The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Chapter XVIII

       Brill Healy Airs His Sentiments

       Table of Contents

      To Phyllis, riding from school near the close of a hot Friday afternoon along the old Fort Lincoln Trail, came the voice of Brill Healy from the ridge above. She waved to him the broad-brimmed hat she was carrying in her hand, and he guided his pony deftly down the edge of the steep slope.

      "Been looking for some strays down at Three Pines," he explained. "Awful glad I met you."

      "Where were you going now?" she asked.

      "Home, I reckon; but I'll ride with you to Seven Mile if you don't mind."

      She looked at her watch. "It's just five-thirty. We'll be in time for supper, and you can ride home afterward."

      "I guess you know that will suit me, Phyllis," he answered, СКАЧАТЬ