The Bank Robber

by Robert Broomall

  “Well?” asked Kirby, whose own face was cut and scratched from the fight with Silas.

  “Burdette and the girl are on foot,” George said. “They didn’t get none of the Comanche horses.”

  “And?”

  “Ain’t no choice, now—Burdette’s got to go for Scorpion Springs.”

  Kirby knew it. “Then he’s a dead man.” He raised his voice. “All right, water your horses. We’re getting ready for the last push. Make sure your weapons are loaded.”

  Kirby and George discussed the trail ahead. Meanwhile, holding his breath against the smell, Harry removed an eagle feather from one of the dead Comanches and stuck it in the band of his cheap wool hat. He gave a little war whoop and giggled.

  His new friend Brazos laughed with him. Brazos had taken a wildcat-claw necklace from one of the bodies. He stuck an Indian’s ancient pistol in his waistband and cut the kingfisher from the dead boy’s topknot as a souvenir.

  Spud was transferring Swede’s saddle to his own horse. That didn’t seem right to Harry—it was acceptable to take an Indian’s property but not a white man’s. “Do you have to do that?” he asked.

  “Range law,” said the practical-minded Spud. “Swede left it; it belongs to the first fella who claims it. This is a damn good saddle. Karl Reichardt’ll gave me a few dollars for my old one.”

  After the horses were watered, Harry joined Spud and Brazos by the packhorse, where the cowboys were refilling their canteens from the water bag. The three men gulped the warm liquid thirstily.

  “Lord, it’s hot,” Brazos said. “Hottest summer in years.”

  For the first time since joining the posse, Spud took off his big hat, revealing a shade line that ran across his cheeks and just under his nose. All his face above the line was chalk white; everything below was burned reddish brown. His pale bald head shone in the sunlight. He wet his bandana and wiped grime from his face. “I don’t particularly like Kirby, but you got to hand it to him. Lots of men would have give up by now.”

  “Damned if I ain’t one of ’em,” Brazos gasped. His eyes were bloodshot and sagging. He had removed his fringed gauntlets and opened his fancy shirt to the waist.

  Spud stuffed the wet bandana inside his hat and returned the hat to its accustomed position atop his head. “Swede’s got one chance left—and that one’s mighty slim.”

  Harry blurted, “You mean we could come all this way and still lose him?”

  Almost immediately, Harry regretted speaking, as Brazos flashed him a look. Harry had promised himself he wouldn’t upset the young cowboy again. Brazos stood straight, lips compressed. He started to say something, then spun on his heel and walked away, his spurs jingling angrily.

  Spud shook his head sadly. “I like you, Harry, but if brains was gunpowder, you couldn’t blow your head off. Killin’ a man’s no sport. It’s a mean business. It’s nothin’ to be proud of. I know you don’t agree with me—I didn’t neither, at your age—but you’ll learn I’m right. And I’ll tell you this—it’s one hell of a sobering lesson.”

  Self-doubt crossed Harry’s face for a second. Then it was swallowed by his boundless enthusiasm.

  Kirby walked off by himself and sat in the shade of a large rock.

  The posse had heard the gunfire last night. They’d been on the trail since before dawn, uncertain what they would find. This was one outcome Kirby had not bargained for. For nine years he’d thought of Swede and Dancer as one, as he’d last seen them, the tall rider and black horse. It was hard to picture them separated. Kirby was not a sentimental man, but Dancer’s death had spoiled the expedition for him.

  Kirby took out a cheroot. He turned it over in his hands, staring at it. It was a Monte Cruz. Kirby had smoked the same brand since 1863. He would never smoke any other.

  He could even name the day he had first tried one. . . .

  July 2. The Army of Tennessee was camped near Tullahoma, with rumors of an imminent campaign in the air. Around Kirby the sounds and smells of fifty thousand unwashed men and their animals mingled with the clean scent of pinewoods. Kirby was a major, second-in-command of his regiment. He was returning from Division HQ to his “shebang”—his shelter of oilcloth and branches—when he stopped dead in his tracks. Swede was standing by the company flag, talking with a young lieutenant who looked just like—who was—his brother Jeff.

