Chapter Six


Oklahoma Territory, early June, 1883


Ben Riker watched her from across the street. It was her damn fault Hallie had gone all soft recently, whining about getting married. All because Hallie held a grudge against her twit of a cousin.

He had never cared for Trixie Belden, and the fact she was tied into his family, however distantly, just added to his grudge. He’d love to give her some comeuppance, and get under Dan Mangan’s skin as well.

He walked away, his cigar clamped between his lips. The stagecoach had just arrived a few buildings down, and the passengers were stepping off. Ben walked quickly, trying to ignore the image of Trixie smiling at her husband.

Walking, he passed the coach, and the restless horses. One of them tossed his head and snorted as he caught a whiff of cigar smoke.

Ben paused, studying the horse. Turning, he watched Trixie with Dan, standing in front of the jailhouse. The Deputy, Hardy, was there too. Trixie left Dan’s side to cross the thoroughfare, and Ben could see she was talking to her brothers, Bobby and Brian.

She could use a good scare, he thought maliciously.

Without even thinking it through, Ben glanced around. No one was watching. Walking right past the horse, he took his cigar and jammed it against the horse’s flank. The horse shied and reared up in pain, and Ben quickly stepped back. The horse tried to bolt, panicking his team and without a warning, they lurched forward.

The coach driver turned in horror as the stage went runaway down the street. He bolted after it, shouting for help.

Ben smiled as Trixie began to cross the thoroughfare. But she reached it too soon, and the horses were bearing down on where she had just been.

Bobby Belden chose that moment to dash after his sister. “Trixie, wait!”

Brian Belden felt a heavy warning of danger, looked up at the unusual noise and saw the runaway stage, heading right for his brother.

“Bobby!” he screamed. “Get out of the street!”

Bobby paused, turned and looked at his brother, and saw the coach. The driver had leapt up into the seat and was trying desperately to stop the horses. He saw the boy and tried to the turn the team.

Trixie screamed as chaos reigned. The dust choked her but she saw the horses fighting wildly, the stagecoach swaying, and then there was a loud crash and more screaming.

Trixie realized she was the one screaming. Fenton Hardy was holding her tightly as Dan and Brian raced to the stage coach. The driver had been thrown, the horses were down and kicking, the coach was on its side, wheels spinning.

“Bobby!” Brian shouted as he ran across the thoroughfare. Activity had come to a halt. “Bobby!”

Several men that had witnessed the accident sprang into action, joining the Marshal and doctor to lift the coach. Trixie screamed for her little brother but Fenton held her tightly, not letting her see what was happening.

“Let me go!” she shrieked. “Bobby! Brian! Dan!”

“No, Trixie, you don’t want to see this,” Fenton tried to calm her. “Trust me, you don’t want to see to this!”

“It’s Bobby!” she wailed. “Bobby!”

The coach was finally lifted and Brian stared at the small body that wasn’t moving.

***

Ben Riker watched the trail of people in black leaving town. The Belden boy’s funeral was this morning. Hallie had wanted to go but was crying in her room, knowing she wouldn’t be welcome. Bobby had been the most innocent of the Beldens, just a child, and didn’t hold it against her that she had let him take the blame last summer when Mart was framed for murder.

He let the curtain fall and leaned against the wall. It wasn’t supposed to be the boy. The boy shouldn’t have been in the street. It should have been her, that obnoxious Trixie. She had just needed a good scare, that was all. Not the little boy.

He barely remembered setting the horse off. Surely no one had seen him.

Ben walked to the small table with the pretty porcelain basin and washed his face again. It wasn’t supposed to be the boy.

***

“I’m sorry, Dr. Belden isn’t seeing patients today,” Lillian Belden said quietly.

His patients understood of course. He had buried his baby brother just the day before.

Lillian was scared. Brian had barely spoken the accident, since he couldn’t save his little brother. She didn’t know what to do for him.

The coach had come down on him and there was no indication he had tried to shield his body. Bobby had been frozen in shock. The bar between the door and window had dealt the killing blow. Brian had tried desperately to resuscitate the youth, to no avail, had he survived there would have been numerous broken bones and internal bleeding, and part of his skull was caved in.

Dan had finally pulled him back. The townsfolk had stared in horror. One of the horses had gotten too twisted up in the melee and snapped its neck. It had taken several men to calm the other three and unhitch them. The stage coach driver had survived, badly beaten up with multiple broken bones.

Fenton Hardy had forced Trixie inside the jail, not wanting her to see her brother. He had seen it go down and knew young Bobby would need a miracle to survive. There wasn’t to be a miracle that day. It had taken every ounce of strength he had to restrain the hysterical young woman as Dan leapt into action.

Fenton hated funerals. He especially hated funerals for young people. Dan and Jim had joined Mart and Brian in carrying the coffin. The boy would be laid to rest in the family plot, and it had been too much to bear, watching the women weep over their lost boy. Bobby’s best friends, Terry and Larry Lynch, and William Malley, had stood together, tears streaking their small faces. Helen Belden sobbed uncontrollably, Trixie hid her face in her husband’s vest, shoulders shaking, Diana Belden almost fainted and Madeleine Wheeler had fainted in her beau’s arms.

Fenton made sure the family was on their way home before he returned to the jail. Something bothered him about those horses. Horses didn’t just run wild without provocation. Stagecoach horses were well trained. They had been spooked purposely. But why? Who on this earth would want to harm that sweet young boy?

No one. Bobby had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he thought immediately. That’s what had been niggling at the back of his mind since it happened. Bobby wasn’t the intended victim. Someone related to him was.

Standing with him that day had been Trixie and Dan. Brian and Bobby had been across the way. A few other townspeople drifting by, no one with known enemies. Had Dan been the intended target?

