Day of Reckoning

by William W. Johnstone

  Callahan put the two dollars on the bar; the bartender took the money, then gave him a bottle and four glasses.

  When Callahan returned to the table, he saw that Manning and the others were enthusiastically responding to the flirtatious attention of a couple of the bar girls.

  “Get,” Callahan said in a growling voice as he put the bottle and glasses on the table. He made a dismissive sweep with his hand.

  “Honey, are you sure you don’t want company?” one of the two women asked.

  “I said get!” Callahan replied, raising his voice.

  With expressions that mirrored that of the young lady Callahan had turned away at the bar, the two young women hurried from the table.

  “Now what the hell did you do that for?” Morris asked.

  “You plannin’ on settlin’ down in this town after we take care of our business, are you?” Callahan asked.

  “Well, no, but . . .” Morris started to say, but Callahan interrupted.

  “There ain’t no buts to it,” Callahan said. “We plan to do our job, then get the hell out of town. We don’t need nobody cozyin’ to us a’fore we get around to takin’ care of business. If they know us, they can tell the law all about us.”

  “What law?” Manning asked. “I ain’t seen no law.”

  “That don’t mean there ain’t no deputy here.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Morris said. “We won’t talk to none of the girls.”

  “Not just the whores. You don’t talk to nobody.”

  Callahan filled the four glasses and then grabbed one. “Drink up,” he said.

  The men tossed the drinks down, and there was enough left in the bottle for one more round.

  “What did it look like, comin’ in from the north?” Callahan asked Cooper. “Any reason why we can’t go that way when we leave town?”

  “There warn’t no reason that we seen as to why we couldn’t go that way,” Cooper said. “I figure we could follow the north fork o’ the Little Laramie River, they’d be plenty of water for us, ’n it wouldn’t be easy for nobody to be a-trackin’ us.”

  * * *

  The three saloon girls were standing in a small group at the bar.

  “Now there is one ugly man,” one of the girls said. “That flat nose, and that scrunched-up ear.”

  “He isn’t just ugly in looks. He acts ugly, too. That’s a man only his mama could love.”

  “What makes you think someone like him ever even had a mama?” the third girl asked, and the three laughed.

  * * *

  The object of their conversation was sitting at the table with Cooper, Manning, and Morris, unaware that he was the subject of their teasing.

  “When are we a-goin’ to do it?” Manning asked. “I don’t feel good, hangin’ around in this town for so long.”

  Callahan finished his second drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and grinned at the other three. “All right, if you’re all ready then, why don’t we do it now?”

  “You’re in charge,” Cooper said. “How are we goin’ to do it?”

  “Cooper, you ’n Morris will go into the bank with me. Manning, you’ll be outside already mounted and holding the leads of the other three horses,” Callahan said in response to the question. “When we come out, I don’t want to take the time to untie ’em. I think that’s where we made our big mistake in Archer . . . we didn’t leave nobody with the horses, ’n the time it took to untie ’em and get mounted was all the time MacCallister needed. I don’t plan to give nobody that much time today.”

  “I’ll have ’em ready,” Manning promised.

  With a scrape of chairs, the four men stood up and walked, purposefully, from the saloon.

  * * *

  “Hey, how come you girls aren’t working the floor?” the bartender asked, coming down to where the three girls were standing.

  “Come on, Mel, there ain’t but three men out there,” one of the girls said. “And one of ’em is so old that I bet he ain’t had it up in more’n ten years.”

  “Well then, that leaves one apiece for the two of you.”

  The two girls Mel was talking to put on practiced smiles and started out onto the floor in response to the bartender’s nudge.

  “What about you, Suzie?” Mel asked.

  “You want me to take the old man, do you?” Suzie replied.

  “Why not? If anyone can do it for him, you can.”

  “It would probably give him a heart attack. You don’t want to kill him, do you, honey?”

  Mel laughed. “Why not? If that’s what kills him, he’ll at least die a happy man.”

  “Listen, Mel, before I go give the old gent a heart attack, did you pay much attention to those four men that just left?”

  “Not particularly. Why?”

  “I think there’s somethin’ awfully peculiar about them,” Suzie said.

  “You mean ’cause that big pig-faced bastard pushed you away?”

  “No, not just that. Betty and Annie were over at the table with the other three men, and when he went over to join them he ran them away, too. Then, all the time the men were in here, they were talkin’ so low that nobody could hear what they were saying.”

  “It wasn’t anybody’s business what they were saying, was it?”

  “I don’t know, it depends on what they were talking about. What if they were planning something evil?”

  The bartender laughed again. “You know what, Suzie, you missed your calling. Maybe you should have been a detective for Pinkerton instead of wastin’ your time as a bar girl.”

  “Maybe I should have,” Suzie agreed. She pointed to the door as if in doing so she was pointing toward the men who had just left.

  “But you mark my words, there’s something awfully peculiar about those men.”

  Suzie walked up to the batwing doors and looked outside.

  “Do you see any of them out there?” the bartender called.

  “No,” Suzie replied. “They must have ridden on.”

  “Well, good riddance, I say,” the bartender replied.

