Slocum and the Hanging Horse Page 6

  “Yes . . . Mr. Slocum,” Amy said absently, her mind returning to the tall, rough-hewed Southerner. “Mr. Slocum.”

  She left the room, hoping that Ambrose would call her back and give her a kiss for all her fine work. She hoped it would happen but did not expect it, since he was lost in the history of all the artifacts left behind by Les Jeter.

  6

  “No, Les, don’t do it,” pleaded Ruth Jeter. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “Hell’s bells, that don’t bother me much. Everything I do’s dangerous. There’s not a Ranger or lawman in this part of Texas who isn’t lookin’ for me.”

  They sat side by side on a rock looking out over the grassy valley where the cabin stood. From here the barn was hidden, down a slope and beyond the cabin, but other than this, the lookout point allowed a clear view of anyone coming up the valley. This suited Jeter just fine. He worried about being snuck up on as much as he worried that Ruth would take it into her head to leave him.

  “You can’t rob a bank all by yourself. It’s suicide to do that. They’ve got guards in banks willing to shoot anybody who looks cross-eyed at a teller.”

  “Might be I don’t intend to waltz on in and shove a gun under some scared teller’s nose before askin’ for money. Might be I got other plans.”

  “You thinking on tunneling in, coming up in the vault, and emptying it that way? All by yourself, it wouldn’t take more than a month of Sundays. And think about your back. You threw it out when that horse almost kicked you.”

  “I’m doin’ all right,” Jeter said irritably. Ruth didn’t understand. It wasn’t as much about the money as it was showing the world how good he was. And proving to her that he could provide for a family. One day he would have a son to follow him around. So far, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, that hadn’t happened. But it would, and Ruth would have to be proud of him and his son.

  Jeter laughed ruefully when he realized another fact of nature. It was about the money too. He liked money, and the easiest way of getting it was to steal from those who already had it.

  “What’s so funny? The notion you might get your head blown off by some itchy-fingered guard? You’ve got them all so stirred up they might shoot you when you walked in the front door, no matter if you have your six-shooter out or not.” Ruth drew up her knees and circled them with her arms. Jeter had seen her do this before when she withdrew into her own thoughts. It was best to let her be. Eventually she’d come around to understanding that he had to do this. It was for her. For her and their son, whenever he came into the world.

  “I’ve got to hit the trail,” he said, reaching out and stroking over her tangled locks. He used his fingers to crudely comb her brunette hair until it was less snarled and gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. “You’re so purty it makes me ache, darlin’, but I got to go. It’s for you.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, turning away and burying her face between her knees. “You say that, but it’s all about the money. Les, stop the robbing and come work this place. It’s not ours, I know, but we got rights. Whoever abandoned it’s not coming back. They would have been here by now if they hadn’t left for good. A few head of cattle, maybe some more goats and sheep, and a crop of alfalfa and we can make a good living here. It’ll be safe.”

  “Safe?” He shook his head. “There’s no such thing, Ruth.”

  “Not now, not after you shot up about every stagecoach rolling through West Texas. There must be a powerful big reward out on your head. If the Rangers don’t come looking for you, some bounty hunter will. I’m begging, Les. I don’t ask for much, but I want you to stay here. Work here and forget the bank.”

  Jeter said nothing as he looked out over the pleasant green valley from this aerie. This was the sort of place he had dreamed of homesteading once—before he got the taste of adventure from robbing and killing.

  “They won’t be back,” she said. “The people who upped and left won’t come back. And if they do, you’ve got money from all those robberies. You can buy this place for us.”

  “They won’t be back,” Jeter said. He knew the man and woman who had built the cabin and barn and plowed up a few acres to the east would never be back. He had killed them both and put them in their graves less than a mile from where he sat with his wife. He hadn’t wanted to kill either of them, but the man had fought when he tried to rob him. The killing had been an accident, but the woman wouldn’t see that. She had tried to skewer him with a knife. It had been her or him. Jeter wasn’t the sort to let a woman cut him up.

