Chapter 16

She sat down on the edge of the bed and rared up her head to tie her hair back. A strange light was in her eyes. She looked at Blue Duck. "What's your answer?"

He still didn't want to make a solid agreement with her. He was wary of declaring himself inside her circle. The coyote was wary about anybody's circles.

He shook his head slightly.

"Five minutes," she said. "Yes or no."

The others had arrived back in the room. They were in a better mood now. "Did you get it, Crick?"

"Yep."

"How much?"

"Enough to blow up a lot of stumps."

"What'd you see at Mr. Couch's little meeting, J. B.?" Ralph answered for him.

"Couch wasn't there. Some other man -the one that announced him last night -talked about the settlement up at Enid, wherever the hell that is."

She looked away. "Smack dab in the middle of the Outlet .... And he was trying to get people to go up there? What did he say exactly?"

"What did he call it, you mean?" Ralph leaned his head back. "Let's see ... 'God's work in the Oklahoma Territory,' 'the vanguard of liberty,' ahh ... 'the settlement of Eden,' 'Palestine on the prairie'--that enough?"

"Building them a boomer camp in the middle of the Outlet. That's some old-fashioned straight poker. When are they leaving?"

"Two days. He says they'll be back here after a month to get another crew. He's been here before. This is his second roundup. He was talking a lot about the commercial possibilities in the new town. There's a morning train north in two days. They get free passage."

She appeared to be musing. "They've got the trains running before they've even got the towns settled."

"What about the bank?" Crick asked.

They all went silent at that one. Belle sat with her hands up behind her head still arranging her hair. Blue Duck watched her. She seemed relaxed sitting there in the bed with all of them watching her. She finally looked up -directly at him. He became uneasy. Her eyes were very heavy.

They were heavy and still and cracked with light. She looked at him. The men shuffled around some. Someone muttered about the weather being decent, at least.

She just kept looking at him.

It was a minute before he understood what she was doing. He became irritated. He did not like being pressured.

"Well, are we going to bum them down tonight or what?" Crick said. "I wouldn't use that dynamite here. There must have been ten people saw me buying the stuff."

"The safe won't dynamite," Belle said, still looking at Blue Duck.

"Yeah?"

They were all getting uncomfortable. It was unlike her to just sit there. Her hands were in her lap now, her back straight as a board. Her face was the only thing in the room. Blue Duck looked away and tried to put on his Indian composure. It wouldn't stick. She was pushing him. He looked back at her, intending to call her on it.

Instead he looked at her and nodded. Eyes blinking slowly, he nodded once.

"All right," she said, "You boys get ready to start earning your wages. We're going public today. Whoever ain't ready for it, pack your saddlebags."

None of them liked the idea. Crick got quiet and withdrawn and slightly pale. Hotsie grew quiet, too--and shy-acting, as though he were suddenly much younger. Ralph spat between his upper front teeth at twice the usual rate and his sarcasm grew light and ineffectual. J. B. moved and spoke even more slowly than usual. He seemed almost drugged. Blue Duck was aware of them all, but he was most aware of his own intestines, which were a stew of snakes.

Strangely, none of them made serious protest. None of them decided to quit the job. Belle did almost all of the talking. He watched and listened to her sluggishly. At moments, watching her face, he did not hear her words precisely. The others seemed to do likewise, like little boys in a dreamy mood watching their mother.

They moved out one at a time after 2:30. The sunlight made him a little nauseated. He was conscious of the gun on his hip. Voices in his mind protested. They protested in every possible way, arguing, imploring and whispering at him. They talked one at a time like speakers at an assembly. They talked all at once like a swelling mob in his skull. They told him that this was everything that he did not want. He sat alone at the Outdoor Cafe slouched down in his chair over coffee, agreeing with them, capitulating to their arguments. Yet the voices were not as real as she was. She had become very different to him in the last few hours. He did not know why. No single thing had caused it. His accumulated friendship with her had perhaps totaled up somehow. Maybe he was getting scared of her. Maybe he was even more scared of her than of robbing a bank.

When the firebell clanged and people began rushing down the street, he hardly looked to see the smoke. Hotsie had done his job. He stood up and tucked his shirt in. Across the way he saw J. B. and Crick stalking toward the bank. Out in the street a little boy ran square into him. "There's a fire! Down at the town hall!" The boy was so excited that he ran off and left his hat in the street.

