The quail called, its cry lost in the muffled boom from within the bank. Dutch and Considine rushed the safe. The acrid smell bit at their nostrils. The door, blasted open, was hanging by one hinge.
Considine raked the contents of the safe to the floor, then swore bitterly. The heavy sacks of gold were gone! There was only a tray full of coins. He dumped them into the sack Dutch held, ransacked a drawer and found a small package of bills—only a few dollars.
Somewhere down the street a door slammed, and instantly Hardy fired. The report racketed against the false-fronted stores, slapping back and forth across the narrow street.
There was a shout, then the heavy bellow of a buffalo gun. The Kiowa replied with a shot from his Winchester.
Considine straightened to his feet. “Nothing! Let’s get out of here!” Dutch crossed the floor in three great strides and ducked swiftly around the corner to his horse. Considine went out the back door, almost tripping over the crowbar with which he had sprung the door lock to gain entrance. From the street there was now a steady sound of firing.
Hardy was already in the saddle when Considine rounded the building, and the Kiowa had his bridle looped over his arm and was firing methodically up the street.
“All right!” said Considine.
The Indian stepped into the leather and the four riders wheeled into the deeper shadows of an alley. A window went up and a rifle barrel was thrust through at them, but Dutch put a .44 through the window glass and there came a startled yelp and the rifle fell to the ground outside.
The four riders scattered through the willows, splashed across the stream, then turned south and away. They did not ride fast, holding their horses for the necessary drive of speed should pursuit be organized in time to worry them. Behind them in the town a few wild shots sounded, but by vanishing into the willows and crossing the stream they had taken themselves out of sight and out of range.
Considine held the steady pace for about two miles. Then he turned at right angles and rode into the stream, with the others following. They crossed it to a ledge of rock, then turned back into the stream and rode downstream for a quarter of a mile, and came out on the far side and into the mouth of a sandy draw.
Tracks left in that deep sand were only dimples, shapeless and impossible to identify, or even to estimate as to the time they were made. “How’d we do?”
Hardy was the youngest, and he was eager. He still believed that every score was going to be a big one. He had yet to learn that even the most carefully planned robberies might net exactly nothing … unless one counted the bullets fired. “The gold was gone, all of it. There’s maybe a couple of hundred in change and small bills.”
“Hell!”
The opinion was scarcely open to debate, and nobody felt like talking. Even an empty bank does not like to have its safe blown up, and the citizenry would like the sport of the chase. In western towns—and Considine knew it all too well—there is often little excitement, so a bank robbery gives everybody a chance to have a fast ride and do a lot of shooting. A posse would be formed, and every man in it would be a tough, trail-seasoned veteran. Considine led the way up the canyon as if it were broad daylight. When he felt the sudden added coolness in the air he knew they were at the seep, and turned sharply left. When he saw the notch in the skyline above them, he started his horse up the steep slide of talus.
It was a hard scramble for the horses, but it left no tracks, and at the top of the mesa they drew up to let the horses catch their wind. Pursuit would be relatively impossible until daylight, a good four hours off. They rode until the sky was turning gray, and then Considine led them into a narrow draw, and up to a pole corral containing four horses. There was a shack with the roof and one wall caved in.
While Dutch made coffee and started breakfast, the Kiowa stripped the saddles from the horses they had ridden and turned the animals loose with a slap on the rump. They had been borrowed without permission and would return to their home range. He saddled the horses waiting in the corral. Over the small fire they smoked and drank their coffee. Nobody felt like talking. The job had promised well and had failed, and now they were broke. Nobody was hurt, nor had they hurt anybody. Had their escape been a few seconds slower or less carefully organized, one or more of them might now be dead. Of this they had no doubt.
“Well,” Hardy said reluctantly, “even Jesse James pulled a couple of stick-ups that netted him nothing.” Nobody offered any reply, so he added, “But they say he buried a million dollars in a cave in Missouri. I’d sure like to find that.” “Don’t you believe it,” Dutch said. “Anybody who wants to can get the figures. In sixteen years of outlawry the James gang took in less than four hundred thousand, and that was split among six to twelve men. Hell, they were down and out most of the time.”
“That safe was too easy,” Dutch said. “I couldn’t believe it!” They finished their coffee and got up. Dutch dumped out the coffee grounds and kicked dirt over the fire. They took a last careful look around to be sure nothing had been forgotten, and then mounted their own horses and rode out of the draw.
Considine was tired. His hard, spare body relaxed to the easy movements of his horse. His muscles ached with weariness and he desperately wanted to lie down somewhere under a tree and catch up on his sleep. That was always the trouble … everything a man wanted to do lay ahead of him. Darkness retreated reluctantly into the hollows of the hills and hid under the spreading branches of the live oaks. The sun came up and grew hot. Considine paused when they topped out on a ridge and surveyed the country before them, shimmering with heat waves.
When a man took the outlaw trail he only thought of whooping it up and spending his time in the cantinas. He never thought of the long rides without sleep, of the scarce food, and the fact that he was a preferred target for any man’s gun. There had been a time … and it was then he thought of Obaro. Considine never was far from thoughts of Obaro. The town was west and south, and was named for the ranch on whose range the town had begun—the O Bar O. It was a ranch that became a stage stop, then a supply point, and finally a town. Considine had been a puncher on that ranch, and in the years there he had a friend, a girl, and a dream.
Pete Runyon had been his friend, a top hand on any man’s outfit; and together, full of hell, they had ridden the range, working hard, playing hard, occasionally getting into brawls, sometimes with others, often with each other. In those days there had been a lot of unbranded stock on the range, and occasionally when they wanted a night on the town they rounded up a few head of mavericks and drove them into town to sell. The trouble was that the big ranchers believed all stuff, unbranded or not, belonged to them. Originally there had been a lot of cattle that were owned by nobody, and during the War between the States thousands of head had been left unbranded because the men were away at war. Afterward there was no way to trace title to any of that stock, and the big outfits claimed them.
Considine and Runyon were fired for selling stock, and warned off the range. During the winter that followed the two lived on rustled stock. They rounded up unbranded stock, but now they were no longer too particular, and occasionally they caught up a few wearing brands.
Then Pete Runyon filed for the sheriffs office and was elected … and he married the girl.
Two nights later, Considine was waiting at a water tower for the Denver & Rio Grande train. He swung aboard, walked through the two passenger cars collecting from the passengers, and dropped off the train where a horse was waiting. A week later he got the same train on the way back.
South of the border he killed a man in a fight over a poker game and joined the Kiowa and Dutch. Four months later, Hardy joined them. There was a bank in the town of Obaro that was usually well supplied with gold, and it was the boast of the townspeople that it had never been robbed. Robbery had been attempted on three different occasions, and they had created a special Boot Hill graveyard, for the robbers. Seven men were buried there, and Considine knew all about that Boot Hill, for he had helped to bury the first man himself. Every store and office in the town had its rifle or shotgun at hand, and any stranger was under suspicion if he approached the bank. It was the town’s bank, and the people of the town intended to protect it. Anyone attempting to rob the Bank of Obaro must run a gauntlet of rifle fire … in a town notorious for its marksmanship.