The Bank Robber

by Giles Tippette

  “I just will,” he said. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her over to him and tried to run his hand in under her dress. He had a big grin on his face. “I’ll ask her in sign language.”

  She wasn’t liking it. It looked like playing with her ass was all right, but she didn’t go for nothing else. She was jerking around, trying to get loose, but Tod had a good hold around her waist. She wasn’t saying a word, but I could see she was getting mad. Tod was laughing and talking to her in Spanish.

  “You better let her go,” Les warned. “She don’t like that.”

  “Sure she does,” Tod said. “Sure she does.”

  About that time he succeeded in getting his hand up her dress and she let out a little shriek. She’d been holding an armload of dishes, but she suddenly dropped them and slapped the hell out of Tod. Her big fat hand hit his face with a wallop you could have heard in Denver.

  “Goddam!” Tod roared. His face flushed and he jumped up and hit her right back. He hit her hard, with his fist half closed, and it knocked her back into the middle of the room though she didn’t go down.

  “None of that!” Les yelled. He jumped around the table and grabbed Tod and pinioned his arms.

  Tod was yelling and struggling to get to the girl. “No greaser bitch gonna slap me! I’ll by God—”

  “You started it,” Les said. He was having trouble holding him, Tod was so mad. I’d got up too and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bartender suddenly duck down. I swung around, but he was already up leveling down on us with an old shotgun that looked to be about ten gauge. If he let that thing off there wouldn’t be enough of us left to fill a pipe.

  “Watch it!” I said to Les and Tod. “Goddamit! Hold it!”

  The bartender looked like he was fixing to use his cannon. “No, no, Señors!” he was saying. “No, no!”

  Just then Les got Tod swung around and they both seen the shotgun pointing at them. Tod calmed right down and Les let him go.

  “Just take it easy,” I said quietly. “That gent will blast us all to hell if we’re not careful.”

  I raised my hands very slowly. “Many pardons,” I said to the bartender. “Mi amigo es borracho. He meant no harm.”

  The bartender didn’t say anything, just kept watching us from behind his big shotgun. “Les,” I said, “ease up there and tell that gentleman that everything is under control. Tell him we’ll behave ourselves.”

  Les went up and talked quietly to the man behind the bar. After a second he lowered his cannon. The girl was still standing where Tod had knocked her. She had her head down and I thought she was crying, but, when I looked closer, I could see she had a wicked little dagger all clutched up to her breast. She’d been all ready for Tod to come charging up to her.

  I scooped up a couple of dollars from the table and went up to her and held the money out at arm’s length. I wasn’t going to give her a chance to carve me up with that frog sticker of hers.

  “Many pardons,” I said to her. “Your beauty caused my friend to forget his manners.”

  I don’t know if she understood my bad Spanish, but she understood the money right enough. As soon as she seen it she put her dagger away and went all smiles. I never seen such a change in a person in my life. One minute she’s ready to kill and the next she’s giving me and Tod little bows.

  All of a sudden she turned to the bartender and called out something to him in Spanish that was just a little too rapid for me to follow. The bartender said something back to her and then he said something to Les that I couldn’t hear. I went back and sat down at the table and motioned for Tod to do likewise.

  “You damn fool,” I told him when he got seated.

  “She slapped me,” he said. “Hell!”

  Les was still at the bar. The bartender had put his shotgun away and he and Les were talking and Les was laughing. The waitress had come up and was standing behind Tod. She laid her hand on his shoulder. He looked back at her, but I told him to take it easy. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  “Les,” I called, “come on back over here.”

  He came back with a big grin on his face. When he sat down he motioned at the girl and told Tod that she was all ready for him.

  Tod asked what he meant.

  “She’s a whore,” he said. “A puta. She got mad because she thought you were trying to get some free.”

  “Aw, hell!” Tod said. He looked around at the fat waitress.

  “Go ahead,” Les said. “She called across after Will give her that money and said your friend had paid for you and was it all right to take you on back to the room.”

