THE HOLD-UP
From the wash where the sink of the Mimbres edges close to Noches two
riders emerged in mid-afternoon of a day that shimmered under the heat
of a blazing sun. They travelled in silence, the core of an alkali dust
cloud that moved with them and lay thick upon them. Well down over their
eyes were drawn the broad-rimmed hats. One of them wore sun goggles and
both of them had their lower faces covered by silk bandannas as if to
keep out the thick dust their ponies stirred. For the rest their
costumes were the undistinguished chaps, spurs, shirt, neckerchiefs, and
gauntlets of the range.
With one distinction, however: these were better armed than the average
cow-puncher jaunting to town for the quarterly spree. Revolver butts
peeped from the holsters of their loosely hung cartridge belts.
Moreover, their rifles were not strapped beneath the stirrup leathers,
but were carried across the pommels of the saddles.
The bell in the town hall announced three o'clock as they reached the
First National Bank at the corner of San Miguel and Main Streets. Here
one of the riders swung from the saddle, handed the reins and his rifle
to the other man, and jingled into the bank. His companion took the
horses round to the side entrance of the building, and waited there in
such shade as two live oaks offered.
He had scarce drawn rein when two other riders joined him, having come
from a direction at right angles to that followed by him. One of them
rode an iron-gray, the other a roan with white stockings. Both of these
dismounted, and one of them passed through the side door into the bank.
Almost instantly he reappeared and nodded to his comrade, who joined him
with his own rifle and that of the first man that had gone in.
There was an odd similarity in arms, manner, and dress between these and
the first arrivals. Once inside the building, each of them slipped a
black mask over his face. Then one stepped quickly to the front door and
closed and locked it, while the other simultaneously covered the teller
with a revolver.
The cashier, busy in conversation with the first horseman about a loan
the other had said he wanted, was sitting with his back to the cage of
the teller. The first warning he had of anything unusual was the closing
of the door by a masked man. One glance was enough to tell him the bank
was about to be robbed.
His hand moved swiftly toward the drawer in his desk which contained a
weapon, but stopped halfway to its destination. For he was looking
squarely into the rim of a six-shooter less than a foot from his
forehead. The gun was in the hands of the client with whom he had been
talking.
"Don't do that," the man advised him brusquely. Then, more sharply:
"Reach for the roof. No monkeying."
Benson, the cashier, was no coward, but neither was he a fool. He knew
when not to take a chance. Promptly his arms shot up. But even while he
obeyed, his eyes were carrying to his brain a classification of this man
for future identification. The bandit was a stranger to him, a
heavy-set, bandy-legged fellow of about forty-five, with a leathery face
and eyes as stony as those of a snake.
"What do you want?" the bank officer asked quietly.
"Your gold and notes. Is the safe open?"
Before the cashier could reply a shot rang out. The unmasked outlaw
slewed his head, to see the president of the bank firing from the door
of his private office. The other two robbers were already pumping lead
at him. He staggered, clutched at the door jamb, and slowly sank to the
floor after the revolver had dropped from his hand.
Benson seized the opportunity to duck behind his desk and drag open a
drawer, but before his fingers had closed on the weapon within, two
crashing blows descended with stunning force on his head. The outlaw
covering him had reversed his heavy revolver and clubbed him with the
butt.
"That'll hold him for a while," the bandit remarked, and dragged the
unconscious man across the floor to where the president lay huddled.
One of the masked men, a lithe, sinuous fellow with a polka-dot bandanna
round his neck, took command.
"Keep these men covered, Irwin, while we get the loot," he ordered the
unmasked man.
With that he and the boyish-looking fellow who had ridden into town with
him, the latter carrying three empty sacks, followed the trembling
teller to the vault.
No sound broke the dead silence except the loud ticking of the bank
clock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginning
to return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down to
those in the vault to hurry.
There was need of haste. Somebody, attracted by the sound of firing, had
come running to the bank, peered in the big front window, and gone
flying to spread the alarm.
Outside a shot and then another shattered the sultry stillness of the
day. The man left on guard ran to the door and looked out. An upper
window down the street was open, and from it a man with a rifle was
firing at the outlaw left in charge of the horses.
The wrangler had taken refuge behind a bulwark of horseflesh, and was
returning the fire.
"Hurry the boys, Brad! Hell's broke loose!" he called to his companion.
The town was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would
feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One
sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear
voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down
the street. Even in the second he stood there a revolver began potting
at him.
"Back in a moment," he cried to the wrangler, and disappeared within to
shout an urgent warning to the looters.
Three men came up from the vault, each carrying a sack. The teller was
pushed into the street first, and the rest followed. A scattering fire
began to converge at once upon them. The roan with the white stockings
showed a red ridge across its flank where a bullet had furrowed a path.
The teller dropped, wounded by his friends. Two of the robbers loaded
the horses, while the others answered the townsmen. In the inevitable
delay of getting started, every moment seemed an hour to the harassed
outlaws.
But at last they were in the saddle and galloping down the street,
firing right and left as they went. At the next street crossing two men,
one fat and the other lean, came running, revolvers in hands, to
intercept them. They were too late. Before they reached the corner the
outlaws had galloped past in a cloud of white dust, still flinging
bullets at the invisible they were escaping.
The big lean cow-puncher stopped with an oath as the riders disappeared.
"Nothing doing, Budd," he called to the fat man. "The show's moved on to
a new stand."
Jim Budd, puffing heavily and glistening with perspiration, nodded the
answer he could not speak. Presently he got out what he wanted to say.
"Notice that leading hawss on the nigh side, Slim?" he asked.
"So you noticed it, too, Jim. I could swear to that roan with the four
stockings. It's the hawss Mr. Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durn
his forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So does
Keller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the others
must be nesters from Bear Creek, too."
"We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "They
been shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Keller
has put a rope round his own neck."
Men were already saddling and mounting for the first unorganized
pursuit. Slim and his friend joined these, and cantered down the dusty
street scarce ten minutes after the robbers.
The suburbs of the town fell to the rear, and left them in the fall and
rise of the foothills that merged to the left in the wide, flat,
shimmering plain of the Malpais, and on the other side in the
saw-toothed range that notched the horizon from north to south.
Somewhere in that waste of cow-backed hills, in that swell of endless
land waves, the trail of the robbers vanished.
Men rode far and wide, carrying the pursuit late into the night, but the
lost trail was not to be picked up again. So one by one, or in pairs,
under the yellow stars, they drifted back to Noches, leaving behind the
black depths of blue-canopied hills that had swallowed the fleeing
quartette.