As a matter of routine, Kansas peace officers had surely been informed that he was wanted. But without a photographic likeness of himself to aid them in identifying him, he felt he had little cause to fear being picked up. There was always the possibility, however, that he might encounter some one who knew him.
“Time enough to worry about that when it happens,” he told himself.
It was strange how these little Kansas towns that had once meant so little to him now loomed so importantly in his life. The location of a bank or hotel; the manner in which a place was set down beside a creek or out in the open; the direction in which the railroads, with their ever-accompanying tell-tale telegraph wires, ran—a hundred such things—were matters to be weighed and considered now with the greatest care.
They had once seemed trivial enough. But that had been a long time ago. Fortunately, these old Kansas cow towns, that already were saying farewell to the beef era and welcoming a new one of corn and sulky ploughs, were all more or less alike, with a main street, plank sidewalks and the usual assortment of sun-blistered, one-story frame buildings.
In the course of two days he drifted through three or four of them, looking them over, gauging the possibilities, only to decide that for his purpose they were too dangerous or offered too little.
He was moving farther north all the time. In itself, that must weigh heavily against any plans he made, for every mile that was added to their get-away lessened their chance of success.
In Reed City, however, he found a situation that was all to his liking. With care that would have done credit to Smoke Sontag or the great Red Doolin himself, he sized up the bank and the town, and went into every detail that could have any bearing on their enterprise. Thirty-six hours later he found himself safely back on Jake Creek. He had taken his time, being anxious to save Six-gun for the real riding that lay just ahead.
By the position of the sun, he knew it was the middle of the morning. He realized that he had struck the creek a mile or more below Leflett’s place. Crossing the stream, he began picking his way toward the house. He had not gone far when he drew up sharply; he couldn’t be sure, but he thought the breeze had carried to him the sounds of distant gunfire.
Listening intently for the sound to come again, he stood up in his stirrups. It was unmistakable this time. His jaws clicked together sharply.
“That’s a fight, and a good one!” he ground out.
He headed for higher ground at once, taking it for granted that Luther and the others were in trouble.
“If Leflett’s sold them out, I’ll drop him for it!” he promised himself as he urged the gelding along.
It was only a few minutes before he got a distant view of the bluff on which he had left his men. The little puffs of white smoke that rose spasmodically from it told him it was indeed his outfit that was shooting it out with some one.
In another fifty yards he was able to locate the bunch that was attacking them. They were well up the bluff.
“The boys better not let ’em git any higher,” he thought. “Luther knows he can’t fall back. Nothin’ but a long drop to the creek behind him.”
He was in sight of the house now. He had to pass it to reach the bluff. Armed with only a pair of six-guns he could not be of much assistance. It occurred to him that he might find a rifle there.
He approached it warily. At first, he thought it was deserted, but as he reached the pole corral between it and the creek, he heard a rifle crack from one of the upper windows. Making his way around the house, he saw that it was Reb Leflett himself who was doing the shooting, and he was firing at the men halfway up the bluff.
“Say, what’s the meanin’ of this?” Little Bill yelled at him.
“Put that hoss in the shed and git up here!” Leflett barked. “It’s Grat Sontag and some hombres from the Grocery! You’ll find a rifle back of the door!”
He emptied his gun as Bill ran up the stairs. There was a bag of cartridges on the floor beside Reb. He moved over slightly.
“Start throwin’ it into ’em!” he snarled, his grizzled face as black as a thunder cloud in his wrath. “I’ll show this pack o’ weasels they can’t ride in here and run things! This is neutral ground! Grat Sontag nor Smoke himself can bring his troubles to my door!”
“How’d this start?” Bill demanded.
“They rode up ‘bout an hour ago. I don’t know how they knew your bunch was here. Grat said he wanted ’em. I told him to forgit it and go about his business. I thought they’d left until I heard the guns begin to bang. Yuh got ’em located?”
Bill let his rifle answer for him. He and Leflett did not have much to shoot at in the way of a target, but their fire apparently began to have some effect, for Grat and his crowd fell back a bit and for the next twenty minutes wasted ammunition recklessly without improving their position.
