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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Mystery of the Grafton Stagecoach
Hold-ups
(or The Whipping Bandit of the Road)
Tom Sheehan
For a dozen years, from the time she was eleven years old, a girl carried the solution to the mysterious hold-up of the Grafton Stagecoach headed to Abilene back in August of 1867. She kept it to herself because she didn’t know what to do with it. The girl’s name was Madeline Coombs. She was a bit slow in most things, mute for much of her life, though she had a magical eye for graphic images. She was in the company of her aunt Sophia Coombs who was taking her home in the stagecoach after her father and mother died in a runaway wagon crash.
The only loot taken during the stagecoach hold-up was a minor jewelry case that had dropped to the ground from the handbag of a lone woman of about 30 years, and pretty as a young mare on a first ride. The case was decorated with a scarab. The lone robber, well-masked, wearing a clean denim jacket, had picked up the case, fallen open for a moment on the ground, and stuck it in his shirt when he found the money box empty. It appeared to be nothing more than a souvenir of the hold-up.
“Dammit, Smokey,” the robber said when the money box was broken open, as if he knew the driver, “I thought I’d get a little ahead of the game with this box.”
The robber seemed keenly disappointed, and surprised. “Look at that,” he uttered, pointing at the box, “Not a damned dollar by a damned sight. I’m still church mouse poor and should not have come out today.” His revolver was still a threat in his hand, though his manners said he would exercise every option before he would fire it. Instead, the way anger gets going on a person, he whipped the nearest person to him, who was the lady who dropped the jewelry case. She fell with a thud and Madeline Coombs made no cry, though she feared for her life and that of her aunt.
The stage driver, jumped down to protect his passengers, and was whipped about the head.
“I just load and carry,” the driver muttered from the ground, rubbing the back of his head, his eyes fishy on his face. He was wrinkled, as old as the hills, but as patient as the mountains. “That’s all I do. Load and carry and care for my passengers.” He pointed off down the road as if someone out there was waiting on him, the way a threat might be muzzled. “Everybody knows I hate to be late. Ain’t been late in half a dozen runs, countin’ the washout at Cripple Creek a few months ago. Oh, that was bein’ late ‘bout half a day, the way the wash took the edge right off the road, took it for a full ride down the river. We had to backtrack to Stover Crossing to git across. I don’t like messes like that, and I sure don’t like to get head-whipped by the likes of you.”
“I hear you, old man. Don’t blame it on me. I wasn’t near the place that time.” After the gun-whipping the bandit appeared to be somewhat apologetic, his voice changing and his manner.
Madeline Coombs, hearing every word, decoding the tone of voices, assumed the two men knew each other in spite of the whipping. When the sheriff talked to all of them at Abilene, Smokey Dumont said he did not know the robber, but said, “He didn’t kill me. Not taken to killing anybody that I could see, and I don’t think I ever met the man, though everybody between Grafton and Abilene knows I drive the coach. The man was decent to me spite of what he done,” Smokey attested with his final words.
The sheriff, quizzical, unsure of what Smokey meant, said, “What do you mean by that?”
“The critter didn’t shoot me is all I can say,” Smokey said, coming back quickly. “He was lookin’ for money and got none. And he didn’t shoot me. Just whacked me on the head a couple of times, and the pretty lady, too. I ‘preciate not getting kilt. I expect she does too. We all know a few drivers got their arms crossed for them out there on the same road.”
Madeline Coombs, 11 going on 50 in some ways, had an image locked in her mind for a long time after the incident. Sometimes it would leave her for months, even a year or so at a time. The blonde hair on her was striking, and with her blue eyes made her attractive despite her problems. She grew, began to draw with talent, and became mildly happy with her short lot in life. The sheriff, advised of Madeline’s condition by her aunt, had never questioned her about the hold-up, not realizing what the girl held onto.
And the same bandit, sometime later down the road, shot a man who was about to yell out his name. The bandit had struck again, but this time it had all gone wrong for him, yet not a single clue appeared to set trail on him. The sheriff was at a loss. “He’s been here a few times on this road, spreading his work over long periods, but we never get a look at him. We know nothing,” he’d say to those who questioned him about the bandit.
Madeline meanwhile, growing into a young lady but still without speech, became quite good at her chosen art work. She had a small studio in her aunt’s home at the edge of town, and though she became quite lovely, none of the town boys came around to see her. She spent her energy at depicting things in life … people, animals, objects that caught her eye with their symmetry or color or the manner of their relationship with things about them. With work for the newspaper and business posters and placards, and now and then a painting of a rancher and his family, she made her and her aunt fairly comfortable. Though she occasionally dreamed of a fine boy coming to see her, she pushed all energy into her work. Her life, she decided, was set in its ways.