Blue Duck stood looking at the hat with people rushing by him toward the fire. For a moment he forgot where he was or what he was supposed to do. When he saw Hotsie coming with three horses in tow, he remembered. Belle was at the rail in front of the stable on Main Street untying the other horses. She gave him the eye and nodded over toward the bank. J. B. and the others had not gone inside yet. They stood in a little group off the corner of the facade. One of the guards was leaning out the door looking up the street. A half-dozen of the regulars in front of the bank had not been drawn off by the fire. The diversion hadn't worked. A lot of people had gone off to see the show, but these old guys just chewed a little faster and looked a little more disgusted at all the hubbub. That could be very bad.

Blue Duck looked over at J. B. and the others. They huddled together without talking. They seemed scared. If they went in now it would be disastrous. All of the men in front of the bank were armed.

He hurried down the street toward them. He trotted right up to them with no idea in hell of what he was doing. His face was hot. He glanced over at J. B. and the others. On the verge of making a move, they held back now, puzzled.

"A woman!" he cried. They scrutinized him lazily.

"How's that?" one of them eventually said. "A woman in the fire!" Blue Duck said excitedly. "They said to come to the bank, out front, and get her man. Didn't give the name...."

"Don't have a hemorrhage, buddy. What about this woman?"

"Burned," Blue Duck said, making it up as he went along. "All of her clothes were burned off. They got her laid out. It's horrible." Two or three of the men seemed to get worried at that point.

"What'd she look like?"

"I don't know. All of her clothes were burned off! They said to come down here and get some man. She's naked!"

"Get who? What was the name?"

"Was she fat?"

"The whole place is in flames!" Blue Duck looked over at J. B. and the others, hoping to God they'd stay back until he'd baited these guys. It half-worked. Four of them made off down the street. The two who remained stood there chewing like old steers, imperturbable. J. B. and the others closed in. The firebell was still clanging. A wagon rattled by. Belle started across the street with the horses. Blue Duck waited until J. B. and the others had entered the bank. The two remaining men were immediately suspicious.

There was a shot and yelling and another shot inside the bank. Blue Duck drew his pistol and aimed it toward the two. "Get in the bank." They hesitated. ''I'll kill you." They finally moved.

Inside, there was a man on all fours on the floor and others standing against the wall with their hands up. He added his two to the group and helped Crick cover them. Belle came inside with her hair back, neckerchief up, hat down low over her forehead and spurs jingling.

J. B. was on the other side of the tellers' counter getting an older man to stuff the bags with money out of the safe. The man on all fours made a gurgling sound, looked around the room with a strange lost gleam in his eye and began to crawl toward a rifle off against the wall.

"Stop," Belle said. She stepped over and booted the rifle across the floor. He looked at her with puzzled bright eyes. Red foam dripped out of his mouth. Something hung out of his stomach. He started crawling toward the rifle again. "Stop." Belle lowered her pistol, following him.

"Up! Keep them high!" Crick warned. He had a shotgun.

One of the bank executives was making strange noises, something between a whimper and a catching in his throat. His eyes rolled up in his head and blinked rapidly, arms wavering.

"Up!" Crick shouted.

The executive toppled to the floor in a dead faint. The whole group seemed to panic at this point. One began to openly weep. Someone began to moan long deep lugubrious moans -Blue Duck couldn't tell who. Belle got between the crawling man and the rifle, and he pushed right into her boots, bumping her like a cow against a fence. She held her pistol cocked. He reached up, grabbed the boot and held it. He did not try to move her leg but just held on, face to the floor. She looked down on the top of his head. Halfway across the room, Blue Duck saw a combustion of terror in her face. She jerked her leg back as if from a snake. The hardness struggled back to her expression. The crawling man toppled over and went into seizure. His arms and legs stood straight out, his head lifted, he sat up and then stiffened Hat, sat up and stiffened Hat, blue-faced ugly mechanical laughter pushing out of his guts.

The room was exploding with craziness, all too fast to be real. Through the window Blue Duck saw a man approach the bank. At the entrance he turned tail and ran right by Hotsie, yelling, "Bank robbery! Bank robbery!" He had a good voice for it.

Blue Duck advised J. B. that they had about thirty seconds to get out. The old teller who was stuffing the bags stopped immediately and assumed an expression of composed distaste.

"Who's the boss here?" Belle asked.

No one answered.

"Who is he? I'll start shooting if you don't answer me."

A man pointed at the fainted executive. "Him. That's the boss."

"Tell him when he wakes up that this robbery was pulled by Cherokee Strip boomers. We weren't booming fast enough. The funds were slow coming through. Take it as a warning. You got that?"

The man nodded, confused.

"What'd I say?"

Lips moving, he couldn't speak.

"It's a woman," one of them muttered.

"What did I say?" Belle waved her .44 at the man, but he still could not talk.

