Whiteoak reached out to pat Davis’s shoulder and give him a playful swat on the ribs. “Now I see why you can’t do your own dirty work,” he said smugly. “Feels like you’ve barely got the muscle to lift your own arm, let alone a pistol. Or perhaps you intend on using a derringer. Those are favored by women, after all, so—”
The next punch that Davis delivered was stronger than the first, but not by much. It succeeded in shutting Whiteoak’s mouth, however, which was enough to satisfy the older man. He was even more satisfied when he motioned over his shoulder for the skinny gunman to step forward. The sunken-faced man now had a shotgun in his hands which he jammed into Whiteoak’s stomach. Before cutting the professor in half with a close-range blast, Monroe spoke up.
“Hold on,” Monroe said. “Let’s make sure we got what we want before killing this snake. Odds are, he’s got something up his sleeve.”
“I do,” Whiteoak said. “And it’s something you’ll definitely want.”
“Just shut your damn mouth until you’re spoken to,” the skinny shotgunner said.
“Now I remember you!” Whiteoak said. “You’re the bank robber who was wearing the mask when Nash and all those others were cut down.”
“Yeah,” the outlaw replied. “Now shut the hell up!”
Whiteoak did as he was told, watching silently as Halstead went into the room containing the safe. “Looks like the money is here,” Halstead called out.
All of the gunmen smiled, but Davis was reluctant to join in. “What about the rest of it?” he shouted.
Halstead grumbled to himself in the next room as a familiar metallic jangling drifted through the air. After a few seconds, he stormed back into the lobby carrying the keys in one hand and one of the bundles of cash wrapped in twine in the other. “They’re missing,” he snarled.
“What’s missing?” Davis asked.
“The notes that were supposed to be sent to the safe so we could open it.”
“Can’t open the safe?” Whiteoak chuckled. “That is a predicament.”
“Shut up!” Davis roared. Speaking in a somewhat more subdued tone, he looked back to Halstead. “You told me you arranged to have everything we needed waiting here for us.”
“It was sent, like I told you,” Halstead replied. “I was told exactly where to look for the numbers and I’m telling you, they aren’t there.”
“Did you check every bundle?”
“You want me to take these two out of here so you can talk?” Monroe asked as he glanced at Whiteoak and Byron.
Dismissing the two prisoners with an impatient wave, Davis said, “They’ll be dead soon.”
“You like that, don’t you?” Whiteoak said.
“Yes,” Davis said through gritted teeth. “I do.”
“That way I can’t tell your partners here what I saw.”
Monroe brought his pistol up and took aim at Whiteoak. His thumb was on the gun’s hammer when Halstead barked, “Wait.” Monroe refrained from pulling his trigger, but kept the pistol aimed at the spot he’d chosen between Whiteoak’s eyes.
“What did you see?” Halstead asked.
Davis stomped into the next room and returned with a few more bundles of cash. “What the hell does it matter?” he said as he flipped through the money. “He’s a bullshitter and a cheat.”
“Spare me the righteousness!” Whiteoak said. “You’re all cheats. Which one of you told Nash that there wouldn’t be anyone firing at him from the windows the second time he made his run at this bank?”
“You should thank me for that,” Halstead replied. “How else were we going to get that mad dog out of the picture?”
“Bullshit,” the professor laughed. “You were covering him, hoping he’d succeed in his second attempt. And once it looked like he wouldn’t, you cut him loose to be killed.”
Halstead shrugged. “The man was good at his job. He had a better-than-average chance at success.”
“More like there was no chance of him taking it well when you used him up and tried to cast him aside. Let me guess. You tried working with him, realized what an enormously bad idea it was and then wanted him gone.”
“You’re a smart man, Professor,” Davis said. “It seems you’ve skulked around with trash like those robbers long enough to pick up a thing or two.”
“I’ve also been around Barbrady long enough,” Whiteoak said, “to witness you do some skulking about yourself, Mister Davis.”
