The Fighting Four
Max Brand
Contents
I—THE ELKDALE BANK
II—THE ROBBERY
III—ALL FOR ONE
IV—IN THE DEATH HOUSE
V—WAYLAND'S OFFER
VI—ON THE ROOF
VII—THE ALARM
VIII—DILLON'S PLACE
IX—LOVELL'S IDEA
X—JIM SILVER
XI—FROSTY
XII—WAYLAND'S QUEST
XIII—AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
XIV—HAND TO HAND
XV—A BIT OF PAPER
XVI—THE PURSUIT
XVII—SILVER'S DECISION
XVIII—DEATH IN THE AIR
XIX—THE DOUBLE CROSS
XX—FOLLOWING FROSTY
XXI—IN THE BANDITS' CAMP
XXII—FLAMING GUNS
XXIII—THE RAVINE
XXIV—LOVELL'S TERMS
XXV—THE ATTACK
XXVI—THE RETURN
I—THE ELKDALE BANK
The first national bank of Elkdale was robbed at two thirty in the afternoon of an early spring day. It was still so early in the season that it was possible to see a flush of green on the lower slopes of the hills, and the head of Iron Mountain, in the farther distance, was snow-hooded far down to the breadth of the shoulders.
It was a still, hushed afternoon, with thin clouds chasing one another cheerfully across the sky, and the air above the earth perfectly motionless except when a little whirlpool started in the increasing heat and sucked up a whirling pyramid of dust.
At two o'clock that afternoon Oliver Wayland, the cashier of the First National, took advantage of a moment when there was no customer in the building and went into the office of the president, William Rucker, carrying a big, flat parcel under his arm.
Rucker was a burly, fierce old man, and he looked up with a scowl at the interruption; but when he saw the fragile form of his cashier, the lean, handsome face, and the big, pale structure of the brow, he turned his scowl into a smile. He liked his cashier. He liked him so well that he was pleased by the approaching marriage between Wayland and his daughter. May Rucker.
Wayland pulled the wrapping paper of the parcel away and revealed a big, framed photograph, saying:
"This came in the mail today, Mr. Rucker. I suppose we'll put it on the waU, and I wanted to ask you where."
He held up before the eyes of Rucker the photograph, which showed a tall man with big shoulders and a patiently smiling face standing at the side of a great stallion which had his head thrown high and looked a challenge from the picture.
Under the photograph was written, in a bold, strong hand, these words: "From the town of Crow's Nest to every lover of justice and law in the West. We hope the face of Jim Silver, who saved us, will become just as well known as his life."
Rucker looked at the photograph silently for a moment. He was a rough fellow, was Rucker. He had not been a banker all his days. He had begun his days by working on a ranch, and he still knew the working end of a hunting knife or a Colt revolver. He stuck out his big, square jaw and scowled again.
"A picture of Jim Silver, eh?" said he. "What the devil is he doing? Running himself for office? Dog catcher, or something?"
"Not dog catcher," said the cashier. "Wolf catcher would be more like it."
"It would, would it?" asked Rucker. "I suppose that you're in favor of cluttering up the wall space of the bank with pictures like this?"
"A picture of Jim Silver," said the cashier, "would look good to me, no matter where it might be hung."
"Well," said Rucker, "what the devil good does a picture like that do?"
It was, at this time, about twenty minutes before the robbery of the bank took place, and there was a touch of prophecy in the voice of Wayland as he answered:
"Well, I think that crooks would go more slowly if they saw a picture of Jim Silver. And every honest man would feel that he had one friend in the world. After all, honesty is what a bank wants to encourage."
"Jim Silver," remarked the bank president, "has done more for law and order than any other man in the West, I suppose. There's only one thing you can be sure of-— that he'd hate to see his pictures of himself being spread around the countryside. But you can't blame that town of Crow's Nest for wanting to make a fuss about him. Go hang that picture up where everybody can see it, will you?"
"I'll hang it up where I can have a good look at it myself every minute of the day," said Wayland.
"Why?" asked Rucker curiously. "Why d'you want to look at it yourself, Oliver?"
"Because," answered Wayland slowly, as though he were thinking out the thing for himself bit by bit, "because thinking about a fellow like Jim Silver helps any man to do his duty. Helps any man to be ready to die on the job."
"What's the matter?" asked Rucker. "Are you afraid of robbers?"
"There's more hard cash in our safe than we have a right to keep there," answered Wayland.
"Are you afraid of it?" exclaimed Rucker. "I'm the one to say how much is safe with us. Now trot along and get to your work. Don't dictate bank policies to me, young man!"
The temper of Rucker was always uncertain. As it exploded this time, with a roar, Wayland retreated from the office to the outer corridor that ran past the windows of the bank.
Rucker would get over his temper before long. But the fact was that the safe was old and worthless, and inside of it there was over a half million in cash. Wayland had reason to worry about it; Rucker had even better reason.
