“I—wish I’d never listened to you about those land deals, Chet.”
Lindeen laughed harshly.
“Sure you do. And if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be living in that fancy two-storied house on the knoll at the edge of town and have a staff of servants. And a lot of other things.”
The banker frowned but said nothing. Then he slowly lifted his head, looking very puzzled.
“Well, you can see what I did with my share, I guess—but, what about you, Chet? You’re still the same sheriff, still drawing the same pay and still living as you always did. What’d you do with your share? I happen to know it’s not in your account with the bank.”
Lindeen smiled crookedly.
“Be kind of stupid of me if it was. But you never mind about what I do with my money. You just worry about making everything seem normal. Make sure it’s a day exactly like any other day, lock up when the time comes and go home and enjoy your evening.” His smile faded slowly. “By morning, all your worries’ll be over.”
Two – Bank Job
Waco never slept completely. There was always one of the several saloons open right through the dark hours and on into the next day. It was an arrangement between the saloonkeepers and Sheriff Chet Lindeen.
There was an unofficial roster that allowed the Sam Houston to stay open all night on one night a week; on another night, it was the turn of the Carousel Bar, and on a third Brannigan’s Buffalo Gal had the privilege. All three saloons were allowed to operate all Saturday night.
It was a fair enough arrangement and gave a couple of quiet nights to the townsfolk who were likely to complain, but, even on these nights, poker games went on in the back rooms of all of the saloons, under subdued lighting. However, Lindeen made very sure the bars were closed and that the whores stopped ‘trading’ at midnight.
Of course, the arrangement was profitable for all concerned, including the sheriff.
That night happened to be one of the ‘off’ nights: only the quiet poker games were in progress. The rest of the town was mainly in darkness. There was an occasional light showing in a cabin window, but these were going out as the minutes crawled past midnight. Lindeen had long since made his last rounds for the evening, and had turned in at ten o’clock. He knew the saloons would shut down the bar and the girlie-parlor sections on time: they would have him to reckon with if they didn’t—and none of them would want that.
Brett Hallam knew Lindeen was tough, and so did his men as they gathered behind the outlaw leader in an alley running off Main not far from the Waco First National Bank.
Hallam was a coarse man, in looks and habits. He smelled strongly of sweat and rarely washed or changed his clothes. He wore a beard but only to save the effort of shaving and his hair was long and lank. His horny fingernails were broken and packed with filth. Even his men stayed to windward of him whenever possible, though mostly they were used to his stench. No one ever mentioned it; no one ever told him to take a bath. Except Chet Lindeen: he was the one man tough enough to get away with it. Others had tried and found themselves looking up at a pine marker bearing their name on Boothill.
Hallam carried a small canvas bag as he motioned to the men to move against the wall of the building while he studied the street and the bank.
“Okay. Just like they said it’d be. Quiet as a church. Now we got plenty of time; it’s important to remember that. Plenty. Do a thorough job, hear? We take everything, every—single—thing. That’s the deal, so make sure it’s done proper or your only share’ll be a slug from my Colt. Savvy?”
No one bothered to answer and Hallam didn’t expect them to. They had been over it all a hundred times in the hideout in the hills. If they didn’t know it then, they never would. And any man who made a mistake knew he would die. But Brett Hallam just wanted to reinforce the thought in their minds before the job began.
Satisfied that he had put the fear of God into them once again, Hallam nodded, picked up the canvas bag and stepped into the street. The others followed, seven dark shadows, slipping across the quiet street and down the lane beside the bank. At the door, Hallam hissed and a man came up carrying a wrecking bar. There was enough reflected light for him to see the heavy steel hasp that was screwed into the woodwork.
He forced the pronged end of the crooked bar beneath the hasp and then strained, levering hard. The screws began to pull out, one thread at a time. There was a soft screech and Hallam made a cutting motion with his right hand. The man eased up on the pressure instantly.
