“You don’t want that, so you don’t want to risk Thad or Aaron giving us away.”
McKinney shrugged. “They’re young and inexperienced. . . the exact opposite of you, Jones.” The emphasis on the name made it plain McKinney didn’t believe for a second that it was real.
Before they reached the hill’s crest, the two men took off their hats and got down on their hands and knees to crawl closer. They bellied down at the top and eased their heads up to take a general look at the situation.
Stanton had one main street that formed the business district and three cross streets on which residences and smaller businesses were located. Several fairly large houses were scattered around the outer edges of the settlement. Luke wondered if they belonged to men who owned mines in the mountains on the other side of the river.
At the far end of the middle cross street was a dock extending into the Colorado. Luke lifted his gaze to the far side of the river and saw a large, sturdy-looking, flat-bottomed ferry tied up over there. On the Stanton side, another ferry was landing at the dock on the far end of the middle cross street.
“Why didn’t they just build the dock for the riverboat on the far side of the river, so it could take on the gold shipments directly?” Luke asked McKinney.
“There’s a big sandbar close to the western bank,” the outlaw explained. “The mine owners didn’t know that at first, but they figured it out pretty quick-like when three or four boats got stuck and they had a devil of a time getting them unstuck. The river’s deep enough for the ferry to make it, though. At least it is most of the time, when the river’s not running low. So they decided the next best thing was to put the dock on this side and let the town grow up around it on the eastern bank. They ferry the gold across, load it on wagons, and store it in the bank’s vault until a riverboat picks it up.”
“Seems dangerous, hauling it up and down the street in wagons like that,” Luke commented. “That’s twice when a bunch like us could hit it.”
“Some have tried. There are always enough guards on the wagons to keep them from being successful, though. Most of the men who made a grab for the gold wound up shot full of holes. The others are all down at Yuma now.”
“The mine owners don’t post guards in the bank?”
“They do, but not as many since they trust the vault. It’s one of the best, supposedly. But we’ll take care of the guards and dynamite will take care of the vault door.” McKinney glanced up, saw that a cloud was about to drift in front of the sun, and waited until it had, then lifted the field glasses. He studied the town quickly and grunted in satisfaction. “Everything appears normal,” he said as he passed the glasses to Luke. “Take a look?”
“I’ve never been here before. I don’t know what’s normal in Stanton.”
“Your instincts will tell you if something’s not right.”
“You have a lot of confidence in my instincts,” Luke said dryly.
“No, I have confidence in my own instincts. And they tell me you’re a man who’s been in a lot of tight situations and knows how to handle them. Am I wrong about that?”
“No, not really,” Luke answered truthfully. He knew bank robbers and how they operated. He had captured—or killed—enough of them.
While the sun was still behind the clouds, he put the field glasses to his eyes and scanned the town. Stanton looked peaceful in the late afternoon. A few people were still moving around, but as the day eased on toward evening, most folks were either already in their homes or wrapping up their business for the day.
“Where’s the saloon?” he asked.
“North end of town on the west side of the street. It takes up most of that block.”
“I see it,” Luke said. “What about the bank?”
“Southeast corner of the intersection between the main street and that middle cross street.”
“Marshal’s office?”
“At the far end of the block where the bank is, on the same side of the street.”
“So the marshal’s handy.”
“Yeah. He can get from his office to the bank in less than thirty seconds, I’d say.”
“And the saloon where we’re going to be staging that distraction is only a little more than a block away.”
With a shrug, McKinney said, “I wish there was more distance between them, but those are the cards we’ve been dealt. The guards in front of the bank will all be looking toward the saloon once the fight breaks out. We’ll dispose of the ones in back and go in that way. The guards in front won’t know anything’s going on until the dynamite goes off. We’ll have men waiting for them if they come rushing in. Same goes for the marshal.”
Luke handed the field glasses back to McKinney. “And once those of us in the saloon hear the blast, we light a shuck out of there?”
“Yeah.” McKinney waved a hand toward the area where the rest of the gang was waiting. “We’ll meet back here and head east with the wagon for a ways, then stop and divvy up the gold.”
Luke rubbed his chin, frowned in thought, and then asked, “Where are Thad and Aaron going to be while all this is going on?”
“They’re going to wait here.”
“They won’t like that, especially Thad. I’ve got a hunch he’ll want to be right in the middle of things.”
McKinney shook his head. “I don’t care what he wants. He’ll do what I say.”
“Are you sure about that? From what I’ve seen of Aaron, he can be pretty headstrong, and Thad probably takes after you as well.”
“I don’t care about that. I’m not going to let them argue with me.”
“You know your boys,” Luke said, but that angle worried him. Thad and Aaron were wild cards. He wished he could be certain they would be safe, but he might not have that luxury if he wanted to stop the gang from killing some of the guards and the marshal, and making off with a fortune in gold. Stopping that plan was already going to be difficult enough, although he had a glimmer of an idea that might work.
The sun dropped below the clouds and spread reddish-gold rays across the mountains and the hills to the east. In less than an hour, he estimated, it would slide behind the peaks and night would fall with the suddenness common to the region.
