Tin Star

by Jackson Lowry

  Luke had to stop by the shop. He called out to the last man in line.

  “You getting ready for a big celebration?” That explained a great deal. Men wanted to look good for a parade or big church social or even a barn dance.

  “What celebration’s that? I ain’t heard of anything happening.” The man scratched himself and looked around, as if he had missed something. He turned back to Luke to study the ignorant newcomer to town.

  “Anything at all happening? Is somebody important coming to town?”

  “I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at, mister. This is the way it’s been since the other barber upped and died a couple months back. Jake was about the best there was, but he was turnin’ blind. Wasn’t any surprise when he woke up dead one morning. The doc said it was his ticker.”

  “Jake died in his sleep?”

  “Old man Schulmann gave a real purty elegy at Jake’s funeral. That wasn’t such a big deal, though, not like a celebration or anything. Mister Schulmann gave the pallbearers a free haircut for their service. We were all sorry to see the last of Jake.”

  “Even Schulmann?”

  “They carried on a fierce rivalry during the day, then bought each other drinks after work and bragged on how many beards they trimmed and miles of hair they cut off.” The man moved a few feet along in the line when a satisfied customer came from the barbershop. “One month they even saved all the hair they clipped off and had a contest weighin’ it.” The man scratched himself again and looked thoughtful. “You know, I don’t recollect who won. Me, I always went to Jake. Him and my brother-in-law were partners in a saloon ’fore Jake’s wife got bit by the prohibition bug.”

  Luke wondered if either barber had cut the hair of Rollie Rhoades or Mal Benedict. If they had, they didn’t know how close they’d come to doing society a favor. A quick slip of the straight razor across a throat and the world improved.

  Only Luke would never find out where Audrey had been taken. He shook his head. Such daydreaming served no purpose. He had to concentrate and outsmart the crooks.

  “Enjoy your haircut,” he said, bidding the garrulous customer farewell. The man wanted to spin more tales of barbering in Crossroads but Luke had business to conduct.

  He rode slowly down the main street until he reached the far side of town. Cattle pens held several hundred beeves. Some carried brands on their rumps. Others were corralled in marked enclosures. The crowd of men here matched that going into the barbershop. Luke rode past a wall covered with wanted posters—only these hunted for cowboys willing to work. A half-dozen ranches needed wranglers.

  Crossroads showed the kind of prosperity that piled up a mountain of gold ripe for the pickings. Rhoades always had a yen to be notorious. Robbing the Crossroads bank would get his name known and make him a rich man—if that was what he planned.

  Luke stepped down and tethered his horse at a watering trough across the street from the bank. The one in Preston had looked out of place, being a showy brick building set among lesser structures. The Crossroads State Bank was as ornate and sported a second story with windows, but it fit right in. The town’s prosperity outstripped even a rich rancher’s need for a fancy bank.

  A gaunt man outside the bank’s carved wood double doors built himself a cigarette. A practiced move striking a lucifer across the seat of his britches caused a momentary flare that lit the cigarette with no fuss or bother or wasted motion. Luke saw a rifle leaning against the wall beside the man. A guard. If there was one outside, there must be more in the lobby.

  Luke walked back and forth, getting the lay of the bank. He went down a cross street and came up behind the bank. An open field littered with trash butted up against the building. He paced slowly back and forth, hunting for any sign that robbers planned to tunnel in. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he went to the far side of the field. Two tumbledown shacks looked to be perfect for thieves to use to start working across the open stretch and up into the bank itself.

  He kicked open the door of the first shack. The hinges protested. Nails pulled free and the door crashed to the ground. A quick look inside showed a dirt floor packed so hard it’d take dynamite to start a hole. That thought made him hunt for any explosive Rhoades thought to use for such an excavation. All he did was cover himself with dust and cobwebs. Sputtering and brushing the dirt off, he left to scout further.

  As he went to check out the other shack, the hairs on the back of his neck began rising. He slid the leather thong off his six-gun’s hammer. He reached out with his left hand for the dilapidated door, then spun, went into a crouch and had his Model 3 out in a smooth motion. He froze. He stared down the twin barrels of a shotgun pointed directly at his head.

