Whiteoak turned the key and, with the enthusiasm of someone who’d discovered a vein of gold on his property, opened the little door. When he turned to gloat to the man beside him, he was met only with a bland stare.
“So?” Byron asked.
“Remember those bundles of money you brought in that satchel you were hired to deliver?”
“Yes.”
“You mentioned earlier that you were never hired to deliver money on any other occasion. And since there are much better ways to send that amount of money besides giving them to a nearly helpless courier . . .”
“Hey!” Byron snapped. “I wasn’t helpless!”
“My point is that sending cash is such a standard practice that there’s no good reason to assume your employers would choose to hire you instead of sending it along any of the other many routes and means they use for such transactions. I mean, this isn’t even a lot of money for men like Halstead.”
By now, Byron knew he had to break down what the professor said and find its meaning like he was crushing a boulder into smaller chunks that could be sifted for flecks of gold. Like those boulders, the amount of gold to be found in Whiteoak’s abundance of words was usually fairly small. “So you think there’s something special about these bills in particular?” Byron asked.
“I’ve been sure of it since the moment I heard what you were carrying.”
“You knew I was coming to Barbrady and you knew I was carrying an important parcel for my employer?”
Already busy sifting through the next bundle of cash, White-oak said, “How could I know such a thing?”
“Jesus,” Byron sighed. “I knew you had some agenda of your own and I knew you were a swindler, but this is more than I could have imagined.”
“Oh, don’t play the innocent.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t try to act with me,” Whiteoak chuckled. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“I’ll admit, I thought staying close to you might prove to bring me some measure of profit that I couldn’t get as a courier, but it wasn’t much more than that.”
Whiteoak turned to look at Byron. Unlike the previous times he’d done so, the professor’s face was cold as steel and twice as sharp as a tempered blade. “Tell me that you haven’t enjoyed this.”
“Enjoyed what?”
“This! The excitement. The freedom. Making a fortune using your wits and gall like the men who carved this great country from a savage land.”
“All right,” Byron said, knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to float anything less than the truth past those sharp eyes and sharper ears. “Perhaps it was a little . . . exciting.”
“I knew it,” Whiteoak replied as he found a bill within the stack and pulled it out. He set that bundle down and picked up another. “We are two of a kind, you and I.”
“Is that why you served me a drink of that whiskey as well?”
Whiteoak shrugged and continued examining the money.
“I’m certain you wanted to put me out as well,” Byron said smugly, “considering what a potential threat I might be.”
A smirk flickered across Whiteoak’s face before he twisted back around to face the safe. “Sure. Right. That’s it.”
Gritting his teeth, Byron decided not to press the matter and instead focus on whatever was capturing so much of the professor’s attention. The square compartment was open, but appeared to be empty. “Looks like that theory of yours didn’t pan out,” he said.
Whiteoak immediately shifted his attention to the second bill he’d removed from its bundle. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about watching the front of the bank for any stray killers?”
“What stray killers?”
“There were some key figures missing from my little celebration. Namely, Chuck Monroe himself. He’s been laying low for a spell, but I doubt he simply pulled up stakes and left town.”
“All right. I’ll go take a look. But don’t run off on me.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Whiteoak snarled. “If I took more than two steps in here, it’d echo all the way outside. Just take a peek out the damn window.”
Whiteoak’s claim about the acoustics within the empty bank proved to be correct when Byron walked back to the lobby. His steps knocked throughout the entire building with the special kind of reverberation that was only found in unnatural desolation. Outside the bank, Trader Avenue was quiet as well. Further down the street, however, some dust was being kicked up by at least two horses.
Byron stepped outside, careful not to make too much noise. Knowing the town well enough to guess where that noise was coming from, he cut across a few empty lots until he was closer to the sheriff’s office. Sure enough, the horses were being brought there by one man leading them to the little building. There were other men already there and they weren’t deputies.
Pressing his back against a wall, Byron shimmied closer so he could hear some of what was going on.
“. . . don’t know what the hell is goin’ on around here,” said a man Byron recognized as Chuck Monroe. “With them law dogs out of the way, we got us a chance to bust Mister Davis outta jail without any fuss. Hell without that damned committee to fire at us from the windows, we can just shoot the locks and just stroll on out of there.”
“Are we moving on that bank again?” asked someone who only sounded vaguely familiar.
“Damn right we are. Whiteoak and that courier fella are probably already there. We can put them down easy.”
“No witnesses,” snarled the man Byron couldn’t place. “I like it.”
Byron’s heart clenched and his throat went dry. He then leaned around the side of the building next to the sheriff’s office to get a look at who was having the conversation. With Chuck Monroe was the slender dark-haired fellow who’d attacked Byron and Whiteoak some time ago. Seeing his face also brought the man’s name to mind. Eastman.
“Soon as Davis is free, we’ll go to the bank and clean it out,” a third man said as he strode out of the sheriff’s office. Byron didn’t have any problem recognizing George Halstead, even from a distance. “He’s pulling himself together now,” Halstead said. “You’d think he never sat on a damn cot before. We also got us some extra help as well.”
