Whiteoak’s attention was now focused on the stacks of money. Although he picked through them all, he didn’t help himself to any of it. “Makes sense. I believe that clerk wanted no witnesses when he killed Bailey.”
“Murderers are like that, so I’ve heard,” Byron scoffed. “I’m surprised more bank tellers don’t try to rob their place of work, actually.”
“What he was after wasn’t only to kill Mister Bailey. He needed someone to pin the death on.”
“Like who?” Byron asked as he dug his hand into the inner pocket of Bailey’s jacket.
“Me.”
“A little self-important, aren’t you?” Byron said. “Then again, we already knew that.”
“Look at the gun in that teller’s hand.”
Byron looked at the second corpse in the room and quickly spotted the silver-plated .38 laying near him. “That looks like your gun.”
“It is my gun,” Whiteoak said. “He made me hand it over before taking me in here and must have pocketed it somewhere along the line. Considering the law’s already low opinion of me, combined with me being here and my gun having obviously been fired recently, it wouldn’t take a deductive genius to put me at the top of the list of suspects.”
“And he was just waiting for you to come walking in here?” Byron asked skeptically.
“Maybe,” Whiteoak replied as he examined a few smaller bundles of cash. “Or perhaps he saw an opportunity and jumped on it.”
“What about Nash? You think he was waiting around for this as well?”
“He was in town and we already know he was after this safe. He and anyone else he could scrounge up were most likely poised to strike sometime very soon and me showing up here today simply sped the process along. Did you find those keys yet?”
“I did.” Byron stood back up and extended his hand. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”
Whiteoak turned toward him and saw the keys dangling from a ring in Byron’s grasp. There had to be at least two dozen of them rattling together like a collection of small, flat teeth. And no, he didn’t like it very much.
“Any idea which key goes to which lock?” Byron asked.
Setting the money back down, Whiteoak rearranged some of the stacks so they were at an angle to the door. “They wouldn’t happen to be marked, would they?”
Byron examined a few of them and replied, “Yes, but not one through twenty. There are at least four numbers on each one.”
“Then, no. I don’t know which key goes where, but I do have an idea of how I might find out.”
“Good.” Outside, the shooting had died to a low rumble mixed with a few shouting voices, all of which were still much too close for Byron’s liking. “Wait a moment,” he said. “Are you planning on robbing this place?”
“I’m planning on getting to the bottom of what these criminals, killers and crooked businessmen are after. Why have you been following me this whole time if you were suspicious of my motives?”
“Guess I’ve been sort of swept up in all of it. Also, there was that talk of a profit to be made.”
“And there still is,” Whiteoak said as he eased the safe’s door shut. “Just not right now.”
“Finally! It’s time for us to get the hell out of here. There must be a back door to this place.”
“I’m sure there is, but we’re not taking it.”
His body deflating like a sail on windless seas, Byron asked, “What now, then?”
“Now, we become heroes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The dirt on Trader Avenue was slick with blood. Bodies were strewn like discarded toys, most of them near the bank but a few directly beneath the windows from which they’d fallen. Having survived the town’s onslaught once, Nash had a good idea of what to expect the second time around. He’d landed some well-placed shots which sent a few of the elderly riflemen toppling from their high ground. While his deadly accuracy helped his cause, it wasn’t enough to give him the clear shot at the bank he’d been hoping for.
But the outlaw wasn’t the only one with the advantage of being forewarned. Sheriff Willis also had some of the cards stacked in his favor since his men and the town’s shooters were already on their guard and ready for war. When both forces collided, the talking was kept to a minimum and tempers flared almost immediately. The first casualties were two of Nash’s men. Yance and a bearded fellow that Whiteoak didn’t recognize were gunned down within seconds of each other since neither one knew how to back away from a fight. In an impressive display of marksmanship, Yance had hit one of the local men while lying on the ground. The old man fell from the window, inciting even more violence from the rest of Barbrady’s protectors.
