The Bank Robber Page 7

  I looked at him. Everybody in the damn place was staring at us. “Boy, get away from me. I’m tired of this foolishness.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I bet you are. Tired and scared. That’s what you are. Tired and scared. Scared mostly.”

  He was just a young kid, twenty at the most. Kind of blond and skinny. He was even wearing his hand gun wrong, all up to the front and out of place where he’d have to draw and then aim. Over his shoulder I could see Howland enjoying himself.

  “You kill him,” I said to Howland. “I ain’t got the heart.”

  Howland just laughed. It was all a huge joke to him. Me, I felt sick. There I was, a man who’d wanted to make something of himself and had been fooled by his own reputation, being faced by a kid in a low saloon in a Mexican border town.

  I looked at the young cowboy. He was edging closer and closer to me. “Your fight’s not with me,” I told him. “I wasn’t playing at cards with you.”

  “That’s all right,” he said, getting braver by the minute and pushing me harder. “That’s all right for you.” He was so drunk he couldn’t even think up a good remark. “I seen you helping that fellow. I seen you and don’t you try to lie.”

  “Boy,” I told him, “you better get back to your table before you get hurt. Now go on.” Les and Tod was watching us. Tod with a kind of silly grin on his face, but Les with the kind of look that told he understood. I didn’t want to kill the boy.

  “You cheated me,” the kid was saying, “and now you’re going to give me satisfaction.” He backed away like he was going to make a play for his gun. I didn’t even shift, just watched him. I’d seen the move a number of times and it wasn’t nothing new to me.

  There had only been them two times I was brought up on charges for men I’d shot, but there had been a number besides that. Howland was wrong that time he’d said six. Actually there had been nine at the time and the count had grown. Mostly I was in rough country and if men didn’t have beast or nature to pit themselves against they’d try the man next to them. In the early days I’d had a hot temper and a disinclination to back away from any man. Fortunately I’d had a hand fast enough to match and so had avoided getting killed. Of late, however, I’d grown to the point where the whole business had commenced to sicken me. I’d got to where I’d rather walk away.

  I looked at the kid. “The hell with you,” I said. “Go back to your table.”

  “Wilson Young,” he sneered at me. “You ain’t Wilson Young.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. I turned away and went for the door. The kid wouldn’t shoot me in the back, Les would see to that. The quiet got so low I could near about hear it as I went out the door. Then, just as the doors brushed together, there came a little laugh and then the talk picked back up again.

  What I should have done, I guess, was to have shown that kid some quick iron and then let him back off, but that would have been playing the show-off and I don’t like to do that. Hell, I didn’t care about what had happened. I know who I am and I ain’t too worried if anybody else does or not. But I hadn’t liked the way Howland had acted too much. He was starting to get just a little big with that “This here is Wilson Young” business and I resolved to have a little talk with him. To me, that kind of stuff is just plain foolishness. Why in hell should a man want to brag on somebody that had killed folks? Sure it made a name for you, but with who? Drunks and outlaws and that ilk. They was the only ones that cared or took notice of a man like me. Not good folk; not that don or his goddam beautiful niece. I bet she thought I was dirt. Sure, I’d told myself she’d give me a long look, but I was lying to myself. She’d seen me all right and taken a long look, but it was probably just to fix me in her mind as someone she wanted to steer clear of.

  I heard a step behind me and looked around. It was Les, coming along quietly, a little cigar burning in his mouth and making a glow along the dark street.

  “Damn dark out, ain’t it?” he said, coming up to me.

  “It’ll do,” I said, “until they figure out a way to get inside a cow.”

  We stood there, in the dust of the street, just kind of looking around and not saying much. Except for a few saloons that were going full blast the town had gone to sleep. The saloons threw light out their windows and it made little golden patches in the dark of the street.

  “Well, Will . . .” Les finally said. “You done right. That kid was drunk and stupid. I seen you do right.”