  Shrapnel in his chest might deflect a .45 slug. Nothing would keep him from getting his head blown off from a storm of 00 buckshot.

  “Relax,” came the cold command. The man with the shotgun never wavered. His grip was steady and his pale eyes looked like chips of ice. If Luke had ever seen a killer, this was it.

  “I’m holstering my six-gun,” Luke said. With exaggerated moves, he lowered the hammer and slowly came out of his crouch. All the while, until he finally dropped his pistol back into his holster, the shotgun remained unwaveringly trained on his head. “Your turn to lower the scatter-gun.”

  “Seeing as how you’ve given up, why don’t you unbuckle your gun belt and let your hardware drop to the ground?”

  “I didn’t give up. I decided to palaver rather than spray lead everywhere.”

  “A good idea. Now drop the belt.” The man didn’t move a muscle, but Luke felt the danger rise.

  “Are you the law?”

  The man silently pulled back his coat. A shiny badge pinned to his vest caught the light just right and blinded Luke. He threw up his arm to shield his eyes. The marshal moved like lightning. Two quick steps forward and a short swing landed the shotgun stock alongside Luke’s head. He crashed to the ground, stunned.

  “I wasn’t resisting. The reflection off the badge blinded me.” He started to put his hands up but froze. The lawman still had the shotgun trained on him. After a few more seconds of the impasse, Luke said, “Either pull the triggers or let me up.”

  “I’m thinking on the matter.”

  “In my coat pocket’s something that can solve this.” Luke reached down and fumbled out the strip of leather with the tin star fixed to it. He took a real risk showing it to the marshal, but other ways out of his dilemma didn’t look too good.

  He held up the latigo strip and let the badge swing slightly. The shotgun never followed the badge’s motion. The marshal had seen such distractions in the past and had learned from them. Keep the prisoner covered. Everything else took care of itself.

  “What’s it say?”

  Luke felt a thaw in the man’s icy demeanor. He stretched to hold it up where the badge could be seen better.

  “It says Pinkerton. You’re a Pink agent?” The lawman took a half step back. The barrels began to look less menacing to Luke, but he was still a goner if the marshal so much as twitched.

  “On the trail of the notorious Rhoades gang. Your bank looks like easy pickings for killers like them.”

  “It’s not. Charles spotted you right away and signaled me to come running.”

  “Charles? Is that the guard outside the bank? The match was a signal that the bank’s being robbed?”

  “That some yahoo was watching a bit too close for comfort. When you went around to the back and started poking at the ground like you wanted to tunnel in, I decided to have words with you.”

  “I’m protecting the bank, not sizing it up to rob it.”

  “The Rhoades gang. You said that.” The marshal stepped back two more paces and lowered the shotgun so it lay across his left arm. He kept his trigger finger at the ready. The man trusted no one. Luke appreciated that. The marshal hadn’t asked who R
hoades was. Either he didn’t care or he already knew.

  “So there’s no way for them to tunnel into the bank and attack the vault from below?”

  The marshal snorted in contempt. He motioned for Luke to walk with him back across the open field.

  “The ground here’s baked harder ’n stone. It’d take a real frog strangler to turn it to mud, and if anybody had worked to dig a tunnel, it’d collapse on their heads. But there’s another reason why no self-respecting outlaw would try tunneling into the bank.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You,” the marshal said, leering, “are one of them exalted, highfalutin Pinkerton agents and you don’t know the reason? It’s simple as pie. Think how much work it’d take. It’s easier to just walk in, shoot up the place, steal the money and leave. I never saw a robber willing to do much more work than that. From rumors about this here Rhoades gang, they’re even worse. They’d consider it a waste of time if they took more ’n five minutes in and out for a robbery.”

