CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The burning had gone really well.

The old woman had screamed enough to impress the crowd, but not too much that it might have made some sympathetic to her suffering.

Cobb’s only disappointment was that the search for Annie Gaunt’s friend, a man called Scruggs, had turned up nothing. He would have burned with the old woman, but it seemed that the man had scampered.

Still, Cobb grinned as he drank his morning coffee and studied the pile on the table in front of him.

“Good work, Brother Uzziah,” he said.

“Hell, boss, that’s only the beginning,” Shel Shannon said, huge in his monk’s robe. “I ain’t near through squeezing them yet.”

Cobb idly picked up a gold ring with a ringlet of hair enclosed in its locket-like setting and turned it in his fingers.

“It’s what they call a mourning ring,” Shannon said. “The woman who owned it said it was a lock of hair from the head of her daughter who died when she was six or seven. I don’t rightly recollect.” The gunman grinned. “Damned slut didn’t want to part with it until I convinced her that a ring wasn’t worth a broken finger.”

“How much?” Cobb said.

“Hard to say, but I reckon it will bring a hundred easily in Texas.”

Cobb tossed the ring onto the heap of jewelry and gold watches on the table.

“How much is all this in front of me worth?” he said.

“Five, six thousand,” Shannon said.

He saw the disappointment on Cobb’s face and said, “The boys are still gathering stuff, boss. By tonight we’ll have twice that and maybe more.”

“I know, but it isn’t gonna be near enough,” Cobb said. “But we’ll make it up with the bank money.”

Shannon nodded. “I asked some questions about that, discreetly, like you said. Ain’t that the word you used?”

Cobb nodded and Shannon said, “There’s gold miners’ money in there and a few cattlemen’s accounts. Seems like they figured a law-abiding town like Holy Rood was a safe place to leave it.”

Cobb smiled. “Their mistake. How much?”

“Near as I can figure, twenty, maybe thirty thousand. But there could be twice that, I reckon. Only Reuben Waters knows for sure.”

Cobb considered that, then said, “All right, we’ll pay off the hired guns with the jewelry and stuff, and split the bank money between us.”

“Seems fair to me, boss,” Shannon said, pleased.

Cobb picked up the mourning ring and after a while found a tiny clasp at the side of the setting. He opened the locket and let the lock of hair inside fall to the floor.

“I’m keeping this,” he said. “When I kill Jasper Wolfden, I’ll put a chunk of his beard in it.” He grinned at Shannon. “I’ll wear it on my finger to mourn him, like.”

“Will we have time for that, boss?” Shannon said. He looked concerned.

“We’ll make time,” Cobb said. “I want Wolfden and them other two that he helped escape. And most of all, I want that girl.”

“You gonna gun her too, boss?”

Cobb shook his head, his eyes gleaming. “No, I got other plans for her.”

 

 

The coin was heavy, but most of the bank’s assets were in paper money and Reuben Waters easily handled the burlap sacks he threw into the back of the surrey. The horse in the traces was a Morgan and it would do its job.

Waters had been pilfering the accounts for the past year, but not so much that it would be noticed by his clerk without a careful audit.

The big banker nodded to himself and smiled his satisfaction.

He estimated there was close to sixty thousand in the surrey, enough to last him the rest of his life if he stayed to cheap whiskey and cheaper whores.

As for his dear wife, Prudence, fat and snoring in the marital bed, she could fend for herself. Hey, maybe Brother Matthias would name her for a witch and burn her.

Waters’s smile broadened. Serve her right. She really was a damned witch after all.

The virgin dawn blushed pink in the sky as the banker checked the loads in his Smith & Wesson .38 and returned it to the pocket of his frockcoat.

A big-bellied man, and heavy, the surrey lurched and creaked when Waters climbed into the seat and clucked the Morgan into motion.

Holy Rood was still asleep as the banker swung the surrey into the street and headed south through long morning shadows.

Waters was mightily pleased with himself.

If he kept to the main wagon and stage route, by tonight he’d be in Silver Reef where he and his money would be safe.

Then a few drinks, a good dinner and a woman to share his bed, and he’d hit the road again and head for the Arizona Territory where nobody knew him.

And after that . . . well, the world was his oyster.

Waters slapped the horse into a trot, anxious to be gone from the damned town forever. The surrey trailed a plume of dust as it cleared the business area, then the livery stable and finally the sheriff’s office.

He didn’t see a soul.

But a dog trotted out of an alley, a burned chunk of bone in its mouth, and watched Waters go. The dog dropped the bone, then squatted and scratched and scratched and scratched. . . .

 

 

“There he goes, boss, just like you said he would,” Shel Shannon said. “Runnin’ like a scalded cat.”

Cobb stepped to the window in time to see the surrey’s dust settle back to the street.

He smiled. “I don’t know how many mistakes Waters has made in his life, but this is his biggest.”

Cobb moved away from the window and said to Shannon, “Who’s to the south.”

“McCord and Hooper. I told them to bring him back dead. Figure it’s easier that way.”

“See the money is returned to the bank and I want a two-man guard on it until we ride out of here,” Cobb said.

He smiled as a thought struck him.

“Hell, we’ll burn the place on the way out. Wipe this burg off the map.”

“Easier that way,” Shannon said, repeating himself.

