Although both lawmen froze intently in their spots, the outlaws shifted anxiously on their feet. Whiteoak noticed Cord’s eyes darting upward and to the sides, prompting him to take a look in that same direction.
There were several buildings neighboring the bank, either next to the square building or across from it. Most of those structures were at least two floors high and a few were three. Plenty of windows had a view of Barbrady’s financial institution, several of which were slowly being opened. From his angle, Whiteoak couldn’t see much more than a few flapping curtains being tugged by the wind or the occasional wrinkled face gazing out for a look at what was about to happen.
“One last chance, Nash,” Willis proclaimed.
The outlaw answered quickly and loudly. His pistol erupted in his hand, its report muffled by the skull of the woman he’d grabbed from inside the bank. Before the pulpy mess of blood had a chance to slide down the door frame, Nash dropped the dead husk he’d been using as leverage and disappeared inside the bank. When he returned, he was holding another hostage.
“You wanna keep bargaining?” Nash asked. “There’s plenty more in here, although this is the last lady.”
“Fine,” the sheriff said. “Let that woman go and come on out of there.”
At first, Whiteoak couldn’t tell the person Nash had grabbed was a woman. Once Nash took a step outside, it was easy enough to see that Willis was right. The outlaw dragged a dark-haired woman along with him, wrapping an arm around her neck and pressing his pistol against her head. She winced at the touch of the warm, wet barrel and tears began streaming down her cheeks.
“Let my boys go too,” Nash shouted.
“You let the woman walk away and I’ll think about it.”
Sensing weakness in the lawman, Nash added, “Bring the bank president in here so he can open this safe! I’m taking some of this here money as well. I don’t do any job for free.”
“Let her go.”
“Or what?” Nash asked. “You ain’t got the stomach for all the blood me and my gang’s prepared to spill!”
There was more silence, but it was short-lived. After a second or two, Willis stooped down to set his pistol on the ground near his right boot. He stood up again, stretching his arms halfway to the sky in a lazy surrender. “This what you want?” he asked.
A filthy grin spread across the lower portion of Nash’s face like fungus overtaking a tree stump. He leaned his head out from behind the woman he’d grabbed so he could use both eyes to drink in the sight before him. The woman was slender and had short black hair with streaks of gray. Too frightened to move, it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
“Your deputy too,” Nash said.
“You heard him,” Willis told the younger lawman. “Put the gun down.”
Although he wasn’t happy about it, Avery left his gun on the ground while rising to his feet.
The other four outlaws had been content to let Nash do all the talking. Now that it was time to put that bank behind them, they all seemed more than eager to be on their way. Several horses were tied to a rail near the bank and it was there that the outlaws started to converge.
“Leave the woman,” Willis said.
“She’s our ticket out of this shit hole,” Nash replied. “I’ll cut her loose when we’re away from here.”
“You’ll do it now.”
Nash pulled her close while backing toward a gray mare tied to the rail. “Nah. I’ll do as I please. And maybe,” he added while pulling her close to take a long sniff of her hair, “I’ll do it more than once.”
Whiteoak’s hand tightened around the grip of his pistol. Even though he was well outside of the .38’s range, he wanted nothing more than to put an end to Nash’s threats.
All of the gunmen were gathered around their horses by this time and a few were climbing into the saddles. Some, either from nerves or overconfidence, were laughing loud enough to be heard from where Whiteoak was standing. The professor looked over to Sheriff Willis, glaring at the lawman while silently urging him to do something, anything at all, to put an end to this nightmare.
Nash had his back to his horse and stood so the woman was between him and Willis. Keeping a hand locked around the woman’s neck, he lifted one foot into a stirrup. It was an awkward motion, but one that had surely been practiced many times over the years with countless other poor souls he’d taken hostage.
Whiteoak looked back and forth frenetically between the outlaws and the sheriff. “If he’s not going to do something,” the professor grumbled to himself, “then by God . . .”
