THIRTY-FIVE
Jamie Dolan divvied up the proceeds of the bank job, tossed a bag of money at each of his three men. He got half, and the other three split the other half.
“I ain’t sure I like this arrangement no more,” Ed Grey said.
“Me neither,” Billy Ludlow said. “We take the same amount of chances, so why do you always get half?”
They were all hunched around the campfire, so Dolan stood up and faced the other two men across the flames.
“You two want my half? Come and get it.”
Grey and Ludlow stood up, their hands hovering near their guns. They felt they could take Dolan. He was no gunman. That was clear in the way he wore his gun, so that he had to cross his body with his hand to draw it. He liked the way it looked, but in a gunfight he’d be a dead man.
But the joker in the deck was Santee, and right on cue they both heard the hammer of his gun cock back.
“No guns, amigos,” he said. “If you want to take his money, you have to do it with no guns.”
Dolan drew his gun and tossed it away.
“Come on then, lads,” he said. “Time to change the arrangements anyway.”
“That’s all we’re askin’ for, a change in the arrangement,” Grey said.
“Just a little bigger cut, is all,” Ludlow said.
“I was thinkin’ more of a two-way split,” Dolan said. “You boys are out.”
Both men stiffened as they realized what the big Irishman was saying.
“But still,” Dolan said, “I’m a fair man. If you can take my money from me, you can have it.”
The men considered their options.
“What if we just wanna ride?” Grey asked.
“Not one of your options, I’m afraid,” Dolan said.
“What are our options?” Ludlow asked.
“Take my money from me,” Dolan said, “or die.”
“Hand to hand?” Grey asked.
“Two against one?” Ludlow said.
“You drop your guns,” Dolan said, “and Santee will holster his.”
The two men exchanged a glance, then unbuckled their gunbelts and tossed them away.
“That’s it,” Dolan said, flexing his big hands. “Now come on . . .”
Santee drew his gun again.
They found a portion of the river shallow enough to cross. “Shallow” enough meant it only came up to their horse’s withers. Clint kept an eye on McBeth, who had never crossed a river this deep on horseback before. The Irishman turned out to be an accomplished horseman.
When they reached the bank on the U.S. side, their pants were wet from the thigh down.
“We lose anything?” Clint asked.
They each had a burlap sack looped around their saddle-horns, filled with supplies they’d picked up a couple of days ago when they’d reached a town with a general store.
“Naw, I got everythin’,” Weaver said.
“So do I.”
“How you doing, McBeth?” Clint asked.
“A little winded,” McBeth said. “The current was pretty strong.”
“If you give your horse his head, he’ll usually get you across,” Clint said. “Let’s step down and take a rest here.”
They dismounted and Clint decided they needed some coffee, so he told Weaver to build a fire and make some. McBeth found a large, round rock and sat down on it. He’d been riding for three days now, and he’d been right about his wound. The stitches didn’t pull as much today as they had the first day.
“Your bandage get wet?” Clint asked, moving over to join him.
“No, it’s dry.”
Clint stepped behind McBeth and took a quick look. If the stitches had separated, he wasn’t bleeding through his shirt.
“It’s fine,” McBeth assured him. “You think they crossed here?”
“No way to tell,” Clint said. “There are a lot of tracks, so lots of people have crossed here. If they didn’t, then I’m sure they did somewhere along the way. I’m willing to bet they pulled some kind of job at the first likely town they came to.”
“Likely?”
“Some kind of store or bank in a town without much in the way of law.”
“Maybe the next town?” Weaver asked, arriving on the scene with wood for the fire.
“If not, we’ll sure hear about it in the next town,” Clint said.
“Why would they not have robbed a bank in Mexico?” McBeth asked.
“Several reasons,” Clint said. “First, it’s Santee’s home, and I bet he likes to go back whenever he can, without being wanted. Also, they wouldn’t want to have to deal with Mexican soldiers, or a Mexican prison. And third . . . all they’d get for their trouble would be pesos. No, they’d hold off until they got back to this side of the border, and they’d be impatient to fill their pockets with American dollars.”
Weaver got the fire going, and a pot of coffee. Before long they all had a cup in their hands.
“Are we campin’ here?” Weaver asked.
“No,” Clint said. “We’ve got a few hours of daylight. We ride that long and we’ll get to the town of Silverton tomorrow. They’re big enough to have a newspaper and a telegraph. If they haven’t suffered some kind of robbery, we’ll be able to find out who has.”
They finished the entire pot of coffee, then doused the fire, mounted up, and headed out to ride out those three hours before dark.