Wolf Moon

by Ed Gorman

  Five minutes went by before I heard the shotgun blast which was followed by a long, nervous silence and then horses running hard down the dusty main street out of town.

  Six-shooter fire followed the horses. I imagined it was Reeves, emptying his chambers, making it look good for the townspeople.

  Lundgren and Mars appeared a few minutes later, riding hard. At the fork they headed west, which was where I expected them to head. I gave them a five-minute lead and went after them, keeping to grass so I wouldn't raise any dust.

  They'd had it all planned and planned well.

  They rode straight to the river, where business clothes and fresh horses were waiting for them. In a couple of minutes they wouldn't look anything at all like the robbers. And they'd be riding very different horses.

  They took care of the robbery horses first, leading them to the edge of the muddy rushing river where Mars took a Colt and shot both the animals in the head. The horses jerked only once, then collapsed to the ground without a sound. Lundgren and Mars pushed them into the river, where they made small splashes and then vanished. All I could think of was the hayseed kid the old con had drowned that day in the quarry. I cursed Mars. The sonofabitch could have just shooed the animals up into the foothills.

  I also kept thinking of the shotgun blast back at the bank. Anybody who could kill an innocent animal the way they had would have no trouble killing a human.

  They took the long sack of money, wrapped it in a red blanket, and cinched it across the back of Mars' mount.

  They stripped down to their longjohns and then put on their business suits and climbed up on their business horses and took off riding again, though this time they went slow and leisurely, like easterners eager to gasp at the scenery. At the river they threw all their robbery clothes into the rushing, muddy water.

  Fifteen minutes later they came to the crest of a hill and looked down on the cabin where they'd been meeting Reeves, and where Reeves had been meeting Ev Hollister's wife.

  They rode straight down the dead brown autumn grass, coming into a patch of hard sunlight just as they reached the valley.

  A few minutes later, Lundgren tied up the horses and Mars lugged the money sack into the big, fancy cabin.

  I sat there for a while, rolling myself a cigarette and giving them a little time.

  After a while I grabbed the rifle from my scabbard and started working my way down the hill.

  16

  I went down the hill at an angle to the cabin and then along a line of scrub pines to the right of the place. There were no side windows, so that helped make my appearance a complete surprise.

  I crawled low under the front window then stood up when I was directly in front of the door.

  I raised my boot and placed it right above the doorknob, where it would do the most good. If my kick didn't open the door the first time, I was likely going to get a chest full of lead before I had a second chance.

  The door slammed backward.

  I put two bullets straight into a Rochester lamp hanging over a large mahogany table that looked just right for both a good meal and a poker game.

  The Rochester lamp exploded into several large noisy chunks.

  I went inside.

  Lundgren and Mars were standing by the bunk beds, the money fanned out on the lower bunk.

  They were just now going for their guns, but it was too late.

  I crushed Lundgren's gun hand with a bullet. His cry filled the room.

  "Throw the gun down," I said to Mars.

  Lundgren had already dropped his when the bullet went smashing into his flesh and bone.

  "Who the hell are you?" Mars said.

  "Who the hell do I look like?" I said. "I'm a police officer from town."

  "I'm impressed."

  "You want me to shoot your hand up the way I did his?"

  "Asshole," he said.

  But he dropped his gun.

  "Fill the sack."

  "What?"

  "Fill the sack."

  "That's our money," Mars said. He was one of those belligerent little men whose inferiority about their size makes them dangerous.

  "Do it," Lundgren said.

  He had sat himself down on a chair and was holding his hand out away from him and staring at it. He was big and blond and Swedish. Tears of pain made his pale blue eyes shine. He was sweating a lot already and gritting tobacco-stained teeth.

  "You heard what your partner said," I said to Mars. "Maybe I don't care what my partner said."

  I pointed the rifle directly at his chest. "I don't give a damn about killing you. After what you did to those horses, I'd even enjoy it."

  "Do it," Lundgren said again. "Give him the goddamned money."

  He was almost pathetic, Lundgren was, so big and swaggering before, and only whimpering and whining now. You just never know anything about a man till he faces adversity.

  "He isn't going to turn this money in," Mars said, staring at me.

  "What?" Lundgren said.

  "You heard me. He isn't going to turn this money in. This is for himself."

  "Bullshit. He's a police officer."

  "So what he's a police officer? Half the goddamned cops we know in Denver are crooked. Why shouldn't they have crooked cops in a burg like this?"

  "Fill the sack," I said.

  Mars glared at me now, a tough little man in a brown business suit and a comic black bowler. He looked out of place amidst the expensive appointments of a stone fireplace, a small library filled with leather-bound classics, and leather furniture good enough to go in the territorial governor's office. He didn't belong in such a world.

  "Fill it," I said.

  "I'm going to find you, you piece of shit, and when I find you, I'm going to cut your balls off and feed them to you, the way the A-rabs do, you understand me?"

  In two steps I stood right in front of him. As I brought the rifle down, I thought of how he'd killed the horses, and so I put some extra power into it.

  I got him just once, but I got him square in the mouth, and so the butt of my rifle took several teeth and cut his lip so deep a piece of it just hung there like a flap.