“Take him,” Willis said in a voice that cut through the air like a sickle through dry wheat.
Nash had just started climbing into his saddle, which took him farther away from his hostage than he’d been since grabbing the poor woman. The space between them was only a few inches, which was enough for a well-placed shot. That shot came from one of the upper windows overlooking the bank, announced by the solitary crack of a rifle.
Whiteoak twitched at the sound, crouching a bit.
Snapping his head back, Nash toppled to the ground in a jumble of arms and legs. He hit the dirt with a loud crunch and when he scrambled to his feet again, the woman hostage was already bolting.
Cord and one of the others were still on their feet and the two remaining outlaws had mounted their horses. Cord lunged for the woman and grabbed a handful of her sleeve as she hurried past him.
Before the outlaws could get their second wind, Sheriff Willis dropped to one knee and retrieved his pistol with a sweep of his hand. As his fingers wrapped around the familiar grip of his shooting iron, the lawman shouted, “Take them all!”
Nash’s men found themselves staring up at dozens of gun barrels pointing down from the windows overlooking the street.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nash looked up at the windows around him with a broad grin on his face. He was clearly amused by the show of force in much the same way a prizefighter might think it adorable if his seven-year-old son balled up a little fist and popped him in the rigid muscles of his stomach. Blood poured from the fresh wound in his cheek. Another scar to add to his collection of mementoes from near misses throughout an eventful career.
Each shot made a sound that smashed through Whiteoak’s ears like a boulder through the shimmering layer of ice on a newly frozen lake. His nerves were jangled by the eruption of gunfire; a feeling that was clearly shared by all the outlaws who, like the professor, didn’t think the locals had it in them to pull a trigger. All of them were wrong.
It didn’t take long for the initial surprise of that first shot to wear off. After that, survival instinct kicked in. Before they could take aim at the window that was the source of one shot, rifles from all of the surrounding windows spat a torrent of fire and lead down upon them.
“Jesus!” Shawn hollered. He was one of the men who was already in his saddle and he pulled his reins while firing up at the windows directly in his line of sight. His shots punched into the wall, drilling a random pattern accented by flying splinters and chipped boards.
“Take what you can and get the hell out of here!” Nash shouted. He kept his head down and his movements concise as he focused all of his efforts on mounting his horse.
Panic caused another of the robbers to point his shotgun at the opposite side of the street and pull both triggers. The thunderous roar instilled some degree of confidence in his belly, but did nothing to help him. Well beyond the effective range of the shotgun blast, the buildings received nothing more than a spattering of buckshot. In return, the people inside those buildings sent a stream of rifle rounds his way with more than enough power to reach their target. The shotgunner was cut down where he stood.
Shawn twisted as if he still meant to leave town at his own pace. Every second or two, his body twitched and flailed with the impact of one bullet after another. Only a fraction of those fired at him were hits, but that was enough to send him to the ground in a bloody heap. He let ou
t a pained scream on impact that was swallowed up by the unrelenting gunshots coming from above to finish him off.
“Get out of here!” Nash cried out. “Move!”
The remaining outlaws stuck together. Cord was on foot and the masked man sat atop a white spotted horse that was aching to run. Until now, the sixth outlaw had been content to stand quietly near the bank as if he could blend in with the scenery. Gripping his reins in one hand, the outlaw on horseback tried to control his mount while reaching down to help the wallflower. Before the petrified outlaw could make it up behind the rider, he was hit twice by incoming bullets; once in the knee and another in his side. He let out a pained yelp but still somehow got on the horse’s back.
Cord must have recognized that the gunfire was focused on the two men on horseback because he turned away from them and ran across the street. Seeing that the burly gunman was headed straight for Deputy Avery, Whiteoak forced himself to run toward the lead-filled tempest raging in the street.
“Look out!” Whiteoak shouted to the younger of the two lawmen.
