Friar Thomas & the Western Express - Chapter 2

Chapter 2
Inside the coach sat a man named King,
With a wife and two sons to boot,
And a daughter whose eyes were dark midnight skies,
And ringlets of ebony soot.

Come from Virginia to settle the West,
Chasing the glory of gold
But whether they’ll find a fortune in mines
Is an outcome that’s yet to be told, lads –
A story that’s yet to be told.

As of yet Mr. King is poverty struck
A former ship’s cap’n just down on his luck…

Mr. David King, his wife, and their family of three children bumped around miserably in the Western Express stagecoach. It was hot. It was dusty. The delicate handkerchief Mrs. King held in front of her face was no longer white; it was streaked with brown, and when she took it away from her face to speak to him he could tell from where the dirt began and ended on her face where she had been holding it.
“David,” she said wearily, “are we there yet?”
He sighed as he patted her knee. “No Jessebell, we’re not. And we won’t be for days.”
His twin sons, Saul and Jonah, had long since given up their excited chattering about the adventure of moving to the West. They were even too disenchanted to hit and poke each other any more, which was a mercy because Mr. King was heartily sick of trying to keep them from touching each other or breathing on each other in this close space. Only his eldest, Delilah, had been relatively patient about their long and arduous trek.
Ah, Delilah. Mr. King gazed at her fondly as she tried to nap against the jostling coach. His beautiful girl – a woman grown now! Her fine looks and good behavior had earned her an enviable place among the other young women of their hometown in Virginia. None had been able to hold a candle to Delilah at her seventeenth birthday celebration, the last big party the Kings had been able to throw before receiving word that their cargo of tobacco had been captured by pirates as it sailed on the family ship to foreign ports. By the end of the week their creditors had descended on the home, and Mr. King was left a shameful debtor. Even now his eyes stung to think of it. And now they were on their way to the West, chasing rumors of gold and fleeing the prying eyes and wagging tongues of their former friends and neighbors.
Delilah’s magnificent raven locks were rough with the wear of travel. Her dress was stained and limp. The jewel of the family and pride of his heart was covered in dirt, bedraggled but still pretty enough, even if the men who had so admired her before would now be more likely to offer her a hand-out rather than offer their hand. Her father had certainly seen her looking better, and chose to close his eyes to what he’d reduced his little girl to and remember her instead as he’d seen her at her birthday party, the belle of the ball…
The stagecoach began to slow. The horses needed a rest and the driver did too. He’d been paid handsomely by the Kings for his services, enough so that he wouldn’t take any mail along with him. Though he had protested mightily, being a firm believer in the delivery of mail, Mr. King had insisted that carrying mail meant risking highway robbery.
“Mail coaches attract thieves like flies to manure!” Mr. King had said. The coachman had seen his point and his thick wallet, and had agreed. However, he’d since come to suspect that Mr. King’s thick wallet was thicker with moths than it was with cash, and had decided that he wouldn’t kill himself or his team getting to California.
Mr. King noticed the coach slowing and rapped on the ceiling. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Why are we stopping again?”
“Horses need to rest!” shouted back the coachman, not really caring what Mr. King thought about that.
Mr. King grumbled a bit to himself but really didn’t mind the chance to stretch his legs one more time. His family was stirring as well, brought to life by the possibility of escaping their rattling prison for a time. They hadn’t been out of the coach more than three minutes, however, before their driver muttered a curse and yelled for them to get back into the coach quick. He launched himself onto his seat and continued hollering as the family scrambled, clearly anxious to get going as fast as possible. The door to the coach hadn’t even been shut before he’d whipped the team with a sharp “Hee-yaw!” As they lurched forward Mr. King pulled the door shut, the ground already moving quickly beneath them.
“What the devil is the meaning of this, sah?” he shouted at the driver. He didn’t often use curse words in front of his family, but confound it, what did the man mean by stopping the coach and then yelling at them so rudely to get back inside? “I demand that you answer me! How dare you – “
“We’re bein’ followed!” hollered the coachman. “Bandits! Thieves! Outlaws!”
“Impossible!” Mr. King retorted even as his blood turned to ice. “We don’t have any mail! Why would they come after a coach that doesn’t have any mail?”
“They steal things other than mail, you idiot!” was the answer, and the coachman applied the whip over the backs of his straining horses.
The Kings sat in stunned silence at this revelation. Mr. King had never considered that they would be pursued just for the merest possibility of something worth stealing. Didn’t outlaws only steal mail, payrolls and such? His wife clutched his arm and searched his face for comfort he was unable to give. His boys looked at each other with faces aglow: finally, something exciting was happening! He felt pity for them, these innocent boys who never considered what might happen if the outlaws actually caught them. These were desperate men, no doubt; men who would do anything to satisfy their carnal desires and raging greed.
“No worries,” he tried to say cheerfully. “I’m sure they’ll give up soon when they find they can’t catch us. Besides, we have nothing they could want.” And then Mrs. King whispered a single word in his ear that caused his gut to churn: “Delilah..!”