Night Riders

by Abel Short

  They went down to the Cimarron Gal. Joe didn't get a chance to talk to Marie; he had to be careful. Silver had ordered him to stay clear of the place unless he was with him. Joe wasn't afraid of Silver, but he realized he still had to string with him if for no other reason than that Silver alone knew who he was. Silver had seen how the Countess had looked over Joe the first time they were there, but Joe got barely a look from Marie.

  A stage performance was under way when they entered. The black-haired girl with the skin of alabaster and the eyes of a minx was standing alone up front. She sighted him and leaped up through a vent to one side of the stage curtain, and was gone. Later she reappeared, but she went over to a party at a table on the far side to chatter gaily, even finally putting her arm around the red neck of one buckaroo there. Big Joe swallowed the wrong way.

  They returned to the Stirrup along the roadway that was jammed despite the cold, slanting rain. A freighter's wagon was bogged down to the axles in one ditch. Some of the scum from the river rat settlement down on the flats had already slashed the tarpaulin in a couple of spots, with the half-crazed driver wading about and slashing his bull whip vainly, they were looting it and rolling in the slime in rows over the loot.

  "No law and order here," Silver said with a grimace of disgust.

  Back at the Stirrup he held a conference in the office. Joe stood guard at the door. "We're hitting the Ventare's bank in four nights," Silver said. Shandy started to protest. "Shut up! Who's boss here?" Silver snarled.

  There was some more talk with their voices dropped. Silver said, "Won't be no trouble. I'll see to it they's a fire down in the river bank settlement… We'll go in the back door easy… Send Doc in."

  Tugging at his collar, Shandy left. Doc Hilder came down from the front. The door shut, then bounced ajar an inch after he went in. Silver told about the bank. Doc asked if they'd blast the big safe.

  "Nope. Noise brings nosey gents a-snooping. You'll open that safe, like I know you can do it."

  Doc started to say no, no. There was a commotion up front, one bar customer pulling a Bowie. Stub moved in on it and went to work. One man fell back, spitting teeth. Then the trio was booted out through the batwings; it quieted. There was a groan from inside the ajar door.

  Joe wheeled. Inside, little Doc was sprawled half across Shandy's desk. He licked at blood from his mouth and there was a dent in his hat. Silver stood over him holding a gun by the barrel.

  "You're too dumb sometimes, Doc," Silver sneered, "to pound dirt down a gopher hole… You got some sense now?" Then his eyes lifted and met Big Joe's.

  Neither man spoke. In that moment, Joe knew there was something bad, evil in Silver Linn, something black and twisted, knew that even though he might be an owlhooter himself he was of a different stripe than Silver. Silver's peculiar eyes got smokey.

  Doc straightened. "All right, Silver. I'll do it."

  "Gents find it wise to do what I say," Silver said, still looking slaunchways at Big Joe…

  CHAPTER 14

  Things happened in the four-day wait though. Silver was nervous, never still, even when he served drinks from the bar as if he worked for Shandy Smith. In his room he had a bottle constantly. And then word came in from the Spit. Two other outfits, one a small horse ranch, had been hit by the riders of the white hoods. The horse rancher himself, with a wounded leg, had been ushered off in his buckboard before the raiders left. The cow outfit had their bunkhouse burned to the ground and a goodly piece of their range fired as well. The old man and his son who had that brand came into town to put it on the market.

  "Sooner live in the tail-end of creation," said old Marcus, "where there ain't 'nuff grass to shade a sand lizard and plumb rot to death than here! This country's gone clean rotten. Better to drag your tail whilst you can than wake up some morning wondering if they put on your boots afore they killed you." But they had brought in the corpse of one of the raiders with them.

  Silver and Big Joe went down to see it in the undertaking store across from the jail house. He was a young waddy, barely more than a beardless button. His steeple sombrero was on the slab beside him. And half an ear had been shot away in some earlier encounter years back. But even in death he looked tough enough to spit back were a man to call him. Nobody in Maddox had ever clapped an eye on him before. Especially Silver Linn himself. He stood looking, his breath working hard.