Nash had backed toward the bank, only to be stopped by a hailstorm of lead that tore into the front of the building. The outlaw found some measure of refuge laying on his side behind a water trough. Occasionally, he glanced around the wooden box to fire at the encroaching lawmen.
Sheriff Willis and his deputy took their time closing in on Nash. There was nowhere for the outlaw to run and the longer Nash kept pulling his trigger, the fewer rounds he would have when he was finally taken down. Willis shot the trough in hopes of getting a lucky hit while the local men looking down on the street were content to keep firing at everything. Somewhere along the way, one of the town’s younger residents got overzealous and decided to charge into the street. He wound up joining the rest of the bodies stretched out in the dirt, adding another charge to the growing list of Nash’s offenses.
“Give it up, Nash!” Whiteoak shouted from within the bank. “There’s nothing for you in this whole town!”
Nash looked over his shoulder at the broken building behind him. Although he was unable to see Whiteoak’s face, he fired a round through the shattered front window anyhow. “If you think you can catch me in a crossfire, I’ll have you know I can kill you just as good as I can kill these cowards out here!”
“There’s no reason for me to kill you,” Whiteoak said in a rasping voice that was just loud enough to be heard by someone in close proximity. To anyone farther than that, it would be nothing but a whisper lost in the wind. “I’ve already opened the safe and gotten my reward. Or, I should say, my part of the reward.”
Hearing that seemed to upset Nash more than any of the gunshots being fired in his direction. “What’re you talking about?”
“The bank teller is in here with me,” Whiteoak replied. “He told me which doors to open inside the safe and what to do once they were all unlocked.”
“Prove it.”
“You want proof? Go ask your friend George Halstead.”
Nash started to stand up, which drew a few more shots. Quickly dropping down again, he roared, “You’re full of shit!”
“Am I?” It may have been a risk to show his face amid all of that gunfire, but Whiteoak leaned to peek out the window. From his angle, he could see Nash laying on the ground behind the water trough like a very angry worm. “Michael Davis and I ran some jobs in Oregon when he was setting up one of his lumber camps. Meeting him here was a fluke, but it worked out in my favor. Mike recommended me to Mister Halstead and we decided to work together.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Nash asked.
“Because I’m not nearly as unpredictably violent as you. Take a look around and I think even you’d have to agree he made a good point.”
Although Nash didn’t say anything right away, Whiteoak could hear the wheels turning inside the bank robber’s head. Those weren’t the only minds racing. Sensing the tension coming from further across the street, the professor looked to Sheriff Willis and gave him a subtle shake of the head. Willis picked up on the signal and motioned for his deputy and everyone else behind him to hold steady.
“How about we work out something between the two of us?” Whiteoak said.
“You think I need to work with you?” Nash replied, spitting every word back toward the bank.
“It seems you’re in qu
ite the pickle,” Whiteoak pointed out. “Whatever backup you’ve arranged is most likely miles away from here, or they might as well be. Otherwise they would have asserted themselves by now. Am I correct?”
Nash ground his teeth together so hard that his frustration practically echoed through town.
Soft footsteps could be heard approaching Whiteoak from behind. When the professor turned to wave Byron away, the younger man made it clear that he would not be so easily dismissed.
“What are you doing?” Byron asked.
Leaning slightly back so he could be seen from the street but not heard, Whiteoak said, “We don’t have much time before the shooting commences and when it does, it won’t stop until one side is done for. It’s fairly obvious which side that will be.”
“But what are you saying to him? The teller is . . .”
“I know,” Whiteoak snapped. “I’m saying whatever I can to get him to part with some bit of information that will be useful. Already, I’ve confirmed a great many things.” Counting off his points on his fingers, he added, “We know he’s working with Halstead to rob this place and we also know Michael Davis is involved.”
“We do?”
“When I mentioned Davis, he took it in stride. Read him like you’re sitting across a card table from him instead of watching him fight a losing gun battle in the street and you’ll see it as well.”