“How many of them is there?” Bill questioned.
“’Bout seven or eight. Look! They’re droppin’ down towards us now! Got enough of this, I guess!”
It was only a few minutes before seven horsemen dashed down the slope in the direction of the house. They had their rifles to their shoulders and fired as they rode.
“Sure as you’re born they’re comin’ after us now!” Little Bill jerked out. “We’ll have our hands full holdin’ ’em off!”
“Mebbe,” Leflett growled. “We’re damn poor shots if we don’t pick off one or two of ’em before they git in. Let ’em come on a few yards more.”
Whatever Grat’s intentions were he changed his mind in a hurry. Luther and the others had broken cover and were racing down the bluff.
“Pump your gun!” Bill yelled at Leflett. “We’ll end this right here!”
He was right. In a few seconds the Sontag crowd was in full flight. Luther and Link dashed up to the house. The others were only a few yards behind them. All were surprised to have Bill hail them from the window. His face was dripping perspiration.
“Well, you all look okay,” he called out. “How’d yuh come through it?”
“Not a scratch,” Cherokee answered. “They wasn’t so lucky.”
“That’s right,” Tonto seconded. “There’s one of ’em up there on the bluff.”
“Serves ’em right!” Leflett cried. “The dirty scuts! Grat knows he can’t track a man to my place and go for his hardware. You boys step inside; the drinks is on me!”
Later, with Leflett still sputtering vitriolically over the violation of his rights, they started up the bluff.
“This may mean trouble for you,” Latch warned him. “Grat ain’t the kind to forgit.”
“I’ve taken care of a lot of trouble in my time,” Leflett answered grimly. “I’ll take care of this.”
Little Bill rode up alongside Cherokee.
“You’re lookin’ better,” he said.
The Kid nodded. “Yeh, I’m feelin’ pretty good. Leflett fixed me up, sure enough.”
Latch recognized the dead rider as Dib Fletcher.
“Jest a errand boy for the Sontags,” he declared. “He don’t mean a thing. But it’s first blood for us.”
Leflett stared at the dead man for a minute.
“I’ll dig a ditch and roll him into it after you boys git away.” He turned to Bill. “When you figgerin’ on pullin’ out?”
“Right away. We’ll put a few miles behind us and lay up until it’s dark.”
“Then you got somethin’ all set?” Cherokee inquired. Somehow the question didn’t sound as casual as it should have.
“Yeh. It looks all right.”
“You mind sayin’ what it is?” the Kid persisted.
“We’ll have a powwow after we pull away from here,” Little Bill answered him flatly.
In less than an hour they were on their way. Latch dropped back to ride beside Bill. He had overheard the Kid’s question up on the bluffs.
“Bill, you was pretty short with Cherokee. It was him that spotted Grat’s bunch. He put up a whale of a fight. By rights you a
in’t got no cause to be suspicious of him.”
“I ain’t sayin’ I am suspicious of him or Leflett or anyone else; but with a job ahead of us I wasn’t sayin’ anythin’ about it until I knew we was alone and we’re not losing sight of each other for a minute until it’s over. There can’t be no leaks that-a-way—accidental or otherwise. When we pull up this afternoon I’ll make my say to the bunch of yuh and let yuh ask all the questions you mind. Cherokee ain’t no right to ask for better than that.”
“Reckon not,” Latch mumbled. “It’s jest that he’s touchy about things.”
“If he is he can git over it,” Bill advised as they began to close up the gap between themselves and the men ahead. “Maybe it’ll change his luck. Things have had a habit of goin’ wrong for him; they ain’t goin’ wrong with this bunch if I can help it.”
Chapter XIV
IT WAS long after the hills had given way to rolling Kansas prairie that Little Bill told them they could begin looking for a place in which to wait out the afternoon.
They finally pulled up on a little grassy flat, well screened by protecting cottonwoods, in a creek bend. They picketed their horses with great care. Link climbed one of the trees and studied the country about them. He saw nothing to arouse suspicion.