  The always smiling Scar Ventare dropped in for a look too. "White-hooded riders, huh… Mebbeso we might just figure who did this." He let his eyes cut over at Big Joe…

  The next day was that of the bank raid. Silver's hardware hands drifted out ostentatiously and singly. Big Joe led a roan horse down the wide track behind the main street. They would rendezvous at a spot above the town on Snake River to move in a couple of hours after darkness. The simple signal to strike would be the flames from the ratlike hovels down on the river bank. Silver himself was going to take care of the fire with a couple of others.

  Marie was just turning into the path to the back of the hotel when he came into sight. She began to walk very fast.

  "Never had a woman so afeared of me before," Joe called quietly on the late afternoon.

  She flashed around, eyebrows climbing in anger. "I am not afraid of any man."

  He tried to grin. "Then maybe you were running in hopes I'd chase you."

  "Do you talk to hear your head rattle?" a man standing out behind the Cimarron Gal yelled to her. She waved and started toward him.

  Joe thought, a two-bit trigger slammer like me ain't got the right to touch her petticoat. In desperation he hauled out the gold locket. "Here. You dropped this the other evening, Miss Marie."

  She turned to see. Came back and lifted it quickly from his big, calloused palm. "Thank you."

  "You couldn't tell me how—well, how you happened to have that. Not that it's exactly any of my business but—" He had even begun to doubt his own sensation of familiarity toward the locket.

  Maybe it was just his head going like Silver said it did.

  "Mr. Grimes, I don't think we have any business in common." She turned on her heel, hesitated a moment, looking at Joe's side. Then her widened eyes lidded and she went on toward the dance hall.

  Joe turned off into an alley and mounted. He rode out of town unobserved. Leaving the trail he skirted up behind some jackpine so as not to meet anybody. He was the second man at the rendezvous, then Stub came in, and the others a little later. They got down in a little draw and waited. Nobody had very much to say. Stub sat hunkered with that brooding look of late…

  Purple blobs of shadow wheeled out across the prairie. The creosote ceased to cramp in the heat. A black cloud rack fell across the lowering sun like a bar. Night was on them and there were strange noises in the fathomless silence of it. Thousands of stars like bright bubbles patterned the blue carpet of sky.

  "Damn bright night," Stub said. "Let's go."

  Everything went as per schedule, almost too perfectly so. They slipped in by way of a shallow dry wash. Carefully they made their way through a clump of yellow pine where a few hovels stood. They dismounted, then, one by one, afoot, they drifted across an open space to where a fire-charred cavern of barn crouched a couple of hundred feet back from the bank corner. Stub had just checked in the last man when the tongue of flame knifed at the sky down by the river.

  The wind carried the rapidly mounting crackle of it. It sounded like the grinding teeth of a giant. Screams. A great gasp of horror rose along the main street. Then the darkness rattled with the sound of running boots. Windows slammed up. From down near the flames some horses began to neigh wildly, and from bars and gambling hells and dance halls men poured. They went down the road, a desperate torrent of people to the river. The fire had to be put out.

  Only a few minutes passed. High into the night from the river a great shower of sparks cascaded. Big Joe had a nasty thought. Those were the homes of poor devils going up down there, and men might be trapped in the flames. Then Stub grunte
d. A voice from the rank grass said:

  "I'd buy that barn for ten dollars."

  Stub hunched over his two cocked Colts. "I'd sell it for five," he called back softly.

  A shadow that was Silver Linn materialized. With him were Doc and the others. They moved onto the rear of the bank. It wasn't even necessary to keep their voices down. There was a great sucking and roaring sound from the blast furnace of flame at the river. It dominated the night. Spattering through it came the crash of falling hovels, the shrieks of the laboring men.

  Silver said, thumbing backward, "I always knew them rathole shacks would go up like a haypile in Hell."

  They donned their white hoods, flour sacks with slits for eye holes this time. When Joe reached for his he discovered part of it had been hanging from his trouser pocket. Fanning out some, they closed in on the bank. One man opened up a sack. Two axes Were passed out; Joe had one. He leaped at the big solid door with the other gent, the rest ready to cover them if gunfire came. Their axes thudded into the wood, chunking out great splinters. It was lost in the welling turmoil from the river.

