Stagecoach Whip

It isn’t a simple job or a clean one. The hours are impossibly long, and rest is only granted when each leg of the trip is finished. Danger can spring from behind an outcropping of rocks, or from a fellow traveler. The weather is both friend and foe depending on the day. Even the very ground can shift underfoot. Only a fool would choose a job like this, so a fool is what I must be because driving a stagecoach is the only job I’ve ever wanted.

I work for the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Lines. As the name infers, we carry passengers and mail from Cheyenne, Wyoming, through the Black Hills to Deadwood, South Dakota. It’s a trip of approximately three-hundred miles taking fifty hours, including team changes and meal or bathroom stops. The job is not glamorous, but it pays $145 a month.

The trip to Deadwood is normally uneventful. My passengers are usually miners, business executives, and the occasional female. It’s the trip back to Cheyenne that can get a little dicey because I’m not just carrying passengers. I also have gold nuggets on board. It was on one particular return trip that all hell broke loose.

The saloons in Deadwood stay open twenty-four hours, which makes it difficult to sleep if your bedroom is above the gaming floor, which mine is; so tonight, I sleep in the stable. The straw is soft, and the horses keep me warm. Of course, I smelled like horseshit for the ride back to Cheyenne, but I won’t fall asleep at the reins.

Daylight shoves away the darkness, but not the rain clouds. It is time for me to start my day. I stand, stretch the kinks out of my spine, grab my whip, and head for breakfast. Brushing away clinging straw while walking to the saloon, I hear a voice call out.

“Hey Whip, been sleeping with the horses again?”

Jacob is my name, but most stagecoach drivers are called “Whip” because we all carry a 12-foot-long whip attached to a 5-foot hickory handle. It is our trademark, and cracking it is how we get a team of six horses to do our bidding. My whip’s handle is customized with inlaid gold and silver designs, a genuine work of art.

“Best bed in town! Wouldn’t want me falling asleep on the job, would you, Pete? You my shotgun on this run?”

“Yup! They know better than to give a load like this to any other team. We’re hauling two strongboxes this trip, plus six passengers.”

“That’s what dispatch told me when I got in yesterday. One passenger looks familiar, but I can’t place him. Four of the passengers are miners returning home, and one is a very attractive lady. Quite a lot to look after.”

“Don’t worry, Whip. The way you smell, nobody will want to get close enough to rob us.”

“It won’t be my smell. It’ll be that toothless grin and scraggy beard that’ll scare them away. Time for some grub, so we can leave on time.”

The clock in the center of town strikes eight o’clock as we pull away from the depot. Rain buckets down half an hour into the trip and portions of the trail turn to muck. Footing for the horses becomes treacherous, and the coach continually slides toward the edge of the road. One miscalculation and we will all tumble down the mountainside. The rain blurs my vision and the thunder makes the team edgy. This run is testing all my skills as a driver.

We reach a wider, flatter section of trail when suddenly a rider leading two saddled horses and a pack mule emerges from behind some boulders and blocks our way.

“What do you make of this, Pete?”

“Well, Whip, I think it may be time to show off old Betsy.”

Just as Pete reaches for his shotgun, a woman’s voice enters the conversation.

“You boys aren’t planning on doing something stupid, are you?

The female passenger leans precariously out of the coach window and points a derringer at Pete’s head. Simultaneously, the guy I mentioned to Pete mimics his partner on the coach’s opposite side and points his revolver at me. The man on horseback draws his gun.

This is not a time for thinking! With a flick of my wrist, I crack my whip over the team. The coach lurches forward. Both robbers are tossed from the coach. The third robber is almost thrown to the ground when the sudden explosion of movement startles his horses. Pete swivels and points his shotgun toward the man standing in the mud, who is now firing at us. The thief is immediately cut down by the shotgun blast.

The robber on horseback is now within striking distance of my whip. The lash snaps out and wraps around his neck. I give my trusty whip a yank, and he is on the ground, bleeding from the neck. With one more crack of the whip, the team gallops onward to our final destination, leaving the woman to tend to her partners in crime.

Unfortunately, because of the rain and our little incident, we will arrive in Cheyenne half an hour late. It’s just another day in the life of a stagecoach whip.

Author’s Note

Why pick a stagecoach driver for this challenge? I have spent my entire working life in one form of transportation or another. For the last 30+ years, I have driven buses, sold buses, and helped to manage a bus company. With that much time behind the wheel, I have driven over 2 million miles and crisscrossed the U.S. and Canada multiple times. I have met famous people. My wife was a former passenger. I watched as one passenger, who was wanted for a bank robbery, was removed by the police. Another passenger, who was wanted for murder, was taken off the bus and arrested. The hours are long and erratic and the pay is poor compared to truck drivers, but once it gets in your blood, it’s a job for life.

I hope you enjoyed the story!