All right, then. They’d do this Owen’s way, even if it meant him getting a swelled and prideful head.
You could hear the clopping of hooves separate from the rattling wheels. Clem Stubbs lifted his rifle and pointed toward the road with it. Clem was stout and broad-shouldered, with an enormous red beard not unlike the burning bush once revealed to Moses. What few teeth Clem still had in his jaw were yellow and worn, the last stubborn survivors of his mighty love of sweets.
“What you think, El? Should we give ‘em lead and set on them from behind?”
Hayes shook his head.
“No. We’ll wait till they make the delivery and wander off to the saloon. They won’t be as eager to come running to the aid of the Dennison man after spending a few hours drinking and whoring.”
Roach Clayton dropped to one knee as if to pray. He was a short, wiry man with round spectacles that gleamed at odd moments, catching you off guard. He looked more fit to minding a hardware store than trail living, but he could outride any man and was startlingly handy with a camp knife.
“You think we can break the Dennison man? He’ll be guarding that money chest with his life. Those company men are like that.”
“I’ll break him,” Johnny Miller said. “Just get me in that room with him.”
Elwood glanced at the young man. Miller had joined up with them in Denver the month before, a rat-faced youngster who said he wanted to make some easy money and hurt somebody, and not necessarily in that order.
Roach said something else Elwood couldn’t hear. The stagecoach was visible now, accompanied by two guards on horseback in front and two in back. A lookout rode beside the driver, his rifle laid out across his lap. The lookout’s eyes swept from one side of the road to the other, never quite resting on one spot as the coach jostled along. He looked grizzled enough and so did the other guards, none of whom appeared younger than thirty.
Hayes rubbed his jaw, wondering how exactly they’d finagle all this. You had to take all the specifics into account when you were robbing a man or things could turn on you in a hurry.
The stagecoach and its escort disappeared around a bend in the mountain road, leaving a cloud of dust to slowly settle back on the stony ground. They brought the horses out of the ravine and remounted. Elwood brushed the dirt and pine needles from his pants, mindful of the need for respectable appearance as they approached town. Even in a tiny spider hole like this you didn’t want to alarm anyone unduly, not before the silver was in your pocket and the wind at your back.
Clem Stubbs rode up beside Hayes—the road was too narrow for more than two riders to get along comfortably. It was a miracle a stagecoach could fit on such a poor stretch, regardless of its speed.
“You satisfied with your handsomeness, Elwood?”
“I am.”
“A man should be tidy, if he’s going to rob a tidy sum.”
Hayes smiled, letting his horse pick his way down the slanting road. “I like that, Clem. You figure that yourself?”
“Yes, sir. Right now, in my very own Christian mind.”
“Mercy,” Elwood said, shaking his head. “What wonders hath God wrought in His creation.”
The road leveled out some. Elwood kicked his horse to a trot and the other men trailing him followed suit. Down below, you could make out a cloud of dust rising above the trees as the stagecoach rushed onward, heading toward a small town laid out on the valley floor. The town, naught but a few dozen buildings, seemed to be hunched away from the mountains surrounding it, like a nervous wagon train making camp for the night.
Red Earth, his brother had called it. Red Earth, Wyoming.
And such a beauty of a day.
Elwood slowed his horse as they rode down the last steep length of mountain road and reached the valley floor. Felt good to be on flat ground again, to ride without worrying about pitching forward, but Elwood Hayes resisted the urge to let his horse out. They weren’t going to act the cowboy, whooping and raising hell as they pounded into town. No, that sort of tomfoolery got a group of men noticed.
They passed the copper mine, which was nothing much to see besides a few buildings and a dark hole in the hillside. Elwood noted the unsettling fact that there seemed to be only one torturous road in and out of camp. If a group of like-minded men, angry and well-armed, managed to cut them off before they’d started upward…well, that could lead to a bloody encounter for all involved.
About a half-mile past the mine’s entrance, they came to the first buildings on the outskirts of town. They stabled their horses at the livery barn and left the stable two at a time, with Roach and Johnny going first, headed straight for the saloon downtown, while Hayes and Clem held back a minute before crossing the street.
“That’s sharp, splitting us up like that,” Clem said, scratching his beard. “Four men stick out more than two.”
“That’s why I’m in charge, Stubbs. You let me do the hard figuring.”
A few old timers were sitting on the porch outside the town’s general store. Elwood touched the brim of his hat and one nodded back.
“You reckon your brother’s working in the mine these days, Elwood?”
“No, it don’t seem likely. He’s worried by dark and crowded places. That’s why he only prospects, and does poorly at that. He thinks silver and gold can still be found around these hills, popping out of the ground like prairie dogs.”
They crossed the street and came to a handful of shacks that smelled about the same as the livery stables. A man sat cross-legged in a doorway, cradling a jug in his lap. His blond beard was gnarled and unkempt and his hair looked like it might not have seen a barber’s shears in a year or more. Elwood kicked the man’s leg and he jerked awake, his eyes red and bleary.
“Hey, hoss. No call for kicking.”
Stubbs and Elwood laughed.
“Lord Almighty,” Elwood said. “Don’t you look poorly, you little skunk.”
