“I’m keeping this,” he said. “When I kill Jasper Wolfden, I’ll put a chunk of his beard in it.” He grinned at Shannon. “I’ll wear it on my finger to mourn him, like.”
“Will we have time for that, boss?” Shannon said. He looked concerned.
“We’ll make time,” Cobb said. “I want Wolfden and them other two that he helped escape. And most of all, I want that girl.”
“You gonna gun her too, boss?”
Cobb shook his head, his eyes gleaming. “No, I got other plans for her.”
The coin was heavy, but most of the bank’s assets were in paper money and Reuben Waters easily handled the burlap sacks he threw into the back of the surrey. The horse in the traces was a Morgan and it would do its job.
Waters had been pilfering the accounts for the past year, but not so much that it would be noticed by his clerk without a careful audit.
The big banker nodded to himself and smiled his satisfaction.
He estimated there was close to sixty thousand in the surrey, enough to last him the rest of his life if he stayed to cheap whiskey and cheaper whores.
As for his dear wife, Prudence, fat and snoring in the marital bed, she could fend for herself. Hey, maybe Brother Matthias would name her for a witch and burn her.
Waters’s smile broadened. Serve her right. She really was a damned witch after all.
The virgin dawn blushed pink in the sky as the banker checked the loads in his Smith & Wesson .38 and returned it to the pocket of his frockcoat.
A big-bellied man, and heavy, the surrey lurched and creaked when Waters climbed into the seat and clucked the Morgan into motion.
Holy Rood was still asleep as the banker swung the surrey into the street and headed south through long morning shadows.
Waters was mightily pleased with himself.
If he kept to the main wagon and stage route, by tonight he’d be in Silver Reef where he and his money would be safe.
Then a few drinks, a good dinner and a woman to share his bed, and he’d hit the road again and head for the Arizona Territory where nobody knew him.
And after that . . . well, the world was his oyster.
Waters slapped the horse into a trot, anxious to be gone from the damned town forever. The surrey trailed a plume of dust as it cleared the business area, then the livery stable and finally the sheriff’s office.
He didn’t see a soul.
But a dog trotted out of an alley, a burned chunk of bone in its mouth, and watched Waters go. The dog dropped the bone, then squatted and scratched and scratched and scratched. . . .
“There he goes, boss, just like you said he would,” Shel Shannon said. “Runnin’ like a scalded cat.”
Cobb stepped to the window in time to see the surrey’s dust settle back to the street.
He smiled. “I don’t know how many mistakes Waters has made in his life, but this is his biggest.”
Cobb moved away from the window and said to Shannon, “Who’s to the south.”
“McCord and Hooper. I told them to bring him back dead. Figure it’s easier that way.”
“See the money is returned to the bank and I want a two-man guard on it until we ride out of here,” Cobb said.
He smiled as a thought struck him.
“Hell, we’ll burn the place on the way out. Wipe this burg off the map.”
“Easier that way,” Shannon said, repeating himself.
“Ain’t it, though?” Cobb said, his tight-skinned face alight.
Bargain with the coin and save the notes, Reuben Waters told himself as the two riders, dressed in monkish robes, rode out of the trees and blocked the road.
“Howdy, Rueben,” one of the men said. “What brings you out so early in the morning?”
Jason McCord was a Texas gunfighter who’d been a close friend of John Wesley Hardin and had gone drinking and whoring with him on numerous occasions. He was so sudden on the draw and shoot that Hardin called him Fast Draw McCord, and meant it.
Waters searched for mercy or understanding in the man’s pale blue eyes but found neither.
Beside McCord, a rifle across his saddle horn, Tom Hooper had an amused smile on his lean, narrow face, his mouth showing teeth under a great dragoon mustache.
Waters believed that the lives of such rough men revolved around women and whiskey, and he decided to play to both vices.
“I’m headed for Silver Reef, boys,” he said. “I keep a woman there an’ figured it was high time I got some of my money’s worth.” He winked. “She also supplies the whiskey.”