  “Then stay, Les. Please. For me.”

  “I’m doing this for you. When I get back, might be that’ll be enough for us to live on the rest of our born days.” He stood and dusted himself off. It was a long ride into San Esteban to rob that pathetic little bank there.

  Nobody knew what he looked like. That made his entry into San Esteban all the easier. Les Jeter rode past the bank and gave it a quick once-over, then rode on to the Drunk Camel Saloon for a drink. He went inside and found himself a table near the door where he could look out into the street, past the marshal’s office to the bank.

  “What’ll it be?” asked Luke the barkeep.

  “A half bottle of whiskey,” Jeter said. “I think I got enough for that much.” He rummaged around in his pocket and found a gold coin—one taken from the last stagecoach robbery. He dropped it onto the table. The tiny disk spun, shining gold and bright before falling flat.

  “That’ll do more ’n a half bottle, mister,” Luke said, scooping it up. He returned a minute later with the whiskey, a mostly clean shot glass, and a handful of change. He dropped this on the table, where it formed a small mountain of silver. “Sorry ’bout all the nickels and dimes, but I ain’t got any silver dollars fer change yet. Too early in the day.”

  “You could go to the bank and get the change,” Jeter said.

  “Or you could. I can’t leave my customers.”

  Jeter looked past the barkeep to the only other patron, passed out on a poker table in the back of the saloon.

  “Yeah, I can see that. Reckon I’ll have to take it to the bank myself, but after I finish this.”

  “You must have worked up a powerful thirst for that much whiskey this early in the day,” the barkeep said. Jeter only stared at him, his gray eyes cold and empty. “I’ll let you git on down to serious drinking,” the barkeep said uneasily, backed off a pace, and then hurried behind the bar. Jeter heard him rummaging about, probably making sure his six-shooter or sawed-off shotgun was close at hand.

  Jeter had robbed saloons before, but not today. It was like the man said. There wasn’t whole lot in the till yet. And maybe even after a good week there wouldn’t be, since San Esteban split their money between this and the other saloon. The Drunk Camel and the Prancing Pony. He wondered how they’d conjured up names like those. Jeter sipped at the surprisingly good whiskey and considered if it would be worthwhile to take a barrel of the fine rotgut. He shook off the notion of such an audacious theft. He might load a barrel or two onto a wagon and get away with it, but his sights were set on a bigger target. The men going into the bank weren’t bowed over with bags of money, but they looked prosperous. The area around San Esteban was festooned with rich cattle growers. More than one had a string of horses that he sold to the Army, in addition to supplying beef and other foodstuffs. The desert made it difficult for the Army to transport much in the way of food, so it was cheaper to buy locally.

  Cheaper, but not too much so. The ranchers gouged the Army unmercifully, and it showed in how prosperous a town like San Esteban was. And a well-to-do rancher had to keep his money somewhere.

  The bank was an easy target that might yield a thousand dollars or more. Lots more. Jeter kept drinking as a plan formed in his head. His wife had been worried about one man holding up a bank, but Jeter was up to the chore. They weren’t too bright when it came to protecting their wealth in these parts.

  He drank, he thought, and finally when the level
of alcohol reached the point where it overcame his natural caution and Ruth’s worry, Jeter stood, hitched up his gun belt, and left.

  “Hey, mister, you gonna drink the rest of that whiskey? Kin I have a nip?”

  Jeter paused at the door and looked to the back of the saloon. The cowboy who had passed out earlier craned his neck around like a prairie dog hunting for food. Only this one had spotted the few drops of whiskey left in the bottle.

  “It’s yours, partner,” Jeter said. “But I almost forgot my change.” He scooped up the pile of change. “You sure they’ll give me a couple silver cartwheels for all this?” he asked of the barkeep.

  “Sure am,” the man answered. “They do it all the time for me, and I don’t have that much in the bank.”

  “You mean you have an account there?”

  “Yeah,” the barkeep said warily. “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing,” Jeter said, laughing. He left, clutching his pile of coins. How stupid he had been! Thinking of robbing the saloon was a waste of time when the barkeep said all his money went into the bank. He’d rob the bank and get the revenue from both saloons!

