Bart Stollard was the first to break from the line facing the wall. The instant the robber turned at the gate he broke. He ran to the teller’s window and snatched up his pistol on the shelf underneath. When he reached the street the robber was speeding out of pistol range, but through the swirl of dust he noted that the motor cycle was grayish green in color. One of the two men jostled by the robber had a car outside. Bart sprang into it, and the two men scrambled into the tonneau as he started the car. Others joined the pursuit behind them, Mrs. Merriwether screaming, “Stop thief! Stop thief!”
Over his shoulder Bart heard shots — no, not shots. They were blow-outs, tires gone flat. Two of their own tires blew out, and the car lurched to a standstill.
Tacks — roofing nails! The robber had sown them in the dust as he rode.
“Any skunk that would do that—” said the owner of the car.
Bart jumped out and turned back. Three other cars had stalled, though others were coming, and he ran toward them, waving their drivers to the side of the street. Two more had to stop before he could reach them, but the light delivery truck of the Imperial Grocery, with two citizens on the seat beside tile Mexican driver and four in the body, was just getting under way as Bart swung aboard over the tail gate.
“Off to the side, Tony,” he ordered. “Climb the curb! Keep to the sidewalk!”
A half mile ahead the robber turned south into the highway, toward El Metropole and the Mexican border beyond. Fully a minute later they themselves reached the highway. The cement road lay like a strip of gray carpet upon the yellow floor of the desert. It sloped gently upward over the dunes to the crest of a rise some five miles away. They peered into the jiggling heat waves. The one moving speck visible was the motor cycle and its rider, which topped the rise and was gone.
“We’ll never catch him,” said one of those in the truck.
“Don’t need to,” argued another. “He’s as good as nabbed already. He can’t leave the highway.” The man waved a hand over the sea of powdered dust. “If he keeps on they’ll grab him at the first town. The bank has phoned everywhere by now, you bet.”
“Don’t you suppose he’s thought of that?” Bart asked.
“What of it? What can he do?”
“I don’t know what he’ll do,” said Bart, “but it’s my guess that he’s got something figured out. We’ll just keep on after him.”
II
They did, but when they reached the crest of the long rise they could see no sign of the motor cycle. As straight as a string, the cement strip stretched to the horizon. Nothing moved upon it except a sand truck about a mile away. They overtook the truck and passed it. They picked up the tracks of the motor cycle where the dust had drifted over the paved road. In these places they saw two tracks, one made by the robber when coming to Nopal, the other when leaving. At last they came to a stretch where there was but one track. The robber then had not come this far.
They blinked at the desert that shrivels and erases. The man was gone. Nowhere to the mountain haze on either side was there aught to screen him. The clumps of greasewood would not do it. The sand verbena would not hide a jack rabbit. The man was gone.
The pursuers turned back. They stopped and questioned the driver of the slow-moving sand truck. He regarded them with lazy interest. He wanted to know if their doctors knowed they was loose in this oven heat. Yes, he sort of remembered seeing a motor cycle. Where did it go? Huh, where would it go? It just went. Wished he had a motor cycle instead of a load of sand, to hit up a little breeze. They would have to excuse him, but he wasn’t paying no attention where the motor cycle got to. Real nice broiling weather, wasn’t it?
“Oh, come on,” said one of the men. “This bimbo’s asleep, and he’d be a dumb-bell even if he was awake.”
“And keep out of the sun the rest of the day,” the driver of the sand truck advised them as he threw in the clutch.
A crowd stood around in front of the bank when they returned. Bart saw then that the doors of the bank were closed. His father admitted him. He started to speak to Bart, but turned without a word and led the way to Mr. Trawl’s desk. Bart followed. Two of the bank directors were there. Mr. Trawl’s brows arched behind his nose glasses as he greeted Bart.
“Ah, the end of the grand stand chase, eh? And did you get your man?”
Bart shook his head.
“You wouldn’t,” said Mr. Trawl, “even though he was crippled and deaf. Why didn’t you shoot him when he came in here? But no, I suppose you were counting the buttons on his shirt. Always hipped on details! I suppose you can tell us the color of his pants?”
“I can tell you,” said Bart, “that he wasn’t deaf.”
“Not deaf? He was stone deaf. When that tin box dropped he didn’t so much as start.”
“That was iron control. A deaf man would have jumped. The concussion would have made him jump. Doctors have told me that. When the robber did not jump, that showed that he was pretending to be deaf.”
“Well, what of it? What good does your knowing that do us?”
“It probably kept the robber from shooting you, Mr. Trawl,” said the elder Stollard. “He believed that we thought he was deaf. Consequently Bart convinced him that you were not stooping for a gun. I saw his finger on the trigger, but Bart saved you.”
“But,” Trawl objected petulantly, “that catches us no thief. Very convenient for your father, your not catching him, young man.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Trawl?”
“Oh, indeed! However, these directors of the bank and myself, we understand only too well.”
“Bart,” said the elder Stollard, “it’s worse than you think. The robber must have known that we were expecting a large sum from the Southwest National.”
“But he didn’t get that. It hadn’t come yet.”
“He did get it, though.”
Mr. Trawl’s laugh was sarcastic. “That is your story, Mr. Stollard.”
The elderly cashier looked only at his son. He went on:
“That money from the Southwest National was brought by a messenger, Bart. He came on the stage before the bank opened. I was alone here, and let him in. I received the money, ten thousand dollars, and the messenger left at once. I opened the vault and put the money there. The robber took it, of course.”
“Like blazes he did!” Trawl burst forth, throwing off his manner of deliberate sarcasm. “A most convenient robbery for you, Mr. Stollard. And you and your son needing money badly for that ranching experiment of yours. Come, come, produce the money so that we can open the bank’s doors.”
Bart trembled where he stood. “That’s rot, Mr. Trawl!”
“Yes, a rotten betrayal of trust.”
“You’ll be saying next that we knew the robber was coming.”
“It would almost seem so. Very strangely the fellow happened in during the only few hours in an entire month when more than a thousand dollars would be in our vault. It’s curious — very.”
“Not so curious. The Southwest National has been sending us currency the same day every month for the past year. Almost any one could make it his business to find that out.”
“Why, yes, that’s so,” spoke one of the two directors. He was Witheral, owner of the sand pits near Nopal and owner of most of the bank. His eyes, under stubborn bushy brows, were afflicted with a squint in their steadfast gimlet boring. “Mr. Trawl’s charges are serious,” he went on, “and your father, Bart, is either unfortunate or — the charges are true. That’s what we have got to find out. However, Mr. Trawl, I might as well tell you this: You have misrated Mr. Stollard in the past. Jealousy, no doubt. Afraid he will displace you. Now listen. In case these charges are proved untrue, we could no longer trust to your judgment, and your place would likely be taken by one whose probity as well as judgment we could in that case trust absolutely.”