  “That Howland,” I said. “Sometimes I wonder about that man. He seems to get a positive pleasure out of meanness. I don’t know that I can figure him. I’m like you, I’ll shoot if I have to, but that Jacob’s coat seems to enjoy it.”

  “Well, you done right.”

  We stood a moment more and then I kind of half turned away. “I reckon I’ll go on,” I said.

  “Where you headed?”

  I studied a minute, but Les is my good friend. “Les,” I said, “I’m just about froze for a pretty woman. I think I’ll mosey along till I find a place that specializes in ’em and try a little sample.”

  “You want company?”

  “No,” I said. “I reckon I’ll try it solo. May not find nothing. You go stay with the rest of the boys and keep ’em out of trouble.”

  I turned away and took a few steps and Les called to me. I looked back and could just make out his dark form lit up by the glow of his cigar.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’re letting that girl ride your mind.”

  “What the hell you mean by that?”

  “You ain’t been yourself. You’ve been bothered. You ought to get her out of your mind. Hell, Will, she ain’t your kind.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, it ain’t none of your goddam business.”

  “I know that. Just thought I’d say it.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  I turned around and walked off. I didn’t know what a man can find in a whorehouse, but I was damn sure going to give it a try.

  The bordello I finally went into was a two-story adobe-brick affair. Downstairs was the bar and some chairs where you could get to know the girls, and upstairs was the rooms you took ’em to once you’d made your choice and settled on the price. It was hot and smoky and busy. A good body of what I took to be drovers was in the place and they was mostly drunk and loud. I went in and went up to the bar and watched them for a while. They were yelling and laughing and sporting with the girls and I envied them. I still had the feeling of ice in my belly and a bad touch in my mind that I couldn’t get rid of. I took several drinks trying to loosen up, but they didn’t help much. I felt sour and on edge and a little angry, not at all the way I like to feel. Standing with my back to the bar, I watched the cowboys sporting around the room with the girls. The whores wasn’t much, being mostly dogs, but the pokes didn’t seem to care. I wanted to get in the kind of mood they were in, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stand there and think about how I’d come from a good family with extensive holdings and yet there I stood, in a whorehouse in Mexico, drinking cheap whiskey on borrowed money and watching a bunch of forty-dollar-a-month cowboys blowing a month’s wages on a passel of cheap bitches. Had even made a botch of bank robbing. It sure looked like a man who’d decided to go bad could make a better job out of it than I had. Hadn’t even been able to hang on to what we’d taken, which is a pretty sorry comment on bank robbery.

  Finally I got so down on myself I decided to hell with it and took a bottle of whiskey and walked across to a table where the prettiest girl in the place was sitting with a young cowboy. He was pawing around on her, trying to get his hand down her blouse, and she was laughing and giggling and asking to see his money. He was a young kid, about the same as the one in the Texas Bar, and I just walked up and kicked his chair and told him to move it. They both looked up at me in some surprise and the poke asked me what I’d said.

  “I said move it. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Well now, mister,” he began, but I kicked his
chair again and set the bottle down on the table so as to have both hands free. “Boy,” I said, “you get up and move it and do it pronto or I’m gonna eat you alive. My name is Wilson Young and if you don’t think I can’t kill you before you can wink you just set there another second.”

  He hadn’t had much to drink and he looked me over a second, taking note of the way my gun was set up and the look on my face. Finally he kinda swallowed and stood up. I hadn’t been too loud, so nobody else was paying us any mind. He seen that and seen he wouldn’t have to get killed over his pride, so he took a step or two backward.

  “Hell,” he said. “I don’t care none anyway, I didn’t have no more money, so I didn’t care. Besides, she’s got the clap.”

  He said that last and looked quick to see if it made me mad, but I never said a word, just took the chair he’d vacated. The girl looked about as bored as one can get. She’d seen it before and, hell, with me coming up the way I’d done she knew she had a sale. I made sure the kid was gone, then poured us out a drink and knocked mine off. Maybe if I got us both drunk enough I could have some fun.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her in Spanish.