“Well, good for you, Reuben,” McCord said. “What does your old lady say about that?”
Waters tried a grin that ended up a grimace. “Well, the wife don’t know nothing about my spare woman. Like, I told her I was headed to Silver Reef on banking business.”
“So what you got in your poke behind the seat?” McCord said.
“Oh, that?” Waters said.
“Yeah, that,” McCord said.
“It’s money I plan to invest in certain business ventures in Silver Reef.” Waters tried the smile again. “As you brothers know, I believe in giving the good folks of Holy Rood an interest second to none, more than they’d get in them big banks in New York or Boston. And the secret to supplying that interest rate is sound investment after sound investment. And always keeping a sound head, of course.”
The two gunmen said nothing.
Waters sweated in his broadcloth and wiped his round, glossy face with a large, blue bandana. Suddenly, he found it hard to breathe and he heard a wheeze in his chest.
“You don’t look so good, Reuben,” McCord said. “A might peaked, like a man with a misery.”
“I am a sick man, brother. That’s another reason I’m headed for Silver Reef, for some well-earned rest and relaxation.”
“I never could relax with a whore,” McCord said. “Could you, Tom?”
Hooper shook his head. “Nah, I was always too busy to relax.”
“Ella Campbell is not a whore,” Waters said, pretending to be outraged about his pretend woman to make his reason for travel more believable.
“She’s a kept woman, you said.” Hooper grinned.
“Well, yes, she is.”
“Then she’s a whore,” McCord said. He turned in the saddle and said, “Tom, check out them sacks.”
“Wait!” Waters said. He shook his head, the wattle under his chin wagging, panic in his eyes.
“I told you a lie, brothers,” he said quickly. “I’m stealing the bank’s money.”
“We know you are, Reuben,” McCord said. “Now just sit back and enjoy the morning while Tom takes a look.”
“Seems like it’s all there to the last penny,” Hooper said.
“Now much you reckon?” McCord said.
“Hell, I don’t know, and it would take me all day to count it,” Hooper said. “But it’s a lot. I can tell you that.”
“Fifty thousand,” Waters said. “We can split it three ways and head for Arizona.” His hands outstretched, pleading, he said, “What do you say, boys? Is it a deal? Let’s have no unpleasantness here.”
McCord said, “You lied to us, Reuben, and you know what happens to bad boys who tell lies, don’t you?”
“They get shot,” Hooper said.
Waters’s eyes unmasked and now they glittered with anger.
“Scum!” he yelled. “You damned scum.”
He went for the revolver in his pocket.
It was another big mistake, and the last one he’d ever make.
The Smith & Wesson was still in the broadcloth when Hooper hit him with a heavy-bladed machete he’d drawn from a scabbard on his saddle.
Waters screamed as the honed edge bit deep into the roll of fat at the back of his neck and blood spurted.
His face ugly with fear and horror, the banker rolled off the seat and hit the ground hard. He tried for the gun in his pocket once more, but Hooper had dismounted and he swung the machete again.
/> The sharp steel blade split open Waters’s skull like a ripe watermelon and he was mercifully dead when more of Hooper’s blows rained down on his head and shoulders, and blood and brain fanned into the morning air. . . .
Finally sated, the gunman straightened up and let the gory machete dangle at his side. His face was covered in streaks of scarlet and gray and it looked as though he wore a red silk glove on his right hand.
McCord leaned from the saddle, his forearm on the horn.
“Never seen a man killed like that before,” he said. “Never figgered a blade could cause that much damage.”
Hooper grinned. “Got a taste for the steel when I was just a younker and done fer my pa with a wood axe. Besides, a blade saves a bullet, considering what a box of decent .45s cost these days.”
“Hitch your hoss to the wagon, Tom,” McCord said. “We’ll take the money back to town.”
“What about him?” Hooper said.
“Just leave him where he lays. I don’t reckon he cares much one way or t’other.”
Hooper gave McCord a sly look. “We could just grab the money an’ run, Jason. Just like ol’ Reuben said.”
