Day of Reckoning

by William W. Johnstone

  Nervously, the teller began to reply, emptying his drawer in just a few seconds.

  “This is all there is,” the teller said, holding the bag back toward Callahan.

  “That’s all you have in the cash drawer,” Callahan said with a smile. “And you did that very well. Now, I’ll be asking you to give us everything you have in the vault.”

  “I can’t do that,” the teller said.

  “I can see the vault,” O’Leary called over from his position at the end of the counter. “The vault door is open.”

  “Oh, well, that means you can do it,” Callahan said.

  “No, you don’t understand. I’m just the teller, I don’t have the authorization to take any money from the vault. Only Mr. Matthews can do that.”

  “That’s all right,” Callahan replied easily. “We don’t really need you. Since the door to the vault is open, we can just kill you and help ourselves.”

  “No!” the teller shouted quickly. He reached for the cloth sack. “Give me the sack, I’ll fill it.”

  “I thought you might see things my way,” Callahan replied with an evil smile.

  The teller began taking bound packets of money from a shelf in the vault and dropping them into the sack. A moment later he returned with the sack full and handed it to Callahan.

  “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Callahan said with an evil smile.

  “All right, men, let’s go.”

  The teller, who now had his hands up, watched as the four men did a strange thing. They fired their guns into all four corners of the bank, though there was nothing there for them to shoot at. They also shot toward the vault, and the bullets whined as they ricocheted off the heavy steel door.

  Leaving the bank, the four men mounted the horses Manning was holding for them, then they rode out of town, firing their pistols to either side of the street, forcing those who were outside to flee into or around the corners of the buildings.

  The people were so shocked by the sight of five men galloping down the street and firing their pistols indiscriminately, that not one of the armed citizens of the town thought to shoot back.

  “What ranch did them crazy cowboys come from?” someone asked angrily, as the five men, now beyond the town limits, galloped away. “Somebody needs to talk to the boss of those fools.”

  “Help!” someone shouted, running out to the street in front of the bank.

  “See here, ain’t that Rick Adams?” someone asked.

  “Help!” Adams shouted again.

  “What is it he’s a-yellin’ about?”

  “Help!” Adams shouted again. “The bank has been robbed!”

  * * *

  The five outlaws left Centennial with no one in pursuit. Riding south, they reached the Little Laramie River, then turning west, they followed the river valley into the Medicine Bow Mountains. Once they were well into the valley, Callahan called for a stop.

  The men dismounted, and the horses moved to the river for water.

  “All right, let’s see how we did,” Callahan said, dumping the money from the cloth bag. As the others watched, eagerly, he began counting. It took less than a minute, but the results were rewarding, more rewarding than any previous job had been.

  “Five thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars,” Callahan said with a wide smile.

  “Hey, that’s pretty good!” Cooper said. “That’s more’n a thousand dollars apiece for each of us!”

  “Yeah, well, you wait until we hit the bank in Cheyenne,” Callahan said. “We’ll be rich enough to open our own bank.”

  “No, I don’t want to do that. What if somebody like us was to come along ’n rob us?” Manning asked.

  The others laughed.

  “When we goin’ to do it?” Cooper asked.

  “It’s up to Red here, he’s the one that’s been studyin’ it.”

  “Not the next Wednesday, but Wednesday week from now,” O’Leary replied.

  “Why then?” Manning asked.

  “On account of that’s the second Wednesday of the month, ’n it’s always the second Wednesday whenever the railroad brings in all the money that they need for paying folks and buyin’ things. It ain’t never less than a hunnert thousand, ’n lots of times it’s over two hunnert thousand.”

  “Damn!” Cooper said. “I can’t hardly wait!”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Medicine Bow

  Duff finished playing the pipes, as Ina Claire drummed, and they both acknowledged the crowd’s applause.