  "Wait!" Silver leaped in, reached through a gap and got at the lock on the inside. They poured through out of the glow of the fire.

  There was another door of heavy iron bars a few feet inside. But that didn't take long as two heavy crowbars were produced. Two big men got on each, Joe among them. Steel scrounged and bars sang as they bent, then buckled. Silver seized the quaking ashen-faced Doc and thrust him through a gap, then followed. Behind him a man had lighted a barn lantern, holding a piece of blanket with which to mask it.

  Silver's spurs caught and he plunged to hands and knees. But he was up in a flash and grabbing back for the lantern. Even though his hood revealed his eyes alone there was a kind of wild intentness about him, a cold fanaticism. He wheeled and shoved Doc forward. Doc was working his small white hands and massaging them.

  But Joe saw none of that. He saw only what had fallen from Silver's pocket as he stumbled; Joe snatched it up. It was the picture of "Stan," his brother. The picture Silver hadn't wanted to give up.

  Now was the waiting. The rest splayed out in the rear of the bank building to cover the alley on either side. If anybody happened along, orders were to jump them and whisk them inside the bank. Inside Doc would be working on the vault combination and tumblers with those delicate fingers of his. In case of a concerted attack, the gun pack were to make a stand until Silver and Doc got free.

  They watched the fire down at the river. One of the men rubbed his mouth over the mask. "By grab, I'd like a drink! This waitin' ain't healthy."

  There was a great hissing sound from the river.

  It was the old mill there, used as a lodging house now, going overboard in flames. A tall skeleton of a pine down there fired up like a torch. There were the exhortations and curses on the breeze as men tried to salvage some of their possessions. Steam boiled up as bucket brigades doused the flames.

  An unnatural quiet hung close about the men. The main part of the town was like a cemetery. Everybody was out at the fire.

  "Taking 'em one hell of a long time," somebody said.

  Silver appeared at the back door to see if everything was all right. He was back inside about two minutes when the flat clap of a pistol came. Came from inside the bank itself.

  Stub grabbed Joe and they rushed in. Then it was as if the side wall of Hell itself had blown out. Little Doc came scrambling through the gap in the door of iron bars white as a sun-bleached bone. Acrid gunsmoke seethed in the front of the bank, weaving through the grilles of the tellers' windows. A livid spike of muzzle flame ripped through it. Silver came backing toward them, firing at the front doors.

  As he told about it afterward, Doc had just clicked the tumblers in the second set of the vault doors. They pulled them open. Silver had stepped in with the lantern. There was one awful shock, :hen something had made him turn and a front door was partly opened with Duke Ventare entering. His had been the first shot. Wild, but a shot of warning. And then the storm had broken. Two others had hopped in behind Duke as Silver triggered.

  It had been no accident, Duke's happening in. Something had warned the Ventares. They'd had gunners hidden across the road watching the bank since nightfall. Maybe they had expected a frontal attack, or a blasting of the vaults. The river colony fire had distracted them, of course. Then Duke had looked in.

  "Somebody tipped 'em off! Somebody tipped 'em off!" he reiterated grimly later.

  Now, as he walked back down the hallway he snarled at them to get clear. "They're coming round the sides! You wanta be trapped like rats?"

  The Panhandle killer, Shots Mouger, sent a Ventare man doubling up near the front doors. Through them they could see the white pillars of the bank front. "Let's get the damn dinero, anyways!" he yelled.

  "You fool! Back! That's it—there was no money there! The vaults was bare as a buzzard-plucked carcass! Back—" Silver's two hoglegs slivered lead slashes forward in unison.

  They were almost trapped inside the back doorway. Led by that Largo, Ventare men came along the side and around a corner of the building. It was Big Joe who saved them. He leaped out and the muzzle froth cut from his hips as he slammed both guns into action. One Ventare hand went down and was hauled back into cover of the alley by his friends.

  Silver and Stub rushed over there and into it. They sent the bunch on that side diving into the street. Those latter began to holler that the bank robbers were breaking out that way to escape. The men from the other alley and from inside went scrambling back to the road to cut them off. The only thing that had saved Silver and his men was that the Ventares had not expected half such a pack. They had not known of the gun-slicks Silver had imported.