  Even I laughed a little at that. It was just like Tod to be getting into something of that nature. “Go on, Tod,” I said. “She’s all ready for you. About your speed, too.”

  “Aw,” he said, “I wouldn’t screw that for half interest in the Katy railroad.” He’d flushed a little. “What do you think I am?”

  “Never mind that,” I said. I motioned the woman away. “Bring us another bottle,” I said.

  “We’re still here,” Les said.

  “Ain’t we,” I agreed. Tod said something low that I couldn’t hear. I asked him what he’d said.

  “I said there’s still them spurs of yours.”

  “Tod ...” Les said.

  “Well, he could always get them back after we pull that job. Hell! What else we gonna do? He won’t let us steal no horse.”

  I picked up a coin from the table and turned it over and over in my fingers. They both got quiet thinking I was mad. Well, what the hell difference did it make about the spurs anyway? We couldn’t sit in Villa Guerro and rot and my spurs looked like the only way. I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to impress anybody back in Corpus, spurs or no. They knew me and a little dressing up wasn’t going to change anything.

  I pitched the coin back to the table. “All right,” I said.

  “Now, Will,” Les said.

  “No, it’s all right. I don’t mind. We’ve got to get to Piedras. Question is—where do we sell them? Not in this town. I bet there wouldn’t be a hundred dollars cash in the whole place.”

  “How about one of them big ranches Les was talking about?” Tod asked. “Maybe you could ride out and make a swap.”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t good-natured. “I ought to just let you do that. You ever met one of them patrons off one of them big ranchos?”

  “I might have,” he said.

  “No you ain’t,” I told him, “or you wouldn’t talk so foolish. For just plain snobbery and proudness, they’re the champions. I just got a big picture of me riding up to one of them like a saddle tramp and asking him to swap me for a horse. I think a little more of myself than to be shamed like that.”

  The girl came back over with our bottle and put it on the table. She stayed right beside Tod. Les and I were watching him.

  “Aw, hell,” he said. “She ain’t so bad. Are you, Mamacita?”

  Now she was giggling and helping him move his hand around. It was irritating to me to see it. We were in a mess of his making, but he didn’t give a damn. He figured we’d get him out of it.

  “There’s still Howland,” Les said.

  I sighed. “The hell with it.” Who was I to worry about being high-hatted. “Go on up to the bartender, Les, and ask him directions for the nearest ranch. And while you’re at it, ask him where there’s a livery stable. We’ve got to get these of ours grained before we start out.”

  While he was gone I poured myself a drink and tried not to get mad about the way Tod was fooling around with the girl. Hell, I didn’t care what he did. It was his business. I just thought he ought to have a little more class than that.

  Les came back over and sat down. “He says there’s the rancho Fernando about six miles southeast of here toward Villa Union. Big place. Says he thinks they got good stock.”

  “What about the livery stable?”

  “There’s a blacksmith shop up the street that stables h
orses.”

  I stood up. “Let’s get at it.” I scooped up the money and put it in my pocket, leaving two dollars to pay for what we’d eaten.

  “What about me?” Tod asked.

  “You stay here and you stay out of trouble.”

  “Well, leave me a couple of dollars to drink on.”

  I pitched a dollar on the table. We were already short, but Tod wouldn’t understand. “Make out on that,” I said. “You and your girl friend.”

  Les and I went out and mounted up and rode down to the livery stable. While they grained our horses we done what we could to clean up, but we were still pretty dusty and travel-worn.

  It was odd, in a way, how Les and Tod and I had hooked up together to go on the scout. Even though we’d grown up together there’d been such a break in years after I’d left home that I hadn’t even recognized them when we’d met back up. We’d all grown up around Corpus and we’d been the best of friends from about the time we were ten years old. My daddy and Les’s had had big ranches out from Corpus, but Tod’s parents run a mercantile store in town. We’d gone to what school there was together and rode together and fished and hunted. Then, when I was about sixteen, I’d left home and gone up to north Texas and went to punching cattle. My daddy had held a considerable spread, but, in the years after the Civil War, Yankee land-grabbing politicians had come down and done him out of the biggest part of it. Most of his titles were old Spanish grants my ancestors had gotten from Mexico and some of the records weren’t too clear. Out of almost forty sections they’d done him out of all but about a thousand acres, and you just can’t make a living running cattle on that little land, it being as poor as it is.

