Winchester 1887 (3 page)

Under Judge Parker's orders, the driver of the wagon was not allowed to carry a gun. So in essence, the party of deputies was limited to two—Jackson Sixpersons and Malcolm Mallory. The way the Cherokee did his math, basically one.

The sun was setting, but the day had yet to cool by the time Sixpersons and Mallory reached Flatt's camp. The two deputies had found the dead whiskey runners' horses and transferred the bodies to those mounts. Ned and Bob were pretty much bloated by the time they reached camp, causing Flatt to curse and moan.

“We'll pack them down in charcoal when we reach Doaksville,” Mallory said, the one sensible thing he had spoken all day, maybe all week.

“Who kilt 'em?” Flatt asked.

Mallory tilted his hat toward Sixpersons, who was rubbing down his horse.

“Got coffee boilin'.” Flatt did something unusual. He filled a tin cup and took it to Sixpersons.

The Cherokee knew something was wrong. Besides receiving the coffee, he could read it in the tumbleweed wagon driver's eyes. He accepted the cup, stepped around his horse, and waited.

“Trader come along, headin' for Texas,” Flatt said.

Sixpersons waited.

“I give 'im some coffee and a bit of flour.” Flatt's Adam's apple bobbed. “He give me a paper. Newspaper, I mean.” He reached into the rear pocket of his duck trousers, pulled out and unfolded a newspaper. “
Democrat
, only two weeks old.”

Sixpersons took the newspaper.

“Second page. Well . . . it's . . .” Flatt stepped away.

Sixpersons opened the newspaper, saw the story just above an advertisement at the bottom of the page for Straubmuller's Elixir Tree of Life.

“What is it?” Mallory asked.

Sixpersons read.

Flatt answered. “Ex-marshal, Jimmy Mann. Seems he kilt Danny Waco, the old border ruffian, over in Texas, but he got hisself kilt doin' it.”

To the teller at the Greenville Independent Bank, the gun in the hand of the man in the hood looked like a cannon. Five other men inside the bank also wielded guns—one a rifle, the others revolvers—but those weapons weren't four inches from Mike Crawford's face.

“You tell me there's a time lock on that safe again,” Wheat-sack hood said, “and I'll wallpaper this place with your blood and brains.”

Crawford had seen shotguns before, but nothing like that one. It had no stock, but a pistol grip that ended just beyond the lever. The wooden fore end was covered with beaded leather and the case-hardened, blued barrel had been sawed off just in front of the tubular magazine. He had done enough dove and deer hunting to know that the bootlegged Winchester shotgun was a ten-gauge. It wouldn't just wallpaper the back wall with his blood and brains; it would blow his entire head off.

He had already lost his watch. The man with the pistol-grip Winchester '87 scattergun had ripped the Waltham out of his vest pocket and dropped it into his own pocket. To Mike Crawford, that watch—a gift from his dearly departed father—was worth more than all the money in the bank, though he knew his boss would disagree with any such sentiment.

Crawford nodded just slightly and backed away from the counter. One of the hooded men with a revolver hurdled over the gate and followed him to the vault door. As soon as he turned, he felt the barrel of the pistol ram into his back. He flinched, but at least the man did not shoot. Slowly, he pulled open the heavy vault door, walked inside, and easily opened the safe.

“Payday, boys!” the man said, pushing Crawford aside. “Come and get it.”

Two other men rushed through the gate, into the vault, and began filling sacks and saddlebags with greenbacks and coins.

Crawford found a handkerchief in the pocket of his waistcoat and wiped his brow. He heard the man with the shotgun say from the bank's office, “You. Empty the tills. Now, or you're a dead man.” He was talking to Spencer Tillman, assistant cashier.

Crawford returned the soaking piece of cotton to his pocket and stood ramrod straight as the men in the safe stuffed money into their bags, not even bothering to pick up the bills and coins that fell onto the floor.