Wayland got a chair, pulled it close to the wall facing his cashier's window, and then, climbing onto the chair, he tacked up the photograph of Jim Silver and Silver's horse. Parade. Hal Parson, the ruddy old janitor, who stood by to assist, delayed matters by dropping his handful of nails when they were wanted. As Wayland got down from the chair, he smelled the pungency of Parson's breath, and said to him in a low tone:
"Hal, you're tight again."
"Tight?" answered Hal Parson. "Who says that I'm tight? I'll break the jaw of the gent that calls me tight."
"I say you're tight," answered the cashier. "You're full of whisky. It's the second time this month that you've had your skin full. And I warned you the other day that the very next break would be the last one."
The janitor lowered his big head like a bull about to charge. He made no answer, because he knew that the young, pale-faced cashier was his best friend in the world.
"I ought to march you into the office of Mr. Rucker right now," went on Wayland. "I ought to let him see your condition, because a feUow like you is not safe around a bank. Remember what I'm telling you. I'm responsible for the way the things go on in this bank—outside of the president's office. And I can't let this happen to you again. Now go out and run some cold water over your head. Then come back, and I'll take a look at you."
The janitor went off, his head down, growling to himself. And the cashier turned his head and saw a girl in a straw hat and straw-colored dress smiling toward him as she stood with her hand on the knob of the door of the president's office.
That was May Rucker. He went to her happily. She was a rather plain girl. When she grew older, she would look a bit too much like her big-jawed father. But at the moment she had the beauty of youth and much smiling, and she had a good, steady pair of eyes that would never grow old or dim.
"What's the matter, Oliver?" she asked him. "Is there something wrong with poor old Hal Parson again?"
"You know what's generally wrong with him," said the cashier. "I like him as much as you do, but he's got to reform!"
"I’ll take him in hand," said the girl. "He's done a lot for me. If I talk to him, maybe he'll do something for hi
mself."
She gave Wayland her smile again and went on into her father's office, while the cashier turned back down the corridor and went toward his own cage, which contained the great, old-fashioned safe. He never looked at that safe without wondering how the yeggs who had traveled the West in search of easy marks had not picked out this as a choice opportunity.
He was thinking, as he walked, that life was simple for him—a straight path to a goal that could not fail to be reached, unless he died suddenly. He could not help marrying May Rucker. She could not help inheriting her father's interest in the bank. And so the whole business would one day rest entirely in his hands.
He felt that he would be competent to handle the affairs of the community. He did not look upon banking as a means of bleeding patrons who were in debt to the institution. He looked upon banking as a means of pumping lifeblood through a developing region. And he felt that he knew the men and the industries which were worth support in that part of the world. He had been a cowpuncher, lumberjack, and various other things. It was chiefly his lack of physical strength that had forced him to take up clerical work. Half of his nature was still out roaming the highlands or riding the desert ranges.
So he turned into his big cage, fenced around with the bronze-gilt bars of steel. And again his glance fell on the old safe. He shook his head, as he nearly always did when he looked toward the old, inefficient structure.
He looked out of the rear window over the roofs of the town toward the big sea of the mountains, made dark by the rugged growth of the pines.
They seemed to him to be in motion, sweeping toward the town of Elkdale. A strange sense of gloom came slowly over the heart of the cashier as he got back on his stool before his barred window.
This was only a little over five minutes before the bank was robbed.
II—THE ROBBERY
At this time, four riders came jogging quietly down the main street of Elkdale and dismounted in front of the watering troughs that were lined up before the general-merchandise store of P. V. Wilkie. The horses at once stretched their heads toward the water, but one of the four, the smallest man of the lot, with a pinched, rat-like face, gathered the reins and jerked on them to keep the heads of the horses in the air.
Those horses wanted water, and since the riders had just come into town, there was no good reason why they would have to be kept from it, unless the riders expected to be leaving the town again at high speed before many minutes had passed. However, none of the idlers in the street paid any attention, neither did they notice the way in which Jimmy Lovell presently pretended to tether the horses to the hitch rack and made no progress in his work.
In the meantime, the other three went down to the corner, turned across the street, and walked back up the other side of it to the big double doors that opened into the First National Bank of Elkdale, where half a million dollars in cash rested in the safe.
Joe Mantry was young, light-stepping, handsome. He was as reckless as a bull-terrier puppy, and he had the light of a fighting terrier in his brown eyes. Dave Lister was tall, and had a long, pale face. The leader, Phil Bray, was a handsome fellow in a way, but there seemed to be something missing from the corner of his face; one could hardly say what.
It was Bray who walked ahead of the others to the cashier's window and laid the barrel of a big Colt .45 on the sill of the window.
"Shove up your hands and keep your mouth shut," said Bray.
In the banking room there was only one other man, the teller. He was a grizzled man with only one leg. The lack of a leg was what kept him inside a bank instead of out in the mountains.
Dave Lister covered the teller.
Poor Oliver Wayland looked up at the savage eyes of the robber who was before him, and above the head of Phil Bray to the picture which his own hands had lately nailed against the wall at a convenient level. He saw there the smiling, good-looking face of Jim Silver, looking far too young for the fame which he had won. Wayland had nailed up the picture, thinking that this would be an example to him and to the others in the bank. Silver was the sort of a man who preferred death to a failure m any line of duty.
