The Bank Robber

by Giles Tippette

  Wasn’t but a day later, me still hanging around Corpus, that I’d run into a deputy sheriff I’d known before when I was a kid. Had run into him in a bar and we’d stood together, drinking quietly, until he’d said: “Got a dodger a while back from Arkansas on you.”

  Well, that had taken me up short. I kept on sipping my whiskey, trying to be casual. Finally, I’d said: “A wanted notice? On me?”

  He’d nodded. “Murder. Said you kilt a man in cold blood in Jonesboro.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute, just kind of edged around until my rightside was clear of the bar and then asked him what he reckoned to do about it.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Naw. Ain’t no reward attached and I ain’t going to the trouble and bother of gettin’ you back up there, which, from the looks of you, might be a job, for nothing.”

  “What would you do if they was money involved?” I’d asked him.

  He’d shrugged. “That’s another story. But they ain’t. Besides, I knowed your pap and I recollect the way them Yankees did him and others.”

  Yes, I’d recollected that myself. From about the time I was ten it didn’t seem like he was ever at the ranch. Seemed like he was always in town at the courthouse. He’d come in, his face flaming, cussing and swearing, and me and Mom would try to lay low from him. I never knew what was happening but I was able to guess when I got a little older. One by one he laid our hands off and little by little our pasture shrunk. I remember once him and Ma in the parlor and him sitting in a chair, having a whiskey, with his big fist knotted in his lap. “They’ve got the power!” he’d said. “The power and the money! The money, goddamit!”

  So that’s the way some of my recollections laid out. The only fault in that is that you don’t go into bank robbing for your health; yet there I stood, in a ramshackle livery stable, in a dirt-poor adobe town, standing in front of a busted mirror trying to shave with cold water and lye soap without a dollar in my pocket. Well, something had gone wrong somewhere. Something had gone bad wrong. Tod picked the wrong moment to come sashaying by and ask me what I was prettying up for.

  “Get the goddam horses saddled,” I told him. “We’re moving out.”

  “Still on the prod, huh? Les told me you was mighty upset about some Mex girl.”

  I whirled on him. “Mister,” I said, and my throat was so tight I could barely get the words out, “you better do what I told you. It was just my fists I used on you yesterday.”

  “Okay,” he said, backing away. “Okay, okay, for God’s sake.”

  We rode out about ten. There wasn’t no hurry, us not being due in Piedras Negras until the later part of the week and having no sure way of knowing that Howland and Chico would be there on the exact hour we made it.

  Howland was Howland Thomas, a cowboy out of Kansas who’d drifted down into the Southwest. Way I had it, Howland and a few others had made a specialty of meeting the smaller herds being drove into Kansas City by Texas drovers and relieving them of all or most of their herd somewhere after they’d crossed into the state. That must have proved a little warm because he’d apparently give it up to come south and go into the holdup business. I didn’t know a hell of a lot about him except he was give out to be pretty dependable in a tight place, but a little mean when he’d been drinking or not drinking. Him and me had never had no kind of run-in, but I’d seen him pistol whip a half-drunk cowpoke near to death in a saloon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But then, in our business we don’t generally ask a man for his membership in the Baptist church before setting out to ride with him. It’s a pretty rough and pretty risky business and it don’t generally attract Sunday-school teachers.

  I’d seen Howland in El Paso a spell back and he’d let on that he knew a bank in Uvalde, Texas, that was just begging to be robbed. Said we could open it up like a can of peaches. Uvalde being just north of Piedras Negras some sixty miles, we’d made it up amongst ourselves to meet in that town and talk about it. I hadn’t much liked the idea of going too far into Texas, but Howland had said there wasn’t enough law there to put in your eye and that we ought to do it before somebody else did. He’d been riding a spell with a Mexican boy named Chico Rodriguez and he said he’d bring him along. Said the five of us wouldn’t have no kind of trouble, that we might, if we wanted to, set up in the town and take turns electing each other mayor.

