CHAPTER 26
The subject of whether or not to lock the bank doors came in for considerable debate after Smoke left. Abner Hawkins suggested that they do so.
“You all saw how easily those men got in here and started shooting,” the bank president said. “That could happen again at any time.”
Ned Warren nodded and said, “That’s true, Mr. Hawkins, but some of the townspeople, our friends and neighbors, could show up looking for shelter at any time, too. I think that’s even more likely.”
“Perhaps, but if they do, couldn’t they knock on the door and ask to be let in?”
“Maybe, unless they were too worn out from getting here in the storm.”
“Somethin’ else you ain’t thought of,” old Shug Russell drawled. “Those owlhoots could get hold of somebody from town and force him to come up to the door and bang on it, askin’ to be let in. Then when the door was unlocked, that bunch could swarm in and start slaughterin’ folks. That’s what Bishop and his gang are notorious for doin’.”
“Shug is right,” Hawkins said. “We can’t take a chance on opening the door for anyone. It’s just too dangerous. We should lock it and leave it closed. Perhaps push some of the desks over in front of it to make sure that no one can get in.”
“Even if our friends need help?” Warren sounded as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“It’s better for the people who are already in here,” Hawkins insisted. “Safer.”
“I just can’t turn my back on folks like that.”
“Well, I can, if it means a better chance of saving the ones who are already here.” Hawkins took a key from his pocket and stalked toward the door.
“Hold on there,” Warren told him. “We haven’t made up our minds—”
“I’m the president of this bank,” Hawkins snapped. “It’s my decision to make.”
He thrust the key at the lock, but before he could insert it, the door flew open and banged into him, knocking him backward. Hawkins cried out in pain, surprise, and fear.
Ned Warren jerked the shotgun to his shoulder and leaped to the side so he could fire without hitting the bank president.
But he held off on the triggers, not wanting to blast an innocent person, and yelled, “Hold it right there, mister!”
The newcomer stumbled to a halt just inside the door and stuck up his hands as he bleated, “Don’t shoot! It’s just me, Windy!”
The old-timer was covered with snow, from his battered hat to his boots. His whiskers were even whiter than usual because of all the snow clinging to them. He shook like a wet dog, and the stuff showered off of him to fall around his feet.
Warren lowered the shotgun and said, “Windy, get on in here. Ralph, close the door before any more cold air comes in.”
“Yes, Pa,” the boy croaked as he scurried to obey.
Ralph had hold of the door and was about to push it shut when a hand reached in out of the storm, closed around his arm, and jerked him out into the blizzard. Ralph started to yell in alarm, but the wind whipped the sound away.
“Ralph!” Warren cried. He lunged toward the door.
Windy was closer. He whirled around and dived through the opening, right back into the storm from which he had just escaped. Warren charged out behind him, hearing his wife’s screams of terror for their son coming from the group at the back of the bank lobby. He hoped someone would grab Evelyn and keep her from following him into danger.
The wind-driven snow was like a blow to the face. Warren staggered under its onslaught. He was blind and disoriented for a moment, and if he hadn’t felt the boardwalk under his feet, he wouldn’t have known where he was.
That feeling passed quickly, however. Warren’s vision cleared somewhat. In the light that spilled through the open bank doors, he saw Windy Whittaker standing a few feet away. The old-timer had drawn his massive revolver and was pointing it at something.
“Let the boy go, you polecat, or I’ll blow your damn head off!” Windy shouted over the wind.
Warren moved up alongside Windy, and now he could see what the old-timer saw. One of the outlaws, a stranger to Warren, stood on the boardwalk about ten feet away. His left arm was looped around Ralph’s neck, and his right hand held a gun pressed against the boy’s head.
“Back off!” the outlaw yelled. “All of you throw your guns out! I’m comin’ in there, and if you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll kill the boy!”
Even though Warren was armed, the shotgun was useless in this situation. He couldn’t risk a shot at the outlaw. The blast would hit Ralph, too. Even using the Colt on his hip instead of the scattergun was too dangerous. He hoped Windy understood that, too, and wouldn’t start blazing away with that old hogleg of his.
“Take it easy, mister,” Windy said. “You know good and well we ain’t throwin’ down our guns. The only chance you got to survive this blizzard is to drop your gun and let go o’ that younker. You’ll be our prisoner, but at least you won’t be froze to death.”
“And take my chances with the law?” The man laughed harshly. “I don’t think so.”
“But what have you actually done so far?” Warren argued. “Ridden into town? There’s no crime in that. If you let go of Ralph now and surrender, there won’t be any charges against you.”
“Not here, maybe,” the outlaw rasped, “but what about all the other places I’ve been?”
