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  Baine watched them, the corners of his mouth curling upward. A puppy came from behind a rain barrel and playfully barked at the hoop. Farther down, the old woman who had sniffed at him saw the children and smiled.

  A young man and woman strolled out of the millinery, hand in hand, the young woman wearing a new bonnet.

  From the butcher shop stepped a middle-aged matron in a calico dress, with wrapped meat under one arm and a pink parasol under the other. She promptly opened the parasol and strode off in stiff-backed dignity.

  “Damn,” Baine said. Instead of mounting, he hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and crossed the street to the general store. A tiny bell tinkled as he opened the door. The interior was cool compared to outside and filled with tantalizing scents. Baine idly surveyed the many items for sale. A display of spruce gum caught his interest. So did an assortment of wine bottles. He was regarding a stack of canned goods when someone lightly coughed.

  “May I be of service, sir?”

  The proprietor was a bantam rooster whose clothes and apron were immaculate. His smile was genuine enough.

  “Carry any Saratoga Chips?” Baine asked.

  “Sure do. Follow me.”

  The section devoted to food rivaled general stores in much larger towns. There were the usual staples: butter, cheese, eggs, coffee, tea and molasses. In the rear were vegetables and fruits. Baine was tempted by the beer and salted fish but did not give in to the craving.

  “Here you are.” The man held out the Saratoga Chips. “Just got in a shipment last week. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Baine shook his head.

  “Passing through, are you?”

  “I thought I was.”

  “If you plan to stay the night, I can recommend a boardinghouse where the sheets are clean and the food is hot,” the man offered.

  “I am only staying until six,” Crooked Nose Baine said.

  Chapter 2

  At ten minutes to six, Jesse Stark and his four partners in greed and mayhem ambled from the Cocklebur and strolled along Fremont Street. They joked and laughed, giving the impression they did not have a care in the world.

  Whistler’s Flat was about to roll up the boardwalk. The bank, the general store, the feed and grain, the millinery, the butcher; they all shut their doors at six. The owners and employees were busy getting ready to close.

  It was also the hour when most of the town’s womenfolk were busy making supper, and their children were helping or doing other chores.

  Fremont Street was practically deserted.

  The puppy came from behind the rain barrel and yipped at the five men filing by.

  “Shut up, you mangy cur,” Jesse Stark said, and delivered a well-placed kick that sent the pup yelping.

  “That’ll learn him,” chortled the scruffiest of the outlaw fraternity. “Were it me, I’d have blown his brains all over creation.”

  “And have everyone in town fit to ride us out on a rail?” Stark said. “The idea is to not attract attention.”

  Another of the five stopped at a hitch rail they were passing. Five horses were tied to the rail. He unwrapped the reins. Then, folding his arms, he leaned against the rail and shammed an interest in the cloudless sky.

  Only three of the remaining outlaws entered the bank. The fourth stopped in front of the large front window and fiddled with a spur.

  Jesse Stark held the door for the other two. He scanned the street a final time before following them in. Only the teller and the bank president were present.

  The teller was tallying the money in his drawer and asked without looking up, “What can I do for you?”

  Stark unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out a folded flour sack. “You can start by filling this. Then we’ll move to the safe.”

  The clerk glanced up in alarm. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you hard of hearing?” Stark’s Remington cleared the counter. The click of the hammer was ominously loud. “The bank is being robbed.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbing, the teller blinked ten times in five seconds. “Robbed, you say? My word. You can’t mean it.”

  “Does this hogleg look like I’m joshing? Start filling the sack, you goose-necked simpleton.”

  Instead of complying, the teller turned and bleated, “Mr. Randolph, sir. This gentleman says we are being robbed.”

  “What’s that?” The white-haired bank president rose from his desk and came over. He had large jowls that quivered as he walked. “It must be a jest. No one would rob us. We don’t have enough money to make it worthwhile.”

  Jesse Stark pointed the Remington at him. “Let me be the judge of that, you old goat. Now fill this, or else!” He wagged both his revolver and the flour sack to emphasize his demand.