The pistol-whipping bandit made appearances every so often on the same Grafton road, with the same kind of actions taking place. Whenever Madeline heard the stories about him, a faint image, one without known contours, tried to find its way into her attention. It did not succeed, but she was aware of the inclination, and the terror behind it. Though she could see the old stagecoach driver and the lady of the jewelry case on the ground after getting their heads whipped, some other terrible and fearful feeling leaped around in the back of her mind trying to get out and be known.
Then the first Fair Day came, a glorious weekend of build-up and fervor and take-down as a small carnival came to town. The color and noise was great and Madeline enjoyed it from the first tent stake driven into the ground at the edge of town until the last stake was pulled and packed into a wagon. People bubbled all around, and gay sounds and laughter settled into comfort as the day moved on.
It was during the colorful afternoon when Madeline, walking with her aunt, suddenly froze in place. Shivers ran through her body. Aunt Sophie realized something had frightened the girl, who, for the first time in years, was trying to talk. A mush of sound came from her mouth, from her throat. It was like a small animal growling at some discomfort. With that uttered failure, Madeline grabbed her drawing pad, rarely out of her hands, and began drawing.
Her hands flew across the poster board in a frenzy of recapture, her pen finding symmetry and contour, and soon the lost jewelry from the stage hold-up years ago decorated the page, the imbedded icon brought back to life. Her aunt looked at it quizzically, until Madeline quick-drew a cartoonish stagecoach at the bottom of the page and a woman lying on the ground, with an old man beside her. In one moment it all came back to Aunt Sophie in a grand hurry.
She screamed for the sheriff.
Rushing out of the crowd, where he was walking with his wife, expecting the worst, the sheriff saw Sophie and Madeline scrunched over the drawing pad. People gathered at the commotion, thinking a big hit had been made at a game of chance.
The sheriff saw the picture that Madeline had drawn, and recognized the setting. Madeline, in a sudden move, pointed across the wide fairgrounds … at a tall man, neat of dress, who was tossing bean bags at a small hole in a wall of canvas. A woman, almost as tall, was standing beside him. The man was a friend of the sheriff, the chief teller at the bank, Jacob Medlin, a poker buddy, a fishing pal, a man who sat in the same pew at the church.
Madeline drew a quick picture on her pad, and then pointed at his belt buckle. The images were identical. The scarab came from an historical past, from the Aztecs so near and so far. Their designs had long intrigued Madeline, attracting her artistic talent, settling their style in her mind.
She shivered as she had shivered before, her body reeling. Sophie hugged her in comfort as the teller, knowing all the principles, suddenly as anxious as all get-out, tried his best to avoid a confrontation.
“What the hell is this, Jake? You marking me for somebody else? A picture the kid thinks she saw in your office? Nobody ever got a picture of me.” It almost said, “Nobody can mark me as a stagecoach robber. I’m too smart for that. Have been that way for years.”
He was relaxed and still holding hands with his lady friend. “Get on with it, whatever it is, Jake. I’m due at the bank in half an hour. They don’t wait for me, not for a second. You know how Pettibone operates. He’s as cheap as they come. An Indian giver from the word go.”
His lady friend, however, was very nervous, aware of the stage she was on, visible to everybody in town. Her discomfort showed as plain as a crippled steer.
“He’s the whipping bandit, sheriff,” Sophie said. “Madeline knew that from something he has. Something he said. His voice maybe. Something she recognizes.” Her hand fell on the drawing, the way a child scratches for identity, as if there’s a chance for recognition.
“That’s all a bunch of cow turd, Jake,” the tall man said, even as the lady of choice slipped her hand out of his, the whole gathering of town folk looking on, the whispering gaining ground in the crowd.
With the terrible scene from the past haunting her, seeing the whole situation rig itself for new exposure, mute Madeline Coombs pointed at Jacob Medlin, teller at the bank, unsuspected bandit of the road. Her aunt, the sheriff, more than half the town, succumbed to her frontal assault.
“There,” she said huskily, the first time in years she had spoken, from deep in her emotions. “It’s him.” She was pointing at his belt buckle, mounted as a mere souvenir. The scarab from the jewelry box was there, as bright as it would ever be, denouncing a quiet killer.
When the sheriff locked his friend in a pair of iron bracelets, the girl, mute for so long, began to hum. Her aunt recognized the tune.
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