“The bank! It’s bein’ robbed. I seen ’em just now. Breakin’ in the back door. You can ketch ’em if you hurry.”
Pat ran to the door leading into the saloon and shouted loudly: “Listen every one of you. You’re deputized. Every man that’s got a gun, come an’ help me surround the bank. That is—all except you, Harold Morgan.” He singled out one of his close neighbors, a sober, steady rancher who had been drinking less than the others in the saloon.
“You go upstairs, Morgan. Stand guard at room fifteen an’ the next one to it. That’s Kitty Lane’s room. Don’t let anybody in or out. The rest of you come on out the back way, an’ be quiet about it. We can circle around behind the bank before anyone knows we’re comin’.”
He trotted across the saloon floor to the rear exit, and two dozen armed men swarmed after him eagerly.
5
The back door of the hotel opened onto an alleyway with small residences on the other side of it. Pat Stevens swung to the right around the hotel with his informally deputized crew right at his heels. He slowed as he approached the front of the building on the street corner, motioned his deputies to stay back while he cautiously peered around the corner and down Main Street toward the Dutch Springs bank on the opposite side and near the other end of the block.
He drew back after a slow survey of the street, said grimly, “Everything looks quiet in front of the bank. You: Jim, Todd, Ben, Max, an’ Slim. You five string out on both sides of the street an’ saunter down to the bank slow-like. Just act like nothing’s happened, an’ don’t tell nobody nothing. Couple of you stay on this side of the street opposite the bank. Other three cross over an’ mosey up close. Stay right there where you can cover the front, but don’t start nothing less’n they try to come out that way. If they do, don’t waste any lead tryin’ to cripple ’em.
“Mark Johnson,” Pat went on swiftly to a grizzled rancher right behind him, “you gather up ten men an’ take ’em back around the hotel an’ through the alley to the end of the block. Start driftin’ ’em across the street an’ around behind the bank. Spread your men out to block off the street an’ that side of the bank. Pick your men an’ get started.”
While Johnson was swiftly selecting ten men to go with him, Pat told the others, “We’ll string out and cross the street to this end an’ go up behind the bank from this side. Last two men stay at this end to block off the street. You others spread out about fifty feet apart so there won’t be a chance of anybody gettin’ through. We don’t want nothing like the last time the bank was robbed, ’bout seven years ago that was, when Sam an’ Ezra an’ me had to trail the gang all the way down into New Mexico. I’ll go first an’ get right up in behind the bank.
“You, Walter,” Pat ordered the young puncher who had brought the alarm. “Come along with me an’ tell me more about this. We’ll get goin’.”
He stepped forward from behind the concealment of the building and sauntered across the moonlit dusty street. Walter followed him at about fifty feet, and when Pat reached the shadow of a building on the other side, he stopped and waited for the cowboy to reach his side.
He nodded with grim satisfaction as another man stepped out into the bright moonlight and started across as Walter stepped up on the boardwalk. That would do it. If they’d all be casual and take their time in following each other, the chances were that the lookout wouldn’t notice anything amiss—that was, if the bank robbers had a lookout posted to watch the street.
He caught Walter’s arm as the youth reached his side, started hurrying him around to the alley leading down behind the bank, and questioned him.
“How’d you come to get onto it, Walter? You think anybody noticed you coming for me?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Stevens.” Walter’s teeth were chattering but he made a manful effort to hide his nervousness. “I was coming across the alley when I heard a funny noise at the back door of the bank. It’s in a dark shadow and I couldn’t see good. So I stopped and listened.”
“What were you doing back in the alley?”
“I’d been to see—I was visiting Miss Grubbs that lives across the alley from the bank. Miss Jane. And I took the short-cut when I left her house.”
They turned into the alley. Pat said, “Keep talkin’.”