  “What do I do, Mr. Randolph?” the teller asked.

  “Perhaps we should do as he wants, Horace,” the bank president said. “These three strike me as rough characters.”

  “Quit jawing and fill!” Stark was growing red with anger. “I swear, the bank in Ellsworth wasn’t half the bother this one is.”

  “We are a small bank,” Randolph said.

  “So you don’t know how to be robbed?” Stark barked. “It’s easy. You give us the money. Then you lie on the floor and don’t let out a peep.”

  “All I am saying,” Randolph said, “is that since we have never been robbed, we are not familiar with the etiquette involved.”

  “If it ain’t chickens, it’s feathers,” Jesse Stark said, and shot the bank president in the head. The clerk squealed and turned to run, and Jesse shot him, too, square between the shoulder blades. “Goddamn stupid people! You tell them to fill a damn sack and they prattle on about eti—whatever it was.” He stormed around the counter and into the teller’s cage, bellowing, “One of you check the safe. The other keep an eye out. Folks will have heard the shots.”

  The man who ran to the safe yanked on the metal handle. “It’s locked! Damn it, Jess. That itchy trigger finger of yours will leave us as broke as when we came in.”

  Hurriedly stuffing coins and banknotes into the sack, Stark responded, “Not quite. I’ve got pretty near sixty dollars here.”

  “Sixty? That’s twelve dollars apiece! Hell, I lose that much at cards in an hour. You said we would each get a hundred.”

  Over at the door the other outlaw warned, “The butcher has come out of his shop and is looking this way. The same with the runt who runs the general store.”

  Stark opened another drawer, but all it contained were a ledger and pencils. Swearing viciously, he wheeled and kicked the bank president in the ribs. “Eti—whatever be damned!”

  “Mills is bringing the horses,” the man at the door reported. “No one is trying to stop him.”

  “They better not,” Jesse Stark said.

  “Maybe we should tree the town,” suggested the man over by the safe. “With the marshal gone, it will be as easy as licking butter off a knife.”

  “These yokels might not scare,” Stark noted, “and there’s a heap more of them than there is of us.”

  “It’s worth a try,” the other argued. “We can take what we want. Make this worth our while.”

  “Breathing dirt isn’t much to my liking,” Stark said. He vaulted over the counter. “Come on. We’re lighting a shuck.”

  They burst from the bank ready to sling lead, but the town was as quiet as when they entered. “See?” said the man in favor of treeing. “They’re mice hiding in their holes. Whatever we want is ours.”

  “Your yearnings always did outstrip your common sense, Warner,” Stark criticized. To the man bringing their mounts he bellowed, “Hurry it up, Mills! Those are horses, not turtles!”

  Down the street the butcher cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled, “What’s all the ruckus? Who are you men and what are you doing?”

  “Minding our own business!” Jesse Stark shouted. “You should do the same.” He moved to the middle of the street. He still had his Remington out, and he
brandished it at a farmer who stepped from the feed and grain. The farmer scurried back in.

  The butcher, his apron spattered with blood from the day’s work, was advancing on them, a meat cleaver clenched in his right fist.

  “Will you look at this,” Warner marveled. “What does that idiot think he’s doing?”

  Stark pivoted and took deliberate aim. “That’s close enough, meat-cutter! We’re leaving and we don’t want any trouble.”

  The butcher did not stop. “What have you done to Jack Randolph and Horace Stubbs?”

  “They’re lying on the bank floor with their hands and feet tied,” Jesse lied. “But keep coming and that can change.”

  Reluctantly, the butcher halted. “Jack! Horace! If you’re alive and can hear me, give a holler!”

  “I gagged them, too,” Stark said.

  The butcher resumed his advance. “I reckon I will just see for myself. You better not have harmed them.”

  “I did the same to them as I am about to do to you,” Jesse Stark said, and shot him in the chest.

  The butcher was a big man. Years of handling heavy slabs of beef and wielding a big butcher knife had sculpted his arms and shoulders with muscle. The slug staggered him but he did not fall. Raising the cleaver, he charged the nearest outlaw, who happened to be the one bringing the horses.