But there was too much chaos filling the air, and the professor could barely hear his own voice. Avery had no chance of hearing the warning. Whiteoak straightened his gun arm and fired a shot in Cord’s direction. His bullet didn’t draw any blood and didn’t even stand out enough from the others whipping by to catch Cord’s attention. Rather than waste ammunition with another hurried pull of his trigger, Whiteoak steadied himself to take proper aim.
His body loosened a bit. He drew a breath, held it, and let it out while squeezing his trigger. The .38 bucked against Whiteoak’s palm, sending a round directly into Cord’s thick torso. The impact knocked the outlaw off his stride and stopped him long enough to be hit by one of the shooters looking down from a nearby window.
Ignoring the pain from his wounds, or perhaps too overwhelmed to feel it any longer, Cord bared his teeth in a feral snarl while shifting his aim to Whiteoak. The deputy only now realized how close the outlaw had gotten. Before he could fire a shot in his defense, the professor burned another hole into Cord’s chest. This one, having been aimed with even more precision, bore a tunnel through Cord’s heart and sapped the big man of all his remaining strength.
Cord dropped to his knees, shuddered with a wheeze and flopped dead onto his side in the dirt.
Once his target was down, Whiteoak’s senses opened to everything happening around him. The sensations were almost enough to make him dizzy as screams, gunshots and shattering glass all mingled with the sound of hooves beating against the street. Whiteoak took particular notice of the latter since those hooves were drawing closer with alarming haste.
Leaning low over his horse’s back, Jesse Nash tapped his heels against the animal’s sides to milk every last bit of speed from the horse’s able body. Firing wildly into the windows on either side of him, Nash raced down the street and through the middle of town.
The masked outlaw had remained in his saddle with the wallflower behind him. He meant to follow Nash, but was forced to turn sharply as more rifle rounds hissed down at him. So many chunks of hot lead hit the street that they kicked up a small cloud of dust in the path of the masked outlaw’s horse. He turned and decided to make a run for the opposite end of the street. Sheriff Willis stood in the middle of the confusion, sighted along the top of his pistol and sent a round directly into the wallflower’s back.
At least one of the rifle shots hit the horse beneath the masked outlaw, causing the animal to rear up and churn its hooves in the air. The wallflower was thrown and landed heavily on the ground. An easy target for the shooters above, the fallen man was peppered with lead that slapped into his flesh and drilled bloody holes under his flailing body. By some miracle, the masked outlaw managed to jump from his saddle and roll clear so his spooked horse could gallop away.
Nash was out of sight, but there was more gunfire erupting from the direction he’d gone. Since most of those shots rippled through the air like a summer storm, Whiteoak assumed they came from more citizens in the upper windows.
“Give it up,” the sheriff said as he marched forward to approach the only gunman left alive anywhere near the bank. The masked outlaw climbed to his feet and held his hands high above his head.
The shots from the nearby windows came to a halt. Most of the faces looking down at the street were covered in weathered skin with more wrinkles than a basket full of prunes. Their eyes were sharp, however, gazing down over rifles held in steady hands. Many of them had also been at the professor’s medicine show, watching Whiteoak with almost as much scrutiny as they watched the outlaw now, waiting for a single misstep.
“You . . . you’ll kill me,” the outlaw whined.
“Not if you do as you’re told,” Willis assured him.
“You killed all the rest.”
“Because they were stupid. They fired at us or put innocent lives in danger. You’re standing there like a frightened kid holding a bag of money.”
Flinching, the outlaw looked at his shoulder as if he’d forgotten he’d grabbed one of the saddlebags full of cash taken from the bank. Once he was reminded, he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.
Nodding slowly, Willis said, “Good. Now toss the pistol.”
“If I do, will you call them off?” the outlaw asked while nodding up to the windows.
“If you do, they won’t have any reason to shoot. Ain’t that right?”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” one of the wrinkled faces hollered down.