Shaking his head, Davis tossed one of the bundles aside so he could look through the other.
“What are you talking about?” Halstead asked.
Even while surrounded and held at gunpoint, the professor couldn’t resist pausing for dramatic effect. After the appropriate number of seconds had ticked by, he locked eyes with Halstead and told him, “Mister Davis intends on keeping the contents of that safe for himself.”
Halstead’s eyes narrowed.
Byron drew a nervous breath. He’d been too frightened to say much of anything so far and wasn’t about to draw attention to himself now.
“He doesn’t even know what we’re after,” Davis said. “Shoot the lying son of a bitch.”
Keeping his focus on Halstead, Whiteoak spoke in a voice that was as cool and steady as Monroe’s gun hand. “He wants you to kill me so I don’t finish talking.”
“So finish,” Halstead said.
“Clearly, I intended on robbing this bank as well,” Whiteoak explained. “While I wasn’t ultimately successful, I did plenty of scouting beforehand. During that time, I saw Mister Davis enter that room and remove something from that safe. I questioned one of the tellers and he told me that what Mister Davis took was crucial and had only just arrived when my friend Mister Keag came to Barbrady.”
Some of the sharp edge disappeared from Halstead’s face. When he glanced in Byron’s direction, he nodded as if confirming something he already knew.
“I believe it was only a few dollars,” Whiteoak said. “At least, that’s what the teller told me.”
“Bullshit,” Davis spat. “I already told you, he’s a liar. There was no teller who knew anything.”
“Actually,” Monroe said after clearing his throat, “there was one fella working here who was working for me.”
Slowly turning his head to look at the bounty hunter, Halstead asked, “Worked for you . . . how?”
“I paid him to keep an eye on Mister Bailey and if things got too far ahead of schedule, he’d kill him.”
Davis puffed out his chest like a frog drawing air into its throat, but Halstead jumped in before he had a chance to unleash the hell he was surely preparing. “We all knew Bailey might get wise to what was about to happen, Mike. We were going to kill him sooner or later and this way, he never got a chance to clean out the safe himself.”
Davis’s eyes flicked back and forth between Monroe and Whiteoak. “But what he said about the teller seeing me do anything is preposterous! I just got out of jail, for Christ’s sake!”
“And you had plenty of time to do plenty of things before you landed there,” Whiteoak pointed out.
“We’ve been in this together long enough,” Davis said to Halstead. “You’re going to trust a known swindler trying to save his own hide over me?”
To Whiteoak, Halstead said, “You’d better come up with something more convincing than that and I’m not about to waste much time on waiting for it. I’m guessing whatever you did to the folks in this town won’t last all day.” Furrowing his brow, he added, “Will it?”
“No,” Whiteoak told him. “And it doesn’t have to. Mister Davis clearly intended on following through on his own plans right here and now, so it stands to reason that he’d have any incriminating articles on his person.”
“This is asinine,” Davis snapped.
“Search him,” Whiteoak said. “That’s all I ask.”
Davis stormed up to the professor and punched him in the gut. His fist succeeded in doubling Whiteoak over, but only because it had surprised him
. “You don’t get to ask for a goddamn thing and if you say one more word, I’ll knock your teeth out. Monroe, kill this prick and be done with it.”
“Monroe,” Halstead snarled, displaying more power over the gunman with one word than Davis had done with an entire tirade. “Search Mister Davis.”
“What?” Davis gasped.
“There’s no harm in it,” Halstead said. “If there’s nothing to be found, I’ll step aside and let you kill him any way you like. So humor me and let’s move on.”
Shaking his head, Davis threw up his hands. “Whatever you say, George.”
Eastman and the skinny fellow stood by, both of them adopting Byron’s policy of keeping their mouths shut while the others argued. They did, however, shuffle a few steps closer to Byron and Whiteoak in case one of them tried anything unexpected.