  Well, it had sounded pretty good—though I wasn’t taken in by believing it would be as easy as he’d said—so I agreed that me and Tod and Leslie would meet them there.

  Tod bitched a little at first about the grey, but quieted down after we’d been on the trail awhile. I could see myself that the old horse was a good traveler and Tod himself finally come out and said the animal wasn’t near as bad as he’d thought. “Got a good gait. He cross-hammers a little, but it ain’t too bad.”

  Well, that was that damn high-born Mexican for you. He wouldn’t even give me the satisfaction of feeling cheated.

  We rode along, the sun being plenty high and burning down hot. Les was to my left and Tod was quartered off to the right a bit. I figured we’d make it in two days easy, taking it slow in order not to work the horses too much and making it a little light on ourselves as well. We had us a big mess of beans in a crock in my saddlebags as well as a good supply of tortillas. Also, I’d spent the last dime we had on two bottles of tequila, the bartender being good enough to make me a special price as I was a little short on the second bottle.

  I tell you I didn’t much like going down a strange trail with such a few provisions and no money at all. We were taking a straight shot to Piedras Negras and, so far as we knew, there were no ranches of any size on the way, so we wouldn’t be enjoying anybody’s hospitality.

  In spite of our slow pace we made about forty miles the first day and turned in that night in the lee of a big rock. Bandits are pretty bad in northern Mexico, so we built our little fire up under the rock, heated the beans and made a supper. After that we passed the bottle of tequila around until we’d killed it and then turned in. It being snake country and season, we each took our lariat ropes and encircled our bedrolls. Snakes won’t cross a rope, they say. I don’t know if that is true or not as I’ve never seen a snake try. I do know I ain’t never been snake-bit while in my bedroll and that’s good enough for me. Me and Tod and Leslie grew up knowing to do it and we just did it.

  Next morning there was a Gila monster in bed with Tod. I was first awake, it just coming light, and I reared up in my blankets and looked around. First thing I seen was what looked to be a crooked stick lying just beside Tod’s leg, on top of his blankets. Then the stick moved and I seen it was a Gila. Without making too much commotion I eased my hand back to my saddle horn where I had my holster looped and come out with my pistol. The Gila made as if to crawl across Tod’s stomach, but just then the cousin stirred and the Gila turned around and started down his leg. He was a big one, maybe two feet long, and I was surprised the weight of him didn’t wake old Tod up. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Les had woke up also and was watching me quietly. I let the lizard crawl a little further, till he had his head clear of Tod’s thigh, and then thumbed off a shot.

  Well, it blowed that lizard’s head into about nineteen pieces, but it acted even worse on Tod. He come out of his bed screaming he was shot and carrying on like I’d never seen. Of course I hadn’t hit him, but I had blowed a nice little hole in his blankets. Les and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t get breath to explain. All Tod seen was me sitting there with a smoking gun in my hand and I guess he thought I was gonna shoot again because he flang himself sideways and laid flat on the ground and yelled for Leslie. “Get his gun! He’s gonna kill me!”

  I was about to say something, but Les finally got himself together enough to point at what was left of the lizard. Tod seen it and come to his senses and began to look sheepish. We all got up and he grumbled around during breakfast and then finally said to me that he guessed I was expect
ing a thank-you. I said no, that I wasn’t, and he said that was good because he wasn’t offering none. He said that while it was true I’d got the Gila, the scare I’d give him could easily cost him several years of his life.

  “What’d you want me to do?” I asked him. “Let him get in under the covers with you?”

  “Well, you could have called out or something. Warned me somehow.”

  “Yes,” Les put in, “and you’d have reared up and that lizard would have bit you and there we’d be. If it hadn’t kilt you outright you’d have been sick a week and then what would we have done? No, Will did right.”

  “You always side with him,” Tod said. “And it ain’t natural. Not against your own kin.”

  “I side with him because he’s generally right,” Les said.

  I told them to knock off the argument. “We’ve got tracks to make,” I said. I rolled my gear and tied it to the saddle and went off to bring in the horses. “Kick that fire out,” I told Les, “and put the beans in the grub sack.”