“Anyone we can trust?”
“He’s got a love of money and none for Whiteoak, which is good enough for now. There’s plenty of guns and ammunition inside as well, so stock up before we head on up to Trader Avenue.”
Easing away from the wall, Byron put some distance between himself and the other men. After that, he broke into a run.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“They’re coming!” Byron said breathlessly as he hurried into the room where Whiteoak was still working.
Still hunched over as Byron had left him, the professor asked, “Who’s coming?”
“Chuck Monroe and some of the other gunmen hired on by Halstead and Davis.”
“How many are there?”
“I don’t know for certain. I just heard Monroe talking to Mister Halstead near the sheriff’s office. They were going to break Davis and someone else out of jail and then they’re headed here.”
“Do they still think you’re working for them?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Byron replied. “They intend on killing both of us.”
Whiteoak looked up from what he was doing. “Hmmm. We’d better hurry, then. I’ve only got one more door to open and then we can get whatever is in here.”
“Forget that! We need to leave!”
“If we get the prize locked in this safe, we’ll have something with which to bargain. Otherwise, we’ll have to take our chances running from experienced killers and trackers. You think you’re up to that?”
Reluctantly, Byron said, “Probably not, but you have experience too, right?”
“Not in that arena, unless you count being the target and that usually doesn’t end well. Now help me find the key to get this last door open.”
; Having reached his limit, Byron snatched the keys from Whiteoak’s hand and shoved him away from the safe. “I suppose it makes some kind of sense to empty out this safe,” he said while looking at the keys, “but why do you have to make everything so damn difficult?”
“Give me that!” Whiteoak demanded.
Byron drew his pistol with his free hand and pointed it at the professor. “Back the hell away from me!”
Whiteoak did as he was ordered, glaring at Byron like a tiger eyeing its next meal.
“You’re right in what you said before. I actually thought working with you might be a good idea. You know why?”
“Please. Enlighten me.”
“Because you’re a blowhard and a cheat, but you’re a smart businessman and at least you’re not a killer. I thought I could stand to make some money. Then I found out you’re a damn lunatic!”
“I’m not crazy.”
“No,” Byron said as he flipped to the key next to the last one Whiteoak had used, “but you’re also not as smart as you think you are.” That key didn’t fit, so he tried the next one and the next. “In the time it would take you to decipher whatever clues you think you’d found, I could’ve gotten this damn thing open by process of elimination.”
“Stop,” Whiteoak said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The fourth key Byron tried slid into the lock all the way. “Don’t I?” he said as he turned it. The locking mechanism clicked smoothly within the little door, as did a similar mechanism that rattled behind the rest of the doors like a series of falling metal dominoes to shut them all tightly. “What was that?” Byron wondered out loud.
“That,” Whiteoak replied, “was all of the doors being shut and locked again because the keys were turned out of sequence.”
“How does that happen?”
“Same principle as the tumblers of a lock, but on a different scale.”
“I’ve never heard of a safe like that!”
“Didn’t I mention Myron Colfax safes were rare and exotic?” Whiteoak fumed. “Wait a moment, I believe I did mention that!”
“Yes, but . . . aw, hell.”
Whiteoak snatched the keys from Byron’s hand. “Give me those! You’re damn lucky I have such an excellent memory.” The professor then proceeded to flip through the keys until he found the one he wanted. That key fit into the lock of the third door and opened it. The next key he selected opened the door beside it.
“How do you know what doors to open?” Byron asked.
“There was a note in the satchel you delivered with the numbers three, four, seven, nine, twelve and sixteen written on it. I surmised those were the doors that needed to be opened and I was correct.”
“But the markings on those keys are all numbers, and none of the numbers are less than three digits long so they can’t be matched to numbers on the door.”
Working furiously, Whiteoak spoke as though he was trying to explain scientific theory to a pinecone. “There are six numbers in that note. In your money belt, there were also six bundles of cash. The cash wasn’t a remarkable amount, but you had it deposited into this safe.”
“No,” Byron said. “I dropped the whole belt off and it was picked up by someone else.”
Whiteoak looked up and scrunched his face into a thoughtful grimace. “Oh, right. It was. Well, I saw it was in here when the safe was opened by Mister Halstead. Six little bundles, wrapped up in twine. Because they were delivered with the note, I figured the bundles also had something to do with opening the grander scheme of cracking the safe. Upon closer examination of the money, I discovered this.”
Whiteoak handed over one of the bills he’d separated from the rest and Byron took it. His hands were trembling and his heart was thumping an irregular drumbeat within his chest. “What am I looking for?” he asked.
“Look at the writing on that bill,” Whiteoak told him.
The bill in Byron’s hand was for twenty dollars. More used to spending them than studying them, it took a moment for him to find the writing to which Whiteoak was referring. On the note was the number three and then another string of four numbers after it. “So what?” Byron said. “I’ve seen things written on paper money before. Is this supposed to help?”
