"Relax," Cutlass said. "Five minutes maybe. That ain't long to sweat."
Five minutes for a Dallas to Fort Worth payroll shipment that was supposed to be worth a hundred thousand. Travelling just like any other stage, if you could believe Toady. So as not to draw attention: Just two drivers, a couple of rifles, and maybe two or three regular passengers.
Hell. Gonzales and the Kid could have the hundred thousand. He had his pile. Robbin Cutlass couldn't remember where the rest of it had come from exactly—the watch with the initials that weren't his had puzzled him some. But he knew more by instinct than by memory how he'd got it, and that he had plenty more junk like it stashed in a bank safe-deposit box in—yeah, Abilene, what the hell was the matter with him.
Sure, he had his pile. But it makes a man sore as hell when all the tin badges in Texas gang together just to hunt him down like a coyote and then hold up his hide for every gawk to hoot at. Who the hell did they think they were to give Robbin Cutlass any back-talk? When the Wells Fargo rig slowed up to have a look at Chico, noise or no noise, by God....
The Kid heard it when he did, took his hands from his moist gun butts in a play at nonchalance and adjusted the black kerchief over his thin nose.
Cutlass didn't say anything until the stage had come tearing hell for leather around the long bend, started spurting little plumes of dust from under its iron-rimmed wheels as it ground to a halt. One of the drivers started getting down.
"OK," Cutlass said.
Only it wasn't OK. Even before they'd covered half the fifty yards, Cutlass saw the driver who had gotten down to go over for a look at Chico pull out his Colt and deliberately gunwhip the possum-playing Mexican across the head. Then he flopped flat on his belly and the doors of the stage slammed open even as the other driver was dropping from his perch, Winchester coming up as his boots slammed dust from the road.
Two full squads of U.S. cavalry were firing even before the Kid had been able to get his guns out. He went down with five holes in him before he could cry out. Cutlass was already out of his saddle and choking on sand. Before his first Colt was empty three soldiers and one of the drivers were dead.