“Well, like I say, I heard a funny noise but I couldn’t see anything. So I sort of crouched down and waited. I heard it again—then a loud creaking. Like the back door was maybe being pried open. Then I saw a flame like a match striking, inside the bank. So I knew something was wrong and I hightailed it around and asked at the Gold Eagle for you. Someone said you were at the Jewel. And—that’s all, I reckon.”
“You didn’t tell ’em at the Gold Eagle what was up?”
“No. I thought I ought to find you.”
“An’ you didn’t see anyone? Don’t know how many there are? Don’t know where they got their hawses hitched for a fast getaway?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Stevens,” the youth admitted regretfully. “I thought I ought to hurry and get you.”
“You did just right.” Pat squeezed his arm and lowered his voice. “We’re comin’ up to the bank now. You’re right, son. There is a light inside. Mighty dim. Comin’ out of the vault, I reckon.”
Pat stopped and ordered briskly, “You stay right here. Stop the first man to come up an’ keep him here with you. The others’ll be scattered out behind. We got ’em trapped,” he went on grimly. “They ain’t got a chance to get away. I’m going to Injun up to that back door an’ be a reception committee of one when they try to come out with the money.”
He left the lad posted there, and moved forward slowly and cautiously toward a dull square of light showing through a dirty back window of the bank. There were empty tin cans and debris scattered out in the rear of the bank building, and Pat had to move with the utmost caution to keep his progress noiseless.
He had one gun out and ready to fire as he crept forward. The darkness here was made black and complete by the high wall of a building on the east blocking off the rays of the moon that was still low above the horizon.
It would be smart, Pat figured, for the robbers to have left one man outside the bank on guard with their horses. If he could surprise that man and seize the horses, their only means of escape would be effectually cut off.
He crouched far forward to make his body into the smallest target possible, and moved forward one cautious step after another, without seeing or hearing anything to indicate the presence of any other living thing in the area of blackness behind the bank.
A dog came trotting up the alley behind Pat. He stopped and sniffed the air, then let out a short, curious bark. Pat sank back to his haunches and set his teeth together tightly. The dog started toward him slowly, on stiff legs. Pat stayed very still, cursing all dogs under his breath, and this member of the breed in particular.
It was a small, spotted dog with one floppy ear and the other one pointed and alert. He stopped ten feet from Pat and barked again. Pat sucked air between his lips to make a soft, welcoming sound.
The dog trotted closer and stopped again to sniff the air suspiciously, then came on and rubbed against the sheriff ecstatically, making small whimpering sounds to indicate his delight.
Pat scratched him behind the ears with his left hand, patted him and whispered, “Stay here, dawg. Better not get any closer to trouble.”
But the dog was not willing to lose his new-found friend so easily. When Pat started forward on hands and knees, he trotted past him toward the bank, then stopped to look back and wag his tail encouragingly.
Pat moved on, staying close to the ground and disregarding the spotted pup as best he could. Complete silence blanketed the dark-shadowed scene. Not a sound came from Main Street beyond the bank. The deputized men had been wholly successful in closing in to surround the bank on all four sides without warning the robbers.
Pat Stevens was grimly sure the trap was effectively set this time, and he gave up his plan of try
ing to locate the horses of the thieves. With every avenue of escape closed to them, Pat turned directly toward the bank, bent on smoking them out into the open where they could be disposed of or captured.
The little dog ran ahead of him to the back door of the bank. He stopped there, wagging his tail furiously. When Pat got close enough, he saw that the heavy door sagged open.
Still, no sound came from within the bank itself. The yellow blotch of light remained as the only concrete evidence of marauders within.
Pat Stevens lifted himself to his feet when he was ten feet from the open back door. He hesitated, then stepped sideways toward the lighted window. The dog trotted to him and rubbed against his legs. Pat stopped to pat him on the head, then went close to the window and tried to peer inside.
The glass was so dirty with accumulated grime that Pat could see nothing at all. He stood close to the window and listened intently, but could hear no sound from inside.
