He drew up in a quiet street just outside of the better-lighted part of town. With him were Mullins and a Mexican named Carlos Vallejo. He told them to wait in the car until he returned.
Bill wanted to see a man who spent most of his evenings at Hank's Pool Hall, but he did not care to be observed talking with the man, nor to be identified by anybody as having been here on this particular night. Taking advantage of the darkness, he slipped down a back road to the alley beside the pool hall. Here he waited for ten minutes, on the lookout for a suitable messenger.
A barefoot negro boy passed the mouth of the alley, and Nuney hailed him. 'Want to make half a dollar, kid?' he asked.
The boy did. Nuney gave him careful instructions. He was to go into the pool hall and draw Shep Rogers aside, to tell him that a man in the alley had five dollars to give him to do a little job that would not take over an hour. Bill paid the boy and said that, after he had delivered the message, he could go on his way.
A few minutes later, a man came to the alley entrance and peered into the darkness. 'Someone want to see Shep Rogers?' he asked.
Bill drew Rogers a bit deeper into the alley. 'You don't know me,' he said. 'But that doesn't matter. Here is your five.'
Rogers held the bill in his hand suspiciously. He never did any work and he lived on nothing a year, but it was his experience that five-dollar bills were not so easily come by as this.
'What you want me to do?' he demanded.
'I'll tell you as we go along. It won't take half an hour.'
'You'll tell me now,' the loafer differed.
'You owe John Webster three dollars, don't you?'
'What if I do? I ain't got through borrowing it yet.'
'I want you to go with me and tell him you've come to pay it back. That is all you have to do.'
This did not make sense to Rogers, and he said so. 'I don't get this. Who are you? And what difference does it make to you if I never pay John back?'
Bill Nuney saw that he was not getting far on this line. Shep needed more urgent persuasion. He pushed the barrel of a revolver into the man's belly. 'Less talk from you,' he ordered. 'Just do as I say.'
The eyes of Rogers bulged and his jaw fell. 'Goddle-mighty, don't shoot me,' he gasped. 'I haven't got a nickel, mister.'
'You've got five dollars, and there will be five more on top of that if you behave right. You are as safe as an old lady in church. Walk beside me down the alley to the road. Take it easy and don't try any monkey-shines.'
Bill put the gun under his coat as they started. Rogers mentioned that he had a bad heart and excitement was bad for him. Maybe somebody else could do this job better. Nuney told him that he could do it fine and that his heart did not need to act up because there wasn't going to be any excitement. 'You don't even need to pay the three dollars,' he added with a grin. 'Just say you are going to pay it.'
Rogers's heart had another shock when they reached a car in which two masked men sat. He was invited to get into the back seat, and did so after a mumbled protest. Nuney sat beside him and one of the two in front started the engine. Along back streets the car took a roundabout way to the jail. While going there, Nuney talked into the ear of their unwilling passenger.
All Rogers had to do was to call to the jailer that he had come to pay the three dollars he owed. Webster would be surprised and pleased to get this news and he would come to the door to receive it. Rogers need bear in mind only two things. The first was that if he did not speak in a perfectly natural voice, it would be too bad for him, and the other that he had better forget what any of them looked like since they were a tough bunch of bad hombres who would certainly not forget what he looked like if he tallied.
The car was stopped fifty yards from the jail, an old square brick building set well back from the street. The hill men stood close to the building by the door when Rogers called to the jailer. After the third call, Webster came to a window and asked who wanted him. Rogers told who he was and why he had come.
Webster was certainly surprised. 'Where did you get the three dollars, Shep?' he asked.
'I found a wallet with five hundred dollars in it belonging to a dude from Boston. He gave me twenty-five bucks for returning it.'
The jailer knew that there had been two or three tourists from Massachusetts in town. It did not occur to him to doubt the story. He came down wearing slippers, his nightgown thrust into the top of his trousers. As soon as he opened the door and saw the three masked men, he knew he had been trapped.
'We want Brick Fenwick,' Nuney told him.
'Now — now, boys, you can't do anything like that,' Webster remonstrated. 'A little fun is all right, but—'
Mullins pushed a gun into his back. 'Don't talk,' the outlaw snapped. 'Move along and get yore keys. Stick right here with us, Rogers, till we turn you loose.'
The jailer made one more attempt to dissuade the masked men. 'I don't know any of you, but you're going to get in bad if you pull off a jail break.'
'Don't argue,' Nuney said. 'Unless you want to be pistol-whipped. Get yore keys and take us to Fenwick's cell.'
Webster got the bunch of keys and led them upstairs. He opened the outer cell and let the rescuers into it. From the inner cage Brick Fenwick growled at his rescuers.
'Where the hell you been all this time?' he demanded. 'Does Black think he can let me rot in this hole and do nothing about it?'
'We're doing something about it, Brick,' Nuney answered mildly. 'We didn't know till this morning you were here. Did you expect us to come in open daylight and bust the calaboose open? You got no kick coming. You haven't been here forty-eight hours yet.'
'It seems like forty-eight years,' Fenwick complained. At Webster he yelped, 'Hurry up and get that door open, or I'll break you in two when I get out.'
'He's doing his best, Brick,' expostulated Nuney. 'Soon as he picks the right key, he'll get it open.'
The steel door swung open and Fenwick stepped out. He took the key-ring from the jailer and swung the heavy bunch of keys against the man's forehead. The knees of Webster buckled and he slid down the metal door to the floor.
'No need of doing that, Brick,' said Nuney. 'He treated you all right, didn't he?'
'Don't tell me what I'm to do,' Fenwick snarled. 'I do as I please… Fling the fellow into the cell and see how he likes being locked up.'
Mullins and Vallejo picked Webster up by the head and the heels and dropped his unconscious body on the cot inside.
'What about Rogers?' Mullins wanted to know.
'Who is he?' Brick asked tartly.
'The fellow we used to get Webster downstairs,' explained Nuney. 'I owe him five dollars more. He won't bother us any.'
Fenwick caught the man by the back of the neck and flung him into the cell with the jailer. He locked the door and made for the stairs. 'Let's go!' he barked.
Bill Nuney stayed long enough to peel another five-dollar bill from his roll. This he pushed between the bars where Rogers could get it.
As the car crossed a bridge on the edge of town, Fenwick reached out of the window and dropped the keys into the stream. Five minutes later he woke up to the fact that they were not on the right road for the Rabbit Ear Gorge country.
'Where we headin'?' he questioned.
'For Casa Rita,' Nuney told him.
'No. Black can't order me around like a slave. I'm going back into the hills.'
'Better stop the car, Carlos,' the lank cowboy said, 'Brick wants to get out.'
'I don't either,' Fenwick denied. 'Take me home.'
Bill Nuney was fed up with the rescued prisoner's surliness. Like other men he usually walked around the young killer carefully rather than run the risk of angering him. But Bill was a bold young scamp who did not intend to be trampled upon even by a man with Fenwick's reputation.