The Bank Robber

by Robert Broomall

  Funny how it had turned out for Sarah, Swede thought. She lived in town now, but she still never knew whether her husband was alive or dead. Kirby had come back from the war a different man.

  Rosie spoke, interrupting Swede’s thoughts. “So you and this Kirby fella been enemies ever since, huh?”

  “Not exactly. We was a bit stand-offish for a while, but it didn’t last. Hell, Sarah was right—she was better off with a fella like Kirby. I saw that after I cooled down.”

  Swede looked at the sunburned girl. “Any men in your life?”

  “Nah, I guess not. A lot of men, but none of ’em I really liked. Pretty sad, huh?”

  “Not even this Frank Morgan?”

  Rosie snorted. “Certainly not Frank Morgan. Frank was a thug, but I knew that; he robbed me, and I knew that, too. He took me in, though, and he put a roof over my head. He gave me secure work—or as secure as whorin’ gets—and he didn’t beat me much. I guess me and Frank came out about even.”

  They pushed on. The trail wound through the hills. Dancer’s hooves beat a monotonous rhythm on the rocky ground. The black horse was slowing down. He could go without food, but lack of water and rest were getting to him in this heat— and so was the extra weight he carried. The situation was frustrating, because there was nothing Swede could do about it.

  The girl was talking again. “Don’t it bother you, stealing money like you do?”

  Swede was about talked out. “Don’t it bother you, bein’ a whore?’ ’

  “No,” she shot back. "It don’t. My work don’t hurt nobody.”

  “Well, my work only hurts the Southwest Texas Railroad,” Swede corrected grimly.

  “It also hurts a lot of innocent people. Old people who lose their life savings, businessmen, and fanners with kids. Don’t you see that?”

  “Lady, you sure ask a lot of questions.”

  “What would happen if you gave yourself up?”

  Swede yanked Dancer’s reins and began walking faster. “I can’t give up. I murdered a man—probably two, counting yesterday. If I’m caught, I’ll hang. I’ve got to play my hand to the end.”

  15

  The posse entered the hills, and its members became more separated, their view of each other blocked by jagged rocks and thickets of spiny grease wood. The men were hunched in their saddles, their eyes half shut from the heat. They smelled the dust and their horses and their own sweaty bodies. Their mounts were blowing and lathered, and several had begun to limp.

  Still leading the spare horses, the cowboy Spud rode to the head of the column. He drew alongside Kirby. “You’ve about half killed the horses we’re riding, Kirby. They can’t take much more.”

  “I know,” Kirby said. He looked ahead. “George, how are we doing?”

  “Gaining,” the black man said without turning. “Gaining slow, but gaining.”

  Kirby looked at the sun, which was directly overhead, then he looked around him. There was no water, but there was reasonable shade. He turned and held up his hand, halting what he could see of the column. “All right, we’ll take our dinner break here. Then we’ll change to the fresh horses.”

  “Thank God,” groaned Brazos to Harry. The two youths dismounted and stretched their aching backs and legs. Brazos regarded the dark-haired town boy in a conciliatory manner. “You kept up good, Harry. You’ll do to ride the river with.”

  “Why, thanks,” Harry said, immensely flattered.

  The five men unsaddled and picketed their mounts in the shade. Harry’s friends were not yet in sight, so he sat with the two cowboys. He sighed with pleasure—it felt so good to be off that horse.

  Brazos tilted his canteen into his mouth and drank deeply. “Damn! Damn, that’s good.” He drank again, then poured water over his neck and the back of his head. “Don’t see how Swede’s making it without water bags.”

  Unscrewing his own canteen. Spud shook his grizzled head. “He’s a tough bird, that’s for sure—fourteen horses shot from under him during the war. They say when he drove on old Mail Route Number One, back in the forties, he used to make campfires out of Comanche arrows stuck in the coach.”

  “How did he lose his rank in the war?” Harry asked, remembering what Kirby had told him.

  Brazos hooted. “You never heard that story? Hell, boy, don’t you know nothin’ about Swede Burdette? He got drunk and told off some sonofabitch gen’ral that got his regiment wiped out—challenged the sonofabitch to a duel. The gen’ral wanted Swede shot, but the court-martial let him off with loss of rank, on account of he was such a hero.” Brazos looked proud of his knowledge, as he dug lunch out of his morral .

