The first was a boy, and was well and duly named Jack Loupel; and Uncle
Jack used to go to the house for Sunday dinner and play bear all over
the floor of the sitting room. The next was a girl, and the next was a
boy again. Bud was by that time cashier of the bank, and Sam Rand left
most of the work to him. Jack Mills was just what he had always been;
that is to say, a likable, wild young chap with a quick gun and a
reckless eye and a fondness for the society he found at Brady’s.
Sometimes, after eating one of Jeanie’s dinners, he would take his horse
and ride out of town and be gone for a day or two. He was always alone
on these excursions; but ranging cowboys came across him now and then
and reported that he seemed to be just sitting around, smoking, doing
nothing at all. When he got ready he would drift back into town and go
to work again. Old man Ross liked him; Jeanie liked him; everybody liked
him. But the sober citizens were also inclined to disapprove of him;
and some of the stories that came to Jeanie’s ears made her think that
when the children were a little older she had better quit asking Jack to
come to the house. She hated to think of doing this; and because she was
kind of heart, it is unlikely that she would ever have come to the
actual point. But that the possibility should occur to her is some
measure of the man’s standing in the town.
One day, about seven years after Bud and Jeanie were married, Bud sought
out Jack Mills and asked him to get his horse and come for a ride. “Want
to tell you something, Jack,” he explained.
Mills saw the trouble and distress in the other’s eyes, so he saddled
up, and they trotted out of town. When the last building was well behind
them, Jack asked mildly: “What’s on your mind, Bud?”
Bud Loupel, with some hesitation, said: “I’m in trouble.”
“Yeah! I judged so,” Mills told him. “Well, what brand?”
“I’ve been putting money in the market at Wichita,” Loupel said. “I’ve
had rotten luck. It’s gone.”
Jack nodded. “I got three-four hundred in the bank,” he suggested. “Take
that.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Maybe I could look around and raise five hundred more.”
“It wouldn’t do a bit of good.”
Mills produced tobacco and papers and rolled a slow cigarette while
their horses jogged along. At last: “How much?” he asked.
“Forty-four hundred.”
“You’ve saved a right smart, ain’t you?”
“It’s the bank’s,” Loupel confessed, and Jack puffed deeply and expelled
the smoke in a cloud and remarked:
“Well, at a guess, I’d say you were a damned fool.”
“I know it.”
Their horses plodded on, and the dust cloud rose and hovered in the air
behind them. For a space neither man spoke at all. Then Loupel bitterly
exclaimed: “I’m not whining for my own sake, Jack. If it was me, I’d hop
out. I’d take a chance. But Jeanie....”
“Sure,” Jack Mills mildly agreed. “Sure.”
“Damn it, Jack, Jeanie’s proud of me. She’s proud of me.”
“Yeah!”
“I can’t bear to think of her knowing. It would just about bust her.”
Mills drawled: “Your sentiments does you credit, Bud.”
There was a cold and scornful anger in his tone that kept the other for
the moment silent. They rode on, side by side, and Loupel, covertly
watching the younger man, waited for him to speak. Mills finished his
cigarette, eyes straight before him, face unchanging. Then he flicked
the butt away and turned in his saddle and looked at his pardner.
“What’s Rand say?” he asked.
“He’s been away. Due back to-morrow afternoon. He’ll spot it in a
minute.”
Mills whistled for a moment, between his teeth, a gallant little tune;
then he nodded, as though in decision, and he asked: “All right, Bud.
What’s your idea?”
While they rode on at the trot toward the low hills south of the town
Bud Loupel outlined his idea; and when they turned back again at sunset
Jack had agreed to do what the other asked of him.
V
At ten o’clock next morning the town lay still and shimmering in the
blistering sun of a summer day. There were one or two men in Brady’s,
and here and there along Main Street other figures lounged in the shade.
Jack Mills rode in from the south on a strange horse, wearing new
overalls and an indistinguishable hat. There was a red bandanna loosely
knotted about his neck. He encountered no one within recognizing
distance. In front of the bank he dropped off, hitched the horse, lifted
the handkerchief so that it hid his mouth and nose, and stepped into the
building. Two or three people at some distance saw him go in, and idly
wondered who the stranger was.