  Jeter made his way across the dusty street, aware of the sun in his eyes. It was getting toward afternoon. Siesta time. He wasn’t sure if the bank closed for a couple hours and it didn’t matter, since the kind of withdrawal he intended didn’t require them to be open to the public.

  “Just open for my six-shooter,” Jeter said, stopping at the front door to the bank. It was dim and cool inside the big adobe building, and it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the change in light.

  Two guards, one snoozing in a chair to the right and the other standing with his hand resting indolently on his six-gun as he talked to the teller. Jeter looked around for the bank president or some other officer, but didn’t spot him. He might be back in the vault. That would be good because it meant the heavy door would be open.

  “A cornucopia,” Jeter said to himself as he walked inside. He had always liked the sound of that word ever since he was a kid, and the way it rolled off his tongue made him feel good, big, intelligent. The bank was his cornucopia!

  “Good day, sir,” greeted the teller. “What do you have there?”

  “I need some of this changed into greenbacks or even a silver dollar or two,” Jeter said, dropping the pile of change onto the counter. He made sure a few of the coins bounced off onto the floor. The sleepy guard started and shifted position, but never opened his eyes. The other bent to pick up the change Jeter had dropped. When the guard looked up he was staring up the barrel of the outlaw’s six-gun.

  “Lose your hogleg,” Jeter said. “And none of you folks get frisky and try anything dumb. If you do, your friend here gets a hunk of lead in the brain.”

  The teller blanched and stepped back from his window, hands going up.

  “No, you stay where you are. Gather up all the money and put it into a bag for me.”

  The instant Jeter’s attention shifted to the teller, the guard reacted. He put his head down and drove forward, catching the outlaw just above the knees. Jeter let out a screech of surprise and jerked the trigger hard. The recoil pressed the butt of the gun into his palm—and the guard died instantly. The bullet had smashed his spine.

  Jeter sat heavily on the floor and swung his six-shooter around to cover the now-awake guard in the chair. Before the man could go for the rifle leaning against the wall beside him, Jeter fired. Twice. A third time, making certain the guard was dead.

  “Don’t, don’t!” Jeter shouted, but it was too late to stop the teller from grabbing for a small-caliber pistol hidden under the counter. Jeter aimed and fired. His bullet caught the teller just above the bridge of his nose.

  “Damnation,” Jeter grumbled as he got to his feet. Things had turned sour mighty fast. “You should never have made me kill you all. They aren’t gonna pay you a dime more for dyin’ tryin’ to protect the money in the vault. Hell, they aren’t gonna have to pay you at all now.”

  Jeter kicked open the low gate between the president’s vacant desk and the lobby and went around to the teller’s box. He grabbed a moneybag and began stuffing what he could find in the teller’s drawer into the bag. There was hardly enough to make the robbery worth his time. Less than a hundred dollars and three men dead? There had to be more.

  Jeter heard people out in the street, mumbling and whispering among themselves, wondering if anything inside was wrong. He reckoned he had plenty of time before some intrepid soul poked his head in—

  It happened sooner than Jeter had expected.

  “Any trouble in here?”

  Jeter recognized the part-time deputy who took over when the marshal was out getting drunk in other towns. He barely remembered lifting his six-shooter and firing. The deputy’s head exploded in a red mist as the bullet tore through the skull and came out the top. Jeter fired again, but his pistol came up empty. Grumbling at the inconvenience, Jeter knocked out the spent brass in his Colt and reloaded from cartridges stuck into loops on his belt.

  Nobody followed the foolish deputy inside, so Jeter grabbed his moneybag and went to the vault. The door had been pulled shut, but had not locked because a large hunk of cloth jammed the locking bolts. Putting his back into it, Jeter pulled open the door and saw that the cloth had been ripped from the bank president’s coat. The man cowered in the rear of the vault, hands up to protect his face.

  “Don’t kill me. Take what you want but don’t kill me like you did the others.”