  “What the—?” said Kirby.

  The lieutenant turned, grinning. “Johnny!”

  The brothers embraced. Jeff lacked Kirby’s height, and he was more rounded and of a more humorous nature, with sparkling blue eyes. Jeff had tried to enlist back in ’61, but his brother had made him stop—it would be too hard on Mom to have them both away. Their dad was a state senator now; his influence had kept Jeff from being conscripted and had gotten him a commission in the Home Guard.

  “What are you doing here?” Kirby said. “How did you even get here? We heard the Yanks have the Mississippi sealed tight.”

  “I dodged their patrols. It was pretty easy, really.” Jeff handed Kirby and Swede paper-wrapped parcels. “Here’s some new clothes from home. You both look like you can use them.”

  “Thanks,” Swede said. He was a sergeant now, and his clothes were in rags from six months in the saddle. “But what are you—”

  “And these are for you, John.” Jeff handed his brother a second parcel. It was a box of cheroots. They were Cuban, and Kirby could guess how difficult they’d been to obtain through the blockade.

  “You look different,” Jeff went on, eyeing his brother dispassionately. “That mustache gives you a fierce appearance, like a Cossack.”

  “You didn’t come a thousand miles to talk about my mustache,” Kirby said. “What’s this all about?”

  Jeff laughed and grinned boyishly, hands stuffed into the pockets of his gray uniform trousers. “Why, I’m joining you, of course. I have orders detaching me from the Guard.”

  “Oh, no, you ain’t,” Swede told him. “You’re going to skedaddle back home.”

  Jeff looked at Swede in surprise. He turned to his older brother. “He doesn’t mean it, does he?”

  Kirby said nothing.

  “Aw, come on, Johnny, you have to let me stay. I tried to keep at home—I really did—but it’s not fair that you get all the glory. You’re famous, you know—the papers were full of you capturing that Yank ammunition train last December. I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m twenty-four now. I deserve my chance, too.”

  Jeff gave his brother that eager, hero-worshiping look that had always won him over in the past. Kirby hesitated, considering.

  “Come on, Johnny, it’ll be fun. We haven’t done anything together in years—not since you went off to college.”

  “I said no,” Swede told him.

  Kirby said, “I’ll make the decision, Swede.”

  Swede stiffened. “Then go ahead and make it. Tell him no.”

  Kirby stroked his well-shaven jaw thoughtfully. He missed being with Jeff, missed it a lot. It would be good having the boy—the young man—around. “All right, Jeff, you can ride with us—but for this campaign only. Then you go home. Is that understood?”

  “Understood.” Jeff beamed.

  Swede’s eyes grew wide, his lips tightening. “Have you lost your—”

  Kirby held up a hand, halting the big sergeant. He sent Jeff to the colonel, to be assigned to a company.

  When Jeff was gone, Swede exploded. “Have you lost your head—letting him stay like that? It’s too dangerous.”

  “No, it’s not.” Kirby smiled broadly, like he was playing a gigantic joke. “Don’t tell Jeff, but he’ll be perfectly safe. Division has just informed me we won’t be getting remounts this summer. That means there won’t be a campaign for us. Odds are, we won’t even leave camp.”

  But he was wrong. The regiment was ordered to fight as infantry in the series of actions that culminated in the battle of Chickamauga, in Georgia, slugging it out in the smoky cedar thickets, stifling with heat and
humidity. With a large part of the Yankee army put to flight, the Confederate General Bragg ignored the vulnerable Union flanks and hurled charge after charge at their entrenched center. Men were shot down in the hundreds; the attacking companies had to clear lanes through the piles of dead and wounded. In one of these hopeless assaults Jeff was shot in the head and killed.

  Later, Kirby watched, hollow-eyed, as the bearers carried Jeff’s body from the field. The straw-colored hair that would never stay in place was clotted with blood.

  Swede stood beside Kirby, slapping his hat against his leg in frustration. There were dark circles under Swede’s eyes. His unshaven cheeks sagged. His hair had thinned noticeably at the temples.

  “Jeff would’ve been better off if we’d left him with the Comanches,” Swede said. Then he turned and walked away. . . .

