Tap nodded down at Little Kinney, much as any traveler might do, no more than passing the time of day.
Kinney mumbled something by way of reply and lifted his half-empty glass in salute.
Joseph looked through the window at the front of the sheriff’s office to see if he could catch a glimpse of the man, but there was nothing. The sign outside the bank was bright and looked freshly repainted. ARKANSAS MERCANTILE AND BANKING COMPANY. This time there was a face at the window and it jutted forward then pulled away as Loughlin and Joseph approached. By the time Tap had slid from the saddle, Steven Cash was standing in the open doorway, smile set on his face and his right hand extended in welcome.
Tap handed his reins up to Joseph and stepped on to the boardwalk. As he shook the bank manager’s hand, he glimpsed Majors at the far end of the street. Tap frowned: he was pushing it awful damn close.
“Anything wrong?” asked Cash.
“Huh? No. No, nothin’. Just a thought is all.”
“That’s fine. Won’t you step inside?”
Buddy Brayfield beamed out from behind his teller’s position, his freckles strong enough to show clearly through the wire grille. Mrs. Chowning gave a smile from her desk back of the counter and revised her opinion of the new account holder - he was almost as handsome as Mr. Cash himself. A few years older, maybe, and his nose wasn’t altogether straight on his face, but he had a generous mouth and, above all, honest eyes. Yes, that was a telling factor, honest eyes.
“I’ve had the necessary papers made out, Mr. Danziger. If you’d care to step through and into my office we could get the formalities over in just a few moments.”
The office was to the right, its door facing Mrs. Chowning’s desk. Cash left the door open and set the papers down in front of Loughlin.
“You brought your deposit, I see,” said the bank manager, nodding at the bulge beneath the buttoned alpaca coat.
“Oh yeah.”
“Money belt, I suppose?”
“That’s right.”
Loughlin shifted his position so that he had a good view of the woman and could see one side of the bank teller, nothing, though of the door. That didn’t matter, he’d be sure to hear Majors enter.
Cash was dangling a pen before Loughlin’s face, if you’d like to put your signature here ... and here … and one more time, here.”
Tap grinned good-humouredly. That’s a whole mess of names, ain’t it?”
Out in the main section of the bank, Buddy Brayfield had begun to whistle.
Cash was still holding out the pen, still smiling. Loughlin pointed down at the papers. Three times, huh?”
That’s right, Mr. Danziger. Just three times.”
The door to the bank was hurled open loud and fast and Bray-field’s tune ended in a surprised splutter. Majors’ voice boomed: “Don’t nobody move!” Tap Loughlin drew in the sides of his mouth and reached inside his alpaca coat. Staring, not wanting to believe, Steven Cash watched as the pistol slid up from Loughlin’s belt.
“Danziger!” the bank manager gasped.
“Uh-uh, friend,” said Loughlin softly, “you got the name wrong. Now while everyone else is kind of busy outside, would you mind opening up that safe of yours?”
Cash’s eyes were blinking fast and all of the color had drained from his face.
Lloyd Majors had got to the end of the counter, a hinged flap of wood that he rammed back hard. Buddy Brayfield winced at the crack and Mrs. Chowning pressed her hands down over her ears. Majors glanced at her quickly and then looked a second time, more carefully. The way her hands were raised pulled the silky material of her dress awful tight across her breasts.
Something was ticking away inside Brayfield’s brain, some fool idea that he couldn’t shake. His hands were trembling and his left foot was tapping a quiet, insistent tattoo on the boards.
“You got a nice big sack there, sonny?”
Buddy nodded.
“Okay. Then scoop all you got out from under that counter and fill her up.”
The tick wouldn’t go away; his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Buddy looked quickly over at Mrs. Chowning, but her eyes were closed tight as if she was waiting for some fierce onset of pain.
“Now, sonny!”