“Ain’t it, though?” Cobb said, his tight-skinned face alight.

 

 

Bargain with the coin and save the notes, Reuben Waters told himself as the two riders, dressed in monkish robes, rode out of the trees and blocked the road.

“Howdy, Rueben,” one of the men said. “What brings you out so early in the morning?”

Jason McCord was a Texas gunfighter who’d been a close friend of John Wesley Hardin and had gone drinking and whoring with him on numerous occasions. He was so sudden on the draw and shoot that Hardin called him Fast Draw McCord, and meant it.

Waters searched for mercy or understanding in the man’s pale blue eyes but found neither.

Beside McCord, a rifle across his saddle horn, Tom Hooper had an amused smile on his lean, narrow face, his mouth showing teeth under a great dragoon mustache.

Waters believed that the lives of such rough men revolved around women and whiskey, and he decided to play to both vices.

“I’m headed for Silver Reef, boys,” he said. “I keep a woman there an’ figured it was high time I got some of my money’s worth.” He winked. “She also supplies the whiskey.”

“Well, good for you, Reuben,” McCord said. “What does your old lady say about that?”

Waters tried a grin that ended up a grimace. “Well, the wife don’t know nothing about my spare woman. Like, I told her I was headed to Silver Reef on banking business.”

“So what you got in your poke behind the seat?” McCord said.

“Oh, that?” Waters said.

“Yeah, that,” McCord said.

“It’s money I plan to invest in certain business ventures in Silver Reef.” Waters tried the smile again. “As you brothers know, I believe in giving the good folks of Holy Rood an interest second to none, more than they’d get in them big banks in New York or Boston. And the secret to supplying that interest rate is sound investment after sound investment. And always keeping a sound head, of course.”

The two gunmen said nothing.

Waters sweated in his broadcloth and wiped his round, glossy face with a large, blue bandana. Suddenly, he found it hard to breathe and he heard a wheeze in his chest.

“You don’t look so good, Reuben,” McCord said. “A might peaked, like a man with a misery.”

“I am a sick man, brother. That’s another reason I’m headed for Silver Reef, for some well-earned rest and relaxation.”

“I never could relax with a whore,” McCord said. “Could you, Tom?”

Hooper shook his head. “Nah, I was always too busy to relax.”

“Ella Campbell is not a whore,” Waters said, pretending to be outraged about his pretend woman to make his reason for travel more believable.

“She’s a kept woman, you said.” Hooper grinned.

“Well, yes, she is.”

“Then she’s a whore,” McCord said. He turned in the saddle and said, “Tom, check out them sacks.”

“Wait!” Waters said. He shook his head, the wattle under his chin wagging, panic in his eyes.

“I told you a lie, brothers,” he said quickly. “I’m stealing the bank’s money.”

“We know you are, Reuben,” McCord said. “Now just sit back and enjoy the morning while Tom takes a look.”

“Seems like it’s all there to the last penny,” Hooper said.

“Now much you reckon?” McCord said.

“Hell, I don’t know, and it would take me all day to count it,” Hooper said. “But it’s a lot. I can tell you that.”

“Fifty thousand,” Waters said. “We can split it three ways and head for Arizona.” His hands outstretched, pleading, he said, “What do you say, boys? Is it a deal? Let’s have no unpleasantness here.”

McCord said, “You lied to us, Reuben, and you know what happens to bad boys who tell lies, don’t you?”

“They get shot,” Hooper said.

Waters’s eyes unmasked and now they glittered with anger.

“Scum!” he yelled. “You damned scum.”

He went for the revolver in his pocket.

It was another big mistake, and the last one he’d ever make.

The Smith & Wesson was still in the broadcloth when Hooper hit him with a heavy-bladed machete he’d drawn from a scabbard on his saddle.

Waters screamed as the honed edge bit deep into the roll of fat at the back of his neck and blood spurted.

His face ugly with fear and horror, the banker rolled off the seat and hit the ground hard. He tried for the gun in his pocket once more, but Hooper had dismounted and he swung the machete again.

The sharp steel blade split open Waters’s skull like a ripe watermelon and he was mercifully dead when more of Hooper’s blows rained down on his head and shoulders, and blood and brain fanned into the morning air. . . .

Finally sated, the gunman straightened up and let the gory machete dangle at his side. His face was covered in streaks of scarlet and gray and it looked as though he wore a red silk glove on his right hand.

McCord leaned from the saddle, his forearm on the horn.

“Never seen a man killed like that before,” he said. “Never figgered a blade could cause that much damage.”

Hooper grinned. “Got a taste for the steel when I was just a younker and done fer my pa with a wood axe. Besides, a blade saves a bullet, considering what a box of decent .45s cost these days.”

“Hitch your hoss to the wagon, Tom,” McCord said. “We’ll take the money back to town.”

“What about him?” Hooper said.

“Just leave him where he lays. I don’t reckon he cares much one way or t’other.”

Hooper gave McCord a sly look. “We could just grab the money an’ run, Jason. Just like ol’ Reuben said.”

McCord nodded. “We could. But do you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for Hank Cobb? Years might pass, but one day, when you least expect it, you’ll turn and he’ll be there.”

Hooper considered that, and then said, “I was only joshing.”

“I wasn’t,” McCord said.