“Oh, we’ve secured it, Mister Mayor,” Chase said.
“Maybe you’d better lock it up in one of the cells for the night.”
“Oh, we will, Mister Mayor,” Dempsey assured the man, and grinned. “As soon as we count it. First thing in the morning, one of us’ll saddle up and ride it back to Golden, get it back in the bank where it belongs. We wanna make sure it’s all there. Who knows—the kid might’ve spent some of it or maybe hid some along the trail.”
Lonnie rolled his eyes. He was too miserable to do anything else in protest of his predicament.
Mayor Teagarden strolled over to the table and stared down at the money. He whistled. “That’d sure buy someone a trouble-free life—eh, fellas? Easy street all the way. And possibly a long vacation in San Francisco to boot!” The mayor laughed, keeping his sparkling eyes on the money.
“Sure would,” said Dempsey, holstering his six-shooter. “No doubt, that’s what Shannon Dupree had in mind. Not to worry, though, Mister Mayor. I’ll start out for Golden first thing in the mornin’, deliver these here greenbacks to the bank.”
“Well, you know what, fellas?” the mayor said, rising up and down on the toes of his half boots. “I was headin’ over to Golden on business tomorrow. I can throw them saddlebags in my buggy, toss a blanket over ’em to make sure nobody knows what I’m haulin’, and I’ll have ’em there by the end of the week.”
Chase and Dempsey glanced at each other. They held each other’s gazes for about three seconds, both men wrinkling the skin above their noses in silent, wistful communication.
Chase said, “Ah, no, no, Mister Mayor. We couldn’t ask you to do that. Haulin’ stolen money back to its rightful owner is a dangerous job. It’s a job for the law. And me an’ Dempsey here—with the chief marshal dead now, God rest his soul—are about the only law left in Arapaho Creek. That’s a job for one of us.”
“Maybe both of us,” added Dempsey. “One to carry the loot, one to ride shotgun. It’s a good three, four-day ride over the mountains to Golden. Who knows where Shannon Dupree is about now? If the kid double-crossed that outlaw, he’s probably on his way to Arapaho Creek.”
“Yeah, no, sir, Mister Mayor.” Chase walked over and drew the front door open as though inviting the mayor to leave. “Haulin’ that loot is a job for armed lawmen. It’ll be a dangerous trek over to Golden, but me and Dempsey’ll make ’er, all right. That’s what we get paid for, after all.”
The mayor winced visibly at the proclamation. He studied the money on the table for a time, probing his silver tooth with his tongue, before he glanced at both lawmen suspiciously. “Yes, well, I suppose it would be a job for the law.” He chuckled deviously and switched his gaze back and forth between the two deputies. “You boys don’t let all this tinder go to your heads now, and do something—well, something dishonorable, now, you hear?”
Chase and Dempsey laughed as though it were the funniest joke they’d ever heard. When the mayor had strolled out through the door and Dempsey had closed the door and turned the key in the inside lock, securing the bolt, he turned to Dempsey and said, “Why, that old coot was seriously considerin’ makin’ off with that loot. I know he was!”
He stared at Chase, who remained standing by the table. The men stared at each other for a long time in silent conversation. Their eyes grew at once brighter and darker as malicious thoughts stole across their brains.
“Uh-oh,” Lonnie thought, sitting on the edge of his cot. It wasn’t hard to read these two scoundrels’ simple minds.
Both deputies turned their heads to regard Lonnie through the cell’s barred door. He and Dempsey said at the same time, “What about the kid?”
They turned to each other again, and Chase said with quiet menace, “Well, we’re gonna have to keep him good and quiet for a long, long time.”
“How we gonna do that?” Dempsey asked.
Chase glowered at Lonnie through the barred door and loosened his pistol in its holster, caressing the hammer with his thumb. “How else?”
CHAPTER 20
Lonnie stared at Chase’s thumb fondling the hammer of the Colt’s revolver snugged down in the man’s black holster thonged to his right thigh.
