Two whips cracked out in Bertha’s yard.
The mail coach missed its start.
A barrel shouted, “Stand aside!”
Her horse let out a fart.
“Fourteen men!” the barrel roared.
“A gang you cannot beat!”
But Bertha counted horses: two.
And two small bags of meat.
The driver, Mercy, shut the door
and held her people back.
“Nobody’s charging into this.
I’ve children at the back.”
“Fourteen men,” said Bertha, “eh?
I’ve tangled with the sun.
I caught its rays upon my whip
and rolled them into one.”
Her horse had heard that tale before.
He turned to face the shed.
The taller bandit, Rusk, cried out,
“You’ll face our gang instead!”
His coat hung nearly to his heels.
His brother Petey frowned.
“Don’t tear that coat. It isn’t ours.
I promised it back sound.”
“Fourteen men!” the barrel called,
in voices thin and deep.
Rusk’s lips were moving all the time.
His brother said, “That’s cheap.”
So Bertha put her shoulder down
and rolled the barrel clear.
The fifteen voices in the yard
fell suddenly to fear.
“I count two men,” said Bertha then.
“The rest are wood and air.”
Said Rusk, “There’s more behind the shed!”
Her horse looked round. None there.
But Petey snatched the mail sack up
and darted for his mare.
Rusk caught his borrowed coat upon
the hitch rail sticking there.
The tall man’s knees went left and right.
His coat refused to go.
“Don’t pull!” cried Petey. “Don’t you tear!”
Rusk swore a word for “Whoa.”
Now Bertha’s whip could pluck a fly
from half a county’s width—
at least that’s how she tells it now.
We needn’t trust that bit.
It looped the handle of the sack.
She pulled it from his hand.
The letters scattered through the dust
like geese that failed to land.
“My mail!” said Mercy, climbing down.
“And where’s the purse you took?”
She saw it bulge in Petey’s shirt.
He gave a sheepish look.
“We’ve worked the south range all this spring.
The work ran out last week.
We need two fares to reach the north.”
His voice was small and weak.
“You might have asked,” said Mercy then.
“We did,” said Petey. “Twice.
The clerk just pointed at the fare
and said, ‘That’s still the price.’”
“Well, theft won’t make your ticket good.”
She took her purse and sack.
“Pick every letter from that dust.
Then put the lot of them back.”
Rusk struggled with the hitching rail.
“My gang will make you pay!”
“Your gang,” said Petey, “is a tub.
And she rolled it away.”
Big Bertha freed the borrowed coat
and hung her whip aside.
“My yard needs hay moved under roof.
Paid work. No need to hide.”
“You’d hire us?” Petey asked at once.
“If all the goods come back.
And Mercy watches while you work.
She’ll keep her purse and sack.”
Rusk said, “I don’t work under guard!”
His brother shook his head.
“You’d rather rob a coach again?
We haven’t even fled.”
The passengers would lose a day.
They grumbled from the seat.
So Bertha opened up her loft
and Mercy bought them meat.
No cheering crowd forgave the theft.
The cook wanted his fee.
The brothers hauled until the stars
were where the sun should be.
They ate their supper standing up.
Their boasts had all gone thin.
Rusk tried one tale about a bear.
“Was that a tub?” asked Finn.
Finn was the youngest passenger.
His mother hushed him fast.
But Petey laughed into his beans
and Rusk laughed too, at last.
At dawn the wages bought two fares.
The mail was checked and tied.
The coat went back across the street,
the sleeves still side by side.
“Fourteen men,” said Mercy, counting
heads aboard the load.
“That’s passengers, this time, I hope.”
She took them up the road.
Big Bertha watched the coach depart.
“Now once,” she told her horse,
“I stopped a mountain with this whip
and changed a river’s course.”
The horse had waited half the night.
He’d heard about the sun.
He walked away before she reached
the river part of that one.
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