The drunk shaded his eyes.
“El, is that you?”
“Sure is, you drunken fool.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
Owen Hayes set aside the jug and stood up, leaning against the boarding house’s doorway for support. He smiled, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, and staggered forward to embrace his older brother. Elwood tolerated the contact a moment before pushing his brother away.
“I can hardly believe it. You came, Ellie. You got my letter and you came.”
“I did. It wasn’t a pile of nonsense, was it, Owen? I’ve got three men with me and none of us is going to be too happy with you if you was spinning tales.”
“I wasn’t spinning tales,” Owen said, looking at Stubbs. “I might be a drunk, El, and a poor excuse for a prospector, but I’m no liar. Payday is tomorrow. That Dennison man will be sitting on that cashbox tonight like a goose in a fairy tale, waiting for its fat gold egg to hatch.”
Hayes glanced at Stubbs.
“We saw the stagecoach on the way in. Had a sizable escort.”
“That’s it, all right. That’s the National Bank coach. Comes once a month to Mr. Cooke’s house.”
“What’s Cooke like?” Stubbs asked. “You met him before?”
“No, not myself,” Owen said, wiping the sweat off his brow. “But I seen him plenty around town and heard folks talk. Thinks he’s smarter than everybody and tougher, too. About what you’d think a big company man to be like in a place like this, I suppose.”
Elwood scratched beneath his hat. He’d sweated through the brim and his throat felt dry enough to close up permanently.
“Let’s get ourselves a drink. I’m thinking Roach and Johnny have already started without us.”
Owen’s face broke into another one of those tobacco juice grins.
“I could use a sip myself, brother.”
>
“Kid,” Stubbs said, roping him against his chest with one broad arm, “I think you better stick to coffee from here on out.”
Owen’s vexed eyes went to Elwood, who kept his expression flat.
“Robbing the Dennison Mining Company is no drinking game.” Elwood reached into his coat and pulled out a .38 revolver. “You remember how to shoot?”
Owen took the revolver and pointed it across the street, looking down its sight with one eye closed.
“Been awhile, but I can recall.”
“That’s good. Now tuck it away until you need it.”
“This a Remington, ain’t it?”
“Don’t matter what it is. Shoots bullets well enough. Just don’t shoot yourself or any of us.”
“Thank you, brother. I will strive to remember that.”
Elwood Hayes, like the other men in his gang, wore his pistol in a holster strapped to the small of his back. He believed it did no good to show your gun to the world, reckoned that it only made you a bigger target, both to the law and to hot-tempered drunkards. Also, he liked the look bank tellers and rich folk got in their eyes when you pulled your gun on them like a magic trick. Folks always underestimated a man with empty hands and that alone could give you an opening, if you knew where to look for it. The other men had taken awhile to see the wisdom of this, but Elwood had made it a rule if they wanted to ride with him, a known man in Colorado with three successful holdups already under his belt. Folks said you lost time reaching back for your revolver, which was true, but if you got used to drawing that way it was only a moment and you could overcome that and more through surprise.
Elwood allowed his younger brother to take the lead and show them to the Runoff Saloon, figuring the town without acting too obvious about it. He picked out the accountant’s house straight off, seeing as it was the only building in Red Earth that looked permanent, two-stories tall with stone walls, a proper chimney, and small, narrow windows only a cat could pass through.
“I can feel them,” Stubbs grumbled beside Hayes. “I can feel their eyes at this very moment, feeling me out.”
Elwood opened his mouth, about to ask who exactly Stubbs thought was watching them, but then he saw the girls gathered on the front porch of the saloon, fanning themselves as they sat in the shade, their bare arms glowing. Elwood closed his mouth and swallowed, abruptly aware of the sweat rising along the brim of his hat and the smell of horse upon his skin.
Stubbs crossed himself.
“May the Good Lord preserve me from temptation and deliver me…”
Clem Stubbs was married, somehow, and always started up like this when they ran into women. The prayers must not have been as feverish or pure as the Good Lord wanted, however, since Stubbs usually gave into temptation around his third drink.
Owen glanced back at them and grinned.
“Don’t worry about the doves, gentlemen. They do like to flutter around this particular area.”
Elwood nodded to the ladies as they climbed the porch steps and passed through, his hand on Stubbs’ shoulder to help him along. The ladies flicked their fans like peacock tails, giggling (as he knew they would) while their perfume lifted sweetly off their powdered skin and into the summer air. Elwood and Clem Stubbs stopped just inside the saloon as Owen continued on, allowing their eyes to adjust to the dimness. On Elwood’s left were several round tables, all of them empty except one near the saloon’s front windows, where three of the stagecoach guards sat playing cards. On Elwood’s right was a stairway to the saloon’s second floor and behind that a hallway that led to several rooms. The saloon smelled like spilt beer, stale cigar smoke, and the burning kerosene lamps that hung about on pegs.
Roach Clayton and Johnny Miller were sitting by themselves at a rectangular bar in the middle of the room. Elwood headed in their direction, looking sideways at the other tables. The bartender, a young man with a tangle of dark hair over his eyes, came up as Elwood sat down on a stool beside Roach and set his feet on the brass foot rail.