  Anyway, I’d gone up into the Panhandle for a few years and then drifted north into Idaho and Wyoming and Montana. It’d been in the Panhandle that I’d got into that first shooting scrape and that had been what caused me to move for new country. I stayed up north for a while and then worked my way down into Arkansas. Of course that was where that other business had taken place, so I’d kept on running south. Finally I’d come on back into Texas and found that my mom and dad had died whilst I’d been gone and that the ranch had been taken over by the state on account of there being no heirs on record.

  Hell, the place wouldn’t have been worth the fight it would have taken to get it back and, besides, I was on the scout by then and didn’t want much truck with the law. I’d never turned an outlaw dollar until I’d busted jail in Arkansas, but after that I’d just kind of drifted into the road-agent business out of hunger and necessity. Coming south through New Mexico, I’d found myself broke and hungry and it had been a rancher family’s misfortune to meet me as they were coming along in a buckboard. They’d looked pretty prosperous and I’d suddenly rode up to them and threw down on the old man that was driving. He had his family with him, but I never gave them no bother other than scaring ’em a little while I was relieving the old man of about fifty dollars.

  So there I was, wanted for robbery and murder, and I figured I might as well make it pay so long as it lasted. Being alone, I couldn’t rob no banks (that being pretty risky on the lone scout) but I done my share of road-agent business until I drifted back into home country and rode into Rio Grande City.

  It was there, in a saloon, that I got into a tussle with a great big redheaded fellow over a saloon girl. Course I didn’t know it was Tod at the time. About eight years had passed since we’d seen each other and folks do change. Anyway, he had come over to this girl that was talking to me at the bar and asked her to come sit with him at a table. Naturally I got my back up a little at that and I’d told him just to bide his time. The girl wasn’t much, being about as ugly as homemade sin, but I didn’t like nobody pressing me too hard and I told him so. Then, one thing led to another and nothing else would do but I got to jam my gun in his belly and offer to blow a hole in him for his trouble. Of course that had settled it, Tod being the way he was, and he’d backed off and gone back to sit with a dark-complected fellow at his table. I hadn’t known that was Les, either, but I’d turned around and put my back to the bar and watched the redhead just in case he felt it wasn’t over. They’d put their heads together and had a talk, all the time giving me looks. Finally, this dark-complected fellow had come up and asked me if I wasn’t Wilson Young. Hell, I didn’t know who he was—he might have been a lawman or a bounty hunter for all I knew—so I didn’t say, just asked him what business it was of his. He said if I was then I’d know who Les Richter was and put out his hand with a big smile.

  Well hell, I like to have fell over I was that surprised. We went over to their table and me and Tod apologized to each other and said we’d never had no trouble if we’d known who the other was and then I sat down and we fell to talking over the years that had passed since we’d seen each other last. It took a while for it to come out, but they finally let on they were on the scout too. They’d had some trouble with the law about a herd of cattle they’d been driving back from Mexico and one thing had led to another and Tod had shot a deputy sheriff. After that they’d done just like I did, just kind of drifted into the business.

  We sat up late, drinking and talking, and before the night was over we’d decided to throw in together. Tod’s all right in his way but you don’t want a better partner than Les. He’s a man to go down the road with.

  CHAPTER 3

  Rancho Fernando

  The ranch house at Rancho Fernando turned out to be a big yellow adobe building with many breezeways between the sleeping quarters and the cook house and the main structure. Me and Les had done our best to shave and clean up at the livery whilst they was graining our horses but we still didn’t look very good. We rode up and halloed the house and a peon came out and asked us what we wanted. I said we’d like to see the patron about buying a horse. Well, this peon give us a look like we ought not to be soiling the dust of the place but he bid us get off our horses and went on back and reported to the head man.

