"Not even with a stick," the storekeeper agreed. He grinned, then glanced over at the spinner rack. "You boys figured out which o' them funny books you want yet?"
"Just about, Mr. Matthews," the fat kid replied.
The stranger took another swig of the melting Coke and said to the storekeeper, "You must be Drew Matthews."
"That's right. We haven't met, have we?"
"No, sir."
"But I know who you are. You're one o' them newspaper fellas, ain't you?"
The stranger smiled. "Does that bother you?"
"Nope. One o' you boys shows up about every ten years or so, when they figure everybody's forgotten again about the Tacker Gang."
"Are you willing to talk about it?" asked the reporter. "Especially the part about the war? I understand it's quite a story."
Short, silvery bristles stood out on Drew Matthews's jaw and chin. He lifted his hand and rubbed it over the stubble, making a faint rasping sound. "I suppose I could reminisce a little," he said. "If you're really interested, that is."
The reporter nodded. "I am. And I think my readers will be too."
"Well, since business ain't very brisk this afternoon— and ain't likely to be until after it starts to cool off a little— why don't you pull up that chair and sit down while we talk?"
The reporter picked up the wicker chair and carried it over by the side counter. As he did so, the two little boys brought a stack of comic books to the counter on the other side. "Can we get these and a couple of root beer popsicles, Mr. Matthews?" one of them asked.
"How many funny books you got there? One, two, three, four, five of 'em, at twelve cents apiece, that's sixty cents, and them popsicles are twenty-five cents each . . .."
"I got a dollar," the fat kid said.
Matthews nodded. "Close enough for gover'ment work. Get your popsicles and go on out on the sidewalk while you eat 'em, so you won't be drippin' on the floor in here."
The boys got their popsicles from the freezer and hurried out, arguing over which one of them would get to read the new issue of Spider-Man first.
When the screen doors had slammed behind the boys, Matthews leaned back a little on his stool and said, "Thought it might be a good idea if them little fellas left before I started tellin' you about what happened back in the old days. Some of it wasn't very pretty, you know."
"Whatever you want to tell me," the reporter said, "I want to hear it."
"You understand, I wasn't there for everything that happened. Most of it, but not everything. Course, I heard all about it later from the other fellas. I'll just tell it the best way I know how. I reckon the whole thing started in Nevada, in a little place called Flat Rock . . .."
CHAPTER ONE
We were double-crossed, plain and simple. If not for what Murph Skinner did, might not any of it would have happened the way it did. But it did, and before we knew it, it was way too late to change things. That's always the way, seems like.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was a while after we all got together in '17 that the real trouble started. The first few months the Tacker Gang rode, things went just fine. We walked into that bank in Flat Rock as bold as brass and smooth as silk, and nobody inside dared move a muscle when we drew our guns and Roy said in a loud voice, "This is a holdup. Everybody just stay still, and nobody gets hurt."
Seven of us went into that bank. Roy Tacker, he was our leader, and the oldest one of the bunch, around forty-five years old. Tall and a little on the skinny side, with as much gray in his hair and mustache as black, but I'd as soon tackle a wolf with my bare hands than get in a fight with Roy. Then there was his little brother, Jace. Half brother, really, since Roy's mother had died a long time before and Roy's daddy up and married him a younger woman when he was getting on in years, and they had Jace.
But that never affected the way Roy felt about Jace. They were as close as any full-blood brothers you ever saw.
Aaron Gault was from California—Bakersfield, I think. He'd drifted east after some trouble out there, just like I'd drifted west from Texas, and we both wound up in Nevada and fell in with Roy. Aaron was a good-looking fella with blond hair, and the gals all loved him as soon as they saw him. That never gave him a big head, though. He was down-to-earth, and a good man to ride with.
Big Boy was with us too, of course. Wherever Roy was, Big Boy wasn't far off. His real name was Alfred Guinness, but he never cared for it—the Alfred part, I mean. And Big Boy suited him just fine, since he was so tall and wide we used to rib him by saying it'd take a man on horseback a day just to ride around him. He'd been riding with Roy the longest, even longer than Jace.
The last two who went into the bank were the Gunderson brothers, a couple of Swedes who had just joined up with us. This was their first job. Outside, seeing to the horses, was Murph Skinner. Roy never gave that chore to a new man. It was too important. Being able to keep a cool head while you were inside a bank robbing it was pretty important too, but you sure as hell wanted your horses to be there waiting for you when you came out. And Murph was cool-headed, right enough. A treacherous son of a buck, but not prone to panic.
So we all had our guns out, but there were more of us than there were other people in the bank. A manager, a couple of tellers, and an old man standing at one of the tellers' windows were the only folks there, and they were all gawping at us like they'd never seen a gang of outlaws in dusters and Stetsons, with bandannas tied over their faces, before.
And maybe they hadn't, since it was 1917, after all, and most people thought the Wild West was dead and buried. Some of the streets were paved now, even in a little burg like Flat Rock, and there were gaslights on every block. Flivvers were parked along the boardwalks, instead of buckboards.
But there were still hitching posts along the street too, because this was ranching country and a lot of cowboys still rode their horses into town on payday—which was, of course, the very next day, and that was why the bank was full of money today.
"Nobody gets hurt," Roy said again. "All we want is the cash."
The bank manager was a dried-up little prune of a man, and he puffed up like a toad and said, "Well, you can't have it, you hooligan."
Roy pointed his gun at the man's face and said, "You best think about that for a minute, mister, but no longer, 'cause we ain't got the time."
The bank manager swallowed hard as he stared down the barrel of that Colt. Then he looked over at the tellers. "Give 'em what they want."
"Figured you'd see the light of reason," Roy said.
Big Boy and the Gunderson brothers holstered their guns and took canvas bags from under their dusters. They went behind the counter and started emptying the cash drawers in the tellers' cages. While they were doing that, Roy said to the manager, "You'd best open the vault now."
"I . . . I can't. The key's not here—"
"Sure it is. I never saw a banker yet who couldn't get into the vault whenever he wanted. I'll bet you like to go in there and just look at all those greenbacks. Makes you feel all nice and tingly inside, don't it?"
The bank manager heaved a disgusted sigh. Roy had him pegged, all right. "The key's in my pocket," he said. "I'll get it out."
"You do that."
The fella reached into his coat and brought out a gun instead of the key to the vault. I don't know what he thought he was going to do with one piddling little pocket pistol against four Colts, but he never got a chance to do much of anything. As always, Roy had told us that there wouldn't be any shooting unless it was to save our lives, so he jumped at that bank manager and cracked the barrel of his gun across the gent's scrawny little wrist. The manager yelped and dropped his pistol before he could even come close to getting a shot off. Roy whacked the little gun with the side of his boot and sent it sliding across the floor, well out of reach.