Buddy Brayfield turned sideways to Majors, facing the counter. He stretched over a little to his right and began to pull out the drawers, exposing bills and coins set in neat columns. Majors beamed. Buddy got as far as the third drawer and then his hands knocked against the sawn-off barrels of the shotgun. A pulse raced at his temple. He jerked the gun clear of its pegs, his thumbs bumped clumsily against the hammers, feeling swollen. Majors was staring at the woman’s chest. Buddy spun round and swung the shotgun towards the big man who bulked at the end of the counter.
Majors flattened himself against the side wall and fired twice.
The sound of his pistol was lost in the roar of the shotgun.
Mrs. Chowning screamed, certain that she had been shot. Her hands dragged away from her ears and clasped her breasts.
Chunks of plaster and lathe flew across the room.
Buddy Brayfield was hurled back against the counter, his body turning, his neat, well-pressed suit already darkening with blood. The brown freckles that covered his nose and cheeks were spotted red. The pulse that pushed haphazardly against his tight skin beat with less and less force. He slumped at the knees, arms grabbing sideways; one of the money drawers came toppling towards him. Nickels and dimes bounced and rolled. Crisp banknotes fluttered into the air.
Inside his office, Cash was leaning hard against the side of the safe, mouth open and fighting for breath. His eyes were no longer blinking, were wide. He was looking at Loughlin, looking at the gun which had swung away towards the door at the sound of firing from outside. Cash was thinking about the president of the bank, about the trust that Grant had imposed upon him. He read the indecision in Loughlin’s face and made a grab for the gun. Loughlin reacted, but not quickly enough. The two men staggered several yards sideways and collided with a glass-fronted cabinet set against the wall. Plate glass cracked and crashed and the shelves spilled their contents on to the floor. Both of Cash’s hands were tight round Loughlin’s wrist, trying to force the pistol from his fingers.
Loughlin swung his left arm and brought his fist down into the side of the bank manager’s head. Cash grunted and his head moved painfully, but he didn’t relinquish his grip. Loughlin punched him again and again and the two of them swayed and lurched around the office, rebounding from desk to wall and back again.
The gun was raised high above both their heads and Loughlin’s finger pressed back on the trigger hard enough to release a bullet into the ceiling.
Mrs. Chowning leapt up from her desk and began to run around the space behind the counter, her hands still clapped to her ears and her mouth open to a succession of shrill screams.
Majors, down on one knee scooping money into a large white sack, raised his pistol and shot her through the side.
The woman went into the doorway of Cash’s office as if she’d been kicked. Her shoulder hit the door jamb and she slowly slid down the wall towards the floor. Blood was leaking through her ribs, through the smooth material of her dress, clouding its silky shine. Her right hand moved to the wound and found the stickiness of the blood. The other hand covered her mouth but she could still hear her own screams.
Loughlin brought his knee up into the bank manager’s groin and thudded the underneath of his elbow crisp against his chin. Cash’s teeth rammed together and he bit off a quarter-inch of his tongue. He let go of Loughlin’s right wrist and Tap swung the pistol free and drove its barrel end sideways across Cash’s face. The sight grooved a deep line through the flesh of his cheek and he tumbled, half-conscious, to the ground.
As Loughlin began to feel in his pockets for the keys to the safe, he heard the sound of shooting from the street.
His fingers froze on the steel ring.
Through the open doorway he
caught Majors’ gaze, the scorn, the eyes that said I told you.
~*~
Little Kinney had been standing close by his horse; he had seen Majors enter the bank in the wake of Tap Loughlin and he knew that at any moment they’d be riding out of Ozark as if there was a bunch of vigilantes on their tail. He saw the black astride his horse outside the bank and saw that he was holding the reins of the other two mounts. Everything seemed to be going off just like Tap had planned it. Even the sheriff hadn’t shown himself outside his office; the door had shut behind him and stayed shut.
Kinney licked his lips, dry still after two glasses of beer. He turned the leather of the reins over his hand and pushed his left boot into the stirrup. What he wasn’t prepared for was the blast of the shotgun that echoed out from the bank.
