“Originally I was gonna take him into the bank with us, but I decided not to. Since you and me are the only ones who are gonna get full shares, it might as well be just us.”
Jacks checked his pocket watch. “Bank’ll open in five minutes.”
“And we’ll make our withdrawal one minute after that,” Cardwell said.
Jacks looked around. “I still can’t believe those deputies aren’t somewhere around here,” he said.
“If they do show up,” Ben Cardwell said, “we’ll make them sorry they did.”
18
Thomas Shaye was checking hotels at one end of town, while James was checking rooming houses at the other. Dan Shaye was still in his house. When Ben Cardwell and Simon Jacks entered the bank, none of the Shaye men were anywhere near it.
Thomas read the name on the register.
“Simon Jacks,” he said, looking at the clerk. “Says here he arrived yesterday.”
“That’s right, Deputy.”
“What kind of man is he?”
The clerk shrugged. “Normal, I guess. Not a fancy man, doesn’t look like a hard case.”
“What does he look like?”
A shrug again. “A salesman, maybe?”
“He have a drummer’s case, samples, anything like that?” Thomas asked.
“No.”
“Was he wearing a gun?”
“Well, sure.”
“What kind?”
“I’m a desk clerk, Deputy,” the man said. His name was Hubert Holt, and he was about thirty.
“You been alive long enough to see guns, Hubert,” Thomas said. “Old or new?”
“Looked old.”
“Clean?”
“I guess.”
Thomas closed the register and pushed it back at Hubert. “Where is he now?”
“He left early.”
“Okay,” Thomas said, “thanks.”
He started for the door, then turned back.
“Hubert?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Did he just leave, or did he check out?”
“Oh, he checked out,” the clerk said. “Paid his bill and all.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Thomas left the hotel, stopped just outside. Jacks didn’t sound like much, but he’d checked three hotels and this was the only stranger he’d found. He wondered how James was doing.
That’s when he heard the shots.
James had checked three rooming houses and come up empty. He was on his way to the fourth when he heard the shots, which sounded like they were coming from the center of town. One shot wouldn’t have carried, but there was a volley.
He started running.
Shaye had left his house and was walking toward the center of town when he heard the first two shots. Immediately, he thought of the bank, and that made him think of the Bank of Epitaph, a year ago.
“No,” he said, “not this time.”
He took off at a dead run.
Moments earlier Cardwell and Jacks had walked into the bank as soon as it opened. Nancy Timmerman was still in the manager’s office, where Fred Baxter was telling her he thought she deserved more responsibility.
Cardwell and Jacks entered and immediately drew their guns.
“Nobody move,” Cardwell said to the employees. “First person who does dies.”
That’s when Baxter came running out of the office, holding a gun.
19
Cardwell had taken into account the fact that the bank was in the center of town. His men were spread out in front so they could handle trouble from any direction. Two of them saw Dan Shaye running toward them, the early morning sun glinting off his badge, and they opened up on him. One bullet struck Shaye in the hip, made him stagger and fall, but he drew his gun as he did so and fired back.
James came running from the same end of town as his father. He’d had a longer run, and when he got there, he saw that his father was down but was firing. “Pa!”
He drew his gun, ran to where his father was kneeling on the ground. He fired two shots of his own, then grabbed Shaye and dragged him behind a horse trough.
“Pa? You hit?”
“Yeah, I’m hit, James,” Shaye said, the pain plain in his voice.
“Bad?”
“Can’t tell yet,” Shaye said.
The robbers were still firing, keeping them pinned down. Shaye assumed that the first two shots he’d heard had come from inside the bank. There were no more shots from there.
“James, where’s Thomas?”
“Other end of town, Pa, checking hotels,” James said. “He should be here soon.”
“Gotta warn him—” Shaye said, but then there were shots from another quarter, and he knew they were too late.
Thomas came running onto the scene from the other direction, and was immediately fired upon. The shots flew uselessly around him, and he took cover immediately behind a bunch of barrels in front of the hardware store. From where he was, he could see the bank but not his brother or his father. He returned fire, but a barrage from three other men forced him to duck back down behind the barrels. From the writing on them, he knew the barrels were filled with nails. They were plenty good cover against the fusillade of shots being laid down at him.
He knew his father and brother would either hear the shots and come running or had already done so. He could hear other shots beyond the bank when the men stopped firing at him. Apparently, his father and James were in the same situation he was.
“There were other shots bein’ fired,” James said to his father once all the shooting had stopped for the moment.
“Thomas,” he said. “James, look around. Has anyone else responded to the shootin’?”
James looked around them, but there were no townspeople coming to their aid. If anyone had heard the shots, they were hiding inside until the danger passed.
“No one, Pa,” he said.
“Epitaph all over again,” Shaye said.
“What do we do, Pa?”
“Can you see the bank?” Shaye asked. “I assume that’s what this is all about.”
James craned his neck. “I can see the front door.”
“James,” Shaye said, “if there are men inside the bank, we can’t let them leave—whether it’s with money or a hostage, or both.”
“Nancy,” James said, rising into a crouch.
“Don’t do anything stupid, son,” Shaye said.
“We can’t do anything at all, pinned down like this,” James complained.
“We can see the door,” Shaye said. “That’s something.”
James looked at his father, saw the blood on his hip and thigh.
“How bad are you hit, Pa?”
“I think the bullet took a chunk out of my hip and kept on goin’,” Shaye said. “It’s not bad, but it would help if we stopped the bleeding.”
“Let me shift you back a little so you can watch the bank entrance, and then I’ll see about that.”
He gripped his father beneath his arms and moved him just a bit, then removed his bandanna and tried to plug the wound. He needed his father’s bandanna as well, but eventually got the bleeding under control.
“Hurt?” James asked.
“A lot,” Shaye said.
“I wonder why they’re not shootin’ anymore,” James said.
“We’re not tryin’ to move,” Shaye said, “and Thomas probably isn’t either.”
James looked at his father. “Or he’s…”
Jacks looked out the front window. One of his men saw him, waved, and used sign language to fill him in on the situation.
“What’s goin’ on?” Cardwell demanded.
“Looks like our boys have got the law pinned down,” Jacks said, turning to look at Cardwell. There were four sacks at the man’s feet, all filled with money. On the floor in front of the manager’s office was the foolish manager, who had come running out holding a gun. Cardwell had gunned him down immediately, and the manager fired a couple of harmless shots as he went down.