  Pasting a practiced grin on her face, Suzie started over to the table where an old man, with a full white beard and long white hair, stood staring into his glass of beer.

  “No need for you to be staring at the beer, honey, it’s not goin’ to get up ’n run away on you,” she said.

  “I sure hope it don’t, little lady, ’cause I’m pretty sure these ole legs wouldn’t let me run it down.”

  “Would you like to buy me a drink?” Suzie asked.

  “As long as you don’t expect anythin’ else from me,” the old man said. “’Cause I tell you the truth, if you was lyin’ naked on the bed in front of me, all I could do is say, ‘Damn, ain’t you purty.’”

  Suzie laughed and lay her hand on his cheek. “Well now, comin’ from you, I’d just take that as a big compliment,” she said. “Let me get my drink, then you can tell me stories about the old days.”

  In front of the bank

  When Callahan, Manning, Cooper and Morris stopped in front of the bank, nobody paid any particular attention to the fact that only three dismounted, or that rather than tying their horses off at the hitching rail, they handed the reins to a fourth man who remained sitting in his saddle. The three who did dismount went into the bank. There were three men inside, but it appeared as if all three were bank employees. Two were behind the counter, and one was at a desk on the side of the room. One of the tellers greeted the three men with a practiced smile.

  “Yes, sir, what can I do for you gent—?”

  Before the teller could finish his question, Callahan and the other two men with him pulled their guns.

  “What is this?” the teller asked, the smile leaving his face.

  “We’re robbing this bank. Don’t any of you shout out!”

  Cooper and Morris jumped over the counter.

  Callahan, who remained out front, looked toward the man who had been sitting at the desk.

 
“You the president of this here bank?” Callahan asked.

  “No, sir, I’m just a bookkeeper. I’m afraid that the president of the bank isn’t here.” The quaver in his voice displayed his fear.

  The two bank tellers had looked expectantly toward the man sitting behind the desk, as if awaiting instructions from him. When he denied his actual position with the bank, the two tellers looked away from him.

  Callahan smiled. “Well now, it ’pears to me like maybe you’re lyin’. I think you’re the man I’m lookin’ for,” Callahan said. He made a motion with his gun toward the safe. “Open the safe for me, Mr. Bank President. And be damned quick about it. The sooner this is done and we get out of here, the safer it will be for you.”

  “I can’t open the safe,” the man said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s on a time lock.”

  “Then when can you open it?”

  “It’ll be at least ten minutes before I can open it.”

  “We goin’ to wait, Callahan?” Morris asked.

  “Morris, you dumb son of a bitch! You said my name.”

  “Sorry,” Morris replied nervously.

  Callahan turned back to the man who had been sitting at the desk. “You know what, mister? I just don’t believe that a bank this small would actually have a time lock,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, we just put it in,” the man replied.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mister . . . uh . . . that is Dempster. My name is Dempster.”

  “Mister, huh? You mean like in Mister Bank President?” Callahan asked.

  “All right, I am the bank president, but it is on a time lock.”

  “Ten minutes, huh?”

  “Yes, sir, ten minutes.”

  “Mr. Dempster, here’s what I want you to do,” Callahan said in a deceptively calm voice. “I want you to put your hand here on the counter.”

  “I beg your pardon? Why on earth would I do that?”

  Callahan cocked his pistol, the hammer making a deadly sounding click as it rotated the cylinder. He pointed the gun at the man’s head.

  “Because I will blow your brains out if you don’t.”

  Hesitantly, Dempster put his hand on the desk. To his utter horror, Callahan drew his knife, then brought it down sharply. Before Dempster even knew what had happened, Callahan had chopped off his little finger.

  “Ahhhh!” Dempster called out in pain, drawing back a hand with blood oozing from the wound. “Why did you do that?”

  “Well, you said we had ten minutes to wait before the time lock would let us open the safe, didn’t you? You’ve got ten fingers . . . well, nine now,” he amended with a little laugh. “And that works out just real good, because I figure we’ll just cut off one finger a minute from now until we can open the safe, you know, just to kill the time?” Callahan laughed demonically.

  “No, no! I . . . I just remembered . . . I forgot to set the time lock last night. I can open the safe now!” Dempster said. “Please, don’t hurt me anymore!”

  “Well, now, ain’t it just real lucky for you that I won’t have to be cuttin’ off no more fingers.”

  “Open it, Carl. For God’s sake, open it,” Dempster said. As the teller, Carl, hurried over to open the safe, Dempster took off his shirt with difficulty and pressed it against the bleeding stub of his little finger.

  Carl opened the door to the vault, and Morris, carrying an empty sack, stepped inside.

  “You see any money?” Callahan called.

  “Yeah, there’s paper money and coins,” Morris said.

  “Forget the coins and grab all the paper you can. Carl, you get back over here with the others,” Callahan ordered. “And you jaspers—put your hands up. I don’t want to see any of you reachin’ for anything. If you do, I’m goin’ to be real nervous, ’n when I get nervous, I shoot.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Morris was taking money from the safe, Callahan and Cooper continued to hold their guns on the tellers. Carl and the other teller had their hands raised. Dempster didn’t raise his hands, but was still holding his shirt over his finger. At that moment a customer came into the bank and realized at once what was going on.