Emotion heaved in Lonnie’s tired brain and exhausted body, and he couldn’t stop himself from running up to the door, wrapping both his hands around the bars, and yelling, “You two can’t kill me! You can’t steal the bank money!” He was so flabbergasted that he thought his head would explode.
Chase glared back at him from the table, lips stretched slightly back from his teeth.
Lonnie switched his gaze to Dempsey, who remained in front of the door. Dempsey wore an even more savage and cunning look than Chase. Lonnie remembered something he’d heard Dupree say once about most lawmen being a hair’s breadth from being outlaws and that most had been outlaws at one time and likely would be again.
For some reason, it was the only thing Dupree had ever said that Lonnie had paid much attention to.
The statement had riled Lonnie. He’d wanted to yell at Dupree, “You’d like to think that, but it ain’t true! Lawmen are good men! They’d never break the laws they were sworn to enforce! You just want to believe they would so you can feel better about yourself!”
Now, the boy was glad he hadn’t said that. What a fool he’d have been. He could see in the eyes of these unwashed, sweaty, unshaven lawmen that they were every bit as bad as Dupree. And they’d have no more trouble killing a thirteen-year-old boy than they’d have shooting a chicken-thieving coyote.
Lonnie had been about to lay into Dempsey but he saw now he’d just be wasting his breath. He’d run into lawmen no better than the men who’d stolen the money that his trip to Arapaho Creek had been about returning.
In other words, he’d come to the end of his trail, which was what a friend of his father’s had told Lonnie after his father’s passing of a heart stroke in bed only four years after he’d fought so hard in the War Between the States.
He’d come to the end of his trail …
The idea wasn’t new to Lonnie. He himself had almost died several times in the past day. Still, to be facing the two men who were going to do the dirty deed while he himself was trapped behind bars and helpless, nearly caused him to whiz down his leg. His mouth went dry and his tongue swelled.
He switched his gaze between his two executioners, felt tears well in his eyes, and tried to get control of himself. He wouldn’t break down. He wouldn’t cry. He had enough sand in his hide, young as it was, to not give up that easy.
“You think we oughta do it, Dempsey?” Chase asked, still staring into the cell at Lonnie. He was opening and closing his fists slowly. His eyes were large and round and white-ringed like the General’s when the horse saw a rattler or scented a wildcat on the wind. The big mole had turned black. It appeared to pulsate, like a small heart.
Chase was nervous.
Dempsey sat down at the table and started pawing through the money. “This here’s more money than either you or I will ever see again, Chase. We gonna let one thieving, outlaw brat stand in our way of bein’ rich?”
“I won’t tell,” Lonnie said weakly, still holding onto the bars of the door and staring bleakly, forlornly out. “I won’t tell no one. You can take the money and go. I won’t tell who took it. Besides, they’ll know who took it, anyway, even if I’m not alive to tell ’em!”
“They’ll know when we took it,” Dempsey said. “If we leave tonight, head for Mexico, we’ll have several hours’ head start on a posse.”
“It didn’t help matters that you done just told him where we’re goin’!” Chase chastised his partner in crime, laughing caustically as he turned away from Lonnie and moved to the table.
“Heck,” Lonnie said, “where else would you go? Besides, I’ll keep my mouth shut. If you leave right now, you can be in Arizona by the end of the week! No one will even find me in here until then! Lock the door! I’ll keep quiet!”
“Nah,” Dempsey said, spreading out the pa
ckets of banded bills. He was blinking each eye hard. “My plan is to leave a note, say Dupree came and stole the money from us, and we went after him. That’ll give us several days’ head start. Folks might think the story’s a might fishy, but they won’t inform the marshal over in Camp Collins for several days, after we don’t return. Hell, we’ll probably be across the border by then.”
Chase sat down across from Dempsey, chuckling. “Sorry, kid. I reckon there’s no other way.”
Anger burned in Lonnie. He squeezed the bars, trying to twist them. “You two ever killed a kid before? A thirteen-yearold boy with his whole life ahead of him? You really think you got the spleen to do somethin’ that mean and low-down and just plain nasty? Why, every time you spend a penny of that there money, you’re gonna remember the kid you killed so’s you could make a clean break with it!”