  The horses had found themselves a little water seep down in a draw and they were easy to catch. I got down on my belly and had a drink with them. The water was sweet and pure and cool, probably coming from an underground spring and being washed clean by all the limestone rock that’s in that northern Mexico country.

  I took the horses in and we saddled up and rode out. Les said the only thing for Tod to do was get him a bigger rope. “Something a Gila can’t step over.”

  It was a fine morning, the night coolness still in the air, and we urged our horses on and made good time. Before we knew it, the steeple of that big Catholic church there in Piedras Negras was rising up in the distance and we rode on in good style. Tod made some noise about coming in on such a sorry-looking animal, but we shut him up mighty quick about that. I told him the animal had done a good job of carrying him there and he ought to think about that instead of being ashamed of the way the horse looked.

  I’d made it up with Howland to meet them at the Gran Nacional Hotel and we headed for there as soon as we hit town. It was the siesta hour, it being midafternoon, and the streets were quiet and near empty with only an occasional peon asleep under his serape.

  We put our horses up at the livery stable next to the hotel and clumped on into the lobby carrying our gear and bedrolls. I’d half expected to see Howland or Chico sitting around, but they wasn’t, so we went on up to the desk and got us a room. Naturally we didn’t have no money, but we slung our saddles over the desk for the clerk to hold as security. I told him we had pards riding in and were expecting some money in a day or two. That being custom in that country, the clerk didn’t make no commotion, just took our two saddles (we hadn’t brought Tod’s, it being not worth much) and stacked them in the corner.

  “Let’s go up to the room and wash up,” I said, “then go in the bar and have a drink. Maybe Howland and Chico is there.”

  We did, but our partners weren’t there. We got a table but didn’t order anything on account of being broke. It was a bad feeling and I didn’t like it.

  “Well, what the hell are we going to do?” Tod demanded. “They’s liable to not show up for two or three days and what do we do meantime for eats and drink?”

  “Oh, shut up, Tod,” Leslie said, but the redhead had a point. I wasn’t much liking sitting around broke any too much myself.

  “Why don’t you sell them spurs?” Tod said. “You’d get enough to at least grub-stake us.”

  “All right,” I said. “But we’ll have to wait until siesta’s over and them shops open back up. Meanwhile we’ve got most of that second bottle. Let’s go up to the room and finish it off.”

  I tell you we’d been in the brush a mighty long time and I was sure feeling blue about being in a town and not having money for a blowout. All the way up the trail I’d been looking forward to getting to Piedras and getting drunk and having myself a woman. Les had felt the same way because he’d said, “Listen, let’s let our hair grow a little when we get to town. We owe it to ourselves, don’t you reckon?”

  I’d reckoned, but there we sat in a broken-down hotel room passing around a greasy bottle of tequila. There were two beds in the room and Tod and I were sitting on one apiece while Leslie was hunkered down on his bedroll where he’d spread it in the middle of the room. The Gran Nacional didn’t quite live up to its name; the room we were in was dusty and worn and the plaster walls were cracking and the window was dirty. The beds had rawhide thongs for springs and no sheets and the water basin was near as cracked as the walls. Still it was some better than we’d been enjoying on the trail. I sat there on the side of my bed, nipping at the tequila bottle and getting lower and lower in spirit. It was a fine comedown for a boy who’d set out to be free and rich and who’d determined he’d kiss no man’s boot nor follow any man’s orders.

  God, I was hungry for a woman. It had been a long, long time and I guess the sight and sound and smell of that girl Linda had just brought it all to the front of my mind. I felt horny, like a young bull does in spring, and I wanted me one of those soft, smooth-skinned Spanish girls with big breasts and hips and red lips. Nothing like that sow back in Villa Guerro but a sweet-smelling, sweet-kissing, soft, clean little beauty. Money could get that for me, but nothing else. And meanwhile, all I could do was sit there, drinking that hot, gut-burning, throat-searing tequila. I tell you, every drink made me feel worse.