  “Help!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Bank robbery!”

  Even as the customer was giving the alarm, he was drawing his pistol. Callahan swung his gun toward the armed customer. The customer fired first, his bullet hitting an inkwell on one of the tables and sending up a spray of ink. Callahan returned fire and his bullet found its mark; the customer went down.

  Another citizen of the town came running into the bank and fired as soon as he stepped inside. His bullet shattered the shaded glass around the teller cages. Cooper returned fire, killing him.

  “Morris, grab what you can ’n let’s get the hell out of here!” Callahan shouted.

  “But there’s a lot more money I ain’t grabbed up yet!” Morris replied.

  “Now! Get out of here now or we’ll leave you behind!” Callahan yelled.

  Callahan’s suggestion that they might leave him had its effect, and Morris came back out, clutching the bag that was no longer empty.

  Outside the bank the townspeople, hearing the shots, realized at once what was going on.

  “The bank!” someone shouted. “They’re robbin’ the bank!”

  “Callahan! Cooper! Morris!” Manning shouted. “Get out of there! Fast!”

  One of the armed townspeople started running toward the bank with his pistol drawn. Manning shot him, dropping him in the middle of the street. Until that moment not everyone realized that the man sitting on a horse in front of the bank was one of the robbers, though if they had seen that he was holding the reins to three other horses, they probably would have known. Seeing now that he was one of them, the townspeople began screaming and running for cover.

  With Morris clutching the bag in his left hand, he, Callahan, and Cooper backed out of the bank, with Callahan firing back inside.

  “Hurry up and get mounted!” Manning called, holding the reins down to the other three.

  Across the street a young store clerk, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, came running out of the store, wearing his apron and carrying a .22 rifle. Raising the rifle, he fired at the four robbers but missed. Cooper returned fire, and the boy fell back to lie spread out in the street.

  “You son of a bitch! That was my boy!” a man yelled, running out of the same store the boy had exited. He was carrying a shotgun, and he fired both barrels, but his gun was loaded with light birdshot and the shooter was too far away to be effective. The pellets peppered and stung, but none of them penetrated the skin.

  Still another citizen fired at the bank robbers, and Manning’s horse went down under him. Manning leaped from the struck animal before he could be pinned beneath it, then ran to the nearest hitching rail where several horses had been left by their owners. Spooked by all the gunfire, they reared and pulled against their restraints, but Manning was able to untie the first horse, then swing into the saddle.

  “That’s my horse!” someone shouted, stepping through the front door of the leather goods store. Manning shot at him. He didn’t hit the angry owner, but the shot did have the effect of driving him back inside.

  The town marshal, an older man, was just now reaching the scene, having run the entire length of the street from the sheriff’s office. Puffing and wheezing loudly from the unaccustomed effort of the long run, he raised his pistol toward them. “You fellas stop right there!” he called.

  Callahan shot at the sheriff and the man went down, a dark hole appearing right in the middle of his forehead.

  The four robbers rode toward the north end of town only to see a dozen or more of the townspeople rolling a wagon into the street. The townspeople then tipped the wagon over as a barricade and gathered behind it, all of them armed and ready.

  “Callahan, we can’t go that way!” Cooper shouted.

  “This way!” Callahan replied, turning of
f the street and leading them through a churchyard. Only a few moments before all the shooting started, a funeral had been conducted in the church. At the moment, the body was just being carried out to the cemetery for the committal. Having heard all the shouting, the mourners stared in terrified fascination at the four armed and mounted men who were bearing down on them.

  Screams and shouts of fear and terror greeted the bank robbers as the mourners split, then ran to either side of the churchyard to allow the robbers to pass. The pallbearers dropped the coffin, which turned on its side, causing the remains of a young woman, dressed in white, to spill out.

  “Jolene!” one of the mourners shouted out in the horror of seeing his loved one so unceremoniously dumped onto the ground.

  Once the robbers were through the churchyard, they headed south.

  As the horses pounded by, they kicked up dirt to soil the white burial gown Jolene was wearing.

  “You bastards!” cried the mourner who had called out Jolene’s name.

  The retreating riders did not react to the shouted epithet.

  “Grab a gun and get mounted!” someone shouted back in the town. “Those sons of bitches held up the bank!”

  Responding to the call, several men armed themselves, saddled their horses, and got mounted. But they were without a leader.

  “All right, men, let’s go!” John Ray Dumas shouted, assuming the role of leader when no one else stepped up. John Ray was the owner of the hardware store, and he was the one whose earlier shouts had rallied the townsmen into forming a posse.

  It was almost fifteen minutes before they were ready to go and they galloped out of town full of resolve and confidence. Several had seen the robbers turn south after they passed through the churchyard, so south the posse went.

  The posse stopped when they reached the Laramie River.

  “What now?” one of the men asked. “Which way do we go?”

  “Yeah, John Ray, you’re in charge. Which way do we go?”

  “I don’t know,” John Ray admitted.

  “I think we should get back to town,” one of the others said. “We’ve left it completely unguarded.”

  “Yeah,” another said. “And we need to bury our dead.”