Читать книгу A Knife in the Heart - William W. Johnstone - Страница 12

CHAPTER SIX

“Stop here, driver.” Sitting in the back of the surrey, Fallon happened to see the Stockgrowers’ bank as the hack clopped down the stone-paved street, another sign of Cheyenne’s prosperity. There was a time when Fallon prided himself on his memory—a key attribute when you’re a lawman in the Indian Territory, or a prisoner anywhere—but those instincts had faded during his years making speeches and signing his name on countless documents stuck behind a desk.

The driver pulled on the reins to stop the mule.

“I remembered I need to drop something off at the bank,” he explained to the old black man and fished out some coins. “Here you go, sir.”

“Wouldye like me ta wait fer ye, Marshal?”

“No need, my friend. I can walk to the courthouse from here. Thank you, and have a good day.”

The driver looked at the coins, and beamed, “Thank ye kindly, Marshal.”

Fallon stepped down, pulled his hat tight, and saw a man wearing a rain slicker leaning against the column of a saloon, one arm tucked inside the orange-colored material, smoking a cigarette. Fallon looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, but it had sprinkled some last night, and the cowboy did stand in front of a saloon that had not closed its doors, legend had it, for twelve and three-quarter years. Turning to cross the street, he looked back at the cowboy once more, and then waited for a buggy and a farm wagon to pass.

The hitching rail in front of the Stockgrowers was full, and another cowhand worked on the cinch of his Appaloosa gelding at the far right. He wore a linen duster, more common this time of year than a rain slicker. As Fallon started across the street, he saw another man, this one working a pocketknife on his fingernails as he leaned against the wall in the alcove of the bank. He wore a long frock coat, trail-worn from too many years either during the winter or rolled up behind a saddle.

Maybe he was a Texan, because anyone who had spent time in Wyoming wouldn’t consider this cold. Fallon glanced back at the dude in the slicker as his boots clipped on the stones. He studied the rest of the street. It was a slow time of year and a slow time of day. But the bank was doing booming business.

All right, Fallon told himself. The federal and state employees had been paid. Probably some ranchers had paid their cowboys, too. But how many cowboys do you know that save any money? And how many would have an account at the Stockgrowers? A linen duster . . . that made sense? A frock coat or a rain slicker? Those could be used to hide a shotgun. Or a rifle. And even the greenest cowboy didn’t take that long to cinch up a saddle. The man cursed, tried the latigo again.

Drunk. Fallon decided that would explain it. Left his horse at the bank because the rail was full in front of the saloon last night when he rode in. No. No, not if he’s a cowboy. A cowboy wouldn’t walk across a street. He would have found a rail at the apothecary . . . or the hotel . . . or most likely left the Appaloosa in the livery at the corner. And that horse was too well-blooded for a thirty-a-month waddie to own.

Fallon reached the boardwalk, looked down the street from the bank. Empty. His mind raced. One man with the horses. Another near the bank door. A third across the street with a rifle. Five horses tethered to the rail. Three men outside. Three in the bank. The fellow across the street would have his horse closer, and Fallon spied a brown Thoroughbred at the end of the hitching rail in front of the saloon.

His eyes raced up and down both boardwalks. Naturally, there wasn’t one Cheyenne policeman to be seen.

You’re getting too damned suspicious in your old age, he told himself. Jesse James was dead. The two surviving Younger brothers were behind the iron in Minnesota. One Dalton was in Lansing, and his brothers and the other gang members were all buried in Coffeyville. And that Hole in the Wall Bunch would never even try to rob a bank in Cheyenne. It was too damned big.

He waited for a gray-haired woman to stop and enter the bakery. The boardwalk on this side now empty for two blocks, Fallon turned back and headed past the hitching rail. The fellow stopped fidgeting with the saddle and let his right hand disappear inside his duster. Fallon just noticed the buckle to a belt that undoubtedly held a holster, or likely more than one. He noticed the scabbards of three of the saddles to the mounts tethered to the rail were empty.

Then Fallon stepped into the alcove and reached for the handle to the door.

“Hey, pops,” the man in the frock coat said with a smile and holding out the cigar he held in his left hand. “Can I bother you for a light?”

The man at the hitching rail stepped away from the horse, one hand still underneath the duster.

“I don’t smoke,” Fallon said.

“I do.” The man clamped the cigar with his teeth, and held out a box of matches in the fingers of his left hand. His right hand remained underneath the heavy coat. “Light my cigar, old man.”

Old man? Fallon didn’t care for that. He might have been old enough to be this punk’s daddy, but that didn’t make Harry Fallon old.

“Light it, bub, or dance,” the man said. And he let his coattail slip back just enough to reveal the sawed-off shotgun in his right hand.

Fallon stepped close, took the tiny box, and pushed it open. The first match he dropped, feigning nervousness, and stuttered an apology.

“There’s plenty of matches, pops,” the kid said. “Take your time. And smile. Our business will be finished directly.”

“I wish,” said the man by the horses, “they’d hurry up and get her done.”

The match flared in Fallon’s hands. Cupping the match against the wind, he brought it toward the cheap cigar.

“That’s right,” the man with the shotgun said. Then he blew out the match as Fallon inched it to the stogie’s tip. “Oops. Try again.”

Fallon’s eyes hardened, but so did the kid’s.

“You ever seen what a body looks like after it’s took two loads of buckshot in the belly at point-blank range?” the punk asked with a malevolent grin.

More times than you have, pup, Fallon thought, but found another match.

His mind raced. Break the punk’s neck, take the shotgun, and cut loose on the man pretending he didn’t know one end of a cinch from another. The horses would be rearing, probably pulling loose. He’d have one barrel left if one of the three inside the bank came out, and the horses rearing would protect him from the lookout across the street. Pick up the pistols from one of the two men he had killed, maybe a rifle if the man with the duster hid one of those, too. He’d have a chance at least, and the ruckus would bring the policemen and everyone with a gun outside their businesses. Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a major city, but most of the entrepreneurs here were westerners to their bones, and they didn’t take kindly to men robbing them or their neighbors.

But . . .

Fallon struck the match.

That would leave citizens inside the bank with two, possibly three—if no one stepped outside to escape after the first bit of gunfire—hardened killers. Hardened. Fallon was sure of this. These weren’t boys on a whim. This had been well-planned and completely professional. Three men inside. Three outside. On a day when the bank’s vaults would be filled with cash and coin.

He had to wait until all the bank robbers were outside.

The match moved to the cigar. The punk grinned like a clown this time and let the flame come to the stinking cigar. The kid sucked, the flame grew, the tip began to smoke and glow. Fallon heard the door open.

“It ain’t lit yet,” the punk managed to say as he puffed and clenched his teeth. Fallon glimpsed a man in a bowler as he hurried by carrying grain sacks. Another, with a saddlebag over his shoulder. The third, last man, with a rifle pointing inside. He shot a glance at the punk and Fallon, and then warned the bank employees and any customers not to stick their heads outside.

The man held the door open.

“Throw him inside, Whit,” the one with the Winchester said, and looked at Fallon. “Once that door closes, buster, it better not open or we’ll riddle this building with so much lead, you’d think we had a Gatling gun.”

The man hurried to his horse.

Whit, the punk, said, “You heard Mabry. Inside.”