McKinney must have been thinking the same thing. “It won’t be long now.”
Luke heard a note of anticipation in the boss outlaw’s voice.
McKinney was right. One way or another, it would soon be over.
CHAPTER 28
As dusk began to settle over the landscape, Luke and Three-fingered Jack McKinney went back down the hill to join the others. An air of tense anticipation hung over the temporary camp.
One of the outlaws asked, “Does everything look all right down there in the town, Jack?”
“Yeah,” McKinney replied. “Nothing out of the ordinary going on. All of you know the plan. We should be able to carry it out without any trouble. Well . . . not too much trouble, anyway.”
Creager, with his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, rasped bitterly, “You and your new segundo didn’t hatch a new scheme while you were up there?”
“What are you talking about, Creager?”
The brutish outlaw nodded toward Luke. “You took Jones with you to check things out. Usually that would’ve been me or one of the other boys. We all figure you’ve decided he’s second-in-command now, even though he’s only been part of the gang for a day.”
A few displeased mutters came from the other men. Creager had been down there trying to stir up trouble, Luke realized.
“Nothing’s changed,” McKinney said sharply. “You can just get that idea out of your heads. I’m still the boss of this bunch, and that’s all you need to know.”
“That’s right,” Thad spoke up. “My pa’s the boss, and we don’t need to be questioning what he does.”
A faint smile touched McKinney’s lips. “I’m glad to hear you say that, son, because I’ve decided that you and your brother are going to stay behind on this job.”
<
br /> Thad swung around toward him, eyes widening in the fading light. “What? What are you talking about, Pa? I’m going with you. Sure, Aaron needs to stay behind—”
“Why?” Aaron broke in. “How come you think you get to go along and I don’t?”
“Neither of you is going along,” McKinney said before Thad could answer his brother’s question. “You’re both staying here, where we’ll all meet up when the job’s over. There’s not going to be any arguing about it.”
Thad’s jaw clenched tight as he said, “That’s not fair.”
A harsh, humorless laugh came from Creager. “That’s what happens when you bring brats along on a job for men.”
All three McKinneys turned angrily toward him. Thad was about to say something, but his father waved him silent. “You sound like you don’t like the way I’m running this gang, Creager,” McKinney said with a dangerous note in his voice. “You feel like doing anything about that?”
“With a fortune in gold waiting for us a mile away?” Creager shook his head. “No, I don’t suppose I do feel like that right now. We’ll wait and see how things play out. Leave it at that.”
“You’d better leave it at that from now on,” McKinney said with a curt nod. He looked around at the others. “Anybody else have anything to say?”
“Let’s go get that gold,” one of the outlaws responded.
Several of the others chuckled at that, and the tense mood eased slightly.
McKinney smiled and nodded. “Soon. We need to wait for it to get darker first . . . but we won’t wait too long.”
The men tended to their horses as shadows lengthened and then closed in. Luke was aware of Creager’s hostile stare directed toward him but ignored it. However, when he had a chance he drifted over to where Jack McKinney was standing with his sons. “Creager’s going with you to the bank, isn’t he?”
“I’m not going to send him into the middle of a saloon brawl with you,” McKinney replied. “Too easy for him to shoot you in the back or stave your head in with a table leg during all the confusion.”
“That’s what I was thinking. He said he wanted to settle things between us face-to-face, but I don’t know that he meant it.”
Thad said, “I don’t trust him, Pa. He’s got the idea in his head of taking over the gang.”
McKinney sighed and nodded. “I know. He’s going to make trouble sooner or later. But I’d like to get this job behind us first.”
“You really ought to let me come with you,” Thad argued. “I can keep an eye on your back and make sure Creager doesn’t try to double-cross you.”
“He won’t do that. Not with as much loot at stake. No, the trouble will come later . . . but I don’t reckon it would be a good idea to postpone it for too much longer.” McKinney put a hand on his older son’s shoulder. “Anyway, I need you to stay here with Aaron. You two are a hell of a lot more important to me than any gold shipment ever could be.”
“Wouldn’t know that by the way you went off and left us struggling on that ranch,” Aaron said.
McKinney frowned at him. “You think you’ve got all the answers to everything, boy, but maybe you don’t. You might want to keep that in mind.”
Aaron just gazed back at him stubbornly. After a moment, McKinney shook his head and walked off to talk to some of the other outlaws.
Thad said to his brother, “You need to quit raggin’ on Pa about that. He only did what he thought was best.”
“Is that so? He ever explain it to you?”
“Well . . . no. But I know he believed he was doing the right thing.”
Aaron just snorted to show how much he thought of Thad’s faith in their father.
Thad stomped off, following McKinney.
When they were out of easy earshot, Luke said quietly to Aaron, “This is working out for the best. You and Thad will be safe while I deal with your father.”
“In the middle of a bank robbery?” Aaron asked with a skeptical frown.