“Shut up, kid,” Dempsey growled, blinking. “Or I’ll shoot you right now, tell anyone who asks that you were tryin’ to escape.”
Chase was counting the bills but paused to say, “And no one’ll shed a tear. Not for the thievin’ brat of a woman who took up with a curly wolf like Shannon Dupree.”
Then he went back to counting.
Lonnie watched them for a time, stricken. Distantly, he heard them say they’d ride out at midnight, after the rest of the town had gone to bed. They’d take Lonnie out of town, shoot him, and toss him into a deep ravine where the wolves would pick his young bones clean.
Feeling choked as though by a hangman’s noose, Lonnie backed up to the cot and sagged down on top of it, helpless. His only chance, he figured, was to try and make a break for it when they opened the cell door. It was a long shot but probably the only shot he’d get.
He was younger than they and fast on his feet. General Sherman was still outside. If Lonnie could get onto his horse, he’d point the General in the direction of the far hills, slap the spurs to him, and never return to the cesspool that was Arapaho Creek ever again.
A long shot, but it was the only chance he had …
There was a cuckoo clock on the otherwise unadorned stone wall over Stoveville’s desk. At the top of each hour, a blue-headed yellow bird stepped out onto the door that opened for it, and chirped once with tooth-gnashing shrillness for each hour of the day.
The deputies must have been accustomed to the bird. They didn’t seem to mind it chirping like that, like a door on rusty hinges being opened quickly several times in a row. Or maybe they were too immersed in the poker game they’d started playing with their newfound wealth after they’d finished counting the money and finding they were now each worth a little over thirty thousand dollars apiece.
They sat back in their chairs, playing poker and grinning and taking pulls from the bottle they’d hauled out of Stoveville’s desk, and smoked cigars they’d found in the desk, as well. While they played, they talked over their plans for a life of leisure down in Mexico. Sometimes they sang or whistled absently or told a dirty joke while they puffed their cigars and threw back the whiskey. Occasionally, they chuckled in anticipation of midnight, when, rich men, they’d ride on out of Arapaho Creek forever.
After they’d silence the kid, of course.
CHAPTER 21
Lonnie got so that he hated the cuckoo bird so much he’d have shot it off its perch if he’d had his rifle.
Of course, it wasn’t just the bird making him nervous as a cat in an attic full of rocking chairs. He was going to die tonight, sometime after midnight, and no one would ever know how it had happened or why, and they’d never find a body to take home to his ma for burial.
His ma …
He wondered what had happened when Dupree had discovered his money gone.
Dupree …
Where were Dupree and “the boys,” anyway? Lonnie almost wouldn’t have minded seeing the outlaw. At least, Dupree would throw a wrench into the lawmen’s plans for the boy, though Dupree’s intentions for Lonnie likely wouldn’t be any rosier than those of Deputies Dempsey and Chase.
At the last chirp of midnight, Lonnie’s heart stopped beating. At least, it felt like it stopped. Then, as Chase and Dempsey shoved all the money back into the saddlebags, and Dempsey headed out to fetch a couple of horses from a livery barn, Lonnie’s heart turned two hard somersaults.
He looked at the small window high in the cell’s back wall. He was compelled to jump up and start screaming for help through the window, but he doubted anyone would hear through the small opening and from behind the thick stone walls.
Besides, Chase, who was finishing shoving some gear into a war bag for the trail ahead, would likely make good on his promise to shoot Lonnie right here and tell anyone who cared to ask that the outlaw boy had been trying to make a break for it.
Make a break for it …
Lonnie sat on the edge of the cot, waiting. He looked at the jailhouse’s main door. As soon as either deputy opened the cell door, Lonnie would turn himself into a human arrow flying toward that outside door and freedom waiting beyond.
And, ten minutes later, that’s what he did.
When Dempsey opened the cell door, Lonnie bounded off his heels and threw himself straight at Dempsey. But the last thing he saw before everything went black was Dempsey’s smiling face and the cell door slamming toward Lonnie’s head.