  “You know me?” Jeter asked.

  “N-no,” the bank president said, staring at Jeter with frightened eyes.

  “Then you’re gonna die not knowin’ who shot you,” Jeter said. He fired three times to make certain the president wasn’t going to identify him later. It had been a mistake coming into the bank without wearing a mask. As the thought occurred to him, Jeter pulled up his bandanna. He had to make an escape through what might be a big crowd of townsfolk.

  He went to the boxes on shelves and hurriedly emptied them onto the floor in the middle of the vault. The vault wasn’t large enough for both the dead president and the loot. Jeter considered dragging the portly man out of the way, but he relieved his exasperation by shooting into the dead body a couple more times. It accomplished nothing, but made him feel better.

  Humming his favorite song, “The Two Corbies,” as he worked, he quickly finished searching the vault for valuables and did a quick tally of more than two thousand dollars.

  “I’ll show you, Ruth,” he muttered to himself. “You won’t doubt me when you see this much money.” He swung the moneybag over his shoulder and left the vault and its grisly contents, but stopped when he reached the president’s desk.

  This time people outside weren’t foolishly poking their heads inside the lobby. They shoved in rifle barrels. Lots of them.

  Jeter looked around for another way out of the bank and realized there wasn’t one. He had entered by the only door and had to leave that way. Even the windows were high in the walls and small—too small for a man his size to wiggle through. He might dump the money outside through a side window, shoot his way from the lobby, pick up his loot, and escape.

  Jeter realized how hard that would be to do just as someone sighting down a rifle barrel spotted him and fired. The man had buck fever and missed by a mile. That was the goods news for Jeter. The bad news was how the other scared gunmen all reacted by firing their own weapons. They didn’t have a good target in their sights, but it didn’t matter. The lobby suddenly filled with dozens of rounds, all ricocheting around and forcing him to drop down behind the desk to keep from getting ventilated.

  He poked up his head and waited for what would inevitably follow.

  “You git ’em?”

  “Had to. Nobody could live through that many bullets,” someone else answered.

  “Don’t know. We wasn’t aimin’ at them, not exactly.”

  “We got them,” the first voice said firmly, bravely, b
oasting at his own prowess. “Let’s go drag the snakes outta there.”

  He knocked open the door using the butt of his rifle and stood silhouetted against the afternoon sun, making a perfect target. Jeter should have waited for the second or third man to enter, but the temptation was too great with the first. He fired smack into the middle of the shadowy form. The man dropped his rifle and sagged to the floor without making a sound.

  “What happened?” demanded someone farther back in the crowd.

  “Jackson got shot. They killed Jackson!”

  Jeter ducked. He knew what had to happen. And it did. Everyone in the crowd opened fire at once. Splinters from the desk flew all around and he heard glass shatter. The pungent odor that followed caused him to look around. The kerosene lamp on the president’s desk had been struck by a bullet and had shattered, sending its volatile contents all over the papers strewn about.

  “Did we git him this time?”

  Jeter bided his time and fired a single shot when a head poked around the doorjamb to look in. The man slid straight to the ground, dead. Jeter cursed quietly at his bad luck. The bodies were stacking up in the only way out of the bank. He’d have to vault over them to reach safety outside. If he killed any more of the crowd, he would be pushing a wall of dead flesh in front of him.

  “Hmm,” he said to himself, thinking about the possibilities of hoisting a body and using it as a shield against the crowd’s bullets. Then he decided that would never work. Enough lead would rip the flesh off a body and quickly remove all protection. He had to get out of here and do it fast. If he ran out of ammunition, they would rush him and put an end to his career, which wouldn’t do when he had other stagecoaches to rob and banks to hold up.

  Jeter slipped along behind the desk and shoved the president’s chair under one of the high windows. Risking someone hitting him with a wild shot, Jeter jumped up on the chair and studied the window. The situation wasn’t as bad as he had thought. The frame held a window too small for him to wiggle through, but if the frame were knocked out, he might escape this way.