  But Big Joe was hit; he had caught it in the right thigh above the knee. He had gone down. Risen. But the leg seemed paralyzed as the warm crimson leaked down inside his trouser. He couldn't move. And the new-hired gun-passers were whipping off to their ponies. If there was no dinero, why the hell make a fight!

  CHAPTER 15

  They were at Faley's place. Faley had a little rundown store up at Nawich Crossing on the Snake where a side trail meandered toward the Yellow Hills. He managed to scratch out a living picking up bits of trade before it hit Maddox. Also in any little underhanded way without outward risk that happened along. It was a good place to pick up supplies for a man who didn't want to be seen much, and if he wanted to hide out, Faley had a dirt cellar. The rent of it wasn't cheap though.

  Faley himself was a rotund ball of man in shabby clothes. He was always ready to scratch his reddish ear-to-ear whiskers and complain if there was danger. He did that now and said Silver shouldn't have sent them there.

  "Wanta ride into Maddox and weep about it on the main street?" Stub said. He was strapping up Joe's leg wound. The pants leg had been cut open and it was found the slug had hit the side of the bone without breaking it. That was what had paralyzed the leg, the numbing shock of it. The twisted piece of lead was out now. Joe lay back on the greasy table top. They had given him several slugs of whiskey but his lips were bleached with pain. Stub did the job with the skill of a born surgeon.

  Shots Mouger pushed open the shade-screened store door and thumbed at Faley. "How about rustling your pants in the kitchen and cooking up some chow! Shooting ruckuses allus give me an appetite."

  One of the Ventare pack had been left dead in the alley. And one of their own, Judah Boggs, the chubby hombre, had buckled over when they slid into the barn, gunned in the chest.

  For Silver Linn had halted their rout. He had spoken quickly, softly in the dark, had called them yellow she-dogs, tinhorns who jumped out of their britches. There had been some commanding magic in his voice. Like that hypnotic power in his eyes perhaps. They had stopped running, had moved back slowly in the gloom. The river bank fire was just a black pall climbing skyward and there was no vast glow from it by then.

  "Stub. Get up to Faley's at Nawich Crossing and lie low. Help Pony.
And if anything happens— don't leave no dead behind you," Silver said.

  Then he and Doc had run down and ducked between a pair of buildings around the corner from ;he bank on the main road. Silver threw away his white hood. They had been seen down by the fire when it first started. Nobody would connect them with the bank job.

  So they had slipped to the burnt out barn, carried Boggs' body on from there to the horse. Back down the dry wash. And Stub had led them on up to Faley's. Boggs' body was laid out on the floor of the storeroom in back now.

  "Rider coming. Maybe two," Mouger said, snapping his head in the door.

  No word was spoken. One of them blew out the lamp. Without hurry, there was a certain animal-like sharpness in their movements. The sly, deadly cunning of the hunted. They moved out under the smoky moon. Mougers pointed down the track that led to Maddox. The drum of a second pony came from that direction. Stub gave the orders almost by signal.

  They scattered silently. A couple of men up the river bank. Two more in the bush back of the wing of the store. One across the trail in the thicket. Big Joe went hobbling down the bank under the tree shadow. Found a rocky ledge that tongued into the stream and moved along it. He would command the crossing. If it were the Ventare outfit, every man, even a wounded one, would be needed.

  The rider approaching from the other side of the river appeared first. A gaunt bald man in a white calfskin vest coming out of the cut. He splashed across and halloed in front of the store. Faley knew how to play his game. Every light was out. Only the creaking of a shutter in the wind for answer. After calling some more, the man dismounted, went up and kicked the door hard. He finally gave up in disgust, riding on to take a path northward up a wooded hill.

  It was a little while before the rider from Maddox way swung up to the store. This one didn't bawl out or do any door rapping. Big Joe saw a slim figure in black coat drop to the ground, say something. Stub came out, then some of the others. They went up the steps and into the store and a crack of light seeped through a vein in a window shade.