Kinney’s skin froze up along the back of his neck; his stomach tightened like an old maid’s fist and his whole mouth was dry now. He wiped his hand across his lips and turned towards the opposite side of the street. He was watching the door and the door of the sheriff’s office wasn’t opening.
Little Kinney still had his foot slotted into the stirrup.
He still had his foot slotted into the stirrup when Sheriff John Dillon shot him.
The lawman had left the building through the rear door and come quiet around the side. He’d seen Kinney watching the front and that had been enough. His Colt had come up smooth, the hammer had clicked quietly back and he’d sighted along the top of the barrel, arm bent. The .45 slug ripped through the back of Kinney’s left arm and dug into his back above the shoulder blade. It tore away a good deal of flesh and span away into the front of the saloon, where it embedded itself in the wall.
Little Kinney tried to turn and face the sheriff, but his foot was trapped in the stirrup and as he twisted, his leg got hoisted up and he fell, head-first, to the ground.
That was how come Dillon’s second shot sailed a couple of feet above his body and whined away off the saloon doors.
Another shot rang out from the bank and Dillon hesitated, not certain whether Kinney was going to be coming back up or not.
He figured that if he did, he wouldn’t cause too many problems. The bank was more important. He cut back on to the sidewalk and started to run, his boots loud on the loose, echoing boards. Joseph saw him coming and yelled a warning to those inside. He freed the rifle from under the flap of the saddle and brought it up against his shoulder.
Dillon was still running.
Joseph’s first shot tore away a chunk of the wooden pillar holding up the upper storey of the general store; his second smashed the glass of the store window to smithereens. Dillon raised his left arm to protect his face from the shards of flying glass and dropped to one knee. He steadied his right hand with his left tight at its wrist. The .45 roared once and Joseph felt the wind of the slug as it whipped past him and ricocheted off the front of the bank.
There were men running now, up and down the street, some of them carrying arms, but none so far interested in getting involved in the shooting. Dillon called out orders, waving his hands wildly. If anyone understood, they didn’t show any signs of obeying.
“Bastards!” Dillon yelled. Whose money did they think he was trying to protect anyway?
Joseph was out of the saddle now and up by the bank door, pushing it open and shouting inside. He saw the sheriff run another fifteen yards before taking aim again with his pistol. Joseph just got on the far side of the door in time.
Majors was hurrying across from the counter, a sack bouncing up and down on his shoulder. Tap Loughlin had stopped fiddling with the safe keys and gone through the drawers of the manager’s desk instead. Papers, papers and more papers. Cash started to come round and Loughlin looked at him with quick and real hatred and brought back his right leg. He planted the underside of his boot full in Cash’s face and broke his nose.
“Let’s go!” yelled Majors, almost knocking Joseph over in his hurry to get through the door.
The horses were moving free in the street, hooves plowing up the dirt and dust.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Majors. The horses!”
Joseph ignored him and ducked low, making a dash for the nearest mount. A couple of shots rang out and it looked as if at least one of the townsfolk was helping the lawman now.
Down the street, Little Kinney had managed to push himself into a crouching position and had wiped the dirt from his eyes and mouth. He started to get up and someone hit him in the small of the back with a length of timber. Kinney cursed and fell sideways, rolling over, wincing with the sharp pain that shot through him again and again. He saw a man advancing on him, the piece of wood swinging above his head. Kinney reached for his pistol and his fingers closed round air; the holster was empty. The timber swung for his head and at the last moment Kinney ducked underneath it. He grabbed for the man’s arm and caught hold; pulled him off-balance and scrambled to his feet himself. As the man stirred on the street, Kinney kneed him in the side of the head. He saw his gun in the dirt and bent to retrieve it. A badly aimed shot tried for him and missed by several feet. Kinney turned his horse around and hauled himself with difficulty into the saddle.
He saw the sheriff down on one knee to the left of the bank, using a water trough for cover while he reloaded his Colt. There seemed to be a couple of others putting in their two cents’ worth – one back of some barrels over by the right and another at a first floor window.