“There’s been enough bloodshed for one day,” the sheriff said, even though he hadn’t caught so much as a scratch. “The robbery is over. There’s no reason for you to make things any worse for yourself.” When the outlaw glanced longingly down the street that Nash had chosen for his getaway, Willis added, “He’s gone. Either dead or out of town. Whichever it is, he ain’t coming back for you.”
The outlaw let out a tired breath, lowered his gun arm and allowed the pistol to slip from his grasp.
“Good choice,” the sheriff said. “Now, my deputy’s coming over there to put some cuffs on you. Don’t give him a fight because you know plenty well that I’ve got to bring you in.”
The outlaw nodded.
Avery straightened up and brushed himself off before holstering his pistol so he could retrieve the cuffs dangling from a loop on his belt.
Above the street, many of the windows were closed. Whiteoak counted less than a third of the faces looking down now compared to before. Since the show was over, it seemed they weren’t interested in watching the cleanup. The professor couldn’t help but notice the outlaw studying the upper floors of those buildings also.
“All right, Sheriff,” the outlaw sighed. “I’ll come along without a fuss.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Willis relaxed his posture as his deputy approached the outlaw. Avery looked down one more time to make sure he was holding the handcuffs correctly and the movement sparked one last bit of fight from the would-be prisoner. The outlaw turned and ran away from the lawmen when one more shot cracked through the air. Now that the rest of the town had become quiet once again, that single shot roared louder than the wash of thunder that had come before.
The bullet clipped the outlaw’s thigh, knocking him into a wobbly dance that carried him several more steps before he lost his balance altogether. Dropping to one knee, he reached down to brace himself before falling onto his face.
“Sneaky bastard,” Avery said as he approached the outlaw and kicked the supporting arm out from under him, sending him face-first to the dirt. With a loud curse, the outlaw was out of the fight and allowed himself to be unceremoniously cuffed by the deputy.
Whiteoak stood with his smoking .38 in hand. Noticing that he was under harsh scrutiny from the sheriff, he smirked, shrugged and loosened his grip on the weapon so it could dangle from his finger by the trigger guard. “I suppose you’ll want to relieve me of this as well?”
“That’s the way it normally wor
ks,” Willis said as he stepped up to Whiteoak. “Especially when a man was killed.”
“He doesn’t look dead to me.”
“Maybe not that one,” Willis sighed as he watched his deputy perform his duty. “But there are a few others who seem plenty ready to fill a deep hole.”
“You saying I killed those men?”
“I’m saying men died and you shot at one of them. And here I thought you were gonna be cooperative.”
Handing over his pistol, Whiteoak said, “Of course I want to cooperate. I’m making certain I’m not being blamed for more than my part in this.”
Willis took the fancy pistol from him and tucked it under his gun belt. “You were just in my jail for another shooting last night, Mister Whiteoak. And here you are with a smoking gun in your hand a short while later. Don’t you think I got a right to be a little suspicious?”
“Am I going to be tossed into that cell again?”
“I appreciate your help, Professor. Seems I may have misjudged you. As for the jail cell, I suppose there’s no reason for that. Not yet, anyway.”
“Then be as suspicious as you like, my good man,” Whiteoak beamed. “I find it’s a habit that keeps a man healthy.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Once again, Henry Whiteoak found himself sitting at the dining table in the Keag house being tended to by Lyssa and a wet rag. This time, however, her efforts were gentler and even occasionally bordered on tender since all he’d acquired this time was a few bumps and bruises. Her words, on the other hand, were nothing of the sort.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?” she groused while dabbing at a dirty spot on Whiteoak’s cheek.
Sitting in his normal spot, Byron said, “You didn’t see what happened. I heard he played a part in stopping that robbery.”
“Strictly speaking,” Whiteoak offered, “the robbery had been concluded. What I helped stop was the escape.”
“Either way, you’re a damn fool,” Lyssa told him.
Whiteoak leaned in to her and angled his head so she could apply the damp cloth to a spot on his forehead that was particularly achy. “Not a very nice way to speak to a hero.”
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