  “That ain’t all of it,” Spud added. “Kirby was Swede’s defense officer. It was Kirby persuaded that court not to shoot Swede.”

  While the cowboys fell to their meager fare of salt pork and sourdough biscuits, Harry unwrapped the package his mother had made for him. Inside were several kinds of cheeses, a blood sausage with big pieces of fat, and some homemade bread. The package was wet and stained, the cheeses had run, and the sausage fat was melting in the ovenlike heat.

  “Want some?” said Harry, indicating his large spread. “I can’t eat all this.”

  Spud and Brazos looked at the food, then at each other. “Yeah, sure,” Brazos said at last. “Thanks.”

  Harry sliced the blood sausage and cheeses and handed them out. “These come from my mother’s restaurant—the Italian Gardens. Have you ever been there?”

  “Don’t go to Eye-talian restaurants much,” drawled Spud, who was managing the difficult task of eating with tobacco in his mouth. “When I get into Temperance, I usually eat over to Miller’s Steak House.”

  “What about the Lone Star Saloon?” asked Brazos, and the two cowboys laughed knowingly.

  Harry knew where these notorious establishments were. He had even been by them from time to time, but he was not allowed inside.

  “How long you been out west?” Spud asked.

  “Oh, for years now—since I was a little kid. I hardly remember the east anymore. My father and two of my brothers died in a typhus plague, and Momma swore we had to get out of Philadelphia. She said the air would be better out west. All she knew was how to cook, so she started the restaurant. I love it out here. It’s so beautiful, and there’s so much to do—when I’m not working at the restaurant, of course.”

  After some hesitation, Brazos bit into the blood sausage. He chewed, forcing a smile, while Spud said, “You come out on one of them big wagon trains?”

  Harry nodded. “It was disappointing. We didn’t see any Indians at all.”

  “Look at him,” Brazos said. With a crook of his head, he indicated Kirby, who sat in the shade of a rock. Kirby had poured some water in a mess tin, and he was shaving by the reflection of a hand mirror. “Don’t he ever get tired?”

  “He ain’t changed,” Spud opined. “Allows hisself one cheroot a day and don’t drink hardly at all. When I rode with him before, he never slept. You’d come off guard and he’d be awake, just starin’ into the night. I heard he was like that in the war, too.”

  “It’s like he ain’t human,” Brazos said, wiping sausage grease on his chaps. “Like he lives on hate, ’stead of food.”

  “They say he’s good with his kids, though. Hard to figure, ain’t it?”

  Clopping hooves sounded on the trail. The burly Silas and the bearded young Anton appeared, looking beat. They were followed by Canada with the packhorses. The three men unsaddled their mounts and collapsed in a relieved group. “Tell you what,” Silas said. “I am whipped.”

  Anton lay on his back. “Heavenly God, it is hot.”

  Canada’s head still hammered with his hangover. He hadn’t gone this long without a drink in years. Even in this painful state, his little eyes were constantly moving, watching, seeming to have a life of their own. He dug a filthy jar from his saddlebags and stood up.

  Silas had begun rolling a cigarette. “What you doing with the goose grease, C
anada?”

  The gap-toothed man unbuttoned his wool trousers and let them drop. “I’m gonna rub it on my ass. These saddle blisters are killing me.”

  Silas and Anton laughed weakly.

  The lawyer, Simpkin, and Karl Reichardt reached the temporary camp last. Harry helped them with their horses. While Karl wearily spread a checkered cloth, Simpkin set out tins of beef and chicken, and the two men ate.

  “In my opinion, Kirby has made a botch of this expedition,” said Mr. Simpkin, dabbing his thin lips with a napkin. “We definitely should have brought the dogs.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Harry, who was hanging around hoping to get some of Mrs. Reichardt’s apple stollen. “Black George seems like a good tracker.”

  Karl shook his close-cropped head emphatically. “I agree with Mr. Simpkin. Dogs would have been more proper.”

  “More sporting,” Simpkin said.

  “Ja . The prince of Neheim-Husten would never employ Negroes on a hunt.”

  “All right—move out!” Kirby was on his feet, gathering his gear. “Take your new horses.”