They were damn funny bank robbers, he told himself morosely. What were they doing inside the lighted bank so long? They must realize their danger, yet they were staying long enough to be having a picnic. It didn’t make sense, didn’t add up to the way bank robbers were supposed to act.
He pushed his Stetson back and scratched his head, turned to make a long slow survey of the darkness behind him. He could still see nothing, but he knew that armed men waited back there, waited impatiently for a chance to throw lead.
He knew how volunteer posses were. Sooner or later, one of the deputized men was going to get tired of waiting and would do something that would give the alarm. That might be disastrous. At the very least, it was likely to bring on more bloodshed than would probably be spilt if the robbers walked out into the trap unknowing.
Pat turned back from the window and cat-footed along the wall to the open back door.
He paused on the threshold, gun in hand, staring inside to the blackness and trying to get the layout of the rear interior of the bank clearly in his mind.
There was only a faint glow of light from far inside to the right. That meant the thieves were on the other side of the wooden partition where the bank’s money was kept in a fireproof vault. He knew the door to that vault was none too strong. It could be forced by determined men. As a director of the bank, he had often urged the purchase of a burglar-proof safe, but the other directors had always voted him down on the idea, insisting that no one in Powder Valley was likely to rob the bank, and that no strangers could possibly know how easily the money could be obtained.
The rear door, for instance, had only a stout chain and padlock on it, yet that precaution was considered sufficient. Pat felt along the side of the door frame curiously, and discovered that the three heavy staples holding the chain had simply been pried out of the yielding wood. With an iron bar or a pick handle for leverage, it had been absurdly simple for a strong man to open the door and walk in.
Suddenly, while he hesitated there, the light went out inside the bank. Pat’s body stiffened and his fingers tightened on the butt of his gun.
He heard furtive, scraping sounds on the other side of the partition. He took one step forward over the threshold, flattened himself against the inside wall beside the door.
The little dog whimpered outside, and then trotted confidently through the open door. He nuzzled his cold nose against Pat’s bootleg, then trotted on across the wooden floor toward the point where the dim light had shone. His toenails made a light, clacking sound against the bare pine boards.
The clacking sound stopped, and the little dog whimpered loudly. Pat heard a faint chuckle from ahead in the blackness. Then the heavy sound of bootheels crunching toward the door—toward Pat Stevens.
Pat crouched against the wall with his gun ready. He strained his ears for further sounds to indicate how many men were inside the bank. He heard only that single pair of boots, rapidly nearing him. The owner of the boots was evidently a heavy man, completely without fear or contemptuous of any effort that might be made to stop him. His heels thudded down heavily on the floor, in measured cadence, as though he marched in time with an unheard drum.
Pat had to make a swift decision while the man went past. He could have touched him, could have thrust his gun forward and triggered it with the muzzle against the robber’s body. But if there were more of them back there, that would give the alarm and give them some chance to escape—or to barricade themselves inside the bank building where they might be driven out only with a lot of gunfire.
In that split-second, Pat decided to let this one pass. The trap was well-laid outside. There was no possibility of escape if he was allowed to walk into it blind.
The man hesitated on the threshold. In that brief instant, his body and head were silhouetted against the moonlit sky—and Pat Stevens was looking at the huge bulk and scarred features of one-eyed Ezra, his long-time gun-partner and bosom friend.
There was no time for thought in that fleeting instant. No time to weigh friendship against duty. No time to consider what the consequences might be.
There was only time for Sheriff Pat Stevens to know that Ezra must somehow be saved.
Right and wrong did not enter into it. There was no time to declare himself. No chance to question why Ezra had suddenly turned to bank-robbing.
Pat only knew that he couldn’t let Ezra be captured this way—just as he couldn’t leave Sam Sloan’s knife in the back of the dead man in the Jewel Hotel.
As Ezra took a forward step out into the night, Pat tilted the muzzle of his gun high and triggered it three times in rapid succession.