  He didn't give me the satisfaction of letting me hear his pain. Unlike Lundgren, he was tough. He had tears in his eyes and he kept making tight fists of his hands, but beyond his initial cry, he wasn't going to give me anything.

  "Now fill it," I said.

  This time he filled it, all the while sucking on the blood bubbling in his mouth.

  When he was finished, I said, "Tie it shut."

  "You tie it shut."

  I hit him again, this time with the butt of the rifle right against his ear.

  The blow drove him to his knees and he fell over clutching his head. This time he couldn't stop himself from moaning.

  "Get up and tie the sack shut and hand it to me, you piece of shit."

  "You hurt him enough," Lundgren said.

  "Not as bad as he hurt those horses."

  Mars got to his feet slowly, in a daze, swearing and whimpering and showing me, for the first time, fear.

  He tied the bag shut with cord and then raised it and dropped it at my feet.

  I couldn't get the horses out of my mind. I hit him again, a good clean hit against his temple.

  He went down quick and final, out for a long time. His head made a hollow sound when it crashed against the floor.

  "You sonofabitch," Lundgren said. "He'll hunt you down, you wait and see."

  He was still holding his hand. Blood had dripped on his nice black boots and all over the floor.

  I hefted the bag, holding the rifle in my right hand. "You'll want to know my name so you can tell Reeves," I said.

  "How the hell do you know about Reeves?"

  I didn't answer his question. "My name's Chase. He'll know who I am."

  "You sonofabitch. You're fucking with the wrong people, you better believe that."

  I backed up to the door.

  "Remember the nam
e," I said. "Chase."

  "You don't worry. I won't forget it. And neither will Mars."

  I went out the door and into the warming sunshine of late morning. I could smell the smoky hills and hear a jay nearby.

  I walked around the cabin to where they'd ground-tied their horses. I shooed one away and then climbed up on the other.

  I went up the hill fast. When I got to my own horse, I jumped down, put the money sack across his back, and then shooed the other horse away. He went straight across the hill and disappeared behind some scrub pines.

  I got up on the roan and rode away.

  17

  An hour later, I dismounted, eased the money sack down from the horse and then carried it, along with a good length of rope, over to the abandoned well near our house.

  I knelt down, lifted up the metal cover and peered down inside. Sometimes you could go down a couple of hundred feet and still hit shale. But Gillian had said this one had been easy, the water right there, just waiting. I took out my spike and the hammer I'd grabbed from my saddlebag and drove the spike deep into the shale on the side of the well. Then I took a piece of rope and tied one end to the top of the money bag and the other end to the spike. And then I fed the money bag, an inch of rope at a time, down into the well, stopping just short of the waterline. Nobody would think to look here. I pulled the cover over the well again and stood up.

  Overhead, an arcing falcon soared against the autumn sky, swooping down when its prey was clearly in sight. I stood and watched until it carried a long black wriggling silhouette of a snake up into the air.

  I stood there and thought about it all, what I'd done and what lay ahead, and what Gillian would say and how brokenhearted she'd be unless I could convince her that I'd done the right thing; and then I got on my horse and rode into town.

  Three hours after the robbery, people still stood in the street, staring at the bank and talking about everything that had happened.

  On my way to the station, an old man carrying a hearing horn stopped me and said, "You catch those bastards, hang 'em right on the spot far as I'm concerned."

  I nodded.

  "That kid just died," he said, "a few minutes ago." I rode another half block and saw Dr. Granville, a pleasant, chubby middle-aged man always dressed in a black three-piece suit to match his black bag. He was a real doctor, educated at a medical school back East, not just a prairie quack the way so many of them are.

  He was crossing the dusty street, and when he saw me, he said, "Terrible business. I remember delivering that kid, the one that got killed. Hell, he wasn't twenty years old yet."

  I went on down the street. I was stopped by half a dozen citizens who wanted to express their anger over what had happened to the clerk.

  I took my horse to the station and tied him up in back and went inside.

  I was just passing Ev Hollister's office when I heard a familiar voice.

  "I'm doing what I have to, Hollister, nothing more and nothing less."

  He spoke, as usual, with a small degree of anger and a great degree of pomposity.

  He sounded riled and he sounded rattled, and I wanted to get a look at him this way, so I leaned in the door frame and watched him as he bent over the chief's desk.

  "Something I can do for you?" Hollister said when he saw me.

  "I just rode in from town and heard that the bank was robbed."

  As I said this, Reeves turned around and faced me. His look of displeasure was deep and pure.

  "Yeah, and one of the tellers was killed. Had a gun in his cash drawer. Just a kid, too. Briney."

  Briney was the youngster who'd opened my account. The one with the rimless glasses and the altar boy smile.

  "Specifically against my orders," Reeves said. "I specifically forbid my tellers to keep guns in their drawers. I didn't want anything like this to happen."

  Reeves wasn't angry only at me. He was also angry at Lundgren and Mars. A robbery would get a town riled. But the murder of a young man would put them in the same mind as that old man I'd just seen on the street. They'd want a hanging.