Luther and Maverick spread a pair of blankets on the ground.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Luther invited. “We’ll be here some time.”
They had yanked their saddles off their mounts. Ordinarily they would have stretched out and pillowed their heads on them. Instead, they sat up stiffly or squatted on their heels, waiting for Bill to have his say.
“Get on with it, Bill,” Tonto prompted nervously.
“Just waitin’ for Link to join us,” Bill informed him. He was carrying his rifle cradled on his left arm. Without setting it aside he picked up a stick and cleared away the leaves on the ground in front of him and began to make marks in the black soil.
Link edged in between Scotty and Tonto before he had finished.
“I’ll tell you all of it now,” he said. “Just don’t interrupt me till I’m done. If there’s anythin’ about this you don’t like or understand you can say so then.” First he told them that they were heading for Reed City.
He saw at a glance that neither Cherokee nor Latch liked the idea. Even Link and Luther shook their heads. The others were noncommittal, their faces wooden. They had been through Reed City and remembered vaguely that a bank stood at one of the town’s four corners.
Methodically, his voice emotionless, Bill outlined his plans. Using the map he had drawn on the ground, he told them how they were to ride into town, the stand they were to take and the course they would pursue in their get-away. The location of the railroad, the town marshal’s office, the fact that there would be activity at the railroad corrals—he appeared to have missed nothing.
“This Reed City bank ain’t been stood up in years,” he ran on. “That’ll be in our favor. With half a break we’ll be makin’ our get-away before the town knows what’s happened.” He looked them over slowly. “I guess that’s it,” he said. “You can fire away now …. I see some of yuh don’t like it.”
“Not for a minute!” Latch exclaimed positively. “You put up the best argyment ag’in it yerself when you say that bank ain’t been touched off in years. There’s a reason fer it, and I can tell yuh what it is: yuh got two railroads to cross before you can git back to the Strip. Yuh can’t beat the telegraph no matter how fast yuh ride. By the time yuh hit the Sante Fé yuh’ll find more trouble waitin’ fer yuh than yuh can handle.”
“Latch is right,” Luther agreed. “I wa’n’t thinkin’ so much about the railroads, but no matter how late we ride into Reed City, if it’s only ten minutes before the bank closes, we’ll have close to five hours to go before it gits dark, and all of it out in the open. As I remember it, there’s hardly a bit of cover north of here! … I tell yuh it’s too far north.”
“It’s pretty far, all right,” Link chimed in.
“Yeh?” the red-haired one got out slowly. “What you got to say about it, Cherokee?”
“Just what’s been said, together with the fact that I can’t see takin’ a chance like that for what we stand to get in Reed City. There’s never no money in that bank. We’d be lucky to walk out with two or three thousand. That don’t go far, split eight ways.”
There was further talk, but it developed no additional criticism of the plan. Finally, they talked themselves out.
“All that you boys have said is true enough,” Bill admitted when they had done. He was singularly unperturbed. “If I didn’t think we could be a little smarter than you figger, I’d call this thing off.”
“You can’t outsmart the facts!” Latch declared pessimistically.
“Maybe there’s some facts you ain’t considered,” Bill returned. “It’s never been mv intention to come back this-a-way. When we ride out of town we’ll let ’em think we’re takin’ the shortest cut to the Strip, but in a mile or two we’ll swing off to the east and get across these railroads before any Kansas sheriff can organize himself. In an hour’s good hard ridin’ we’ll strike the big bend of the Cimarron. That ought to be cover enough for anybody. We’ll follow the river south until we git near the line. We’ll take another turn to the east then and slip down into Oklahoma between Kingfisher and Bowie. They won’t be lookin’ for us there. When we git as far down as the Skull we’ll turn up the creek and work back into the Strip from the south …. That’s a lot of ridin’, but we got good horses, and it’s about as safe as yuh can ask.”
It won Luther and Link over.
“Now as for the money,” Bill continued, “we’ll do better than Cherokee thinks. Don’t forgit they been shippin’ beef for a week …. But shucks, whatever we git will be a stake. That’s all we had in mind.”