  Kirby returned the cheroot to his vest without lighting it. He sighed. He felt little of the excitement of the chase. It was just a job now, a dirty job, and Kirby was good at dirty jobs. It was time to get out of the game.

  Abruptly he rose to his feet. “All right,” he shouted. “We’ve had long enough here. Let’s get moving.”

  26

  Swede and Rosie made their way through the tangled hills, first downhill then up. There was a great stillness in the air, as if the heat had pressed the life out of the country.

  Swede unbuckled his heavy chaps and left them beside the trail, making no attempt to hide them. He limped along, trying unsuccessfully not to walk on his blisters, which had broken again and were bleeding. His canteen and saddlebags were over his shoulder. His rifle was in his hand. Rosie stumbled, and he took her arm for support. They were panting in the heat.

  Rosie said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure as hell ain’t nothin’ stopped you so far.” Swede’s head throbbed where the Comanche had hit him with the pistol. There was a large lump just above his eye.

  “Why do they call you Swede? Burdette ain’t a Swedish name, and you don’t look like no Viking or nothing.”

  Swede laughed shortly and looked away. “When I was a kid, I had me this big ole yellow dog named Swede—don’t recollect how he got the name. Me and Swede went everywhere together, and folks started calling me after him—Big Swede and Little Swede. When he died, the name stuck with me.”

  The ground was rocky and uneven; each step had to be taken with care. At last Rosie grimaced and stopped. “God, do my feet hurt. Whoever made these shoes didn’t have cross-county hiking in mind.”

  Half faint, she sat on the ground. She tried to unlace the spike-heeled, thin suede shoes, but the walking had made her feet swell the laces tight. Swede got on his knee and cut the laces with his knife, while Rosie leaned back with her eyes closed. She took off the straw hat and fanned herself. Her reddish-brown hair was bedraggled from perspiration and nights of camping in the open.

  Swede pulled the shoes off and threw them away. There were welts on Rosie’s puffed feet where the shoes and the laces had cut into them. Swede rubbed some life into the feet, then cut two long strips off the gray skirt and wrapped them around her feet, Indian style.

  “That should help some,” he said. He helped her up, and they started off again.

  The sun rose higher in the sky, beating down on the rugged hills with white heat. The ground burned Rosie’s feet through the cloth strips, but she didn’t complain.

  This was how it was going to end, Swede told himself. They would die from the heat, or they would be caught. He hoped they would be caught, for Rosie’s sake. That would mean prison for him, then hanging. No, not prison—never again. He would get Rosie out of the way and make Kirby shoot it out with him.

  He stumbled to a stop. Rosie followed his lead. He took a sip of warm water from his canteen, but his throat was too dry for the few drops of liquid to make an impression.

  He passed the canteen to Rosie. “Finish it.”

  Rosie tilted the canteen into her mouth, straining for its contents. She held the swallow of water, rolling it around, letting it fall drop by drop down her throat. Her face showed momentary relief. Then it became a blistered mask once more.

  She returned the empty canteen to Swede, who slung it over his shoulder. The canteen cap dangled uselessly on its chain.

  “We’ll fill it when we get to the springs,” Swede said. “Come on.”

  27

  Kirby spurred his reluctant horse without mercy. Scorpion Springs was only five miles from the Rio Bravo and Mexico.

  Beside him. Black George spoke with his usual mixture of amusement and disbelief. “This second bunch of horses will be giving out soon.”

  “Let them,” Kirby said. “I want them to hold up just long enough to catch Swede. After that, we’ll camp at the Springs and rest for a day before we start back.”

  Kirby already viewed the posse and its mission as a fait accompli . He was looking past it, to the future. He had a lot of lost time to make up. There would be a year of legal practice maybe, then his ultimate goal—politics.

  He smiled grimly to himself. Would he be a politician like Simpkin? He doubted it. Unlike the venal lawyer from Temperance, Kirby had an aim beyond personal advancement. He wanted to make certain this country continued to grow in a lawful, orderly manner.