  “What!” exploded Simpkin, and a chorus of groans rose behind him.

  “We have not finished eating,” Karl cried.

  The other members of the posse rose, cursing and grumbling. “Hurry,” Harry said to his friends. “They’ll leave without you.”

  “Mr. Kirby, this is not fair,” Karl implored, putting on his pith helmet. “Do not Mr. Simpkin and myself deserve a rest of our own? Is it our fault that our horses are slower than the others?”

  Simpkin advanced, wagging a bony finger. “Kirby, I hope you’re not trying to trick us out of the reward money by saying that we fell too far behind. Because if you are, I can assure you that—”

  “Keep up or don’t, Mr. Simpkin,” Kirby said. “It’s your choice. Brazos—you bring the packhorses.”

  Kirby carried his saddle and bridle to the horse lines. Behind him, Simpkin sputtered, while Harry helped Karl fold the tablecloth with the food still inside it.

  Karl stuffed the tablecloth in his saddlebag, and Harry ran to the horses. He took a sorrel mare with a long, patient face and threw his rented saddle on. He found himself next to Kirby, and he spoke admiringly. “You sure must hate Swede Burdette, Mr. Kirby—to go after him like this.”

  Kirby tightened his saddle girths and let down his stirrup. He turned and looked at the dark-haired youth. “I don’t hate Swede. I hate what he’s become. I don’t like this, you know. I’d rather be home with my family.”

  Kirby mounted, and Harry stared after him, wondering if the lawman really meant what he had said.

  The deputy, Silas, led his new horse out, amid the dust and the buzzing flies and a thirst that could not be satisfied. He was hot and tired and out of sorts, and his mutilated ear ached as it always did when he was thinking this hard. Silas had not come on the posse solely for the reward. Once Burdette was dead, he had it in the back of his mind to grab the bank’s money for himself and escape with it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d operated on the wrong side of the law, and if he was any judge, the loot from Westland would set him up comfortably for some years. It would have been simple without Kirby around. Now he needed a way to get the money while avoiding a gun battle with the well-known Texas Ranger and ex-colonel of cavalry.

  Near Silas, Karl Reichardt was having trouble making his horse move. He coaxed the animal, pulled on the reins, and smacked the horse’s rump, but the shaggy cow pony ignored him.

  “Out of the way.” It was Spud, uncoiling a rope. He looped the rope round the horse’s forelegs, then jerked the animal to the ground and began lashing him with a cattle whip. The horse struggled, raising a cloud of dust; then he lay still, whinnying softly. The whip crack sounded through the camp.

  Spud loosened the rope and let the horse get to its feet. He handed the reins to Karl. “He won’t give you no more trouble.”

  While Spud calmly coiled the rope, Harry Ferrante rushed over to him. “How could you do such a cruel thing? That poor horse.”

  “That’s a four-dollar potro , son. He’s a piece of equipment; he ain’t no pet. That’s how you make him work. Hell, I’ve knowed horses got beat like that near every day of their lives—which proved to be mighty short.”

  Coming from the horse lines, Black George was watching this little drama, looking over his shoulder, not paying attention to where he was going. He passed Silas, and it may have been the deputy’s out-of-sorts feeling that caused him to swing out his foot and trip the braided scout, sending him headlong into the dust.

  Silas led his horse away, laughing. “Look out, nigger.”

  In a trice, Silas found himself on his back, with George’s left arm around his neck and the tracker’s razor-sharp bowie knife across his throat. The black man’s lips were drawn back, his eyes ablaze. “Apologize, mister.”

  Men crowded around. “Let him up, George! Come on, George, he didn’t mean nothing!” Somebody grabbed the untended horses, lest they trample the men on the ground.

  George pressed the knife blade into Silas’s fleshy throat. The deputy’s heels scrabbled furiously at the ground, but George held him tight. “I said, apologize!"

  Sweat rolled down Silas’s face. George pressed the blade deeper, drawing a trickle of blood.

  “All right!” Silas gasped. “All right. I’m sorry! For God’s sake, don’t kill me! It was just a joke!”