“That’s right,” Scotty echoed. It was the first word out of him. His old air of detachment had returned and he appeared as cool and deliberate as ever. “Accordin’ to last reports this was an outfit without a dollar to its name, so we’ll take what we can get and like it. It’s just a waste of time to sit here and talk about it. The only question before the house is: can we make a get-away.”
“That’s the big question,” Latch grumbled thoughtfully. “I’m almost persuaded we can. There’s jest one thing I’d like to know, Bill: how are we goin’ to make any time after we turn east if we don’t keep to the roads? There’s a lot of farms around New Stockholm. The country’s pretty well fenced off.”
“I know it,” Bill admitted. “But they ain’t got no telegraph to give us away. We’ll ride right through New Stockholm. If anybody gits in our way we’ll pull up for a second and tell ’em we’ve come to warn ’em that outlaws have robbed the Reed City bank—that they’re headin’ that-a-way. Before they have time to think it over twice we’ll be out of town.”
“Good enough!” Latch chuckled. “It’ll fool them squareheads!” He shifted around to fix his attention on Cherokee. “Kid, I told you this boy had a head on his shoulders and knew how to use it. He may be new at this game, but he ain’t green. Let him git his hand in and he’ll be mighty hard to stop.”
“I hope you’re right,” Cherokee said grudgingly. “If you’re all set on this thing we’ll go through with it. A man likes to do a little thinkin’ for himself though.”
“Wal, you bin doin’ your own thinkin’ fer a long time,” Latch observed, “an it’s kept you busted fer months. We’ll jest let Bill do the thinkin’ from now on.”
There was a challenge in his words, but the Kid, realizing that he stood alone, refused to take it up.
Stretching out, some of them dozed off to sleep.
“We all ought to get a nap,” Luther stated.
“Of course,” Bill agreed. “You take it now. I’ll wake you in an hour or two and you can spell me for a bit.”
Propping himself up against a tree, he watched as the others slept. Nothing happened to break the peacefulness of
the warm, lazy afternoon. Inevitably his thoughts strayed to matters far removed from the grim business just ahead. And yet it seemed there was a connection, for they always brought him back to the grassy flat among the cottonwoods. He found it easy to understand, in so far as his thought concerned his father, Tascosa or Martha. He knew that if it were possible to change places with his father that Waco would do as he was doing. It would be Tascosa’s way, too. He never questioned for a moment but what he would always have a staunch supporter in old Tas.
“I reckon Martha will stick up for me long after she ought to,” he brooded. Memory of her suddenly became so sharp that he winced. He could fancy Tascosa trying to explain things to her, to win pardon for him. “I don’t want it that-a-way!” he scourged himself. “That’s a closed account, and every step I take just puts another nail in it!”
Fate had played many tricks on him. In the days to come things might so happen that he could see her again.
“It mustn’t be,” he decided. “I couldn’t stand it. I’m sure to see Tas sometime, and he’ll have plenty to say. Or I may run into Paint. That’ll be hard enough to take.”
The shadows were getting long before he awakened Maverick.
“If yuh brought anythin’ along with yuh for a snack you’d better set it out for the boys,” he told him. “We can be movin’ soon.”
Luther sat up, awakened by the low drone of their voices.
“You’re takin’ a few winks first, ain’t yuh, Bill?” he asked.
“No, I ain’t sleepy a bit. You can shake up the rest now and roll your blankets.”
Silent, alert, they moved north through the star-studded night. Morning dawned, and they still rode on, always saving their horses. If they saw a distant ranch-house, they avoided it. When they had to cross a road they scrutinized it for minutes before moving on. An hour short of noon found them in an abandoned barn, two miles west of Reed City.
There was nothing to do but wait now. Cherokee got out a deck of greasy cards and played solitaire. It was a gesture; his attention was not on his game. Some of them smoked. Others walked back and forth. If they spoke it was about anything but the business in hand, and their voices were strained and off-key.
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