Now what would he, Oliver Wayland, do?
He thought of duty and honor—but when he thought of moldering death, he thought also of young May Rucker.
"You fool, get your mitts up," said Phil Bray.
Slowly the cashier raised his hands.
May Rucker and the sweetness of life—that was what he thought of.
From the tail of his eye he saw the old teller standing, reaching his hands toward the ceiling. In the farther distance the third of the bandits was circling through the end gate and hurrying toward the safe.
Was it possible that the bank was to be robbed without the lifting of a single voice to give the alarm?
There was no doubt in the mind of Wayland now. He understood that the faint smile on the lips of Jim Silver was caused by his contempt for the weakness of ordinary mortals. But Jim Silver was a hero, and Oliver Wayland was not. Heroes find something to do because their brains are not frozen up with terror; but in the mind of Wayland there was nothing but the spinning shadow of terror and of shame. He could think of nothing at all.
Behind him he heard the hands of the third of the robbers busy at the safe.
Half a million in hard cash—and the minutes were running on faster than the cold sweat ran on the face of Wayland! He heard the subdued clinking of steel agahist steel as drawer after drawer of the safe was pulled out.
What difference did it make—a good safe or an old and crazy one, so long as the hired men of the bank did not have the courage necessary for their jobs?
Every minute was long enough to drive Wayland to madness. And then something stirred at the rear of the bank. A door opened—the rear door. And old Hal Parson walked in, his head dark, his hair shining from the recent ducking which he had given himself to regain his sobriety.
"Stick up your hands, brother!" called Dave Lister, the tall, pale bandit. "Stick 'em up—and pronto!"
Hal Parson had seen what was happening with slow and dazed eyes. He started to Uft his hands. Then he was aware of that picture on the wall that seemed to say to Hal Parson that courage is always worth while, and chances are worth taking, so long as they are in a good cause.
He saw his friend and patron, Wayland, the cashier, with his long, slender arms stretched above his head, and he remembered in a flash the thousand benefactions that he had received from that man. He remembered the kindness, the money loans, the warnings, the good advice he had often received from Oliver Wayland. And he realized that the result of this day might well be the ruin of the bank and therefore the loss of Wayland's position.
At the same time, Hal Parson recalled the stubnosed revolver which he carried on his hip. He got that revolver out with one jerking motion and tried to send a bullet into Phil Bray, at the cashier's window. But Joe Mantxy observed the janitor in plenty of time. Joe was apparently busy only with the stuff he was pulling out of the safe and stuflBng into a canvas sack. But he observed Hal Parson in plenty of time, made a fine, snappy draw of his Colt, and dropped Hal with a bullet right through the body.
The janitor fell on the floor and began to kick himself around in a circle and claw at his wounded body with both hands. Joe Mantry, having really seen to the safe pretty thoroughly by this time, snatched up the canvas sack and raced away with it. Bray and Dave Lister backed toward the front door of the bank.
That was when the cashier came to himself. He dropped to his knees behind his wall, grabbed a gun off the lowest shelf, and opened fire just as the robbers leaped out of the front door, and as Rucker came rxmning from his inner office into his ruined bank.
Wayland could not tell whether or not he had succeeded in sending a slug iuto one of the bandits. They had scattered to either side the instant they got free of the door of the bank.
Wayland got out to the street, and saw that four men, in a scattered line, were riding down the main street
as fast as they could drive their horses.
His shouts gave the alarm. The barking of his Colt as he fired after the fugitives helped to call out the men of the town. All up and down the street there were horses standing at various hitch racks, and now men rushed out of doorways and literally vaulted out of windows and flung themselves into saddles.
Still, none of the four fugitives had been knocked from his saddle by the bullets that hailed after them. They swept around the curve of the lower street in a solid body and disappeared from view.
III—ALL FOR ONE
Phil bray had command, but Dave Lister knew the country better than the others, and therefore he gave advice as to the twist and the turns they had better make when they got back into the mountains.
They were well out from Elkdale, with their horses running well—dependiug upon Phil Bray to make sure that the horses were as good as money could buy—when bad luck struck them down. Their horses were good enough to gain slowly, consistently, on the riders from the town of Elkdale, but they were not fast enough to outfoot bad luck.
It came in the form of an old prospector who had a rifle slung from his shoulder instead of thrust into the pack of his burro, simply because ten minutes before this hour he had determined that the time had come when he must begin to look about him for a little fresh meat.
He had not seen so much as a rabbit when, looking down into the valley, he saw a stream of half a hundred riders raising a dust from the direction of Elkdale, and far ahead of them there was a quartet of fugitives.
The prospector took them to be fugitives—not the leaders of a pursuit. And since he was a fellow who always followed the first thought, and obeyed every origmal emotion, he straightaway leveled his rifle and took a crack at the strangers.
It was a six-hundred-yard shot, and he fired just before the four men got into a pine wood, so he had no way of knowing what his bullet had accomplished.
As a matter of fact, it had driven into the side of the horse which rat-faced Jimmy Lovell was riding. His, mount stopped to a stagger, and Jimmy shouted:
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