn't be far from the next station.

Suddenly, he heard a gunshot. His horse whinnied and stumbled forward. Colt was catapulted out of the saddle, his body rolling head over heels for several yards until it landed against a small boulder. Colt cried out with the jolt. He lay stunned for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. He thought he heard someone give out a yell, and he knew he was in grave danger, although he remained too confused to realize at first what was happening.

He managed to sit up and look around. Five men were riding hard down a far hill, obviously after the mail. He scooted around behind the boulder, wincing at a vicious pain in his ribs. His saw his horse lying in the distance, bleeding from the shoulder but snorting and kicking. The mail bags were still secured to the saddle.

Colt quickly drew one of his two revolvers, sweat pouring from him because of his pain, combined with the intense heat. These men were out to kill, he had no doubt, and his duty was to protect the mail. He hunched his shoulder and wiped perspiration from his forehead so that it would not sting his eyes; then he took careful aim, waiting until they drew close enough that he could not miss. Every shot had to count, since the boulder behind which he crouched was not nearly big enough to hide him completely.

He fired, and a man cried out, his body jerking back and tumbling from his horse. Colt fired again, and a second man came crashing down, horse and all. Colt flattened himself to the ground when the remaining men returned fire, their bullets making little zinging noises when they hit the rock. He rolled to his knees, again firing. A third man cussed and grabbed his arm.

“Let's get the hell out of here!” one of them yelled.

Colt shot the hat off another.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” the man cried out. “You said they was just kids!”

“Drop your weapons before you're all dead!” Colt shouted.

A couple of the men raised their arms. “He ain't no kid,” one of them grumbled.

“Let us pick up our friends' bodies,” another called out.

“The murdering bastards can lie right where they are!” Colt quickly switched his second, fully-loaded pistol to his right hand, holstering the first pistol and getting to his feet. He held the revolver steady. “Drop your weapons like I said, and get down off your horses!” The three men looked at one another hesitantly. “Try firing at me again, and one of you will join your dead partners. Which one wants to take that chance?”

“Jesus Christ,” one of them muttered, climbing down from his horse. He threw his gun aside, and the other two followed suit.

Colt continued to keep a steady aim on them, ordering them to walk a considerable distance from their weapons. He eased himself over to his horse. “Sorry, boy,” he said, hating to see the animal suffer. He lowered the pistol and shot the horse in the head, and the three men jumped in fright. The horse gasped for a couple of seconds, then shuddered in death. Colt again aimed the pistol at the outlaws as he quickly untied the mail bags, then walked over to the other horse that had stumbled. He could tell without touching it that a leg was broken. He fired again, killing the second horse, and the men cussed and backed away more.

Colt slung the bags over the saddle of one of the other outlaws' horses, then mounted the animal, the pain in his ribs bringing even more perspiration. “Let's go,” he told the three remaining men.

“Go where?”

“To the next station. You three get to walk.”

“But it's another two or three miles! It must be a hundred degrees out here!”

“The heat didn't stop you from waiting out here and trying to kill me and rob the U.S. Mail. Now, start walking! Once we get to the next station I'll see about getting you back to Fort Kearny. The soldiers will take care of you from there. And walk fast, or I'll shoot to wound and leave you sitting in the heat! I've got mail to deliver, and I've got no sympathy for a man who tries to kill me!”

“What about the wound in my arm?” one of them asked. “I'm bleedin' bad.”

“You break my heart,” Colt told him.

“What about our friends?”

“They're resting in peace. Maybe soldiers from the fort will come out and bury them.” Colt grasped the reins of two other horses. The fifth horse had run off. “Get moving,” he told the three men. “I can't trust you not to ride off on me if I let you use your horses.”

“Goddamn bastard!” one of them grumbled.

“Looks like a goddamn Indian to me,” another muttered. “No wonder he ain't got no feelin's.”

For the next hour and a half the men marched on aching feet to the next station.

“You're late!” the attendant called out. “What the hell you got there?”

“Thieving murderers!” Colt called back. “You got another man who can go on from here? I think I've got a couple of cracked ribs. They shot my horse, and I took one hell of a fall.”

The man hurried inside, coming back out with a rifle and another man as well as a boy Colt recognized as Dave Hicks, only seventeen. Dave ran over and grabbed the mail bags. “Glad you're all right, Colt,” the young man told him. He rushed over to a waiting fresh horse, throwing the bags over the saddle and riding off. The attendant herded the three outlaws inside the station, which was nothing more than a log-and-mud hut, and the second man, a Pony Express employee named Matt Willett, helped Colt dismount.