  “What the hell!” Mills was astride one horse and leading the rest. He let go of the reins to grab for his revolver, but he had only begun to draw when the razor edge of the cleaver sliced into his leg. Blood spurted in a scarlet geyser, and Mills screamed. By then he had his six-shooter out and, thrusting the muzzle against the butcher’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. In his excitement and pain, he forgot to thumb back the hammer. Nothing happened.

  The butcher had gone berserk. Rather than finish off the mounted man, he charged the outlaw in front of the bank window. The outlaw quickly drew and fired, but in his haste he missed.

  Jesse Stark swore and extended his Remington. “If you want something done right,” he declared.

  Abruptly, a shout from between two adjacent buildings caused the butcher to lurch toward the source. He was weakening and stumbled just as Stark fired. Lead bit into the wall and slivers went flying.

  “Damn it, I missed.”

  The butcher sank from sight.

  “Mount up!” Stark roared. “We’re getting the hell out of here!”

  Their horses, though, were milling nervously about in the middle of Fremont Street. The outlaw who had complained about the slim pickings dashed to get his animal, but the horse shied and pranced away.

  “This is not going well,” Jesse Stark said.

  That was when Crooked Nose Baine stepped into the street. He appeared out of the gap between the two buildings. The wide brim of his black hat was pulled low so the sun was not in his eyes. His right hand hung low at his side, nearly brushing the black leather holster and the pearl-handled Colt.

  Jesse Stark could not hide his surprise. “What’s this? Did you come to join us?” He had to raise his voice to be heard above Mills, who was shrieking like a gut-shot cat while trying to stanch the flow of blood from his leg, and above the racket raised by the milling horses.

  “No,” Baine said. One instant his hand was empty, the next it held his Colt. The Colt belched lead and smoke, and Mills’s scream became a gurgle that ended with the thud of a body striking the ground.

  Stupefied, Jesse Stark and the other outlaws gaped at the twitching form. Then the man who had been trying to catch his horse bawled, “You shot Mills!” and clawed for his hardware.

  Crooked Nose Baine shot him through the heart.

  Belatedly, Jesse Stark and the other two outlaws galvanized to life. All three squeezed off shots as fast as they could, but Baine was no longer there. He had ducked between the buildings.

  “After him!” Stark roared. But he had only taken a couple of steps when a rifle boomed somewhere down the street, kicking up dust in front of him. The rifleman was on the roof of the feed and grain, taking aim. “Into the bank!” Stark commanded, back-pedaling.

  Another rifle cracked before they reached the door.

  “It’s the damn townsmen!” one of the outlaws cried. “They’re fighting back!”

  The three of them made it into the bank and Stark slammed the front door after them. “Out the back!” he directed.

  “We don’t stand a prayer,” the third outlaw lamented. “Not against a whole town and Crooked Nose, both!”

  “We’re not dead yet.” Stark plunged into a narrow hall that brought them to the rear door. It was made of oak. He threw the bolt and put his shoulder to the door, but it would not budge. Stepping back, he fired two shots at the wood, close to the lock, then kicked with all his might. The door swung open.

  “Now what?” the third outlaw asked as they hurtled outside. “Without our horses we’re as good as caught.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of looking at the bright side of things?” Jesse Stark snapped. Wheeling, he raced along the rear of the buildings. “Ours aren’t the only nags in town.”

  “What are you saying?” the second outlaw asked. “That we’re going to help ourselves to others?”

  “The stable is this way,” Stark said.

  “But stealing horses will get us hung!” the third outlaw objected.

  “And robbing the bank won’t?” Stark countered. To the thin air he said, “I have morons for partners.”

  They came to the end of the street. Ahead was the broad structure that offered salvation.

  Stark ran for all he was worth, but he was not fleet of foot and the other two reached the rear of the stable ahead of him. From up the street came the heavy crash of rifles mixed with the lighter crack of pistols.