“Too bad this snake oil salesman’s going to die,” Davis mused as Monroe stuck his hands into his pockets one at a time. “He can talk anyone into damn near anything. I’ll give him this much, though. He managed to buy himself a few extra seconds on this earth. I can guarantee you one thing, Professor White-oak, you will most certainly not enjoy those seconds.”
Monroe pulled something from the pocket of Davis’s jacket. He examined it for a moment before handing it over to Halstead.
A few seconds was all Halstead needed to study what had been found. “What the hell is this?” he asked in a voice that was more of a predator’s snarl.
Still laughing at the paces he was being forced to go through, Davis asked, “What’s what?”
“This,” Halstead replied as he held out a small wad of folded twenty-dollar bills. “These were in your pocket.”
“So?”
The rage on Halstead’s face grew like a fire ripping through a warehouse stocked with kerosene. As he held the money closer to Davis’s eyes, his hand clenched tight enough to turn his knuckles white. “Look at them! They’re the marked bills we’ve been looking for!”
“That’s . . . why would I have them in my pocket?”
“Now that’s the real question, isn’t it?”
Byron looked at the professor, but could read nothing on Whiteoak’s face.
“They weren’t in the bundles,” Halstead fumed, “and here they are with you.”
“They must’ve been planted on me,” Davis said. “That goddamn medicine man must’ve done it.”
“To hell with that,” was Halstead’s reply. “Nobody’s that slick. You meant to keep us from opening that safe now so you could do it yourself later! Ain’t that right?”
Davis’s voice became calm and steady when he said, “You know better than that, George. We’ve been in this together from the start of this town and we’re together now.”
“Not anymore. Monroe, shoot this backstabbing prick and then shoot the professor and his friend. I’ve had enough of this.”
Still steady, Davis’s voice became sharper when he said, “Mister Monroe, I’ll double your fee once you ignore whatever comes out of that man’s mouth.”
“Shoot him!” Halstead commanded.
“Triple your fee,” Davis countered, “after you put a bullet in his mouth instead.”
Eastman and the skinny fellow next to him didn’t know which way to turn. Their hands gripped their weapons tightly, but their eyes couldn’t decide where to look.
Whiteoak’s expression was unreadable as he simply waited to see what would happen next.
Chuck Monroe, on the other hand, was perfectly clear in his purpose as he raised his pistol and fired a single shot through Halstead’s forehead.
Michael Davis let out a breath and nodded solemnly. “Good choice. I’ll have your money for you once we’re out of town.”
“Keep it,” Monroe said as he shifted his aim and pulled the trigger again.
The second bullet caught Davis in the chest, spun him around and sent him flopping to the ground. Eastman and the other gunman reacted instinctually, swinging their pistols toward Monroe and opening fire on him. Monroe responded by dropping to one knee and squeezing his trigger as though he was knocking empty cans from a fence rail on a warm summer day.
The skinny outlaw was the next one to catch a piece of hot lead. He buckled as a bullet drilled into his chest, but didn’t go down until the next one punched through his lung. As soon as that fellow could no longer hold his gun, Monroe fired on Eastman.
Monroe had shots fired at him as well, but they were fired in a panic. It didn’t matter how close he was to his target when Eastman barely kept enough wits about him to make use of the short range. Eastman was still sending lead into the walls when Monroe’s next shot entered his right eye and exploded out the back of his head. His body hit the floor, followed by the sharp clatter of empty casings being dumped from a warm cylinder.
Calmly reloading his pistol, Monroe said, “When assholes like that start turning on each other, it’s only a matter of time before they shoot at other folks around them. Usually, the next people on the list are them that might pose a threat.”
“Umm, well, yes,” Whiteoak said. “That makes sense.”
Dropping the pistol into his holster, Monroe strode into the next room. Whiteoak and Byron barely had a chance to exchange cautious glances before Monroe returned carrying the bundles of cash cradled in one arm. He rooted around for a few seconds, finding some more cash stuffed beneath the teller’s counter in a strongbox. “I’ll take this as my payment. Whatever else is in there, I don’t want any part of it, of you, or of this town. Too much damn trouble.”