“If I’m lucky, there won’t be a bank robbery. I’ll try to grab your father when the rest of the gang goes stampeding out of town. When you hear them coming, you boys lie low and stay out of sight. They won’t hang around to look for you. They’ll go on and light a shuck out of here. You can ride into Stanton in the morning and find me if I don’t find you first.”
“I’ll have to tell Thad who you really are.”
“It’ll be too late by then for him to do anything about it,” Luke pointed out. “Three-fingered Jack will be in jail.”
“Or dead,” Aaron said bleakly.
“I’ll try to see to it that doesn’t happen.”
“Do whatever you have to,” the youngster said. “As long as he pays for runnin’ off and abandoning Ma.”
Luke nodded. Aaron was carrying a mighty heavy load of hate and regret, he thought. It would be a lot for a full-grown man to bear. The weight had to be crushing for a twelve-year-old boy.
The stars had begun to appear in the sky almost as soon as the sun dipped below the peaks to the west. By the time another hour had passed, they glittered in the heavens like diamonds spread out on an ebony cloth. A half-moon lay low to the eastern horizon.
McKinney circulated among the men, picking out who would start the brawl in the saloon and who would go with him to the bank. It wasn’t exactly an even split. Luke and seven other men would head for the saloon. A total of eleven outlaws, including McKinney, would hit the bank.
“Remember,” he told the men who would be going to the saloon, “drift in one or two at a time so you won’t be noticed, and then once you’re all in there, wait half an hour before you start the melee. That’ll give us time to get in position at the bank.”
Luke and several of the other men nodded in understanding, then swung up into their saddles and rode out.
They scattered on the other side of the hills when they could see the lights in the settlement burning in the distance. Luke rode alone, and as he did, he mused over everything that had happened so far, going all the way back to his first sight of that homemade wanted poster promising a bounty of one dollar and forty-two cents and a used harmonica. Certainly one of the strangest jobs he had even taken on, it promised to be more so before it was over.
Riding quickly because he wanted to be the first one to reach the town, Luke swung to the north and approached Stanton from that direction, as if he were following the river and had been all day. That brought him into the settlement at the end of the street where the saloon was located, so he didn’t have far to go once he reached the buildings.
A glance along the street revealed to him that most of the businesses were dark and closed for the night. A couple of blocks down, the general store was still open, with a wagon parked at the high front porch that also served as a loading dock. A man wearing a canvas apron, either a clerk or the store’s proprietor, loaded crates into the wagon bed.
Luke could also see the dark bulk of the bank, which appeared to be constructed out of bricks and had a second story, making it the most impressive building in Stanton. As he reined to a halt in front of the saloon, he looked closely at the front of the bank and spotted a couple of tiny orange glows in the shadows along its porch. Guards were posted there, just as McKinney had said, and two of them were smoking quirlies.
Luke turned his attention to the saloon. Also as McKinney had indicated, it was large and took up most of the street frontage on the block. At the northern end of the building was a barber shop with its traditional striped pole out front, but other than that, the saloon was the only business.
Garish yellow light spilled through the windows on either side of a broad entrance sporting batwing doors. Luke dismounted and tied his horse at a hitch rail with four other animals, then stepped up onto the boardwalk and pushed through the batwings into the saloon’s smoky, raucous interior.
He had been in countless places just like it and saw immediately that the customers were split roughly evenly between miners from the shafts in the moun
tains across the river and cowhands from the spreads to the south and southeast. East and northeast of the settlement lay stretches of desert and badlands where vegetation was too sparse to support cattle.
Tobacco smoke and the smells of spilled liquor and unwashed human flesh filled the air, along with the tinny sounds coming from a rinky-dink player piano in one corner. A low rumble of male laughter and conversation flowed beneath the music like an underground river, counterpointed by an occasional strident laugh from one of the saloon girls, the slap of cards on green felt from the poker games, and the clicking of a roulette wheel that spun in the back of the room.
All of it was music to Luke’s ears. As squalid as the place might be, that sort of saloon was as close to a home as he had.
He walked to the bar, which was on his right. Dressed in heavy canvas shirts and trousers, and thick-soled work shoes or hobnailed boots, a group of miners stood at the end of the hardwood closest to the entrance. They passed around a bottle of whiskey, filled their glasses, and then roared out one obscene toast after another.
To Luke’s left, half a dozen cowboys stood hipshot, drinking beer, their high-crowned hats thumbed back on their heads. He saw a couple of them cast narrow-eyed, disapproving glances toward the miners at the other end of the bar.
That same sort of mix extended to the tables where men sat and drank or where games of chance were going on. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but Luke sensed an undercurrent of natural hostility between the men who made their living going down into dark, narrow holes in the ground and the others who spent their days riding the range under wide open skies. Those two extremes could never fully understand each other. An uneasy truce, an effort to tolerate each other, was the best either side could do.
As Luke rested both hands on the bar’s front edge, a bartender with a white apron over a red jacket came along the hardwood and nodded pleasantly to him. “What can I do for you, mister?” The man’s slicked-down brown hair was parted in the middle, and he had a prominent Adam’s apple.
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