  “Who the blazes are they shooting at?” the third outlaw wondered.

  “Just so it ain’t us.”

  The back door was ajar.

  “I’ll have a look-see,” Stark whispered, and warily pushed it open so he could poke his head in. Half the stalls were filled. There was no sign of anyone.

  “It’s safe.”

  They found saddles and saddle blankets and bridles, and were ready to ride out in half the time it would ordinarily have taken them. One after the other they stepped into the stirrups.

  Jesse Stark raised his reins and glanced at his companions. “Don’t be shy about using your spurs. If you’re hit, cling on for dear life.”

  “Going somewhere?”

  The three outlaws twisted in their saddles and Stark blurted, “You again! What did you do, follow us from the bank? What in God’s name are you up to?”

  “You haven’t guessed?” Crooked Nose Baine asked, and again his Colt blossomed in his hands. Two swift shots, and the men on either side of Jesse Stark pitched from their mounts.

  Stark heeded his own advice and applied his spurs harder than he ever had in his entire life. As his sorrel streaked out the front, he swung onto the off side so he would be harder to hit.

  Baine ran from the stable and raised his Colt. His trigger finger was tightening when a rifle thundered from a rooftop and hot lead ripped through his body from back to front. Baine staggered and nearly fell. Rallying, he shifted and had a clear shot at the townsman who had shot him. But Baine did not shoot. Instead he ran for his claybank. Other rifles opened up, and revolvers, too, until the street swarmed with leaden hornets.

  Somehow Crooked Nose Baine made it to the claybank. Somehow he gained the saddle and brought the claybank to a gallop. He could not sit up, though, and his buckskins were soaked with blood. Gritting his teeth, he slumped over the saddle horn, riding for his life as more lead fanned the air around him.

  Chapter 3

  Jesse Stark was madder than he had ever been, and that took some doing. The horse he had stolen was racing pell-mell across the prairie. To the west the sun hovered on the horizon, and night could not fall soon enough to suit him.

  Jesse voiced every swear word he knew, two or three times.
He cursed Whistler’s Flat. He cursed the bank. He cursed the banker. He cursed the teller. He cursed his partners. He cursed the butcher and the baker, but not the candlestick maker. But the one he cursed the most, the one he could not stop cursing, was Crooked Nose Neville Baine. He cursed Baine’s mother. He cursed Baine’s father. He cursed Baine’s brothers and sisters, if Baine had any. He cursed Crooked Nose Baine as he had never cursed anyone, and after he ran out of breath and recovered, he cursed Baine some more.

  The cursing ended with a declaration. “If it’s the last thing I ever do,” Jesse Stark vowed, “I will see that son of a bitch six feet under.”

  For all his swearing, Jesse did not forget to glance back now and then to see if anyone was after him. He had gone half a mile when he stiffened. “Dust!” he declared, and in a panic tried to make the sorrel go faster when it was already at its limit.

  After a bit Stark stopped whipping the reins and using his spurs. He shifted in the saddle and stared hard at the dust, and as was his habit when he was alone, he talked to himself. “That’s mighty peculiar. There’s not nearly as much dust as there should be.”

  The minutes stretched into an hour.

  Stark would gallop for a while, then walk the horse so it could rest, then gallop again. At the end of the hour the dust was still there.

  “Whoever it is, I can’t shake them.”

  A gully offered a solution. Riding into it, Stark dismounted and palmed his Remington. “I would rather have a rifle but mine is back in town,” he bitterly said to the horse.

  Stark climbed to the top of the gully and flattened. “I don’t savvy why there isn’t more dust.”

  The dust drew nearer, and Jesse swore again. Not in anger but in surprise. “It’s just one rider!” he exclaimed. Grinning in vicious anticipation, he cocked the Remington. “Whoever it is, he must have a hankering to die. I reckon I will oblige him.”

  The rider came nearer, and Stark’s eyes widened. “Can it be?” In his amazement he forgot himself and rose to his knees. When the horse was close enough that there could be no doubt, he stood and hollered, “Whoa, there!”