Chapter Eleven
Five hundred miles south of Chugwater, six men rode into the small town of Seven Oaks, Texas. All six were wearing long, brown dusters, and all had their hats pulled so low that it was difficult to get a good look at anyone’s face. The town was relatively busy, with a couple of wagons rolling slowly down the street. In front of Bloomberg’s General Store a woman was putting groceries into a buckboard as her six-year-old son stood beside her. At the hotel a man was standing on the roof that overhung the first-floor porch, washing windows on the second floor.
Two older men were playing checkers in front of the feed store, while a couple of gossips looked on.
“You’ve got a jump, Fred,” one of them said.
“I see the jump. Leave me be, let me play my own game.”
“I’m just tryin’ to help.”
“I don’t need no help.”
Abe Sobel was just coming out of the leather-goods store, wearing a new pair of boots, putting weight on them to see how they would feel, when the six men passed right in front of them.
“I’ll be damn,” he said quietly. He hurried two doors down to the sheriff’s office, where he found Sheriff Munson reading a newspaper, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk.
“Sheriff, we may be about to have some trouble comin’ soon,” Sobel said.
Munson put down the paper. “What sort of trouble?”
“Could be bad trouble. I just saw Sid Shamrock ’n a bunch of men ridin’ into town.”
“Sid Shamrock? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“How do you know, for sure?”
“I seen his scar.”
“Lots of men have scars.”
“Trust me, Sheriff. This here is Shamrock.”
“All right, you said a bunch of men. How many men?”
“Five men with ’im. Six, counting Shamrock.”
Sheriff Munson stood up, then walked over to a hook from which hung his belt and holster. He put it on, then took a rifle from the rack and tossed it to Sobel.
“What’s this for?”
“You don’t expect me to go up against six men all by myself, do you?”
“Wait a minute!” Sobel said. “I ain’t gettin’ paid for this. What about your deputy?”
“He ain’t in town; he’s takin’ a prisoner down to Badwater. As far as gettin’ paid is concerned, I’ll make you my deputy. You can get a month’s pay for one afternoon of work.”
“Yeah, if I don’t get killed.”
“You comin’ with me, or not?”
Sobel nodded. “I’m with you,” he said.
* * *
As Sheriff Munson and Sobel were discussing the situation, Sid Shamrock and the five men with him stopped in front of the bank.
“Hawke, you ’n Wix hold the horses. Jaco, you, Pete, ’n Evans come in with me,” Shamrock ordered.
Shamrock and Evans turned their reins over to Hawke, Pete and Jaco gave theirs to Wix, then the four men went into the bank. There was a man waiting at the teller’s window, and a woman, with a little girl, standing at the table. A teller was behind the cage and another man was sitting behind a desk to the side of the room.
The four men drew their guns.
“Let’s make this easy!” Shamrock shouted.
The woman screamed, and Evans brought his pistol down on her head, dropping her to the floor. Her screaming stopped.
“Mama!”
“Shut up, little girl, or I’ll hit you, too,” Evans growled.
The customer at the window stepped to one side with his hands up. “I’m not armed,” he said.
“You,” Shamrock said as he handed a cloth bag to the teller. “Fill this up.”
The teller began to scoop the money up from his drawer. A quick glance made it obvious that there were only a couple hundred dollars in the drawer.
Shamrock pointed toward the closed vault. “That ain’t enough money. Empty the safe,” he said.
“I can’t.”
Shamrock raised the pistol and pulled the hammer back. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“It’s on a time lock,” the teller said. “It can only be opened at nine in the morning and four in the afternoon.”
“If you don’t want your brains scattered all over the floor, you’ll open it now.”
“Mr. Fitzhugh is correct,” the man behind the desk said. “The safe can only be opened twice a day.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the bank manager.”
“Well, Mr. Bank Manager, you’d better find some way to override that time lock.”
“There is no way.”
Wix came into the bank. “We need to get out of here now,” Wix said urgently. “There’s a bunch of men beginnin’ to gather down the street.”
“Open the safe, now!” Shamrock ordered.
“If you’re going to shoot me, shoot me,” the bank manager said calmly. “Either way, that safe can’t be opened until four o’clock this afternoon.” Inexplicably, he smiled. “I would suggest that you might try coming back then.”
It was the smile. Shamrock was ready to just leave, but the son of a bitch smiled at him, and that pissed him off. Shamrock pulled the trigger, and, gasping, the bank manager clasped his hand over the wound in his stomach and went down.
“Let’s go!” Shamrock ordered as he and the others left the bank and leaped into the saddles.
* * *
“I heard a shot!” Sobel shouted.
“Shoot ’em, shoot ’em!” Sheriff Munson shouted, and he and Sobel began shooting at the bank robbers as they galloped away. There were two other armed men who had joined them, and though they were shooting as well, not one of the outlaws was hit.
When Sheriff Munson and several others rushed into the bank, they saw the still form of C. D. Matthews, the bank manager, lying on the floor. They also saw Fitzhugh, the teller, and the little girl, squatted down beside the little girl’s mother.
“Was Mrs. Margrabe shot?” Sheriff Munson asked.
“No,” Fitzhugh said. “She was struck with a pistol, but she’s beginning to come around.”
“Mr. Matthews?” the sheriff asked.
Fitzhugh shook his head sadly. “He’s dead, I fear,” Fitzhugh said.
Sheriff Munson looked at Sobel. “You say it was Sid Shamrock?”
“Yeah.”
“How can you be so sure? The reason I ask is, I’m going to put out a telegram about it, and I don’t want to say it was Sid Shamrock unless I can be absolutely certain.”