The man in seizure was choking. Face white now, eyes turned-up bald globes, he was choking and burbling down his jaw and bleeding extravagant pumping slops of blood out of his belly. He was very unreservedly dying. Blue Duck went over and turned him onto his side to relieve the choking. "Tend this man. You in the ribbon tie, get over here."

A man in a black ribbon tie ventured over, hands still up. "Keep him on his side," Blue Duck said helplessly. "Get a ... get a doctor."

"Sure," the man said venomously.

"What did I say?" Belle repeated.

The old teller, hands now on the counter, head erect, replied, "You requested that we inform the manager that the robbery was performed by Cherokee Strip boomers, that certain funds were slow in coming through."

"All right, grandpa, you got it. The rest of you get behind the counter. Now! We'll have you covered for three minutes after we go out the door, so don't try to leave. Time it or you'll get your face shot off. That's three minutes. Now all of you get behind the counter and put your hands flat on it. Get their guns, one of you."

Blue Duck gathered them up off the floor and threw them out. A gangly man who looked like a farmer stood outside near Hotsie. They burst out of the place with neckerchiefs up, waving guns and toting bags of money. The farmer stood in the swirl of dust and horses with a big smile pasted on his face. "What yall doin?"

"Robbing the bank, what the hell do you think?" Ralph yelled.

A man with a badge rode down the middle of the street on what looked like a bi-cycle. He dragged his feet, dropped it in the street and went for his gun. They blasted out in a clump right at him, J. B.'s horse trampling and for a moment entangling a leg in the machine. The policeman got off two wild shots and dove for a barrel. Belle fired off her pistol and yodeled out a high-pitched Cherokee gobble that raised the hair on Blue Duck's neck.

They were out of town in seconds and crossing the almost-dry Cimarron, two hundred yards of cracked clay and mud, a piss-trickle of water and a wagon toppled half over, stripped of canvas and baked solid in the clay. The two packhorses were on the other side of the river, tied up in some brush and loaded light. Hotsie loosed them without dismounting and gave one of the ropes to J. B. Belle took out ahead and they followed her straight and furious.

Crick was shot. Blue Duck didn't notice it until they finally stopped for water. Blood was soaking down his shirt into the top of his pants. He had been wounded low in the ribs. Blue Duck found out that the shooting before he had entered the bank was between Crick and the guard. The guard shot Crick and Crick blasted him in the stomach with the shotgun. Crick seemed disoriented. Belle got him to lie down.

One of the horses was heaving badly. Belle had made so many changes of trail, cutting down dry creeks and game trails and no trails at all, that it was hard to tell exactly where they were or how far they'd gone. His estimate was twenty miles northwest of Guthrie.

The water was a clear running spring in a patch of oaks with watercress growing in two pools. It was the best water Blue Duck had ever drunk in Oklahoma. Ever. He sucked it down his throat like a horse.

"Is this where we were heading all afternoon?" he asked Belle.

"Best hotel in the Glass Mountains," she said. "Sam and I used to bring livestock through here north for market. The ten plagues of Egypt wouldn't dry up that spring. It'll water a herd of cattle if you feed them to it slow enough .... Crick, let me see that hole in you." He unbuttoned his coat and she poked around on him. "Get your shirt off. We need to put some acid on that. Blue Duck, you're used to such things. I can't stand the sight. It gives me the vapors."

Hotsie chuckled. He and Ralph were counting the money. They had two feed sacks stuffed with bills and coins. The others groaned and hobbled around. They didn't talk much.

Blue Duck got out the carbolic acid and wound dressing and went to work. Crick sat back on his elbows and began to talk distractedly. He was worried about having shot the guard. "He pulled down on me. Course, I was the one that walked in the door with a shotgun .... I shouldn't never have toted that son-of-a-bitch bird gun in there. You ought to give a man a chance."

"He shot you in the gut with a Winchester, Crick. It's a fair trade," Belle said.

"Yeah, but you level a shotgun on somebody at ten feet ..."

"Shut up. You gave that bum one chance too many as it is. Just keep quiet and think about cherry pies and vegetables. You got a respectable hole in you there."

Blue Duck worried with the wound. The bullet had entered on his left side around the lowest rib and made a fairly clean exit out the back. It hadn't apparently damaged any organs, but that was a guess based on how unpainful he kept declaring it. "Just a graze, nothing to it. Knocked off a roll of fat, that's all." Blue Duck wrapped him snugly around the belly and got him to lie back.

"Nine thousand six hundred, thereabouts," said Ralph, after a while. "What does that divide out to?"