Warren shook his head. “That’s no concern of mine. When the storm’s over, you can ride away, free and clear . . . as long as you haven’t hurt the boy.”
Windy licked his lips under his ice-encrusted mustache and said quietly, “I ain’t sure you can promise that, Ned—”
“I’m making that promise,” Warren said firmly. He raised his voice to call to the outlaw again, “Just let him go.”
“No, I don’t think so,” the man said. Ralph whimpered a little as the outlaw pressed the gun barrel harder against his head.
Warren almost charged then. He couldn’t stand seeing his son being hurt like that.
But he and Windy had been edging forward while they talked, and the outlaw had been moving back slowly, until he was in position for Ralph to take things into his own hands.
With the arm pressed against his throat, it was hard for the boy to force out words, but he managed as he unleashed a torrent of profanity in his unnaturally deep voice. The outlaw hadn’t heard his prisoner speak until now and was so surprised by what he heard that he couldn’t help but look down at Ralph.
Ralph pushed himself backward with his feet and legs as hard as he could. His boots slipped a little in the snow that had collected on the boardwalk, but he gained enough purchase to force his captor into stumbling a step back.
They were at the edge of the boardwalk, as Ralph must have noticed, and as he shoved the outlaw backward, the man suddenly found himself with nothing under his feet. He toppled, crashing into the snowy street on his back.
That impact jolted his grip on the boy loose. Ralph tore free and rolled desperately through the snow as he shouted, “Get him, Pa!”
Warren and Windy leaped forward. The outlaw struggled to get up as he spewed some obscenities of his own. He started to swing his gun toward Ralph, then realized he was in danger from the other direction. He tried to jerk it back toward Warren and Windy, but they both fired before he could pull the trigger.
Windy was a hair faster, so the heavy lead ball from his gun smashed into the outlaw’s chest and drove in to pulp his heart just before the buckshot tore into him and left his torso a bloody mess most of the way down to his waist. The double blast hammered him back down into the street. His arms and legs flopped to the sides and didn’t move again.
Ralph scrambled up and ran toward his father, but Evelyn darted around Warren first and gathered her son into her arms. Sobbing in mingled fear and relief, she held him tightly against her.
Warren wanted to embrace both of them, but instead he said, “Evelyn, Ralph, get back inside! There’s no telling who else is out here in this storm!”
“Durned toot—” Windy began, but a shot cracked before he could finish. He grunted and sagged against Warren, who dropped the shotgun to catch him.
Warren had seen the muzzle flash from the corner of his eye. He wrapped his left arm around Windy to support the old-timer, while at the same time his right hand dropped to the Colt on his hip. Maybe he wasn’t as fast on the draw as he had been as a young man, but he had kept in practice enough that the revolver came out swiftly. Flame geysered from its barrel as he triggered three fast shots in the direction of the man who’d wounded Windy.
Even as he was squeezing off those rounds, Warren urged Windy toward the bank entrance. The old-timer hadn’t passed out, so he was able to help a little in the desperate dash. They charged into the building, not far behind Evelyn and Ralph, and as they cleared the doors, a couple of the men inside slammed them closed.
“Doctor, Windy’s been hit!” Warren called.
“Some of you men help him over here to my examining room,” the physician responded wryly. Sarge Shaw had already been moved from Hawkins’ desk to a pallet on the floor made of coats some of the men had donated for that purpose.
“I ain’t hurt that bad,” Windy objected as several men hurried to take him from Warren and carry him over to the desk. The strain in the old-timer’s voice revealed the pain he was in, however.
Warren turned to his wife and son. Evelyn still had an arm around Ralph’s shoulders as she hovered over him protectively.
“Ralph, are you hurt?” Warren asked.
“Gosh, no! That damned ol’ owlhoot never did a thing to me!”
Evelyn was too upset to scold him for his language, and she hadn’t even heard the worst of it. She glared at Warren instead and said, “You should have closed that door yourself instead of telling Ralph to do it! You could have gotten him killed!”
“Shucks, Ma, neither Pa nor me knew that outlaw was lurkin’ around right outside,” Ralph protested. “It’s not Pa’s fault.”
“That’s all right, Ralph,” Warren said. “I should have been more careful.”
“But, Pa—”
Warren summoned up a smile and said, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, son. The only important thing is that you’re all right.”
“No thanks to you,” Evelyn said.
Warren didn’t respond to that. He just squeezed Ralph’s shoulder for a second and then turned to walk over to the desk where the doctor was tending to Windy Whittaker.
The old-timer was sitting up with his thick flannel coat off and his buckskin vest and flannel shirt pulled up to reveal a bloody gash in his right side. He still wore his hat and grimaced as the doctor used a wet cloth to clean away blood from the wound.