  Kirby remembered how Texas had been riven by violence after the war. Between Indian depredations and the absence of law, no one had been safe. The Indians were nearly vanquished now, and the lawbreakers were dead, in prison, or had moved to easier pickings. People were flocking in— Yankees, even immigrants from beyond the seas. As a Southerner, Kirby wasn’t sure he liked that, but if it was good for Texas, he would champion it.

  Kirby had a dream for Texas. He wanted to see millions of people living here. He wanted to see the wasteland made green; he wanted great cities where once the buffalo had grazed. Kirby entertained no ideas about progress bringing Utopia, he was too hardheaded for that, but he believed that progress was man’s best hope in a hostile world. He believed progress had to be aided, to be encouraged at all costs, and the implementation of that belief was his life’s work. He would begin with the state legislature, as his father had done, then the U.S. House of Representatives, and then the Senate, if he was lucky enough. His kind of reputation as a soldier and a lawman had carried lesser individuals that far.

  28

  Swede and Rosie stumbled along—it could no longer be called walking. Swede’s boots were dusty and scarred. The pain in his feet helped keep him conscious. Rosie’s cloth- wrapped feet moved leadenly, leaving drops of blood on the bare earth.

  There was no more talking; there was no strength for that. The midday sun hung over them like a huge, molten ball that would not go away. They smelled the burning heat, tasted it—it penetrated every pore of their bodies, until it felt as if the suffocating air itself was on fire. Their lips were black and swollen, their eyes seared shut. The thick coats of alkali dust on their faces cracked painfully whenever they opened their eyes or mouths.

  Where was the posse? How much longer before it appeared?

  There was no longer a goal, no meaning to anything. The act of moving forward had become an end in itself. Almost without knowing it, Swede let the bulky saddlebags fall from his shoulder to the ground.

  Behind him, Rosie slowed, step by step. Not really sure what she was doing, except that instinct told her never to leave money, she went back to the saddlebags. She opened one and stuffed several wads of bills into her blouse. Then she rose and followed Swede.

  29

  Black George saw the saddlebags first. The bandaged scout rode ahead, dismounted, and held them up. The other men reined in around him as he unbuckled the flaps.

  “Gawd,” breathed Brazos, “would you lookit that? I ain’t never seen so much money in one place before.”

  “First the chaps, now the money,” Spud said mournfully. “Ole Swede must be about ready to drop.”

  George mounted and handed the worn leather saddlebags to Kirby, who glanced a
t their contents.

  “Is it all there?” asked young Harry, worried about his mother’s money.

  “We’ll count it later,” Kirby told him. He placed the bags across his saddle and spumed his horse ruthlessly forward.

  “Kirby!” Spud cried.

  Kirby reined in, wheeling his horse impatiently. The grizzled cowboy rode up to him, leading the packhorse. “What is it?” Kirby asked.

  Spud spoke in confidential tones. “Kirby, you know I ain’t one for tellin’ a fella how to do his job. But we got the money back—that’s what we really come for. Couldn’t you consider lettin’ Swede go?”

  Kirby’s green eyes widened briefly, then narrowed to slits, like a cat’s.

  “Takin’ that girl with him more than makes up for whatever he done before,” Spud went on.

  When Kirby made no reply, Spud said, “There’s some things more important than the law, Kirby.”

  Kirby stared at the cowboy. Then he said, “I want Burdette.”

  He yanked hard on the reins and rode off with George. Harry gave Spud a sympathetic glance and followed after.

  Brazos drew alongside Spud, leading the two spare horses. The curly-haired cowboy bristled with anger. “Well? You still hopin’ for some kind of miracle to save you makin’ a choice?”

  Spud spread his short arms helplessly. “What do you want from me, Brazos? I tried.”

  “Sometimes tryin’ ain’t enough. Sometimes it takes action.” This last statement seemed to remind Brazos of something. “Kirby said you done a good job when you rode with him before. What did he mean by that?”

  Spud had hoped this question would never come up. He looked away from the younger man. “I—I shot a fella. A friend.”

  Brazos took a deep breath. He was about to ride off, when Spud grabbed his arm. “You ain’t plannin’ to go against Kirby, are you?”