“Again—but steady,” the outlaw chief ordered.
The man applied firm pressure and felt the hasp and screws resist the bar. He flexed his muscles a little more. The screws popped up another couple of threads then screeched once more. He eased up without any instructions from Hallam and tried a third time. This time the screws came out and the hasp made a dull clunk as it flopped on its hinges against the doorjamb. The man bared his teeth in a grin of triumph at Hallam, but the outlaw leader merely pushed him aside and pressed his heavy shoulder against the door.
It didn’t budge.
“Locked from the inside, but it’s only a bolt. Use the bar again, six inches above the lock, Tate.”
Tate jammed the bar’s prongs between the door and the frame at the indicated place and levered. He felt the resistance, and applied more pressure. There was a short period of straining, grunting pressure then the door flew open with a crash. The men immediately poured inside the darkened bank then Hallam closed the door and jammed the back of a straight-backed chair under the dangling bolthead.
If anyone had heard the noise—which was doubtful—the door would appear to be closed. He hoped. But there was no time to be sure. He led the way across the darkened bank and Armstrong and Blair hurried around hanging up horse blankets over all the windows.
“Okay, Brett,” Armstrong whispered hoarsely.
“Better be,” Hallam growled and struck a vesta. He cupped a hand around the flame, crossed to a table where there were some oil lamps. He lit two and carried them back to the glass door marked ‘President’.
They went inside, Armstrong and Blair standing guard, one at the front door, the other at the side. They peeked out of special holes cut in the blankets and covered by flaps that could drop into place after use.
At the big vault door, Hallam made impatient gestures as he rummaged in the canvas bag. A man stepped forward with a broad-bladed cold chisel and lead-headed hammer. He started working on the heavy hinge pins, not bothering about the cast hinges themselves. He sheared the rounded tops and bottoms off the pins on all four hinges and another man drove them out with a slim, steel rod and hammer. A third man was smashing away at the edge of the door around the lock mechanism. Still another outlaw belted the brass handle with a second lead-headed hammer. Hallam connected detonators and fuse lengths to sticks of dynamite then went to the door of the office and looked into the darkened bank.
He could just see the two guards in the reflected lantern light from the President’s office.
“All clear?”
“Okay,” Armstrong answered from the front.
“Same here,” Blair reported. “Curly’s just bringin’ the broncs down the street.”
Hallam glanced at a cheap pocket watch and grunted.
“We’re on time. How you fellers doin’?” he asked, turning his attention to the men at the safe.
“Ready when you are, Brett.”
He moved forward swiftly and lifted the first stick of dynamite. He placed this in the trough the man had chiseled between the frame and the door edge, holding it in place with a handful of wet clay. He worked swiftly and expertly, placing another stick at the top of the door, another in the hole where the brass handle had been broken away, and one on each of the hinges. He twisted all the fuses together and the others draped carpets and tellers’ coats and cushions over the door as Hallam paid out the fuse into the main bank chamber.
They were all crouched behind the heavy counter when he
lifted the glass chimney of a lamp and thrust the ends of the various fuses into the flame. The fuses spluttered and smoked and he flung them from him towards the door of the office and crouched with his men.
He was glad he had used only half sticks: if he had used full ones, he doubted that the counter would give enough protection. Hallam strained to hear and smiled in satisfaction at the hissing of the fuses.
Just another thirty seconds ...
~*~
Lang Huckabee never slept in his underwear—as was the custom with most frontier men. He figured it as a dirty habit and always carried pajamas or nightshirt with him on his travels.
He sat up in his hotel bed shivering a little in the chill and pulled his pajama jacket collar up around his throat. It was no use: he couldn’t get to sleep. He had dozed for an hour or so after arriving at the hotel from supper at Mel’s house—with the incessant chatter of the banker’s wife still ringing in his ears and a fine sticky mess on his charcoal-gray trousers from one of the children.
