The Last Stagecoach

The railroad is coming, and the Halloran Overland stage line is dying. This is its last run: Old Thunder, a red Concord coach with six horses, leaves the railhead town of Bitter Springs at dawn for Redemption, three days south across the Dead Flats, the white Salt Pan and the Broken Hills, with the mail, the Silverbell mine payroll in a green strongbox, and a handful of passengers who all have reasons to reach the far side.

There is a driver who has never been late, a shotgun messenger who has never lost a box, a federal deputy with a young outlaw chained to her wrist, a genial railroad man, and a quiet schoolteacher who never lets go of her carpetbag. Riders in red kerchiefs were seen at the Coyote tanks. By the first noon they are shooting.

Ride the box, the roof or the saddle. Count the water in the kegs and the cartridges in your belt. Fight in a canyon, at a relay station, across a dead lake at a gallop, in a ruined mission under a red moon and on a cliff road a thousand feet high, against a gang led by a courteous former cavalry captain who learns from every defeat and comes back. Somebody aboard is lying, somebody aboard is helping the gang, and in Redemption a court sits for a single morning. A medium western for one to four players.