He had hoped to find Loupel alone in the bank; but Jim Paine was there.
Paine had just cashed a check and stood with his back toward the door,
talking to Bud. When Bud saw the masked man he turned pale, and Jim
marked the change in his countenance and whirled around. But Jack’s gun
was leveled, so Bud and Jim Paine reached for the ceiling.
Mills, with some attempt to disguise his voice, said harshly to Bud:
“Paper money. All of it. Quick!”
Loupel, hands still in the air, started toward the safe. Jack looked
that way and saw that the safe door was open. He changed his mind.
“Wait,” he commanded. With a gesture he bade Paine face the wall. Then
he leaped the counter, motioned Loupel aside, and himself approached the
safe. Paine, watching sidewise, saw the masked man drag out half a dozen
packets of bills and stuff them into the front of his shirt. Mills did
this with his left hand; his right hand held the gun, and his eyes
covered Paine and Loupel almost constantly. Loupel, backed into a
corner, watched in silence.
When Mills had taken what he came for, he rose and turned toward the
counter again. At that instant a gun roared behind him, and something
tugged at his shirt, under the left arm. He whirled, saw Rand standing
in the back door of the bank building. Rand’s gun was going. Jack fanned
his hammer twice, and the banker fell.
Paine had not moved. Mills swung, half crouching, toward Loupel. Loupel
had double-crossed him. That was the thought that tightened his finger
on the trigger. But--Jeanie! That was the thought which made his trigger
finger relax. He slid across the counter, made the door in one jump.
Five seconds after his shot, his horse was galloping out of town. And as
he passed the last house a rifle spoke, somewhere behind him.
* * * * *
Half a mile from town he looked back and saw three or four horsemen just
emerging from Main Street. On their heels others appeared. He laughed a
grim little laugh, and slid forward in his stirrups to help his horse to
greater speed. But when he reached the hills, some half a dozen miles
south of town, they were close behind him, and their rifles were
reaching out for him. He knew a certain cave, a narrow, shallow cover.
Poor refuge, but better than none.
In this cave they brought him to bay. He lay prone behind the bowlder
that screened and half closed the entrance, and watched them draw off
and circle to inclose him. “Got a little while,” he said to himself.
“Fireworks won’t start right away.”
Satisfied of this, he rolled a little on his side and drew from the
front of his shirt the packages he had taken from the safe. Strictly in
line with Bud Loupel’s well-laid plan, these were simply dummy packets
of waste paper, with a genuine bill on the outside of each bundle. Mills
laid them on the ground and studied them thoughtfully, considering their
significance.
His situation was sufficiently desperate. Rand was dead. He had no doubt
of that, and he regretted it. He had always liked Rand, but there had
been no choice at the moment. The question was, what next! These fake
bundles of money had their place in the scheme of things. If he kept
them, told the true story, they might well save his life. Frontier
justice was swift, but it was also tempered by considerations not
accepted under a more rigid system of law. If he proved Bud Loupel’s
part in this, Bud would be damned, and he might himself be saved. And
the dummy bundles would prove Bud’s guilty foreknowledge of the
robbery.
A rifle bullet spattered on the rock above him, and he postponed
decision. “Needs thinking over,” he told himself. “We’ll see what we
will see.”
They held him in siege all that afternoon, and toward sunset brought a
barrel of kerosene from town. Men climbed the hill above the cave, where
the bullets could not reach them, and poured this oil so that it ran
down into a pool just in front of his retreat. Then they set fire to it.
He saw at once that he could not endure the smoke and gas, and after
some preparations shouted his surrender.
They bade him come out with his hands in the air, and he did so. His
boots were somewhat scorched by the flames. Then they tied his hands
behind his back and his ankles beneath the horse’s belly, and took him
back to town. Toward dusk he was lodged in the calaboose there, and Nick
Russ, the deputy, went on guard outside.