Some men were meant to be family men, but not Lang Huckabee, he reckoned. Oh, he liked youngsters well enough, as long as they were someone else’s and knew their place—which he reckoned was right away from adults at meal times. But Mel’s two children were all over their ‘Uncle Lang’ and, while flattered at the attention they had shown him, he could very well have done without their sticky fingers on his clothing.
But none of these things prevented him from sleeping. Nor was it worry about the Governor’s presentation rifle in the vault of Mel’s bank.
No, it was Mel himself.
They had never been very close for brothers, even as children, but they had always managed to get along all right whenever they had met up during the course of their lives. Maybe it was because they didn’t see each other very often that kept their friendship alive; they were so different in outlook that if they had been living near each other they would have fallen out long since.
But Lang had always been able to read Mel’s moods and even see behind some of his devious ways when he wanted something very badly but didn’t want to come right out and say so. He had always been able to tell when Mel was lying—and Mel had lied to him that afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to store that special gun in the bank vault overnight at all.
Just why he didn’t was something Lang Huckabee didn’t know but he aimed to find out before moving on from Waco and heading down to Austin for the presentation of the rifle to Governor Dukes to mark the tenth anniversary of the man’s rise to office.
Lang hated a mystery and he had been unable to think of any reason why Mel should be so perturbed at his simple enough request. The nagging puzzle kept disturbing his peace. All night at supper and in the parlor afterwards, the banker had seemed nervous. His wife didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, but then she never stopped talking long enough to notice anything. But Lang had noticed it; Mel had been edgy with the children, he had been positively bad-tempered with the servants and he had kept looking at that damn’ gold watch. Something was troubling the man and Lang knew it had something to do with the gun—if not the weapon itself, then the fact that he had asked for it to be locked up in the bank’s vault.
There was no logical explanation as far as the Winchester man could figure and he knew his brother well enough not to waste time asking him about it. Mel would tell him to mind his own business.
Which maybe was the best thing, anyway.
He had just decided on this and was reaching for a cheroot on the bedside table when there was a thundering explosion that tipped him completely out of bed. He had been leaning past the point of balance when the detonation shook the building.
Blinking, Lang Huckabee sat up on the floor, wondering what in hell had happened, but only for a second or two. He was directly beneath his window and he lunged to his knees and threw the drapes aside, looking across the street at the bank. He didn’t know what made him look in that direction first, but it seemed somehow natural. When he saw the flames of a small fire showing through a blown-out window with a smoldering horse blanket caught up in the wreckage, he knew he had been right. And, worse, he knew why Mel had acted so strangely.
The thoughts raced through his head as he dragged on a pair of trousers then ran to his samples’ trunk and grabbed a rifle and a carton of cartridges from the special compartment in the bowed lid. He wrenched open his door and ran along the dim-lit hall to the stairs, hearing other folk stirring sleepily in their rooms.
Lang Huckabee was a man who knew his wares. He sold Winchester rifles all over the West and he was one of the Company’s top men. He could strip a Winchester firearm in the dark and put it back together again in less than sixty seconds. He had no trouble loading the long magazine with eleven shells as he bounded down the stairs.
When he reached the street, the rifle was fully loaded. He propped on the hotel porch as he saw men streaming out of the bank’s side door and leaping into the saddles of waiting getaway mounts. Huckabee dropped to one knee and got the rifle up to his shoulder. The weapon didn’t have the usual cocking lever, but a strange hinged metal toggle on the curve where the lever loop began. It was a massive, over-sized loop that a man’s hand could go through. Huckabee’s finger tip flicked the toggle outwards, so that it jutted forwards a full three-eighths of an inch.
The robbers were wheeling away from the bank as sleepy-eyed folk began to appear at windows and doors. They swept down the street, yelling wildly, loosing off triumphant gunshots into the air.