  About six I went down and got my spurs and we sauntered out of the hotel and walked down to a saddle shop. The town had woke up by then and people was going about their business and tending to others’ and generally raising a little dust in the street. Occasionally, a Mexican woman would go by, her head low and her shawl pulled down to hide most of her face, and even the sight of these shapeless figures made the breath kind of catch in my throat.

  The owner of the saddle shop wasn’t in and his clerk had no authority, so we hunted us up a silver shop and propositioned the head honcho. He was a little Mexican with a bald head and gold-rimmed glasses. He got behind a counter and took my spurs and turned them this way and that and then looked up at me and said he’d give two hundred pesos.

  Hell, it was an insult. He was offering barely thirty dollars and I’d give over a hundred for my silver spurs. I looked at him and shook my head. Les went into a barrage of Spanish on him, knowing better than any of us how to bargain, and the owner took the spurs back and commenced looking at them some more.

  I tell you I wasn’t feeling too good about selling those spurs. I’d been willing at first, but the more I got to thinking about it the more I didn’t want to. Like I say, I’d bought them spurs during a flush time just before I’d been about to set out for my last trip to Corpus. I don’t know whether I was intending to “show” anybody or not, but I’d bought them spurs and a new hat and new boots and got myself just as fancied up as I could. It had all happened just after me and Les and Tod had commenced riding together and just after my visit back to Corpus after running down from Arkansas. I guess I was feeling a little bad about the way folks had treated me and determined I’d go back and show them. But it was all good intentions gone to waste. I hadn’t made it. Still, what would them spurs have proved except that I had a little money which I’d made robbing banks?

  “Three hundred,” the little silversmith said and made as if to open a drawer where he kept his cash. “And that is all.”

  “Why, you bandit,” I said in English. “You’re worse than us. Why don’t you get yourself a gun if you mean to hold folks up?” I was mad.

  “I don’t believe he’s going to go any higher,” Les said quietly. “Do you want to take that?”

  “Hell no,” I said and reached across and took my spurs. “I wouldn’t take nothing less than a thousand pesos.” I turned around and walked out, the others following me, and the little silversmith adjusted his glasses and went back to his workbench like we’d never been there.

  We stopped at the street.

  “Well,” Tod said, “now wha
t do we do? I thought you was going to sell them things.”

  “I’ll sell them,” I said. “But I won’t give them away.”

  “Meanwhile, what are we going to eat and drink on?”

  I looked at him. “I don’t know,” I said. “I never took you to raise. Look out for yourself.” And I walked off, leaving them both standing there.

  CHAPTER 5

  A Good Time

  I went on back to the hotel and sat around the lobby for a while, but Chico and Howland didn’t show up. I went up to bed after a little and Les come in about eleven. I’d been asleep but I woke up as soon as I heard his step in the room. He was down by his bedroll, getting his boots off, and I raised up and asked him where Tod was.

  He was evasive. “Aw, he’s out somewhere.”

  “On what?” I asked him.

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Listen,” I said, “is he up to something? I done told ya’ll that I didn’t want to do nothing this side of the border. Now what’s he up to?”

  “Well,” Les said lamely, “you’d find out anyway. He sold that grey horse.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just lay back for a minute. Finally, I asked, “How much did he get for him?”

  “Fifteen dollars,” Les said. He’d got in bed by then and drawn the blankets up to his chin.

  I was trying to keep my temper under control. “Well, that rips it,” I said. “Not only do we lose ten dollars on the horse, but now we don’t have no horse. What do we do now?”

  “I tried to talk him out of it, Will,” Les said.

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “I told him you’d be mad.”

  “That’s the stuff,” I said. “I bet that slowed him down.”

  “Well, hell, Will, he figured Chico and Howland would show up with some money and then we could get him a decent mount. He said he wasn’t about to ride that grey out of town anyway.”

  “Your cousin thinks good,” I said. “What if Howland and Chico don’t show up? Or what if they show up without any money? What do we do then? How did your smart cousin figure that one?”