It was a moment before Bill Martin recognized the savage cry over the noise of the stagecoach. Reflex action brought his hand to the .44 strapped at his side. Years of living in the west told him all that was necessary to know. What had started as a return to the West with his new bride was about to become a nightmarish hell. To him this was a natural move back to where he'd been born. Even if California was slightly west of New Mexico, at least it was not Boston!
His eyes darted to the young woman sitting beside him.
Helen hadn't wanted to come out West with him, and now for the first time he thought maybe it had been a mistake. She had wanted to settle in the town of her birth, raise a family near her father and mother and sisters. Yet, even with that longing desire, she had come with him, because she loved him and because she felt it was the duty of a woman to follow her man, wherever he might take her. To Helen that was almost a Biblical demand. And now, because of that, and his own foolish stubbornness, they might be doomed even before they reached their distant destination. And what was that? A dream, a magnet promising riches, maybe even gold in California. And he was following his dream. Blindly. Foolishly. Stupidly.
"What is it?" she asked, frightened, looking at the gun in his hand. "What's wrong?"
Brent Henderson, sitting opposite them, the only other occupant of the coach, answered the question with one word: "Apaches."
The coach jerked, the sound of a whip snapped overhead, and suddenly they were charging across the desert floor.
"Oh God--God help us!" Helen screamed; her face white.
Bill wanted to take her into his arms and say all the things they hadn't had time to say. But that was impossible, now. So many things to say, so many which had seemed special and important but saved for the future when they were together in their own, freshly built home. Out West. Into a world of hope and new adventure, and the chance of making it big, somewhere, somehow. Follow your dream, was his motto. Foolish, stupid, childish dream, yet a part of all that he had been raised to believe. He was a part of the frontier life; but not like his father who had struggled in a small western town to make it as a store keeper and then as a farmer. All those failures had killed the old man. No, John had better dreams. And they had enveloped this wonderful woman who had promised to share his life, wherever he might take her.
And now what?
A bullet smashed into the coach's side and he quickly learned out the open window.
There were at least a dozen bareback Apaches, speeding after the stage, almost enveloped by the collective dust which was whirling around their horse' hooves.
)
He had brought his Boston born bride out west where he'd lived all his life, only to realize, too late, that it was a deadly mistake when a band of murdering Apaches had them trapped in the middle of the Southwestern desert.