Byron looked outside, uncomfortably shifting from one foot to another. “What else have you learned?”
“That there is, or was, backup planned to come to his aid. That means there are still cohorts somewhere nearby who are either biding their time or writing off their hotheaded partner. My money is on the latter.”
“Otherwise they would have been here by now,” Byron said, reciting the professor’s own words.
“Exactly.” Whiteoak was bold enough to take a full step outside. Where all of the nervous tension had been crackling between the two fighting parties in the street, it now shifted toward the well-dressed figure. By Whiteoak’s estimation, he’d bought himself maybe another minute or two. Dropping the .38 he’d taken from the bank’s president caused some of the ferocity in Nash’s eyes to fade. Perhaps that would buy him more time.
“I got the safe open,” Whiteoak announced.
That caught Nash’s attention and held it. “What about the other compartment?”
“I know which compartments to open.”
“That’s enough of this,” Sheriff Willis said. “Nothing inside that safe is going anywhere!”
“He doesn’t know about it, does he?” Whiteoak continued, holding a hand up to the lawman as though he was taming an animal from afar. “There’s more than money in there.”
Nash scowled at him, blinking like someone who’d realized where they were after waking from a dream. “Of course there is. What the hell are you thinking?”
“Perhaps we should call Jeremy Christian in here.”
“What the hell for?” Nash roared as his scowl deepened into hard lines cutting his face into jagged portions. “Shut yer damn mouth!” he roared while swinging his gun around to aim at the professor.
Whiteoak snapped one arm forward, causing a snub-nosed pistol to fall from a pocket sewn into his sleeve and into his hand. He pointed in the outlaw’s general direction and pulled his trigger. Before the scent of burnt gunpowder could reach Whiteoak’s nose, Nash rolled away from the trough so he could line up a better shot. Gunfire erupted from the street as men standing on the ground and looking down from second-floor windows responded to the shots that had already been fired.
When he ducked back into the bank, Whiteoak was grinning.
“What are you so happy about?” Byron asked from the spot where he cowered with his arms wrapped around his head.
The professor moved over to him. Before he lowered himself to the floor, a stray bullet punched through the frame of the bank’s decimated window and hissed above their heads. Both men kept low and waddled deeper into the building, taking cover behind the counter in the lobby.
“Now we know there truly is more inside that safe than what can plainly be seen,” Whiteoak said, ticking off his next point. “Also, we know that Jeremy Christian isn’t involved in the scheme with Davis and Halstead.”
“He looked like he thought you were crazy!”
“Precisely!” Whiteoak said over the crackling roar of gunshots outside the bank. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“And when you fired at him just now,” Byron said, “you didn’t intend on hitting him?”
“If I had, it would have been a welcome bonus.”
“You wanted to get the shooting started?”
“That’s right. And now, all we need to do is survive!”
“You’re a damn lunatic!”
“What?” Whiteoak hollered over the growing wave of rifles and pistols barking like a pack of mad dogs outside.
“I said you’re out of your goddamn mind!”
“Oh. Right. Hand me that pistol, will you?”
Byron had to look down at his hand to verify that he was holding the silver-handled .38 he’d picked up from the dead bank teller’s grasp. Befuddled by the fact that he was the only one in the room showing the first hint of strain in the midst of a raging battle, he gave the professor’s weapon back to him.
Taking his pistol, Whiteoak calmly thumbed its hammer back and pointed it at the gaping hole where the bank’s front window used to be. Less than a second later, Jesse Nash appeared in the opening. Rushing frantically to get inside, one of his boots landed on the glass-covered floor. Professor Whiteoak adjusted his aim and squeezed his trigger, putting a bullet into the outlaw’s chest. Dropping to one knee, Nash attempted to return fire but only succeeded in putting yet another hole into the bank’s interior wall. After that, he was too weak to keep hold of his gun and let it fall from his hands.