He heard a single grunt of astonishment from the red-headed man, then the lunging forward of a heavy body.
Pandemonium broke out then, in response to Pat’s three shots. The overly nervous guards in the alley began shooting wildly, shouting to each other and running forward to close in on the unseen robber.
Pat stayed in the doorway. He heard the sudden thudding of hooves through the tumult.
Ezra was mounted and was driving straight ahead out of the trap so carefully laid. Up and down the alley, men were running forward, betraying the fact that escape was closed off in both those directions.
The thudding hooves drove straight ahead, and Ezra sent his mount crashing through a flimsy board fence into the Grubbs’ backyard while behind him men fired futilely at the speeding shape.
Pat ran forward, shouting loudly and with authority as a rider came galloping up from the west end of the alley.
“I’ll take that hawse!” His voice lifted above the incoherent shouts and curses of the others. “This here’s the sheriff.”
The rider pulled up reluctantly and Pat grabbed the reins. “Out of the saddle, sonny. An’ I’ll take after that varmint.”
The rider was a boy in his teens, and he leaped from the saddle without hesitation. Pat vaulted into the saddle without touching stirrups, and drove spurs into the horse’s flanks. The startled animal leaped forward on Ezra’s trail, and Pat turned to shout back:
“Gather up a posse an’ follow me.”
He leaned low on the horse’s neck and guided him through the Grubbs’ yard to the street beyond. He checked him momentarily to catch the sound of his fleeing friend, and nodded grimly when he heard two horses galloping away madly to the east.
He neck-reined his mount in that direction, gave him his head eastward to a point a quarter of a mile from town where the road forked northeastward and due south into the mountains.
He pulled his horse up at the forks and threw himself off, dropping to the ground with his head flat against the soil of the crossroads.
His ear caught the faint vibration of drumming hooves from the south fork. He got up slowly and brushed the dust from his clothes, remounted and turned his horse to face a group of angry, mounted men surging out from Dutch Springs.
“He went that way!” Pat shouted loudly, pointing in the direction away from the one he knew Ezra had chosen. “Up the north fork. You men ride after him. I got to get back
to town on somethin’ else.”
He sat slouched in the saddle at the crossroads and watched the determined posse sweep away northeastward on a wild goose chase. There was a bitter taste of overwhelming defeat in his mouth as he rode slowly back to town. He caught himself remembering that scene in Winters’ store when he had been sworn in as sheriff and given the silver badge to wear as evidence of the confidence his fellow citizens had in his integrity.
His hand went up and crept inside his shirt pocket to touch the cold smoothness of that silver star. He jerked the badge out angrily and drew back his arm to throw it away into the night, but something would not let him commit that final act of sacrilege.
He slowly slid the star back in his pocket, though with a look of bitter loathing on his face. When a man took the oath of sheriff he was supposed to give up having friends. He was sworn to enforce the law, yet tonight he had deliberately gotten rid of murder evidence against one man, and had deliberately permitted another man to escape the consequences of robbing the local bank.
In his heart, Pat Stevens hated himself for what he had done; yet in his heart he knew, too, that under the same circumstances he would do the same again. Sheriff or no sheriff; silver star or no silver star, Sam Sloan and Ezra were his friends. No matter what they had done—they were still his friends. Nothing could alter that. It was something that happened to a man. You don’t look for friendship, and you don’t throw it away when it comes to you. It brings certain duties with it; and foremost of those is that you shall not forsake your friend.
Pat Stevens didn’t put any such thoughts into words as he rode back to Dutch Springs, but they were in his heart in essence, and he knew they were there to stay.
6
A small group of excited men greeted Pat Stevens on Main Street when he rode slowly back into town after directing the posse away from the direction Ezra had taken.
They crowded around him, asking eager questions as he swung off his commandeered horse. No one knew exactly what had happened, and the small town was flooded with wild rumors.
Sheriff on the Spot Page 4