The Winchester man counted nine riders, and then he began levering, working the over-sized loop of metal as fast as he could; his hand a blur as it moved up and down. He didn’t touch the trigger. As the loop dropped forward, the bolt came back and automatically cocked the external hammer, as in all normal Winchesters. But, instead of having to clamp the lever into place against the butt and then pull the trigger manually with a forefinger, the special metal toggle caught the tip of the trigger’s curve on each backward motion of the lever, tripping it and allowing the hammer to fall.
The result was that the Winchester hammered in a swift tattoo of death that sounded like a miniature Gatling gun. It sounded as if there were a posse on the porch of the hotel, pouring lead into the fleeing bank robbers.
Startled, the outlaws swung their guns around and began firing in panic. The rifle chattered from the hotel porch and one man threw up his arms and somersaulted over the rump of his horse. Another rider staggered and dropped his six-gun to claw at his bullet-smashed shoulder, reeling drunkenly. A racing mount went down as if it had stepped into a trapdoor that led to a chute. It was still running as its nose plowed into the street and the snap of its neck was drowned in the hoarse cry of the rider as he catapulted over the animal’s head.
Dazed and shaken, he stumbled to his feet. His gun was in his hand and he spotted Huckabee, triggered two wild shots in his direction and stumbled along the street after the fleeing outlaws.
He had taken a dozen or so steps before he realized that they were thundering out of town, shooting at anything that moved but not bothering about him. Swearing in fear and anger, he dashed into a side street and began reloading his six-gun as he ran. It was Blair and he knew they had deserted him; left him to find his own way back to the hideout.
Meanwhile, Hallam unsheathed his rifle as he rode and threw it to his shoulder as he led his bunch out of town. There were folk appearing on the walks, mostly in their night attire, but he didn’t wait to see if they were armed or not. He gave the order:
“Cut ’em down.”
He yelled at the top of his voice and started shooting. An oldster tried to turn back into his cabin doorway but he was stopped by Hallam’s bullet. The man’s gray-haired wife screamed as he was driven face-first into the doorframe before slithering to the porch in his own blood.
Another woman screamed shrilly as she was cut down by fire from the outlaws, and people suddenly began to scatter. Bullets smashed in windows and ripped splinters from doors as anot
her unarmed man was shot dead. A child dashed across the street and was trampled by the outlaws’ racing mounts.
Guns hammered behind them as they saw the edge of town coming up fast and swept past the two-storied residence of Mel Huckabee. Just for good measure, Hallam and his men poured a dozen shots into the big, darkened house and had the satisfaction of hearing the shattering of glass.
Then they were beyond the town’s limits and racing into the night ...
Blair was on the run and he could hear pounding boots behind him somewhere. He didn’t know if it were the hombre who had brought him down or someone else, but he didn’t aim to stop and find out. He didn’t know Waco too well, but he thought the side street would bring him out into a vacant lot where he could, maybe, steal a horse.
He might even be able to contact ...
Blair skidded to a halt. He had made a mistake, and a fatal one.
The street was a dead end, finishing in the rearing blank clapboard wall of the railroad storage shed, with other buildings hard up against it. There was no way out and his pursuer was pounding after him through the darkness. It would be only a matter of seconds before he was discovered.
Well, that hombre, whoever he was, was dead, Blair thought grimly, dropping to one knee, and steadying his six-gun on the patch of light where the man must appear. The outlaw would be invisible to anyone running out of the light, for he had the dark wall of the warehouse at his back.
Then he saw the man coming, a tall, rangy form with a six-gun in hand. He held his fire, knowing it wasn’t the man he had seen with the rifle on the hotel porch. There was something vaguely familiar about that figure ...
Then relief flooded through him as he stood and stepped forward, lowering the gun.
“Chet. It’s me. Blair,” he called softly and froze as he saw the sheriff spin towards him, bringing his gun up. “Hey! Hold up, feller. I ain’t tryin’ to nail you. Got myself cornered. Can you get me to a bronc or let me lay low someplace?”
Bannerman the Enforcer 9 Page 2