  Reeves scowled at me. "What I want to know is how the robber got the key to the side door of the bank." That had troubled me, too.

  Hollister shifted forward in the chair behind his desk and started cleaning his pipe bowl with a pocketknife.

  "Reeves here thinks the robbers got the key from somebody who had access to the bank."

  "One of the employees?" I said.

  Hollister shook his head. "Huh-uh. Bank employees aren't given keys."

  "Could one of the employees have stolen it?" I said.

  "Reeves says no." Hollister spoke as if Reeves weren't here. "Says the only person with a key is himself."

  "And one other man," Reeves said, his eyes fixed on my face. "You."

  I looked at Hollister. His face was drawn and serious. "You know where the keys are, Chase?"

  "In the drawer in the back room. Where I always leave them when I finish my shift at night."

  "You never take them home?"

  "Never. You said not to."

  Hollister nodded somberly toward the back. "Why don't you go get that ring of keys and bring it up here?"

  I looked at Reeves. He was still scowling. "All right," I said.

  My bones were still aching and I was starting to cough some, but those problems were nothing compared to what I was beginning to suspect.

  In the back room, where Hollister posts the bulletins and directives for the men, I got into the desk where all the junior officers sit when they have to write out reports.

  Left side, second drawer down, I found the keys. Usually there were seventeen in all. Today there were sixteen. I counted them again, just to make sure that my nerves hadn't misled me. Sixteen. The bank key was missing.

  I sat there for a long time and thought about it. It was pure Reeves and it was pure beautiful, the way he was about to tie me in with Lundgren and Mars.

  I went back up front. I set the keys on Hollister's desk.

  He looked down at them and said, "Well, Chase?"

  "There's one missing."

  "You know which one that is?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "The bank key?"

  "Yes, sir," I said.

  "I knew it," Reeves said. "I goddamn knew it."

  "I didn't take that key, Chief."

  Hollister nodded. "I believe you, Chase, but I'm afraid Reeves here doesn't."

  I met Reeves' gaze now. There was a faint smile on his eyes and mouth. He was starting to enjoy himself. If only one person had the key to the bank other than himself, then who else could the guilty party be?

  I stood there feeling like the farm boy I was. I'd never been gifted with a devious mind. Reeves had not only robbed his own bank, he had also managed to set me up in the process-get me up and implicate me in the robbery.

  "A little later," Hollister said quietly, "you and I should talk, Chase."

  I nodded.

  "Why don't you go ahead and start your shift now?" Hollister said.

  "Yes, Chase, you do that," Reeves said. "But you can skip the bank. Thanks to you, there isn't any money left in there."

  ***

  It was a long afternoon. The sun was a bloody red ball for a time and then vanished behind the piney hills, leaving a frosty dusk. Dinner bells clanged in the shadows and you could hear the pock-pock-pock of small feet running down the dirt streets for home. The only warmth in the night were the voices of mothers calling in their young ones. If there was concern and a vague alarm in the voices-after all, you could never be quite sure that your child really was safe-there was also love, so much so that I wanted to be seven or eight again and heading in to the dinner table myself, for muttered Praise the Lords and some giggly talk with my giggly little sister and some of my mother's muffins and hot buttery sweet corn.

  There were a lot of fights early that night. The miners, learning that they would have no money tomorrow, demanded credit and got it and drank up a lot o
f the money they would eventually get. In all, I broke up four fights. One man got a bloody eye with the neck of a bottle shoved in his face, and another man got two broken ribs when he was lifted up and thrown into the bar. The miners had to take their anger out on somebody, and who was more deserving than a friend? Like most drunkards, they saw no irony in this.

  Just at seven Gillian and Annie brought my dinner, cooked beef and wheat bread. It was too cold for them to stay, so they started back right away-but not before Gillian said, "Annie, would you wait outside a minute?"

  She studied both of us. Obviously, just as I did, Annie sensed something wrong. She looked hurt and scared, and I wanted to say something to her, but when Gillian was in this kind of mood, I knew better.

  Annie went out the back door of the station, leaving Gillian and me next to the potbellied stove in the empty room.

  "There was a robbery this morning, Chase," she said.

  "So I heard."

  "Reeves' bank."

  "Right."

  "He did it again, didn't he?"

  "Did what?"

  "Did what? God, Chase, don't play dumb. You know how mad that makes me."

  "There was a robbery, yes, and it was Reeves' bank, yes, but other than that, I don't know what you're talking about."

  She studied me just as Annie had. "Chase."

  "Yeah?"

  "I made up my mind about something."

  "Oh?"

  "If you take that bank robbery money, I'm going through with what I said. About leaving you. I'm going to pack Annie and I up and go and that's a promise. I don't want our daughter raised that way."

  "He killed my two brothers."

  "Don't give me that kind of whiskey talk, Chase. Your brothers are dead and I'm sorry about that, but no matter what you do, you can't bring them back. But you can give Annie a good life, and I'm going to see that you do or I'm taking her away."

  "I love you, Gillian."

  "This isn't the right time for that kind of talk, Chase, and you know it."

  She walked to the door and turned around and looked at me. "If you break her heart, Chase, or let her down, I'm never going to forgive you."