AMOS AGRY had been the first to discover his cousin Lew’s death, the first to sound the alarm and the first to quit when the going got hot. But he had a little more incentive than saving his skin. All through the action, in fact, his thoughts had kept wandering back to the scene in Lew’s room.
The big one had been just barely stirring when Amos went in there and glimpsed the damage by candlelight. Buchanan’s fingers gripped the leather purse Amos remembered from the night before, but what really took the clerk’s attention was the cascade of big-denomination certificates that littered the floor beneath the open saddlebag and lay across the arm and chest of the lifeless sheriff. Buchanan had moved then, and Amos fled to get help.
Now he was back in the room, working feverishly, expecting Cousin Simon to arrive hard on the heels of the Mexicans. He stuffed the spilled money back inside the bag, fumbled clumsily with the thongs, finally fastened them and then dragged the heavy burden to the door. He paused there, trembling, sweating clammily from fear and expectation. He opened the door and peered down the hallway. No one should be there, and no one was. The only guest during the past month had been Buchanan. The only persons using the place were himself and Cousin Lew.
Cousin Lew. Amos couldn’t resist the impulse to look back over his shoulder at the grotesquely fallen figure of the man who had ridden so roughshod over him all their lives. See the swaggering bully-boy now. How many times did he call me stupid? Amos asked himself. Who was stupid now — dead, with his sneering mouth agape, his sardonic eyes wide and staring?
“I hope you burn in hell, Lew,” Amos said aloud. “I hope you catch it good.”
He bent down, and with a great effort shouldered the saddlebags and carried them down the hallway. Suddenly he stopped and his knees almost caved in beneath him. Horses! Simon and Carbo were here. All right, stay calm. Take the money out onto the front porch, tell Simon a story about how you had saved it for him.
But wasn’t there still time? Wasn’t this the big chance, the last chance to be everything but a lackey all his life? Simon wouldn’t thank him for rescuing the money; there’d be no reward. All he’d get would be more orders, more dull and dirty jobs to do. His father, the uncle of Simon and Lew, had taken a hand in raising them when their own father had gone to prison. He’d taken the whip to them, as he had to his own children, and it seemed to Amos that his cousins still resented those hidings and were taking it out on him.
Instead of taking the money out to the porch, Amos turned and began climbing the service stairway to the floor above. He halted at the top for a breath, then continued down the corridor until he came to the ladder that led to the attic. He dragged the saddlebags behind him, slid the trap door aside and got the heavy weights up the ladder and onto the attic floor. He didn’t even bother to climb in there and conceal them, but replaced the door and came back down. Amos had just reached the first floor again when the front door of the hotel burst open and Simon charged through the lobby.
“Where’s my brother?” Simon shouted wildly.
Amos pointed to Lew’s room, followed the other man at a respectful distance. Simon stopped in the doorway and stared at the body with the incredulous expression, then went in and stood looking down at it in fascination. After a moment his head came up and his eyes were snapping.
“Who killed him? Who’s got the money from the bank?”
“Buchanan,” Amos told him. “I tried to hole him up in there but he got help from the Mex riders.”
Simon left the room in a rage, went looking for Abe Carbo and found him talking with a group before the open bank building. He motioned to the gunman imperiously, and his anger mounted at the time it took Carbo to break off his conference and saunter toward him.
“Damn it, come when you’re called!” Simon growled, but Carbo didn’t seem to hear. He was, in fact, deep in speculation. Finding that safe broken into had dealt Abe Carbo a rather nasty shock, which would have surprised Simon Agry had he known. Carbo’s bandit heritage had led him to take a proprietary interest in those thousands of dollars, and now he felt a very personal loss.
“Get a war party together,” Agry said. “We’re riding!”
“Riding where?”
“To Del Cuervo’s. Buchanan and Gomez stole my money.”
That didn’t jibe with the answers Carbo had just gotten from the eyewitnesses. They told him that Buchanan had been lifted onto Gomez’s horse, and there was no mention of any heavy money sacks. Besides, the padlock had not been shot away but opened with a key.
“Lew’s got it,” Carbo said, repeating his first thought about the theft.
“Lew’s in his room. Dead.”
Carbo brushed past the fat man and hurried into the hotel. He picked up a lamp from the desk and made his way to the rear room. He turned the body roughly over, then pulled it out of the way while he stooped down to peer beneath the bed. He reached in and pulled out the empty sack and suitcase.
“That’s them!” Simon said excitedly from behind him. “By God, it was Lew. And the hardcase killed him and took it away.”
“Could be,” Carbo said, thinking that might have been the way of it. The witnesses had obviously watched from cover. They could have missed the transfer of the money. He reasoned, too, that besides himself only Buchanan had the excuse and the nerve to brace Lew Agry.
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Simon demanded impatiently.
Carbo shook his head. “You don’t have the warriors for the job,” he said.
“We beat them last time — ”
“As I remember, Lew had a hand in that. Lew, Pecos, Lafe, and Waldo Peek. We got to replace those guns, Si.”
“By hell, Abe, you’re the last man I ever expected to show a yellow streak.”
Carbo regarded Simon Agry thoughtfully. Why not puncture this bag of wind right now and be done with it? he asked himself.
“I spoke hasty,” Agry said into the silence, almost as though he read Carbo’s mind. “This is no time for us to fall out.”
“You’re right, Si.”
“What plans you got for getting back that gold?”
“Like I said, we got to hire some gunhands.”
“Where?”
“I’ll mosey north aways. Be back in a week.”
“A week? Buchanan’ll be out of the country — ”
“I don’t think so. Don Pedro is going to want to show his gratitude. And you know how long that takes a Mexican.”