“Very fair.”
After searching the bodies of Davis and Halstead for a few more dollars, Monroe walked toward the front door, stopped and turned back around. “We’re parting on amicable terms this time, Whiteoak. If I hear one word that you bore witness against me to the shootings in this bank today, I’ll come back for you and it won’t be quick like it was for these sons of bitches. Understand?”
While some men preferred to lace their threats with colorful grotesqueries, or obscene details, Monroe made a succinct point well enough to shut Whiteoak’s mouth for the moment. He stuffed his payment into his jacket and left the bank.
The professor straightened his clothes and marched back into the room containing the safe. “After this ordeal, I’m not leaving without the contents of that safe.”
Byron wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’ve been through the same ordeal, so we’re splitting it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Having gone through the motions once already, Whiteoak had the safe’s inner compartments unlocked and open in a fraction of the amount of time it had taken before. Whiteoak was reaching inside compartment number seven when Byron asked, “How much longer is this going to take?”
“Hard to tell. Colfax is said to be a genius, but more than a little crazy.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you two have something in common.”
“Really? Thank you!”
Although he was referring to the crazy part of that equation, Byron didn’t correct him. “How much longer will the locals be sleeping?”
“At least another half hour, I’d imagine. Although some of the people who didn’t get a dose might be wandering about sooner than that. Aha!”
“What?” Byron asked as he crouched down to get a look inside the safe. “What did you find?”
Whiteoak slowly pulled a small ring out of the compartment. It looked to be cast in an unremarkable metal or possibly even carved from wood. It was difficult to tell since it was painted black to match the interior of the space in which it had been found. “Just as I thought,” the professor said. “There’s even more that remains unseen.”
There was a cord attached to the ring which was so thin that it took Byron a few moments to spot it. “What happens when you pull it?”
After giving it a tentative tug, Whiteoak said, “Don’t know.”
Growing impatient, Byron reached into compartment number sixteen and found the ring laying beneath a few scraps of f
olded paper. “Here’s another one!”
“Yes, but—”
Byron pulled the ring to get a better look. Immediately after the thread attached to it drew taut, it snapped. Holding it so the ring and thread fragment dangled from his finger, he said, “Must be old. Let’s get out of here.”
“Idiot!” Whiteoak bellowed. “This is a delicate work of art. Eccentric, yes, but there is a purpose.”
“Safes lock and unlock,” Byron grunted. “That’s it.”
“And thinking like that is what keeps the contents of a Colfax safe out of the hands of simpletons like you.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Don’t worry,” Whiteoak said as he gently pulled the ring from compartment three as far as it would go. “Most people in this world are simpletons.”
Being the one with the broken string dangling from his finger, Byron wasn’t in much of a position to argue.
The professor had already moved on and was easing the ring out of the fourth compartment. “I heard something when you pulled that ring, however. It was a little creak of metal. I’d say it’s a latch, which is what I would have guessed anyway.”
“Naturally,” Byron said sarcastically.
Looping his finger through both rings, Whiteoak held them taut which placed them a few inches outside of their compartments. “What I want you to do is . . . carefully this time . . . take the rings from nine and twelve and hold them out like so.” Whiteoak reached into compartment seven with his free hand and extended that ring out as well. “I’d do it myself, but this is clearly designed to be opened by no fewer than three men. Since you so deftly knocked one compartment out of the picture, we’ll see if we can make up for it with some steady hands.”
Byron reached into the compartments, slipped a finger through each ring, and eased them out. When he’d taken the slack from the threads, he waited for a signal from Whiteoak.
Intense concentration was etched into the professor’s face. Ever so slowly, he moved the rings out a bit more. “Something’s definitely moving,” he whispered as though his voice alone might be enough to snap the threads. “It’s a matter of tensile strength. One thread is too weak to lift the latch on its own, but if the weight is distributed . . . pull yours out a bit more.”
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