“One bill in each stack is similarly marked,” Whiteoak said. “Numbers one through six and the other sequences correspond to six keys.”
“The keys that open the compartments you need?”
“Yes!”
“How the hell did you know about that?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Whiteoak said. “The pieces are there and the goal is to open this safe. Once I got to the safe to see what needed to be done, the pieces started making sense. When I saw that a key matched that number which, in turn, opened a compartment, I knew I was on to something.”
“So you didn’t know exactly what you were doing until you got here?”
“Partly.”
Looking at the professor with open astonishment, Byron asked, “You poisoned an entire town to give you some time to try and figure out your puzzle? What if you couldn’t figure it out?”
Whiteoak started laughing so hard that he almost lost track of the keys in his hands. “I admit to working on a constricted schedule, but I don’t need much time to figure out what goes where. Just do me a favor and get some horses ready. We’ll need to ride out of here as quickly as possible once I open this secret compartment.”
“Shouldn’t we stand and fight?”
“You can if you’d like. Myself, I’d prefer to keep the number of holes in my head at the original number.”
Whiteoak had opened the seventh and ninth compartments by the time Byron started feeling really nervous. He’d been watching the street outside as the professor worked, feeling every second tick by as though it was being dragged through a sea of tar.
“I see horses coming down the street,” Byron reported. “How much longer?”
The twelfth door had been opened and Whiteoak inserted the key into door sixteen. “Almost there,” he said as he turned the key. When the door came open, he let out a short victorious yelp.
“What’s inside that’s so special?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“You’ve got about a minute to find it, so hurry up!”
“The other compartments looked empty,” Whiteoak said. “So does this last one.”
Byron rushed into the room and gawked at the safe. “For Christ’s sake. This is a waste of time. I should never have tried to throw in with you. I should’ve stuck to being a courier.”
Whiteoak stood up to his full height and wheeled around in a rustle of expensive tailored fabric. “No! You’re your own man, like myself. You follow your gut and travel wherever it takes you. That’s why you threw in with me and seen it through for so long that we’re nearly done with this heist.”
“Heist? Good lord, we’re criminals.”
“At this moment, I’m a criminal. At best, you’re an accomplice. At worst, we’ll both be dead if we don’t put an end to this real quick.”
Without waiting to see what effect his words had on Byron, Whiteoak turned back around and dropped to his knees so he could reach desperately into a pair of the safe’s compartments.
“Well?” Byron asked.
“There’s something in the back. Feels like it’s attached. A ring of some kind.”
“A diamond ring? Gold?”
“No. Copper, maybe. Or brass. Could be tin, I suppose.”
“Copper or tin?” Byron moaned. “That’s great. We’re dead.”
“Where are Monroe and the others?”
Leaning out of the room to look through the lobby and the front window, Byron turned pale as a frog’s belly and said, “They’re almost here. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”
“Save the gospel for Sunday. Right now, hide.” As he spoke, Whiteoak collected the bills that he’d separated from the bundles and started stacking the cash back into neat piles the way it had originally been arranged.
“What the hell was I thinking? I’m not an outlaw or bank robber or anything else but someone who takes satchels from one spot to another.”
“You through?” Whiteoak asked.
“I guess so.”
The professor grabbed the younger man’s sleeve and dragged him toward the tellers’ windows. Shoving Byron to the floor behind the low counter, Whiteoak peered between the bars separating the tellers from their customers and then dropped to the floor.
“All right,” Whiteoak hissed. “Keep quiet. If they find us, we’re dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They were discovered almost immediately.
“Lookee what we have here!” Chuck Monroe said as he came around the tellers’ counter. “The medicine man and his assistant.”
“I’m not an assistant,” Byron announced.
The gunman dragged him to his feet and stepped back so Whiteoak could be forced to his. “Whatever you say,” Monroe grunted.
There were two other men accompanying Monroe. One was Eastman and the other was a skinny, scruffy fellow with sunken cheeks and a dirty face. He was the one who dragged the professor into the open. As he was pulled up from his paltry hiding spot, Whiteoak asked, “Where’s the sheriff? Surely he’ll be arriving soon. Best if you let us go and worry about making your escape.”
“Not until we get what we’re after,” said one of the others who’d stepped into the bank. George Halstead spoke with calm assurance as though he’d glimpsed into the future and was satisfied with how everything turned out. “I’m guessing you already got the safe open.”
“It’s open,” Whiteoak replied. “But you won’t have time to do much about it. Even if you empty that safe, you won’t get far before the sheriff hauls you all back. He’s forming a posse, you know.”
Being the one who’d been so recently locked in a cage, Davis stomped forward angrily and punched Whiteoak in the face. It was a weak blow thrown with all the force an old businessman could muster, which barely turned the professor’s head. “That incompetent sheriff is dead!” he said. “And you will be too in about three seconds.”
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