Kinney let out a holler and kicked the horse’s flanks hard. Flicking the reins over, side to side, he galloped down towards the bank, firing as he went. More by luck than anything else one of his shots went close enough to the sheriff to tear the heel off his right boot. Dillon dropped a handful of cartridges from his fingers and flattened himself behind the trough.
By this time Tap Loughlin had emerged from the bank and seen the only free horse disappearing down the street at a steady lick. A man at an upstairs window opposite knocked the glass clear and drew a bead on Loughlin as he hesitated in the doorway.
“Tap! Here!”
Loughlin moved in response to Kinney’s call and a slug split the now vacant doorway in two. Majors fired a couple of times at the man back of the barrels and kept him from joining in any further, frightening rather than hitting him.
The sheriff had loaded his Colt and was about to take a hand in the play once again. A group of men were advancing from the direction of the saloon, looking as if they meant business.
“Joseph, let’s move!”
Tap climbed up behind Kinney and gave the horse a whack on the rump. Majors was already charging away towards the northern edge of town, the sack of money bouncing out from the side of the horse as he went. Joseph was fifty yards behind him and another thirty yards back Kinney and Tap made themselves as small a target as they could.
Sheriff Dillon was torn between trying to shoot them down and calling together a posse to give chase.
There was an ominous silence from inside the bank.
Breathing hard, Tap Loughlin rode with one arm tight round Little Kinney’s waist, the blood that was steadily oozing from Kinney’s back already beginning to stick to his shirt and the lapels of his alpaca jacket.
Chapter Eight
The thicket lay between two ranges of hills pushing up north of Ozark towards the Mulberry River. The posse had been shaken off with ease, none of the riders apart from the sheriff over keen on charging in upon an ambush, not one of them who didn’t prefer to spend that night back at home in front of his own fire, eating his own food. So, hampered as they were by two badly wounded men, Tap Loughlin’s bunch had been able to ride fast enough and far enough to shake off any fear of immediate pursuit. Even to light a fire.
The smoke drifted lazily upwards through the surrounding dogwood and green ash, smelling sweet and dry. A pan of boiling water simmered next to a smaller pan of warmed-over coffee grounds. Loughlin and Scott Levy were doing their best to clean up the pair of wounded men. Little Kinney’s back was grooved through pret
ty deeply and the flesh on either side of the bullet’s path had swollen up and was a passing imitation of deep purple. Baptiste’s scabs had broken open during the ride and now the pieces of hard, brittle surface were interwoven with bright yellow puss and congealing blood.
“What the hell is it about your men that they only get shot in the back?” asked Majors, standing at the opposite side of the fire to Loughlin.
Tap caught his breath, caught his temper, let the remark ride. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about Majors working off his mouth and there were a whole lot of things more important right then. He was conscious enough of the mess they were in; knew that the second attempt to take a place for its money had gone badly wrong. The sack had contained a little over two hundred dollars and that was already shared out between the seven of them. It wasn’t near as much as he planned for, not enough to get them very far. He knew only too well that the bank raid had been a disaster and that if it hadn’t been for Little Kinney coming in like hell itself to pull him out; he would have been dead on that street within minutes. Dead and not a dollar in his pockets to show for it.
But Majors wasn’t about to let it slide so easy. He pushed the toe of his boot into the edge of the fire, dislodging a batch of twigs and making the flames blaze up bright enough to show the anger in his eyes.
“I guess it couldn’t be somethin’ to do with bein’ yeller, could it?” taunted Majors.
Tap’s hand squeezed down on the piece of bloodied cloth with which he’d been swabbing Little Kinney’s back and watery red trickled down into his palm and along his wrist, down through his fingers.
Scott Levy thought about reaching for the pistol at his belt, but then a fresh glance at Majors told him it wouldn’t be the wisest thing to do. Better to wait and see the way things broke – after all, Tap hadn’t been running things so well lately. He’d been saying the same to Gideon earlier and the big black had nodded his head and agreed.
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