  “And now, ladies ’n gentlemen, ye are about to see an act so dangerous that ye will marvel at the courage of the young lady who will be putting her life on the line, ’n the steadiness of the young man who will be demonstrating his skill. Ladies, if ye be a bit frightened by the sight of danger, it might be best for ye to shut your eyes until the demonstration is completed.”

  Elmer brought out a large, wooden square, about seven feet high and four feet wide. The two-by-six boards that made up the square were painted gray, but there was a red outline drawn onto the board, the outline done in the curves of a woman’s body.

  When the board was in place, beside the wagon, Meagan, Ina Claire, and Wang Chow stepped out. With a smile toward the audience, whose faces reflected their curiosity, Meagan backed up against the board, positioning herself inside the red outline.

  Meagan and Ina Claire were both wearing their “show dresses,” which were cut and designed to show off their svelte figures. Wang was wearing wide, white silk trousers, and a white silk blouse with a long tail.

  Ina Claire was holding a golden bucket and she and Wang stepped off a distance of about forty feet from Meagan. Ina Claire reached into the bucket, pulled out a knife, and handed it to Wang.

  “What’s he a-plannin’ on doin’ with that Arkansas toothpick?” someone asked.

  With a quick flip of his wrist, the knife flew from Wang’s hand and stuck in the board, very close to Meagan.

  The audience gasped as they witnessed the first throw, and a few shouted out loud.

  Wang tossed a second knife.

  “I can’t watch this!” a woman in the crowd said. “He can’t miss her every time!”

  Wang continued to throw the knives, and the crowd eventually stopped gasping and just watched in fascinated silence until the last knife was thrown.

  “Now, Miss Meagan, ’n would ye be for steppin’ away from the board and take your bow, now?” Duff called down from the lowered tailgate.

  Meagan stepped away, and when she did so the people in the crowd gasped again, but this time in wonder. The red outline on the board was now augmented with the addition of fourteen knives, each knife perfectly placed, not only on the outline but within the red line itself.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the honorable Wang Chow, who as priest of the Shaolin temple was a personal bodyguard to the Quing emperor.”

  Wang made a perfunctory bow to the crowd, who returned a generous applause.

  As a result of the new addition to the show the crowds grew much larger, and in a town like Medicine Bow, which was one of the larger of the railroad towns, they drew two hundred people, the biggest crowd since they had begun doing the shows.

  “Aren’t you scared when Mr. Wang throws all those knives at you?” Ina Claire asked Meagan. It was night, and they were camped halfway between Medicine Bow and Carbon, which would be their next stop.

  “No,” Meagan said. “I know how skilled Wang is, and I know if he had to err, he would err on the side of my safety.”

  “Err?” Elmer asked. “Does that mean make a mistake?” take?”

  “Yes.”

  Elmer chuckled. “You don’t have to worry none about that,” he said. “Wang don’t make no mistakes, never.”

  Meagan smiled at Elmer’s grammar. “Well, that’s good to know,” she said.

  “I oncet knowed me a feller, an able-bodied seaman he was, on board the Sara Sue. He fancied hisself to be real good at throwin
’ a knife. And he was right good with a knife, too, but he warn’t nowhere near as good as Wang is.”

  “What’s the Sara Sue?” Ina Claire asked.

  “The Sara Sue was a ship, darlin’, a clipper ship, and the finest ever to sail the seven seas. Why, I was on board her when she sailed from San Francisco to Singapore in only forty-two days.”

  “My, that must have been fun.”

  “Tyin’ yourself to the mizzen mast so’s that you don’t blow over in a typhoon ain’t exactly what I would call fun, but it was interestin’.”

  “And it has given you stories to tell,” Meagan said. “Vi says you have told her a lot of the most wonderful stories.”

  Vi Winslow was a widow who owned Vi’s Pies, and she and Elmer often “kept company.”

  “Ahh, don’t listen to ever’thing Vi tells you,” Elmer said. “Sometimes she kinda stretches the stories out some.”

  “Ha, that’s funny,” Meagan said. “That’s exactly what I told her about you.”

  The others laughed.