  Pretty soon this old gent come out and greeted us with stiff, formal courtesy. He was getting along, but he was straight as a board and had a great big handlebar mustache and white hair and was wearing good hand-made boots.

  We got our hats off in response to his and told him we were looking to buy a good blooded horse if the price was right. Well, you’d of thought we come with a letter of credit from the bank the way the old gent acted. You can’t beat a high-bred Mexican for manners. He invited us in and we sat down and put our hats on our knees and he sent a servant to fetch us a cool drink. It was papaya juice and it was very refreshing, but, after that, a servant came in with cognac and cigars. It was real French cognac too. I didn’t know where he’d got it, probably had it shipped in from one of the coastal ports like Tampico, but I didn’t much care. I was just content to enjoy it. I tell you it was fine sitting there in that beautiful, cool room enjoying the patron’s hospitality. It almost made me feel like a gentleman myself. I was conscious of the dusty condition of our dress, but the grandee was such a gentleman that he didn’t seem to take any notice.

  I’d made up a story to tell him. I told him we were cattle buyers from Fort Worth and that we’d lost a horse and needed a replacement and that we’d heard he had the best stock around.

  It pleased him and he sat there drawing on his cigar and nodding. He said that he did indeed have some fine stock and that there was a chance some of it might meet with our approval.

  I allowed that I had no doubt of that, but I was a little worried about us being able to come to terms.

  “We’re but poor strangers, Senor,” I said in Spanish, “and had no thought that we’d be riding up to such a magnificent hacienda when we set out for your ranch.” And indeed the place had been finer than I’d expected. I was trying to set him up to spring the spurs on him. It was making me feel a little uncomfortable.

  Not to be outdone by my humble politeness, he said, “Senores, I extend the welcome of this poor place to you. I know it does not meet with the elegance to which you
’re accustomed, but perhaps you will find my horseflesh passable. I can assure you it will be within your means.”

  The old man made me feel like a lying thief. He was being so polite and treating us like equals and we’d come to him with a mouthful of lies and were about to soil our dignity by trying to barter with him. Les wasn’t saying anything and I could see he was feeling uncomfortable himself. Well, I’d known it was going to be the way it was. Even though I didn’t know what else we could do, I almost felt like thanking the patron and getting up and walking out. I felt so shabby sitting there in that fine room and being treated like a gentleman when I knew I wasn’t. It give me a twinge, the first, I guess, that I’d felt in years.

  We were on our second glass of brandy and I almost hated to finish it. I don’t mind robbing a bank, but I hate to steal from a man like the grandee and I was stealing his brandy just as sure as if I’d had a gun on him.

  Finally he proposed that we go out to one of his remudas and see what he had on hand that we might like. He stood up and Les and I did the same. We got up slowly, giving each other looks. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to come out with my spurs or not.

  Just as we got ready to go out the door, a young lady of about twenty years suddenly came sweeping into the room. I was heading right for the door she entered and the sight of her stopped me dead in my tracks. She was of a size that would just about fit under a tall man’s arm and she was dark and lovely, with high cheekbones and black flashing eyes and red lips and black shimmering hair.

  She gave a little start when she almost ran into me, but then she regained her composure and went around me with a little nod and went up to the grandee and said something.

  He took her shoulder and turned her. “We have guests, my dear.” She turned and faced us and he introduced her. We bowed and she dropped us a curtsy.

  She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. While the don was introducing us I stared boldly at her. I couldn’t help myself. She was slim and small, but her hips and breasts were putting a strain on the material of this pretty gold and white dress she was wearing. She had one of those jeweled combs set back in her hair with a lacy white mantilla just hanging loose from it and it kind of framed her face and set off those big, dark eyes and her big, red lips.