  “You’ve got the bank guarded well enough that any robbery like that would fail?” Luke kicked himself for not thinking of that. For the life of him, he couldn’t picture Rhoades burrowing underground like a gopher. And that went double for Benedict. That owlhoot had a positive aversion to any kind of real work. Their kind destroyed. And he knew riding into a town, shooting it up and laughing at the death and destruction appealed more than being all sneaky. Tunneling in on a Friday night gave them two entire days to make an escape, but gunplay excited them.

  “Come on in and look it over.” The marshal hesitated, then asked to see the badge again. Reluctantly, Luke handed it over. He held his breath as the lawman made out the letters stamped into the tin. “Nothing’s like it seems these days.” He tossed the badge back. Luke snared it and looked at the ragged edges and crude lettering.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “An outfit as rich and powerful as the Pinkertons send their agents out with crappy badges like that.” He shook his head. “And I thought the Crossroads mayor and city aldermen were stingy pinchpennies. At least they let me hire deputies and give them decent badges. If I was you, I’d be plum embarrassed to carry a badge like that.”

  Luke held his tongue and walked along, taking in every detail of the bank construction. It was sturdier than he first thought. That meant Rhoades intended to do what the marshal claimed wasn’t possible. The gang would go in, guns blazing, steal the money and hightail it.

  “The horses,” he said, all the pieces coming together.

  “What horses you going on about?”

  Luke hesitated to mention the stage depot murders and the horses stolen but did. He sketched out what he thought, though it meant the marshal had an improved chance of catching Benedict because of it. Once Crazy Water Benedict was locked up, there was no way to make him tell what had happened to Audrey.

  Where they were keeping her, Luke mentally corrected. He had a gut feeling that she was still alive.

  “I heard of other outlaws trying that trick with the horses. Chances are Rhoades, if it was him who stole the stage line’s horses, sold them before the week was out. Easy money. That’s all his type wants. I’ve got wanted posters on his entire gang. Too bad we can’t claim any of the reward. We’d be a couple thousand dollars richer.”

  Luke made a noncommittal grunt.

  “You Pinks can’t claim a reward, can you, not if you’re hired to bring in the outlaws?”

  “I wouldn’t want the reward. Catching them’s enough reward for me, if they swing for their crimes.”

  “That’s about the way I feel, too,” the marshal said, “but that much money’s a real carrot to hang in front of a man’s nose. If it was Rhoades and his bunch out there like you say, the countryside would be filthy with bounty hunters buzzing around for the reward money.”

  “You caught him, Marshal?” The sentry stood at attention as if he were a soldier guarding an Army fort.

  “Good job spotting me. You deserve a bonus for being so alert, Charles,” Luke said. Using the guard’s name caused him to react. Right now, Luke wanted nothing more than to put someone else at the center of attention.

  “Calm down, man,” the marshal said to the guard. “He’s on our side. This here gent’s a Pinkerton agent hired to watch the bank.”

  Luke started to correct that, then faced a small man wearing a pin-striped coat, a flowing red silk cravat held down by a headlight diamond and a white shirt starched so hard it would hold him upright even if he died then and there. His pants had been creased so firmly he could use the edges as knives and his shined shoes caught every ray of light and seemed to glow. The watch chain dangling across his belly sported a Masonic emblem. Luke wished he had joined the local Masonic temple back home, but marriage plans had gotten in the way.

  If he knew secret signs or handshakes, he could have cemented his place with the bank president.

  “You two are mighty chummy, Marshal. What do you have to tell me about . . . him.” The banker looked Luke over from head to toe and back. He looked as if he had bitten into an unripe persimmon. He expected sweet and got bitter.

  The marshal explained all over again what had happened. Luke hesitated to flash the badge once more. A quick look into the bank lobby showed three armed guards in separate corners. From the eagle-eye tellers, one or more of them probably had a six-shooter under the counter and longed for a chance to show their bravery by blasting away a robber or two. For all he knew, the bank had offered a bounty for any thief gunned down trying to rob the vault. That’d make a hero out of any underpaid teller.