“What’ll you have?”
“Beer.”
“Caleb here is my good pal,” Owen said, sitting on Elwood’s right side, with Clem a third stool down. “Good old Caleb, the greatest bartender Wyoming’s ever known.”
Elwood grimaced—his brother’s breath was as foul as if he’d been chewing on a dead buzzard for the past hour.
“Don’t know about greatest,” Caleb said, setting a cup of coffee in front of Owen. “About the fanciest concoction I can make is pink gin.”
Owen frowned, looking at his coffee. Caleb filled a mug of beer from a keg under the bar and set it in front of Hayes, who tipped it toward the bartender in salute before drinking. Stubbs ordered a beer and a whiskey and Elwood turned to Roach Clayton while the bartender was occupied.
“You see anything strange about them guards?”
Roach shook his head and stared into the bar’s varnished top. “Two went upstairs with a girl each, the rest is playing poker. They’ve been drinking beer and whiskey steady but don’t seem bent on getting wild.”
“They laugh like goddamn donkeys,” Johnny said, leaning across Roach and only bothering to half-whisper. “Bunch of asses, is what they are.”
Elwood stared into Johnny’s eyes a moment, pondering the glassy rage he saw inside them. Miller wasn’t built for the thieving life—he should have been out fighting in a war somewhere, riding on the front lines, charging up hills and such. The only stealth and cunning he had to him was the shrewdness of a cornered animal, already wounded and ready to die fighting.
“You said only two went with the girls, Roach?”
“I did.”
“But I counted six on the road. Four riders, one driver, one lookout.”
“Lookout’s not here,” Roach said, and sipped at his beer. “I’m thinking he’s over at the Dennison man’s place, having dinner or whatnot while they count the money delivered.”
Elwood thought about this, imagining the two men talking quietly over fat beef steaks. Their shirtsleeves would be rolled. The house would be cool and padded with fine oriental carpets. Heavy furniture.
“The Cooke House looks like a tough nut to crack. Thick stone walls with hardly a weak point to it.”
Roach nodded and belched. Hayes turned to his brother, who was still frowning at his coffee cup.
“You didn’t say nothing about a stone fort, Owen.”
“I don’t want coffee, Elwood. I want a beer, like you got.”
“How’d you reckon we’d get at that cashbox if it’s surrounded like that?”
“Figured you’d have your ways,” Owen said, smiling as he looked up at the high ceiling. “What’s a few stones to a famous bandit like Elwood Hayes?”
Hayes took a breath and finished his beer. He felt like cuffing his younger brother on the ears, but it would draw too much attention. He’d have to wait and cuff him later, when they were counting all their money.
Owen sniffed and picked up his coffee, smelling it like an animal expecting poison. “No, El, I suppose I never really thought that far, to be honest,” he admitted. “I didn’t think you’d actually show up as such, ready for business. How long’s it been since we seen each other?”
“Since Gran died, I reckon.”
“Four years, that’d be. Four years, Elwood.”
Elwood’s gaze fell on the bartender, who was whittling on a block of wood. The shavings curled from his knife and drifted to the floor like snowflakes.
“Four years is a long time to be without kin, ain’t it?”
“Yup,” Elwood said. “But we’re here together now, ain’t we?”
“Sure. Sure we are.”
Elwood set his empty mug on the bar, hoping this would be the last of family talk. Caleb came over and poured him another beer, which ta
sted almost as good as the first. Behind them, at the tables, the stagecoach guards laughed and cussed at each other, their voices growing louder. A chair scraped on the floor as one of the guards got to his feet. Leaning back on his stool, Elwood watched the man approach the bar from the corner of his eye and saddle up beside Johnny Miller. The guard had two empty mugs in one fist and one in the other. He pounded all three against the bar.
“More beer, tender! More beer!”
Caleb set his whittling aside and filled the mugs without comment. The guard reached into his pocket and smacked a palm full of coins onto the counter, causing both the bartender and Johnny to flinch. On Elwood’s right, Owen laughed and raised his coffee cup in salute.
“The man knows what he wants, doesn’t he?”
“Damn right, I do,” the guard said, looking down the bar. “You fellers prospecting around here?”
“Something like that,” Roach said. Elwood glanced back at the tables, where the other guards were making a show of not watching.
“Don’t look much like rock moles,” the guard said. “Usually y’all are covered with so much grime you can barely make out your eyes.”
The guard smiled, but nobody laughed. He collected the filled mugs and lifted them off the bar. His heavier right hand wavered for a moment, tipping one of the mugs and spilling beer on Johnny Miller’s knee. The young man sprang up from his stool and pulled out his pistol, leveling it directly at the guard’s chest. Miller moved so swiftly Elwood only had time to open his mouth and inhale a burst of gunpowder before the stagecoach guard dropped to the floor, beer and all.
6
Old Tol Gregerson, who had a touch of firebug in him, had used more dynamite than he ought’ve and blown the newest section of the Dennison mine all to hell, leaving the third level’s north corner a mess of heaped rock and pooled water.
And the Hills Opened Up Page 4