McCord nodded. “We could. But do you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for Hank Cobb? Years might pass, but one day, when you least expect it, you’ll turn and he’ll be there.”
Hooper considered that, and then said, “I was only joshing.”
“I wasn’t,” McCord said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I don’t like it, Shawn,” Jasper Wolfden said. “It’s too thin. I could end up dead real easily.”
“You’re an actor,” Shawn O’Brien said. “All I’m asking you to do is act.”
“I’m willing to part with my hair, if that’s what it takes,” Sally Bailey said. “I’ll cry a little, but that’s what women do, isn’t it?”
Wolfden said nothing, but his concerned face spoke volumes.
Hamp Sedley turned the two jackrabbits roasting on a stick, and then said, “Wolfden, you’re a shape-shifter. All O’Brien’s asking you to do is shift shapes.”
“Who says that?” Wolfden said.
“Says what?” Sedley said.
“That I’m a shape-shifter.”
“Folks. And one of Hank Cobb’s boys said it.”
“Folks say a lot of things that aren’t true. Folks say what they’d like to be true, that’s all.”
“You were on the stage, Jasper,” Shawn said. “Actors shift shapes all the time, become somebody else. You ever play Richard the Third?”
“Of course I did. Not as well as Booth and some others, but in Boston town I played the evil Yorkist prince to considerable acclaim.”
“You had to shift shape for that, I imagine,” Shawn said. “Wasn’t Richard a hunchback with a bad leg?”
Wolfden sighed. “Run your wild scheme by me again.”
“Jasper, it’s not so wild,” Shawn said, smiling reassurance.
“Easy for you to say,” Wolfden said. “You’re not the one sticking his head in the noose, or on the chopping block, more to the point.”
“I’m not an actor,” Shawn said. “I’d never pass muster in Holy Rood.”
Wolfden sighed again. “Let me hear it.”
“We must keep Cobb and his boys in town for a couple of days,” Shawn said. “If he bolts to open ground, we’ll never get him.”
“So far, so fairly reasonable,” Wolfden said. “‘Lay on, MacDuff.’”
“To do that, we need somebody in the inside who can maintain a disguise,” Shawn said. “And who but an actor can play that role?”
“As a federally appointed witch-finder general,” Wolfden said. “Hank Cobb won’t swallow a big windy like that.”
“You’re right, he won’t. But the people of Holy Rood will, hook, line and sinker,” Shawn said. “They accepted Cobb’s story that he could make their town a paradise on earth by the use of the guillotine and the stake to execute undesirables, didn’t they? Cobb aimed high, Jasper, and so will you.”
Wolfden shook his head. “O’Brien, you’ve got my brain bound with so much baling wire I can’t think.”
“It’s easy,” Shawn said. “The first thing you do is get the people on your side. According to Scruggs, Cobb’s tithe has already caused ill feeling. When you tell them their valuables will be returned once you smell out all the witches in town, they’ll listen.”
“And what does Cobb do in the meantime, apart from shooting me?” Wolfden said.
“He can’t go against the will of the people,” Shawn said. “I’m betting that he’ll be stuck in town until you leave. I think the good citizens of Holy Rood won’t stand by and watch him skedaddle with their valuables and money while the federal witch-finder is in town to sort things out.”
Wolfden slapped the Colt at his side.
“I can’t wear iron,” he said.
“We’ll hide it on you somewhere,” Shawn said.
“If Cobb figures the witch-finder is me, he won’t come at me straight up and true blue; he’ll shoot me in the back,” Wolfden said.
“He won’t figure it’s you, not if you’re a halfway decent actor,” Shawn said.
“I was, but I’m not any longer,” Wolfden said.
Sedley grinned. “Cheer up, Wolfden. Sally’s donating her hair. So you glue it under your hat with a mix of pine sap and charcoal and let it fall over your face in ringlets. Ol’ Hank Cobb an’ them will be fooled. Trust me.”
“Gambler, I wouldn’t even trust you to play honest poker with my own marked deck,” Wolfden said.