"Sixteen hundred apiece," Belle said. "But I want to tell you something right now. We've got other business to attend to. We are going to be as strict as Pentecosts about any loot that we're carrying. We don't divide it and we don't worry about it. Just keep your mind on the work. If you start ogling the money, we're ruined. I've seen more gangs bust up on account of sloppy money than anything else. It's yours. You've earned it. But we're sticking absolutely to the plan--fifty a week plus an even share of loot. So get your mind off of it right now. We're on the trail and were working together. You start slavering after the score and it'll sink us faster than anything."

"I think we ought to divide it up," Ralph said. "What if we was to lose you somehow?"

"It ain't good politics. Put sixteen hundred dollars in everybody's pockets and we'll be like a table of pool balls all heading for different holes. I'll keep the money, all except for the two or three hundred dollars of small money. Divide that up right now for pocket cash. I want the big bills in my saddlebags. J. B., pack them in, would you? And keep a close count on exactly how much goes where."

Blue Duck went for another drink. He was more saddle-sore than he'd ever been in his life, and he'd just gotten off the horse. Tomorrow it would be a Sight. He hobbled over to the lower pool and submerged his face in the water. He withdrew and sat on his knees with it dripping down his skin. He took off his shirt and allowed the whole top of his body to fall into the pool, arms outspread. His neck and face and arms melted in the icy water. He sat back on his heels and felt his heart beat hard in his chest. He looked at the others all spread out resting, and beyond them across the rocky scrub oak hills toward the southeast. It was evening, the side of the hill just going into shadow.

Among the larger trees near the spring was one that grew at the very edge of the upper pool. There was a hole between roots that a small animal might use for a den, and the trunk looked like two separate trees grown together. He looked up at the limbs and down at the pool of water. The water had gone smooth again and he could see his face. He had a strange thought: I have been here before. It was a thought and a loosening feeling in his stomach, and it was not without a slight menace. He had been here before.

The night sky filled with clouds of light. Belle and Blue Duck had laid down their rolls off alone. At supper Belle had been talking at some length about what they were going to do next.

She seemed in good spirits. Blue Duck still felt numb from the ride.

"We're safe." She was leaning back on her saddle. "They won't get to us. We could spend the winter here and they wouldn't get to us. There aren't ten white people in the world that know about this spring. We're a few miles south of the Outlet. I guess it's 'Oklahoma Territory' now. It used to be nowhere."

"When did you first come here?"

"I don't remember. Back when I was learning the Territory. We had some stolen cow ponies, I do remember that. Sold them up in Caldwell."

"I have been here before."

"Oh yeah?" She looked over at him.

"Yes."

"I wouldn't doubt it. There were always signs of horse Indians around that spring. Fact of the matter, I found a Hint bird point nor far from here one time. Pretty little thin thing, looked like it was fashioned for hummingbirds. Gave it to Pearl."

"Iktomi."

"What?"

"Iktomi."

"Who's that?"

Blue Duck sat for a moment gazing off, tasting a name long unremembered. "He was a giant. He made flint arrowheads in the ancient times. We made them out of steel, but we found flint heads and used them when we could. It was a big deal to find an Iktomi point."

She looked at him, for a moment silent. He could feel her eyes in the dark. "Are you scared of me?"

"Scared of you?"

"Yes."

He thought about that. "No. Why do you ask?"

She looked away Sighing. "Anyway, what do you think? I mean the feel of it--the crew?"

"I think you better keep them very busy. We also better get Crick to a doctor."

"That old crowbait, he'll heal; don't worry about him. What do you mean 'keep them busy'?"

"Their minds will wander."

"We'll hit that morning train day after tomorrow. Put a squeeze on Enid. Maybe bust up the boomer newspaper in Kansas. Get that one out of the way and I won't be ashamed to go to Tahlequah. I don't want to go back there without something to show Joel Mayes."

"You think he will then release your boy and give you twenty thousand?"

"Don't be smart. I think he'll get Ed scheduled in John Wailer's court and pay me maybe half the money. If these galoots are still alive and ain't sulled up on me at that point, maybe we'll do some more work."

"You are very optimistic."

She grew quiet at this. They sat for a while without talking. He looked at her darkened face and saw the shadow of an expression. Without really seeing it, he knew it was the funny dead-eyed smile which was both unpleasant and remarkable to him, whether an awkward invitation or a satanically complacent demand.

Her hand touched his leg and it jolted him. He suddenly felt angry at her. It came out of nowhere and was strong, almost a ragefulness. It had no definition except that she was the cause. Her presence, her request. He had not felt anything like this toward her before. He hated her. It made him confused.

He got up and walked away, stumbling down the rock-strewn hill toward the spring. He heard the water and knelt down on all fours and drank long and deep. Sitting back on his heels, he closed his eyes and waited for it to go away. His mind was running very fast. He opened his eyes and the pool was full of stars. He must have drunk from it at night before.