  “Say, Duff, how long are we goin’ to stick with this medicine show thing before we start out after Callahan ’n his bunch?” Elmer asked.

  Duff was holding a long stick that he used to poke into the fire.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I have to confess that it’s nae working out like I hoped it would. I’m about ready to drop this whole idea ’n try something else.”

  * * *

  When they rolled into Carbon the next day Duff went to see the deputy sheriff as soon as they arrived in town.

  “Yeah? What can I do for you?” the deputy asked.

  “’Tis hoping I am that ye can do a lot for me, Deputy,” Duff said. This time, rather than using the ruse of acquiring a permit to put on a show, Duff was straight with him.

  “The name is MacCallister,” he started, but before he could get any further, the deputy interrupted him.

  “MacCallister? Would you be Falcon MacCallister? What are you doing in Wyoming? I thought your territory was Colorado.”

  “Och, so ye’ve heard of my cousin, Falcon, have ye?”

  “Your cousin, is it? Well, Mr. MacCallister, from all I’ve heard, your cousin, Falcon MacCallister, is one hell of a man. If you’re one-half of the man he is, you’ll be somethin’ to behold. Stiles is the name, Deputy Morgan Stiles. So, I’ll ask you again, what can I do for you?”

  Duff took the governor’s commission papers from his pocket. “As ye can see by this document, Deputy, Governor Hoyt has commissioned me ’n four o’ my friends as special state officers.”

  Duff didn’t tell the deputy that two of his group were female, nor did he say that, technically, Elmer and Wang had not actually been commissioned by the governor. Duff had just assumed the right to deputize them, figuring he could take it up with the governor later if it ever became a question.

  “We’re looking for four men; Clay Callahan, Zeke Manning, Dooley Cooper, and Pogue Morris.”

  Stiles nodded. “Yes, I can see why the governor is after them, seeing as two of them, Callahan and Manning, escaped hanging. And of course, from all the information I’ve been getting, they’ve been running roughshod ever since. They even picked up three more men recently. It was seven of ’em that held up a stagecoach not too long ago.”

  “Aye, but three of the seven have since been killed,” Duff said. “There’s only the original four again, and they wrecked a train, killing the engineer and some of the passengers.”

  “That was them, huh? Well, I heard about the train robbery, only it turned out not to be a robbery. From ever’thing I have heard, they didn’t get nothin’ from the holdup.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I reckon you’ll be wantin’ to know what the latest information I’ve got on ’em is,” Stiles said, “but you already know that, bein’ as it is about the train robbery. I ain’t heard nothin’ else on ’em since.”

  “All right, Deputy, I do thank you for your time,” Duff said.

  * * *

  After doing their show in Carbon, Duff decided to head back east. To that end he booked passage on the train, not only for them and their horses, but also for the mules and the medicine wagon. Several days earlier, Duff, Meagan, and Ina Claire had done a show in Laramie, but when they returned to Laramie today, they were neither in the wagon nor in costume, and as a result, nobody made the connection between those who rode into town today and the people who had presented the show. It also helped that Elmer and Wang were with them now, and they had not been with them before.

  Off-loading the wagon, they stored it on the depot grounds and boarded the mules in the livery.

  “Have we given up the medicine show?” Meagan asked.

  “Aye, for now at least,” Duff said. “I think we can cover more ground on horseback than driving the wagon.”

  “I liked the wagon,” Ina Claire said. “I thought it was fun.”

  “I did, too,” Meagan said. “But what I really liked was seeing Duff in his costume.”

  “Och, woman, dinnae ye be bedeviling me so,” Duff said, but his smile softened his words.

  “Well now, ’n would ye be for looking at this paper?” Duff suggested, holding up a copy of the Laramie Boomerang.

  “What is it?”

  “I believe it may be a story about the brigands we are chasing,” Duff replied. “If it is, they did a little better this time.”

  BANK ROBBERY IN CENTENNIAL

  Word has come to the Boomerang that on six days previous, the Centennial Bank was robbed. The exact amount hasn’t been disclosed, but it is believed that the five outlaws got away with a little over six thousand dollars.