  She giggled and said it was Louisa.

  “Well, Louisa,” I said and poured myself out another drink, “you better lay in your powder for a long siege. Me and you is going to war.” I downed my drink and got out some coin and spilled it on the table. “Pick that up,” I told her, “and get me another bottle of whiskey and let’s go on upstairs. I got a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Ah,” she said, “you’re muy rápido.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m fast with everything—guns, mistakes, whiskey, even girls. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A Cactus Has Sharp Thorns

  We all met a little before noon in the bar of the hotel. All of us, that is, except Tod. I asked Les where he was.

  “Far as I know he’s out trying to get that grey back. That’s what he said when he left out this morning.”

  “Well, he better have it,” I said, “or he’ll stay right here. I’m through with his harebrained pranks.”

  We were all sitting around a table in the center of the bar. Chico and Howland were eating a dish of eggs and chili, but me and Les, having already ate, were having beer. I was feeling a little better in my mind, but not much. The girl had been all right, as whorehouse girls go, but she hadn’t helped and, after the first trick, I seen I couldn’t go on and I’d got up and dressed and went back down to the bar downstairs. A poker game had been going on and I’d sat in on that.

  I sat there, ruminating, until Howland wiped his mouth on his sleeve and called to the bartender to send him over a drink of whiskey. He looked at me.

  “Well, you about ready to get down and talk some business?”

  “I reckon,” I said, but I had something else on my mind. I had that “This here is Mister Wilson Young” business on my mind. “Look here, Howland,” I said, “I want to get you to do me a favor.”

  He leaned back in his chair and grinned at me. “Need some more money, pard? Did you use up all your luck on them little señoritas?”

  That made me a little angry, but I let it pass. “No, that ain’t it. I’m much obliged for the loan and don’t figure to want no more. No, what I had in mind was something on the order of you not being so quick to tell folks who I am.”

  He tilted his hat back at that and looked at me with a big grin. Howland is a thickset man with powerful arms and a big, heavy face. His grin never seems so much happy as mean. His mouth may smile, but his eyes don’t.

  “What’s the matter, pard, you don’t like being famous?”

  “Well,” I said, “that may be all right for you, but it ain’t my style. And I don’t much like you using the word ‘famous.’ Don’t get cute with me, Howland. Just play it straight.”

  He seen I meant it. “Aw, I was just funning you.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, “but I think you’re wearing the joke a little thin. If I want people to know who I am I’ll be quick enough to tell ’em without no help from you.”

  “Well, I see that you’re getting everybody straightened up around here.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “First Tod, now me. When do you go to work on Chico and Les?”

  The grin had kind of frozen on his face. I just kind of straightened up, which let my chair slide back from the table a few inches. Howland seen the movement, but he never budged. The grin did, however, kind of fade from his face. I just looked at him, knowing he understood I was getting a little touchy.

  Finally he laughed. “Hell,” he said, slumping over the table and propping up on his elbows. “You’re too edgy, Wilson. You know I never meant nothing by a little kidding.”

  “Just so we understand each other,” I said. “Now, what about this bank?”

  “I like to rob one Mexican bank first,” Chico said. I looked over at him. In the little set-to between me and Howland I’d forgotten about everybody else in the room and it kind of surprised me to hear him speak.

  “What?” I asked him.

  Howland laughed. “Chico said he’d like to rob him a Mexican bank. He wants him some of them gold pesos. That’s all he’s been talking about.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, “we ain’t robbing no banks on this side. That’s out. We’re going to Uvalde, Texas.”

  Howland laughed again, but this time it had a different sound to it. “Well, then I reckon I ought to tell you there’s a little dirt out on you over in that state.”

  Les hadn’t said anything, but now he asked Howland what he meant.

  Howland was enjoying himself. “Why, I reckoned ya’ll knew you’d kilt a man in that little job you pulled over there in Carrizo Springs. An important man too, big rancher and state senator or something.”