  “I wasn’t aware that Allan Pinkerton sent an agent to guard my bank. I am certainly not paying your agency a penny for something I never asked for. As you can see, I already have a small army to protect the vault. And the marshal, of course, is a stalwart.” The banker’s smile came across as insincere. Luke guessed the banker had little confidence in the marshal—or not enough confidence to matter. Otherwise, why hire so many gunslingers for his own vigilance committee?

  Luke held his tongue, not pointing out how these guards might take it into their heads to help themselves to the contents hidden away in the vault. They were armed to the teeth and could bide their time, waiting for the most opportune moment to commit the robbery. Some Latin words he’d heard once popped to mind. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

  “I can tell that,” Luke said with equal insincerity. “Give me a quick tour to look over your security, let me report back to the home office that there’s no need for our services, and I’ll be on my way. My primary job is to capture the Rhoades gang.”

  “Cutthroats,” muttered the banker. From the way he looked at Luke, he included Pinkerton agents along with bank robbers. “Marshal Wilkes has warned me about them. They won’t dare show their ugly faces anywhere in Crossroads, mark my words!”

  “They wouldn’t,” Luke said. “They’d be wearing masks during a holdup.”

  Marshal Wilkes smiled crookedly, and the banker’s expression turned even sourer.

  The banker led the way. Wilkes and Luke trailed behind him, going behind the low railing at the rear of the lobby. Luke saw right away that Crossroads intended to hang on to its money with far more fervor than Preston. The Preston bank had a safe. Crossroads’ vault had been built into a solid brick wall. The thick steel door stood man-high. Locking rods were retracted since the door stood ajar. Once those were spun into place by the locking mechanism, the door presented a challenge even Rollie Rhoades could not surmount.

  “Go on, look in. Just a peek,” the banker urged. His sour mood had evaporated. Ebullience at being so important because of the vault contents made him smile broadly.

  Luke poked his head around the door and let out a whistle of surprise. Shelves were piled high with neatly wrapped packs of greenbacks. He was no expert but there had to be thousands of dollars in scrip. Even more star
tling were the heavy canvas bags marked COINS stacked waist-high on the floor.

  “Ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces,” came the answer to his unspoken question. “We have a few bars of gold, too, but the ranchers prefer coins. Paper money is good, coins are golden.” The banker laughed at his small joke.

  “And we always give the ranchers and their hands what they ask for,” the marshal said proudly. “Without them, this place would be nothing more than two dirt roads crossing over a prairie-dog hole.”

  “Like Preston,” Luke said. Both men laughed, and the banker slapped him on the back.

  “You are more perceptive than I thought. Unlike Preston, we’re a growing town. Now, I must return to business. Rest assured, Agent, that we are prepared for any robbery attempt. Any!”

  “Yes, sir, you seem to be.” Luke looked up and saw a pair of perches nailed onto the walls. Two more guards crouched there. If the floor guards were taken out, these men could back-shoot any robber facing the tellers’ booths. It was a good thing the floor was marble. If blood was shed here, it’d be measured in buckets, and stone was easier to clean than wood floors.

  Luke let the marshal herd him from the lobby into the street.

  “When you’re done with your business, you’ll be moving on, won’t you?” The intent of Marshal Wilkes’s question wasn’t lost on him. He was an annoyance in an otherwise peaceable town.

  “I won’t waste any more of your time, Marshal. Thanks for the hospitality.” He held out his hand to shake. Wilkes hesitated, then shook it as if afraid he’d get fleas from the brief contact. When he released Luke’s hand, he gave a little push to get the unwanted visitor on his way. He spun and sauntered off, head high, shoulders back and looking like the cock of the walk.

  Luke vowed to avoid the lawman. With any luck, there’d be no reason to stay in Crossroads much longer. His trail ended when he found Benedict and his boss. A quick swipe of his bandanna dispatched sweat and dust from his eyes. He went off in the opposite direction from the marshal. Again he was struck by the frantic activity pulsing all around him. He had never been to Chicago or St. Louis or even Kansas City but imagined the citizens there were like those of Crossroads. Busy, intent and prosperous. Everyone had a place to go and lucrative business to transact.