“That slug just nicked me,” Windy said. “It kinda knocked the wind outta my sails for a minute, that’s all.”
“Hold still,” the doctor told him. “I’ll need to stitch this up once I get it clean. I should probably give you something for the pain.”
Windy licked his lips and said, “I can think of some mighty effective medicine, Doc. In fact, I got a flask of it in my coat, if somebody’ll fetch it for me.”
“I was talking about . . . Oh, never mind. What you suggest will probably work as well as anything.”
Warren said, “I’ll get it for you, Windy,” and picked up the coat to take a small silver flask from one of the pockets. He unscrewed the cap and gave the flask to Windy, who took it with his left hand.
The old-timer swallowed a small slug of the whiskey and sighed. “Do your worst, Doc,” he said. “I can take it.”
Figuring it might be a good idea to distract Windy from what was going on, Warren said, “What’s happening out there, Windy? Where have you been?”
“Oh, here and there. Hard to say, exactly, where-all I been, since a fella can’t hardly see his hand in front of his face with all that snow blowin’ around.” Windy sucked in a breath as the doctor began sewing up the gash in his side. Then he went on, “But I know I was at Lomax’s Hardware Store, because I killed one o’ them owlhoots there when he jumped his horse in through the front window.”
That revelation drew a babble of excited questions. Windy described the shoot-out with the raider, then said, “I figured I ought to get back here and join up with Smoke again.” He looked around. “Smoke ain’t here, though, is he?”
“He left a little while before you showed up,” Warren answered. “He said he was going to go hunt outlaws.”
Windy nodded. “Yep, that was just what I reckoned he’d do. I was hopin’ I could join him.”
“How many outlaws are in town?” a man asked.
“Is the whole Bishop gang here in Salt Lick?” another put in.
“I can’t say about the whole gang,” Windy replied with a shake of his head. “But I can durned sure tell you that Snake Bishop his own self is in town. I saw him just a little while ago, down by the livery stable. That no-good varmint tried to shoot me. Emptied his six-shooter at me, from the sound of it.” Windy sounded a little proud as he added, “He missed, though. Reckon I was just too fast for him.”
“You said Snake Bishop is at the livery stable?”
The female voice, taut with worry, made the men look around. Tommy Spencer had approached while they were talking. Her eyes were big with fear.
“Why, uh, that’s right, Miss Tommy,” Windy said, although he looked like he didn’t want to admit it. “Bishop and another fella who was holdin’ their horses, so he had to be one o’ the gang, too.”
“What were they doing there?”
“I don’t rightly know. They spotted me at the same time I spotted them, and uh, like I said, Bishop commenced to shootin’ at me . . .”
“I’m sure they were just trying to get in out of the storm,” Warren said. “Anyone with any sense would have done that. It doesn’t mean your father was there, or in any danger, Miss Spencer.”
“We . . . we planned to meet here, if the men at the barricade at the south end of town were forced to retreat,” Tommy said. “But I know my father. He would have gone by the stable and his shop to make sure everything was all right there first.” Her voice rose. “What if Snake Bishop and that other man caught him there?”
“Now, missy, your pa is a mighty smart man,” Windy said. “If he was there when Bishop and that other fella came in, I’m bettin’ he stayed outta sight and figured on layin’ low until the storm blows over and they leave. That’s bound to be what happened.”
Warren said, “Or maybe he’s not there at all.”
Tommy leveled a glare at him. “Where is he, then?”
“Well, he . . . he could have taken shelter somewhere else, or maybe he’s still trying to make his way here . . .”
“Or he’s laying out there frozen to death, if those outlaws didn’t murder him!”
Several of the women from town came up and tried to comfort Tommy. One of them put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, but Tommy jerked away from it.
“I need to go to the stable and find out what happened to him!”
Windy and Warren both shook their heads.
“No, ma’am, that’s exactly what you don’t need to do,” Windy said. “First off, you’d probably never find the place in this storm, and even if you did, those two owlhoots are likely still there. You don’t want to be messin’ with them.”
Warren said, “Windy’s right. I know you’re worried, Miss Spencer . . . Tommy . . . We all are. But things are already bad enough. We don’t need to make them worse by putting more people in danger.”
“Who put you in charge?” Tommy challenged. “You’re just the newspaper editor, not the marshal or the mayor!”
“But I’m the deputy marshal,” Windy said, “and I agree with Mr. Warren; you need to stay right here where it’s safe, gal.”
“Safe,” Tommy repeated skeptically. “For how long?”
Windy and Warren looked at each other. They couldn’t answer that, and neither could anyone else here in the bank.