“Come on inside and I'll wrap your ribs.”

“I have something else I want to do first,” Colt answered. “Later on you can help me herd those three back to Fort Kearny and let the soldiers take care of them. I've also got to pick up my gear that's still out there.”

“Sure, Colt, but you don't look too good. You'd better let me take care of those ribs.”

“I'll be all right. I just won't be able to take a deep breath for a while.” He walked over to a wash bucket next to the station and splashed some of the cool water onto his face. “Just give me a minute. I've got a letter to read.” He took a towel from a hook on the side of the building and wiped it over his face and through his hair, then draped it around his neck, walking to a stool on the shaded end of the building.

He sat down gingerly, taking a cigarette paper from his front pocket and some tobacco from the leather pouch on his belt, rolling a cigarette and lighting it. The pain hit him again when he tried to take a deep drag from the smoke. He grunted, keeping the cigarette between his lips as he pulled Sunny's letter from his pocket. He had sweated so much that the ink on the envelope had run into an illegible blur, and he worried that the letter would also be unreadable, but to his relief the letter was dry and the writing was clear.

Dear
Colt
, he read.
So, you're riding for the Pony Express. How exciting! Is it dangerous?
He could not suppress a laugh, in spite of the pain it brought him. It hit him then that it had been a very long time since he had laughed. It had taken only one opening line from Sunny Landers, and he remembered how he once thought she truly fit her name. He wondered what her personality was like now, since losing her father and taking on the responsibility of Landers Enterprises. Was she still the same young woman, full of so much life and determination? Did she smile anymore?

I
have
no
trouble
picturing
you
riding
across
the
Plains
with
the
mail
, he read on.
I
suppose
it
is
fitting
work
for
a
man
like
you, but I am concerned about your remark that you have suffered your own grief. You said that you had married but that you are alone again. You must tell me what happened. You wrote to tell me that you share my sorrow, but you must also let others share yours.
His smile faded as the ugly memories returned. How could he tell her, knowing that it was partly his fault?

I
thank
you
so
much
for
remembering
me
and
writing
to
express
your
sympathy. This has all been very hard for me, and I am just today getting back to the work of carrying on in my father's footsteps. I never thought this would all be left to me at such a young age. Father was always so big and strong. It is a terrible thing to watch your father, the pillar of your life, waste away into death. It seems so unfair for someone like Bo Landers to die that way, but then, my sister-in-law Vi has tried to help me understand that death is just a part of life.

Yes, I will continue Father's work toward a transcontinental railroad, even though the rest of my family and the board members of our various companies are against it. I promised Father I would carry on the dream, and already there is a bill being reviewed by Congress in support of just such a railroad. I will be traveling to Washington soon to do what I can to get the required votes.

Our
biggest
problem
at
the
moment
is
the
war
and
the
rising
costs
of
material. It will be difficult to get funding, as most industrialists are more concerned with the money they can earn from making supplies for the war than investing in a railroad they think can never be built. For such men money comes above all things, and we who want the railroad will have our work cut out for us in getting others to invest. After all these years of trying, we still have only a few hundred thousand dollars toward the railroad, and most of that has come from our own pockets.

Colt grinned again. “Only a few hundred thousand dollars, huh?” He shook his head. “Just a drop in the bucket.” He thought how he risked his life daily for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.

So, here I am, preparing to go into my first board meeting as chairman of Landers Enterprises while you ride horses across the Plains, fighting Indians and such. Our lives are a fine contrast, aren't they?

Do
write
me
again. You have no idea how welcome your letter was. It really brightened my day, and I need all the help I can get. Somehow, thinking of you doing brave things out there in that wild land gives me more courage to face my own daily life. Believe it or not, I face dangers too, but they are not the kind a man can see, or feel physically. When you are young and a woman, and you have just inherited a fortune, you have many enemies; but Father trained me well, and I know what to watch for and who I can trust.

Thank
you
so
much
for
your
letter, and for remembering me. How could you think I would not remember you? I still have my journal from our trip west, and I often open it and read it. Somehow it comforts me to think of that beautiful land and the peace I felt there. I don't blame you for loving it and wanting nothing more than to do exactly what you are doing. Some of us have duties handed to us in life that we might not really want, but we do them anyway, because it's right and necessary. I am old enough now to know the difference between fantasy and reality, and my reality is right here in Chicago.