  No one was killed or wounded in the robbery, but it is reported that the robbers did a very strange thing before they departed.

  Though there were no security guards in the bank, and indeed only the teller, Rick Adams, was present, the robbers fired their guns into every corner of the bank before they departed with their ill-gotten gains.

  “This can’t be them,” Meagan said. “According to this newspaper article, there were five of them.”

  “They picked up another man,” Duff said.

  “What makes you think it’s them? There are no descriptions of any of them,” Ina Claire asked.

  “Because I feel it,” Duff replied.

  Meagan chuckled. “You feel it?”

  “Aye. ’Tis hoping I am that ye be ready for a bit of a ride, for I think we should go to Centennial and visit with Mr. Adams, and anyone else who can give some useful information.”

  “I’m ready!” Ina Claire said enthusiastically.

  “Child, I think you were born ready,” Meagan said with a little laugh.

  That night they camped on the Little Laramie River.

  “Duff, before it gets dark, I would like to take a bath,” Meagan said.

  “Yes,” Ina Claire said. “Me too!”

  “All right,” Duff agreed. “Elmer, Wang, and I will act as sentinels to ensure your privacy.”

  Half an hour later the two came back from the river, scrubbed and in clean clothes. They had also washed the clothes they had been wearing.

  “I don’t know how we are going to dry these,” Meagan said, “but they were getting so dirty they just had to be washed.”

  “I can dry them,” Wang said.

  “How?”

  Wang walked away from the others and began moving among the trees and low-lying shrubs, occasionally leaning over to cut something with his knife. A few minutes later he returned and constructed a wooden frame alongside the campfire. Then he took the trousers and shirts Meagan and Ina Claire had washed, and spread them out on the frame.

  “They will be dry by tomorrow,” he said.

  As Wang had promised, the clothes were dry the next morning.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  When the five of them rode into Centennial the next morning, there was a noticeable unease at their presence.

  “Damn, here they are a
gain!” someone said.

  “Now it ain’t. One of these is a Chinaman, ’n two of ’em is women.”

  For a moment Duff was confused by the comment, then he remembered that it was five riders who had come into town to rob the bank, and in a town this small it was probably rare for as many as five riders to come in at the same time. It was just a coincidence that the numbers matched.

  It was nearly lunchtime, so they stopped in front of a red-painted building that had a sign in front reading LITTLE MAN’S RESTAURANT.

  There weren’t more than half a dozen customers in the restaurant, and they looked up as Duff and the others entered. Their faces reflected the same curiosity and concern that Duff had seen out on the street.

  A man wearing an apron approached them. He was somewhat rotund and quite short, shorter even than Ina Claire. Duff was sure this must be Little Man.

  Little Man’s approach was cautious, and his face reflected his disquiet until he was close enough to ascertain that two of his new customers were women, then a smile spread across his face. It was also then that he noticed one of his new customers was Chinese, and he blinked in surprise but the smile didn’t fade.

  “’Tis my hope that ye’ll be having nae trouble in serving us,” Duff said.

  “Trouble?” Little Man replied. “Oh, you mean because one of you is a celestial? No, if he can eat American food, I got no trouble.”

  Wang, who very rarely showed a change of expression, smiled.

  “I can eat American food,” he said.

  “How come you didn’t ask Duff if he can eat American food? He ain’t no American, neither, bein’ as he’s Scotsman, which you’ll figger out if you listen to him talk some. I’m the only one who is American,” Elmer said.

  “You are the only one who is American?” Meagan asked. “So tell me, Elmer, is it your belief that Ina Claire and I are French?”

  “No, you ain’t French ’n there ain’t nobody a-said that you was, only the thing is, you ’n Ina Claire is both women,” Elmer replied.

  “See there, Ina Clair, that’s the second time someone has said that we are women. I’m beginning to believe that perhaps we really are women.”