That didn’t make sense. Dan had been up on walkway, with Fenton. There was no way there was a guarantee that Dan would be hurt.

Trixie had crossed the street though, to get to Dan. Trixie was the target. Had the horses been going any faster, they would have trampled her and not Bobby.

Trixie was the target. But who had done it? And why? Fenton was determined to find out who had set those horses loose.

***

Lillian woke quickly, feeling the churning in her stomach. She leapt from the bed, barely making it to the basin in time. Once her stomach was empty, she rinsed her mouth with water. Finding her shawl, she carried the basin outside to empty it. Brian was still asleep, unusual for him but Lillian knew he had been tossing and turning since Bobby died.

Brian was seeing his patients in the office downstairs, but hadn’t been venturing out to the farms. His eyes were glassy and his movements automatic, but there was no light in his eyes.

“Please talk to me, Brian,” she said, sitting next to him on the bed. “Please tell me what I can do.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” he replied dully. “Bobby is dead, and it’s my fault.”

It was the first time he had said it out loud, though it had been repeating in his head for days.

“What!” she gasped. “Brian, it was instantaneous, you said so yourself. There was nothing you could do!”

He shook his head, muttering repeatedly it was his fault. Finally she moved to kneel in front of him.

“Tell me why you think that,” she ordered in a tone she rarely used.

Brian sat with his head down, but he finally lifted it, his dark eyes glassy with tears.

“Because it was. I yelled at him to move. If I hadn’t, if he hadn’t stopped—”

“Brian, Marshal Hardy told me what happened. Bobby would have been trampled if he hadn’t been crushed.”

“Three inches,” Brian whispered.

“What?”

“If he had been standing three inches on either side, he could have survived, because it would have been a window. Not the beam. If I hadn’t stopped him, by yelling, he would have taken another step, and probably survived.”

Lillian shook her head.

“There’s no proof of that, Brian,” she said firmly. “He still would have been tossed around inside.”

"But he might be alive!” Brian stood, pushing her back. “You don’t get it, Lil, if I hadn’t yelled at him, he might have made it. If I hadn’t let him cross the street just then, he could be alive!”

Lillian stared at her husband. “Brian, there’s no guarantee of that. There’s no telling if Bobby would have made it clear of the horses. He could have tripped.”

“But it was my voice that stopped him,” Brian whispered, burying his head in his hands. “I’m his big brother. He always looked to me for guidance. I’m the one he always listened to. Why couldn’t he have not listened this one time?”

Lillian wrapped her arms around her husband, wishing she had the answers to help her husband.

***

Fenton Hardy examined the dead horse carefully. The other three were in the stables, and he planned to look at all of them.

Nothing was amiss on this one, he concluded. He had had to move quickly to look at it, before the body was disposed of.

“Deputy, you best come look at this.” It was Sam, the boy who took care of the rotating horses that ran the stagecoaches.

Fenton followed the boy to the stall of a dark brown horse who was clearly agitated.

“I put some ice on it, from the icehouse, but I think Doc Belden is gonna have to treat this.” Sam held out an apple to the horse, talking to it a soothing voice. Fenton and eased into the stall.

“Left flank, took a good look,” Sam said.

Fenton could see it from several feet away. The horse had been burned, and this wasn’t a brand. It looked about the size of a cigar, Fenton thought.

He had been right. The horse had deliberately been set off to run wild. He suspected Trixie was the target. But who had done it?

***

Dan rubbed his eyes tiredly. Trixie hadn’t slept since the accident, she just laid in bed. The entire Belden family was in a state of numbness.

“Dan?” Fenton walked into the jail.

“Yeah.”

“I think I have an idea of what happened.”

***

Dan stared at the horses flank. He had sent for old Doc Ferris, to come treat the wound. There was no way Brian could look at this horse right now.

“Definitely a burn,” Doc Ferris confirmed. “And I’d agree with cigar.”

“Half the men in this town smoke cigars,” Dan said. “Who would do it, anyway?”

“Was Riker anywhere near the area?” Fenton asked.

“Not that I saw, but I wasn’t looking for him. We’d never be able to prove it, without an eye witness.”

"Dan, I hate to say it, but I think Trixie was the target.”

Dan’s head turned to his partner, his dark eyes wide with disbelief.

“I’ll show you.”

Fenton had drawn out a rough sketch of the thoroughfare where it had happened, with x’s marking positions of where people that he had remembered and recognized had been standing.

“Trixie crossed the thoroughfare ahead of Bobby. Had she been twenty, even fifteen seconds slower, it could have been her. Bobby moved fast, and without looking. The burnedhorse was slowed down by the other three and the coach’s weight, but they were all in a panic at that point. Had this been calculated slightly differently, I think it would have been Trixie.”

Dan swallowed. It made perfect sense. No one would willingly injure a young boy. Bobby had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now he was dead and Riker would get away with it, because both Fenton and Dan knew that’s who was responsible. They had to find proof.











***
Author’s Notes
- A huge thank you to Julie, my editor! As always, she did a marvelous job editing, and to Lindsay, who helped name it.
- I tried to write Helen and Peter's reaction to Bobby's death, and I couldn't. Their grief is not ignored, but I couldn't convey it with the proper respect it was due.
- Word Count, 2,166

Disclaimer: Trixie Belden® is a registered trademark of Random House books. These pages are not affiliated with Random House Books in any way, shape or form. No profit is made here, only entertainment. Images of Trixie Belden and other series characters are copyright © Random House books. Fenton Hardy is copyright © Simon and Schuster. Real life characters such as Alan Pinkerton belong to history. All references and characters and are used lovingly and respectfully, albeit without permission. All non-Trixie Belden characters belong to AmazonWitch,Inc.

This website is © 2005-2025 Mal. All rights reserved. All graphics created by Mal and may not be used without permission.