  I looked over at Les. His face looked as blank as mine. We hadn’t killed anybody on that job. I knew we hadn’t and so did Les.

  “You’re crazy,” I said to Howland. “We didn’t kill nobody on that job.”

  “Then me and the man’s widow and half the state is mistaken. I beg your pardon. Why don’t you step over to the telegraph office and get ‘em off a wire telling ’em the straight of it. I’m sure that’ll get all them rangers off your tracks.”

  Well, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t see how anybody could have been killed. There hadn’t been a straight shot fired while we was inside the bank. True, once we got outside we’d wheeled back and forth and fired a few shots into the air just to hold everything in place and keep folks from rushing out the door after us, but I didn’t see how none of that could have killed anybody unless he was sitting on the rooftree of a building.

  Les said: “We never fired on nobody.”

  “Well, it’s all the news on the other side, ain’t it, Chico?”

  We looked at the little Mexican and he nodded solemnly. “Si, we hear of it in three, four places. You have shot a state senator. A big man.”

  “Where? Where was we have supposed to killed him?”

  “Right there in the door of the bank,” Howland said. “It’s said he run to the door to see which way ya’ll was heading and one of you gunned him down in cold blood. They say he wasn’t even armed.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said.

  “Sure it is,” Howland said. “I just made it up to entertain of a morning.”

  I studied over it a minute. “How do they know it was us? Who says we was even at Carrizo Springs?”

  Now Howland leaned back in his chair and really began to enjoy himself. “Well, that’s what comes of being famous, Mister Wilson Young. Ya’ll was all recognized. Especially you.”

  “Did they say who done the actual killing?” Les asked.

  Howland shook his head. “They’s a wanted notice out on all three of you. The way I had it they was so much shooting and commotion that nobody got a clear idea.”

  I had a clear idea. It hadn’t been me, for t
he couple of shots I’d fired had all been right straight for the sky. And I’d gotten a glimpse of Les wheeling his mount around and shooting. He’d had his gun aimed straight up.

  I sat and studied over it again. Finally it come to me that Howland had known all along. I asked him why he’d waited until just that moment to tell us.

  “Who’s had a chance?” he came back. “Besides, I figured you knew it.” He grinned. “I generally know it when I kill a man. He’s generally standing right where I’m pointing.”

  “So?”

  “So I figured you knew it. I was just telling you you was wanted and that they’ve give a warrant to the rangers. I reckoned you didn’t know that.”

  Well, we hadn’t known it and Howland knew we hadn’t. He’d just saved it up until he could spring it on us when he chose. I was getting a little tired of Mister Howland Thomas and his idea of a joke.

  “We never meant to shoot nobody,” Les said. “If it happened it was an accident.”

  “Oh sure,” Howland said. “Wilson Young is known all over five states for never meaning to kill nobody. Everybody knows it’s always an accident.”

  I didn’t even feel like getting into it with him. I felt pretty bad. As a matter of fact I felt real bad. I slumped back in my chair and called for a whiskey and put my boots up on the table. When the drink came I knocked it off and just sat, staring. Les didn’t say anything either.

  After a long time, Howland said: “So I wouldn’t be too concerned about nothing this side of the border. I hear tell them rangers will come get you, legal or not, if they’s enough reward money involved.” Me nor Les said a word. Howland waited, then went on. “I hear the family has put up five hundred dollars a man.” He still didn’t get any reaction out of us. He went on, pressing: “That’s near a year’s pay for them rangers. Some of ’em would be willing to go to hell and try to bring back the old Nick himself for that kind of money. What do you say to that?”

  I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t much I could say. Legally, rangers can’t come into Mexico for you, but that don’t often stop them. They’ll carry you back over in a load of hay if they have to. The job we’d pulled in Carrizo Springs had been as close to home as we’d ever worked. I hadn’t like it, but we’d done it and now it looked like we were fairly in for it.