Mavericks
Page 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE HOLD-UP
From the wash where the sink of the Mimbres edges close to Noches tworiders emerged in mid-afternoon of a day that shimmered under the heatof a blazing sun. They travelled in silence, the core of an alkali dustcloud that moved with them and lay thick upon them. Well down over theireyes were drawn the broad-rimmed hats. One of them wore sun goggles andboth of them had their lower faces covered by silk bandannas as if tokeep out the thick dust their ponies stirred. For the rest theircostumes were the undistinguished chaps, spurs, shirt, neckerchiefs, andgauntlets of the range.
With one distinction, however: these were better armed than the averagecow-puncher jaunting to town for the quarterly spree. Revolver buttspeeped from the holsters of their loosely hung cartridge belts.Moreover, their rifles were not strapped beneath the stirrup leathers,but were carried across the pommels of the saddles.
The bell in the town hall announced three o'clock as they reached theFirst National Bank at the corner of San Miguel and Main Streets. Hereone of the riders swung from the saddle, handed the reins and his rifleto the other man, and jingled into the bank. His companion took thehorses round to the side entrance of the building, and waited there insuch shade as two live oaks offered.
He had scarce drawn rein when two other riders joined him, having comefrom a direction at right angles to that followed by him. One of themrode an iron-gray, the other a roan with white stockings. Both of thesedismounted, and one of them passed through the side door into the bank.Almost instantly he reappeared and nodded to his comrade, who joined himwith his own rifle and that of the first man that had gone in.
There was an odd similarity in arms, manner, and dress between these andthe first arrivals. Once inside the building, each of them slipped ablack mask over his face. Then one stepped quickly to the front door andclosed and locked it, while the other simultaneously covered the tellerwith a revolver.
The cashier, busy in conversation with the first horseman about a loanthe other had said he wanted, was sitting with his back to the cage ofthe teller. The first warning he had of anything unusual was the closingof the door by a masked man. One glance was enough to tell him the bankwas about to be robbed.
His hand moved swiftly toward the drawer in his desk which contained aweapon, but stopped halfway to its destination. For he was lookingsquarely into the rim of a six-shooter less than a foot from hisforehead. The gun was in the hands of the client with whom he had beentalking.
"Don't do that," the man advised him brusquely. Then, more sharply:"Reach for the roof. No monkeying."
Benson, the cashier, was no coward, but neither was he a fool. He knewwhen not to take a chance. Promptly his arms shot up. But even while heobeyed, his eyes were carrying to his brain a classification of this manfor future identification. The bandit was a stranger to him, aheavy-set, bandy-legged fellow of about forty-five, with a leathery faceand eyes as stony as those of a snake.
"What do you want?" the bank officer asked quietly.
"Your gold and notes. Is the safe open?"
Before the cashier could reply a shot rang out. The unmasked outlawslewed his head, to see the president of the bank firing from the doorof his private office. The other two robbers were already pumping leadat him. He staggered, clutched at the door jamb, and slowly sank to thefloor after the revolver had dropped from his hand.
Benson seized the opportunity to duck behind his desk and drag open adrawer, but before his fingers had closed on the weapon within, twocrashing blows descended with stunning force on his head. The outlawcovering him had reversed his heavy revolver and clubbed him with thebutt.
"That'll hold him for a while," the bandit remarked, and dragged theunconscious man across the floor to where the president lay huddled.
One of the masked men, a lithe, sinuous fellow with a polka-dot bandannaround his neck, took command.
"Keep these men covered, Irwin, while we get the loot," he ordered theunmasked man.
With that he and the boyish-looking fellow who had ridden into town withhim, the latter carrying three empty sacks, followed the tremblingteller to the vault.
No sound broke the dead silence except the loud ticking of the bankclock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginningto return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down tothose in the vault to hurry.
There was need of haste. Somebody, attracted by the sound of firing, hadcome running to the bank, peered in the big front window, and goneflying to spread the alarm.
Outside a shot and then another shattered the sultry stillness of theday. The man left on guard ran to the door and looked out. An upperwindow down the street was open, and from it a man with a rifle wasfiring at the outlaw left in charge of the horses.
The wrangler had taken refuge behind a bulwark of horseflesh, and wasreturning the fire.
"Hurry the boys, Brad! Hell's broke loose!" he called to his companion.
The town was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they wouldfeel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. Onesweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hearvoices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther downthe street. Even in the second he stood there a revolver began pottingat him.
"Back in a moment," he cried to the wrangler, and disappeared within toshout an urgent warning to the looters.
Three men came up from the vault, each carrying a sack. The teller waspushed into the street first, and the rest followed. A scattering firebegan to converge at once upon them. The roan with the white stockingsshowed a red ridge across its flank where a bullet had furrowed a path.
The teller dropped, wounded by his friends. Two of the robbers loadedthe horses, while the others answered the townsmen. In the inevitabledelay of getting started, every moment seemed an hour to the harassedoutlaws.
But at last they were in the saddle and galloping down the street,firing right and left as they went. At the next street crossing two men,one fat and the other lean, came running, revolvers in hands, tointercept them. They were too late. Before they reached the corner theoutlaws had galloped past in a cloud of white dust, still flingingbullets at the invisible they were escaping.
The big lean cow-puncher stopped with an oath as the riders disappeared."Nothing doing, Budd," he called to the fat man. "The show's moved on toa new stand."
Jim Budd, puffing heavily and glistening with perspiration, nodded theanswer he could not speak. Presently he got out what he wanted to say.
"Notice that leading hawss on the nigh side, Slim?" he asked.
"So you noticed it, too, Jim. I could swear to that roan with the fourstockings. It's the hawss Mr. Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durnhis forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So doesKeller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the othersmust be nesters from Bear Creek, too."
"We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "Theybeen shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Kellerhas put a rope round his own neck."
Men were already saddling and mounting for the first unorganizedpursuit. Slim and his friend joined these, and cantered down the dustystreet scarce ten minutes after the robbers.
The suburbs of the town fell to the rear, and left them in the fall andrise of the foothills that merged to the left in the wide, flat,shimmering plain of the Malpais, and on the other side in thesaw-toothed range that notched the horizon from north to south.Somewhere in that waste of cow-backed hills, in that swell of endlessland waves, the trail of the robbers vanished.
Men rode far and wide, carrying the pursuit late into the night, but thelost trail was not to be picked up again. So one by one, or in pairs,under the yellow stars, they drifted back to Noches, leaving behind theblack depths of blue-canopied hills that had swallowed the fleeingquartette.