“It’s done, I’m afraid,” Whiteoak said as he approached the wounded bank robber.
Nash wanted to kill Whiteoak. That much could be seen in his twitching eyes and menacing snarl. Instead of the hateful words he had in mind to spew at Whiteoak, the only thing to come from his mouth was a bubbling trickle of blood.
Outside, the lawmen had stopped shooting. Willis approached the bank while shouting up at the windows where rifle barrels angled downward like so many reeds bent in the wind. Judging by the sheriff’s stern admonitions and raised tone, there were still plenty of frayed nerves and anxious trigger fingers among the town’s protectors.
After taking the gun Nash had dropped, Whiteoak squatted down to put himself closer to the bank robber’s level. “That’s a clean shot I landed,” he said while nodding toward Nash’s sucking chest wound. “Why the hell would you take a run at this bank again, knowing about all those guns that would be pointed at you?”
“Job’s a job,” Nash replied. “Them windows were supposed to be empty, anyhow.”
“If I were you, I’d be mighty perturbed about being left in the street to die by the men behind this poorly executed robbery. Now’s your time to make them pay.”
By now, Willis had gotten his deputy and every other armed local in the vicinity under control. All that remained was to rein in the last two wild elements in his sight. “You!” he shouted to Whiteoak. “Step away from that man!”
The professor held up a hand to silence the lawman, which wasn’t nearly as well received as it had been when he’d shown the same gesture to Byron.
“I’m warning you,” Willis said. “Step away and toss your weapon!”
Keeping his eyes on Nash, Whiteoak said, “Tell me what I need to know and you can rest knowing that I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“What are you saying?” Willis asked as he marched toward Whiteoak and Nash. Looking to where Byron stood nearby, he asked, “What’s he saying?”
Byron shrugged. Even though he could hear some of the professor’s words, he wasn’t sure what they meant.
At the gruff sound of Nash’s voice, Whiteoak leane
d down and turned his head so his ear was close to Nash’s mouth. He nodded and stood up, raising his hands high and allowing the .38 to fall to the ground.
“You too, Nash,” Willis snarled, approaching the two men with his pistol held in a rigid grasp. “Lay flat and put your hands where I can see them.”
“Too late, Sheriff,” Whiteoak told him. “He’s gone. You should probably be more concerned with the rest of his men.”
“You mean these men?” Willis asked as he nodded toward the bodies scattered in the street.
“No. I mean Michael Davis and George Halstead, Senior. They’re the ones looking to rob this bank.”
“That’s . . . that’s absurd!” Willis sputtered. “They were two of the men protecting this bank from those mad-dog killers.”
“Protecting from where?” Whiteoak asked.
The sheriff turned to point at one of the windows looking down on Trader Avenue. “Right there. I saw George with my own eyes.”
But that window was empty. The next window the sheriff glanced at had been similarly vacated. “Avery,” Willis said to his deputy. “Go into the Wayne Hotel and find Mister Davis and Halstead.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff.”
“And you,” Willis said to Whiteoak as his deputy raced across the street to the building containing the second empty window that had been pointed out, “stay right where you are.” Turning his attention to some of the wrinkled faces looking down at the street, he added, “If either of these men move from where they’re standing, gun them down!”
All of the rifle barrels that were still protruding from nearby windows came to attention and stared straight down at White-oak and Byron.
“I’d remain still if I were you,” Whiteoak said to Byron.
The younger man’s voice was shakier than the legs of a newborn colt. “I wasn’t considering anything else.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
By most anyone’s standards, the rest of the day was slow and tedious. By the standards of two men who’d spent some of that day shooting and being shot at, the crawling pace was a welcome change. Professor Whiteoak and Byron Keag weren’t allowed to move from the front of the bank until the sheriff was able to examine the wreckage left behind by the second failed robbery attempt and he couldn’t do that until he found the missing members of the Founding Four. That last part turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.
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