  George let go of Silas and dropped him to the ground, hard. He stood and sheathed his bowie knife. “Don’t you ever touch me—don’t you ever talk to me—again.” The corner of George’s mouth curled in an arrogant smile. He looked once at Kirby, then retrieved his horse and moved off.

  Silas lay on the ground, catching his breath, feeling the blood drain from his head. Kirby rode over and looked at him without emotion. “Next time I’ll let him finish the job.”

  Kirby rode out of camp after George, followed by Harry and the two cowboys with the extra horses. Mr. Simpkin and Karl Reichardt hurried after.

  Silas climbed shakily to his feet, assisted by Anton, who handed the deputy his bowler hat. Looking outraged, bullet¬headed Canada held Silas’s horse.

  Silas hawked phlegm and touched his neck gingerly. “That tears it. That nigger ain’t coming back from this posse.” “Yeah,” said Canada. “But what are we gonna do with him? We need a plan.”

  “I got a plan.” Silas told him. He staunched the blood with his dirty handkerchief. “Are you with me?”

  Canada nodded. Silas turned to the stocky young foundry worker. “What about you, Polish?”

  Anton had never expected anything like this. “I ... I do not . . .”

  “Are you or ain’t you?”

  “Please, you do not understand. It is not so easy for me. I am in this country illegally. In my home, in Poland, I am wanted by the Russians as a—how do you say?—a revolutionary. A Russian policeman was . . . was killed. If I should get into trouble here, I could be deported by the—”

  “Look,” said Silas. “You need the money off this posse, don’t you?”

  “Y-yes,” Anton admitted.

  “Well, you ain’t never gonna see it long as this nigger’s with us. Anybody can scout better’n him—I wouldn’t be surprised if he was helping Burdette.”

  “With him out of the way, there’ll be more reward money for the rest of us,” Canada added.

  “Now are you with us or not?” said Silas.

  Anton hesitated. Fifty dollars meant a lot to him. He had two children, he was deeply in debt, and his wife Sofia was pregnant again. Besides, these men had befriended him, when few other Americans would. “Yes,” he said at last. “Tell me what it is I must do.”

  16

  They were both walking now. Rosie swung her arms manfully as she strode alongside Swede. She could not see how he found the trail through the rocks, the tufts of coarse grass and withered bushes. This arid wilderness all looked the same to her—one hill after another. The thick b
rush tore her skirt, and her legs were bleeding. She wished she had leather leggings, or whatever they called them, like Swede’s.

  The trail took a steep dip. They half crawled, half slid down, with Dancer following in a shower of stones and pebbles. They reached the bottom at a run. Rosie twisted her ankle on a rock and stumbled.

  “Ow!”

  Swede did not stop. Rosie hobbled along after him, grimacing. “Goddamned high-heeled shoes. Why didn’t somebody tell me I’d be walking to Arizona? Hell, I ain’t even going to Arizona. No, I gotta meet some bank robber must have all of a hundred dollars reward on him—”

  “Five hundred and fifty,” Swede said, turning indignantly.

  “—and he’s dragging me off to Mexico. What the hell am I going to do in Mexico?” She shrugged. “Do the same thing I always done, I guess. I just hope Mexican money’s easy to work with—I ain’t much for making change.”

  Swede grinned at that. As she caught up with him, he said, “What does it feel like?”

  “What does what feel like?”

  “You know. Whorin’.”

  “Don’t feel like much of nothing. You try not to think about it. It’s a job. ’Course if they turn rough or . . . well, unusual . . . things can liven up a bit.”

  They kept walking. Their path was up and down; there were no level spots. The sun hung over them like an angry god, beating down on them with hammer blows.

  “Stop and take a drink,” Swede said.

  Rosie limped to a halt. She removed her tom straw hat and wiped off the sweat that was pouring down her forehead. “I tell you. I can’t take no more of this. Women’s clothes are too damn hot.”

  With that, she lifted her gray skirt. She paused. "Mind turning?”

  “Huh?” Swede said. Then he realized what she was doing. “Oh,” he said and looked away.

  “All right,” she said after a moment. “You can look now.”

  Rosie’s silk pantaloons lay on the ground beside her, as did her chemise. Her torn skirt was lowered; she was rebuttoning her blouse. Swede saw her flat stomach and the pale half-moons of her breasts. “What’s that?” he said, flinching.