“I uh.” Sobel saw that everyone else was looking at him, waiting for his answer.
“I rode with him once,” Sobel said quietly.
“Thanks,” Sheriff Munson said. He put his hand on Sobel’s shoulder. “As far as I know, there’s no paper on you.”
“I . . . I don’t know whether there is or not.”
“Sobel, you’ve not given me one lick of trouble from the time you come into town. And you could have kept quiet when you saw Shamrock riding into town, but you came in to tell me about it. So whether there is or not, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no paper on you.”
“Thanks, Sheriff.”
“No, thank you for coming to the aid of the town when you were needed.”
“Hear! Hear!” one of the townspeople said, and the others gave a friendly nod.
* * *
“Four hundred and thirty-seven dollars?” Hawke said. “That’s all the hell we got, is four hundred and thirty-seven dollars? That’s not even a hundred dollars apiece.”
“Well, how much money did you have in your pocket this morning?” Shamrock asked, duplicating the same question he had asked Abe Sobel after the much more fruitful bank robbery in Sulphur Springs.
“Two dollars.”
“Then you’re money ahead, ain’t you?”
“Hey, Shamrock, what do you say we find us some town where we can spend some of this money? It ain’t much, but it’s enough to get drunk on, ’n maybe get a whore,” Wix said.
“Ha! You’ll need to get the whore drunk, too, before she’ll go with you,” Jaco said, and the others laughed.
“It’ll be best if we don’t all ride in together,” Shamrock said. “Just in case word has gone out to look for six men.”
“How is word goin’ to go out?” Jaco asked. “You know that there ain’t nobody that’s got up here this far before we did.”
“Telegraph coulda done it,” Evans said.
“Yeah, I forgot about the telegraph. We shoulda cut the wires. If we had cut the wires, we wouldn’t have no telegraph to be a-worryin’ about,” Hawke said.
“Yeah, and if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass ever’ time it jumps,” Shamrock said. “It’s too late to be worrying about it now.”
* * *
Sid Shamrock woke up in a whore’s bed in Whitcomb, Texas. During the night the sheet had pulled down to the woman’s waist, exposing oversized, blue-lined breasts, one of which had burn scars from cigarettes. She was snoring, and a bit of saliva was dribbling from her lips.
“How damn drunk was I to choose this one?” he asked himself quietly.
He saw a fly land on one of the whore’s breasts, and started to brush it away but decided against it. Instead he watched as it crawled up onto the nipple then sat there for a moment, rubbing its wings with its back legs. The whore twitched a couple of times, then brushed it away.
With a quiet chuckle, and without awakening her, Shamrock put on his clothes then went downstairs. The saloon was empty, so he walked across the street to have breakfast. Here, he picked up a paper from the counter and took it with him to read as he waited for the bacon and eggs to be brought to the table.
He was somewhat disturbed that a story about the bank robbery was above the fold on the front page. He had hoped, and thought, that they would get a little more time than this.
Banker Killed in Seven Oaks
(BY TELEGRAPH) C. D. Matthews, manager of the Bank of Seven Oaks, was murdered during a bank robbery. Mrs. Pauline Margrabe received a skull fracture when one of the outlaws hit her on the head with the butt of his pistol.
The bank robbers were unaware that the vault is controlled by time lock, so the money in the vault was untouched. Only the money that was in the teller’s cash drawer was taken, an amount that totaled $437.00.
That was small reward for the outlaws who are now wanted, not just for bank robbery, but for murder as well. One of the bank robbers has been identified, that person being Sid Shamrock. It is believed that Sid Shamrock is the leader of the gang.
Shamrock is about five feet ten inches tall, with blond, or very light brown hair. He is normally clean-shaven, and can be identified by a purple scar that cuts down through his left eye. The resulting scar has left a drooping eyelid.
Seeing his name and his description in the story startled him.
“What?” Shamrock said aloud. “How the hell do they know that?”
“I beg your pardon, sir, were you speaking to me?” the man at the next table asked.
“No, I wasn’t, and mind your own damn business,” Shamrock replied with a growl, and without further explanation.
How was it possible that he had been identified? Prior to the robbery, he had never been to Seven Oaks in his life. And unlike some outlaws who were widely known, who in fact took pride in their notoriety, Shamrock had purposely avoided being known, even changing his name when his previous name had been compromised.
Jaco and Wix came into the café while Shamrock was still eating his breakfast, and they joined him at his table.
“Do you know where the others are?” Shamrock asked.
“Yeah, I just seen Pete ’n Hawke over in the Brown Dirt Saloon. I don’t know where Evans is, though,” Wix said.
“Pete more ’n likely knows where Evans is, ’cause I seen them together last night,” Jaco added.
“After breakfast, get ’em rounded up. We’ve got to get out of here,” Shamrock told the others.
“Why?” Wix asked. “I’ve still got a little money to spend. ’N I’ve found me a good-lookin’ whore to spend it on,” he added with a grin.
“Because word has already gone out,” Shamrock said. He tapped the story in the paper. “We have been identified. I don’t know how they found out, but they know who we are.”
Actually, only Shamrock had been identified, but by saying “we” had been identified, it gave more urgency to his suggestion that they leave the state.
“What are we going to do now?” Jaco asked.
“Like I said, we’re gettin’ out of here.”
“Where at are we a-goin’?” Wix asked.
“We’re going to Wyoming,” Shamrock replied.
“Wyoming? What the hell is in Wyoming?” Wix asked. “Damn it, I don’t like it that far north. It gets cold in Wyoming.”
“Folks has most likely not never heard of us in Wyoming,” Shamrock said. And his brother was there, Shamrock thought, though he didn’t say that aloud.