The next thing Lonnie knew, he was watching a night-dark trail slide past his outstretched fingers. His stomach and ribs ached, as though a giant were sitting on his hips. His head ached as though he’d been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer. Blinking and shaking away the cobwebs that had grown up thick as gypsum weed inside his head, he saw that what was crushing his guts against his spine was his own saddle.
Dempsey and Chase had thrown Lonnie belly-down across the General’s back, and he was riding with his head hanging down the buckskin’s right side while his legs and boots dangled down the General’s left side. Ropes were tied around his wrists. The ropes stretched beneath the General’s belly, and, while Lonnie couldn’t see his ankles from his unfortunate position, he could feel that they were tied.
Tied to his wrists beneath the buckskin’s belly.
He was being hauled through the night like a tied-down load of freight.
A load of human freight that would soon be nothing more than a midnight snack for the carrion eaters …
He turned his face to stare ahead along the trail. He could see the rumps of two horses and two jostling tails about ten yards beyond. It was a dark night but there was enough light from the stars that he could see that Dempsey was leading the General by the bridle reins. The two men rode slowly along the trail, their horses’ hooves thumping dully in the well-churned dust.
Around Lonnie were dark pines reaching toward the stars. He could feel the cool, high-country air ensconcing him, making him shiver, and smell the tang of pine resin.
Vaguely, he wondered where they were. They seemed to be climbing, probably toward a southern pass. Soon the men would stop and do away with Lonnie. They were likely waiting until they were far enough from Arapaho Creek that no one in town would hear the shot, and remote enough that no one would ever find Lonnie’s body.
No one but the wolves that stalked this stretch of the Never Summers.
Lonnie rode, wincing with each jarring step of his horse. He felt as though his spine was going to saw into his belly from the back side, and as though the jostling of the ride was going to pound the boy’s brains to such pulp inside his skull that they’d ooze out his ears.
Finally, mercifully, the General stopped.
The misery in Lonnie’s belly and head tapered off a little.
Then, not so mercifully, Chase climbed down from his horse and walked back to where Lonnie’s head hung down the General’s side.
“Sorry, junior,” the deputy-turned-outlaw said, “but you’ve come to the end of your trail.”
He took out a big knife and sawed through the ropes.
CHAPTER 22
When the ropes fell away from Lonnie’s wrists and
ankles, his first thought was to slide off his horse and to run as fast as he could. But before he could start to work himself off the General’s back, he was “helped” down by Dempsey from behind.
The deputy dug his hand into the waistband of Lonnie’s denim trousers, and gave a wicked pull. The boy grunted loudly as he fell from the horse like a fifty-pound sack of chicken feed. He hit the ground on his spurs and fell on his butt only to be picked up again by his collar, and thrust off the trail and away from the horses. He was so weak from his run-in with the cell door that he dropped to his knees, his head pounding.
Fear had covered him from head to toe with cold sweat.
He looked around.
They were in a clearing ringed with the arrow shapes of pine tops silhouetted against the starry sky. The quarter moon was climbing, offering wan light below the level of the trees but beginning to dim the stars. A flame-shaped mountain was silhouetted against the moon’s violent glow, straight ahead of Lonnie.
The air was cool enough up here that Lonnie could see his breath. The chill didn’t stop him from sweating. It just made the perspiration colder as it dripped down from between his shoulder blades to cause his shirt to cling to his lower back.
He thought he could see a cabin about a hundred yards ahead and on his right. The moonlight touched its flat roof. Abandoned, no doubt. For some reason it made this clearing feel all the emptier, lonelier. A wolf’s howl emanating from somewhere on that black, velvet, flame-shaped mountain added menace to the emptiness and loneliness.
So this was where he would take his last breath. He’d wondered about his end on cold winter nights when he hadn’t had enough work the previous day to tire him out. So, here it was.
From behind he could hear boots crunching grass and sage branches raking trouser cuffs. Chase’s voice said in a drunken slur, “Get up, kid. Move out there a ways.”
“What’s the matter, Chase?” Dempsey said, also dragging his words though not as badly as Chase. His tone was slightly mocking. “Don’t want him to be too close when you put a bullet in him?”
Lonnie Gentry Page 8