Sedley nodded and smiled. “Wise man.”
“Well, Jasper?” Shawn said.
“All right, I’ll do it,” Wolfden said. “It’s a challenging role with a difficult audience, but it could be my greatest triumph.”
“Sally, we’re asking you to make a big sacrifice,” Shawn said. “You’ve got such beautiful hair. Reminds me of . . .” He smiled. “Well, it just reminds me.”
“No need for that,” Wolfden said.
He removed his hat and a mane of black locks tumbled over his shoulders.
“I let it grow sometimes,” Wolfden said. “It’s a little eccentricity of mine. All actors, even washed-up ones, have them.”
“Well, it ain’t near as pretty as Sally’s,” Sedley said. “But I guess it will do.”
“I’ll be back,” Wolfden said.
He rose to his feet, picked up his saddlebags and walked into the pines.
After the man had gone, Sedley said, “What was all that about?”
“I don’t know,” Shawn said. “But you don’t question a man who excuses himself from camp and steps into the trees.”
Sally’s eyes locked on Shawn’s and her mouth compressed into a small, pink flower.
“What’s on your mind?” Shawn said.
“I just looked up at the sky and had a vision of death. Many deaths,” the girl said.
Shawn didn’t question the girl’s gift.
“Who will die?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “Just . . . many deaths.”
Sedley shivered. “Well that kind of talk spooks the hell out of me. Makes me think of ha’ants an’ such.”
“Shawn, I think we should go away from here,” the girl said. “Leave this place behind.”
Shawn shook his head. “Holy Rood is an evil place, Sally. I’ll cleanse that town or destroy it.”
“Hell, O’Brien, why do you care?” Sedley said.
“You know why I care.”
“The cowboy, you mean?”
“Yes. Him and all the others. And I plan to kill Hank Cobb. His shadow has fallen on the ground for way too long.”
Sedley looked at the girl. “There’s your answer, Sally. Ol’ Shawn ain’t leaving.”
“And you, Hamp?” Sally said.
“I’ll stick. I’m as big a fool as O’Brien is.”
“Sally, you don’t have to stay,” Shawn said. �
��You can take my horse and put a heap of git between you and Holy Rood. Hell, a pretty girl like you can find work anywhere.”
Sally smiled. “I’ll see how it ends. I guess that makes all three of us fools, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does,” Sedley said. “But, girl, you got more sand than most men I’ve run acrost, including my ownself.”
Shawn rose to his feet as the rising sun filtered through the tree canopy and the songbirds greeted the new day. The air smelled sweet of pine and wood smoke and the tang of the cooking rabbits.
“Hamp, do you have a knife?” he said.
The gambler nodded. “Still got my Barlow.”
Shawn extended his hand. “Let me have it.”
He read the question on Sedley’s face and said, “Every witch-finder needs a badge of office. I’m going to make one.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shawn O’Brien returned to camp carrying a long, straight tree branch that was wide at its base but slimmer at the top so it would bend like a fishing rod under any kind of weight.
Hamp Sedley was unimpressed.
“That’s it?” he said. “It ain’t much of a badge of office.”
“It’s not quite done yet,” Shawn said.
He held up a roll of trimmed creeper vine that was stronger than twine.
“For the finishing touch,” he said.
“And what’s that?” Sedley said.
“All in due time, Hamp. All in due time.”
But Sedley paid no attention. He looked beyond and behind Shawn, then jumped to his feet, his gun coming up.
“Hold up right there, mister,” he yelled. “Or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”
“Hell, Sedley, on your best day you couldn’t hit me at this distance.”
It was Wolfden’s voice, but it came from a small, hunchbacked man with the pinched, intolerant face of a Spanish Inquisition torturer.
The man had sunken cheeks and great black shadows under eyes that glowed with a fanatical fire. His pallor was ashen and lank, dirty hair hung about his face. The mouth was thin, pinched, cruel, merciless.
“Well, what do you boys think?” Wolfden said. “I always carry my stage makeup. Never know when I might need it.”
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