Greenville, Arkansas, was not a big town, and the Greenville Independent Bank was not a big bank. The town was located between the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad and Indian Territory, southwest of Fayetteville, practically due north of Van Buren. The bank held maybe $2,500, if that, between what was in the vault and in the tills of the tellers. It hardly seemed worth the outlaws' time, but Crawford wasn't about to tell anyone that—especially the man with the cut-down Winchester '87 shotgun.

He just wanted to get out of there alive, back to his wife and three little girls. He was praying that if he did survive, well, he would even stop seeing that Cherokee soiled dove over in Flint, and might—no he
would
—rejoin the choir at the Methodist church.

The bank robbers had no reason to kill him. He had opened the safe, wasn't doing anything, and there was no way he could identify any of them with those wheat-sack masks they all wore. He frowned, remembering the shotgun. There couldn't be two like that west of the Mississippi River.

Five seconds later, he heard words outside the bank that he had prayed he would not hear until the robbers had left the Greenville Independent Bank.

“Robbery! Robbery! Robbery!”

The words were followed by a gunshot. Then another. Moments later, the streets of the small town sounded like Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

Glass shattered somewhere inside the bank.

“Time to hit the trail, boys!” the man with the shotgun yelled.

The first man, wearing a linen duster, ran past Crawford without a second glance. The next shoved him against the wall, cursed, and spit tobacco juice on the floor. The third tossed the saddlebags over his shoulder, walked past Crawford, then stopped and turned. “Don't get no foolish notions, bub.”

“N-no . . . s-sir . . .” Crawford stammered.

The masked man slammed the barrel of his Remington revolver against Crawford's head. He saw stars, then nothing at all.

Outside the bank, Stoney Post yelled, “It's hot out here, Link!”

Those were his last words. A blast blew him through the plate-glass window as Link McCoy opened the door of the bank.

He cursed and sent a shotgun blast across the street. “I told you this was a mistake, Zane,” he told his partner, who checked on Stoney Post and then cut loose with his Winchester rifle.

“You told me!” Zane Maxwell yelled and began feeding cartridges from Stoney Post's shell belt into the Winchester '73. Post wouldn't have need of those shells anymore.

“Get out!” McCoy yelled to the gang members. “We get separated, we'll meet at the Salt Works.”

“Get killed,” Maxwell said, “we'll meet in Hell.”

Even McCoy had to laugh at that, but he focused on business as soon as the boys bolted into the streets, trying for their horses tethered by the bank and funeral parlor. He fired the shotgun, levered another round, and fired again. He and Zane crouched at the shattered window, and Zane made his .44-40 rifle sing. As soon as McCoy's sixth shot finished, he fell back from the window and began reloading the cut-down Winchester. He had only two shells in when he saw that fool teller, coming at him, a little brass-framed Sharps derringer waving wildly in his shaking hand.

“Don't be a fool,” Maxwell yelled at the idiot, but did not wait for the teller to lower the four-shot, .30-caliber rimfire popgun with the fluted barrel group. That old relic, made before the War Between the States, might not even fire, but Link McCoy was not one to take chances or give fool bankers second chances.

The shotgun roared, and the teller went flying against the counter while the Sharps Model 2A sliced across the room, bounced off a desk, and fell into a wastebasket.

McCoy jacked the hammer and finished reloading the shotgun.

“Corey's bought it,” Maxwell said, as he fell back and reloaded the Winchester. “And I think Tawlin got hit.”

“Rest of them?” McCoy levered a fresh load into the chamber of the ten-gauge.

“Hard to tell. Made it, maybe.”

“Let's you and me make it, maybe.” Link pushed himself up and bolted through the open doorway, blasting away with the sawed-off shotgun.

Farmers mostly, in that part of the country, not that it was worth growing anything other than corn. Farmers and city folk, if you could call Greenville, Arkansas, a city. The people were full of grit. McCoy would give them that much, but not much when it came to brains. Too nice for their own good.

All they had to do was kill the outlaws' horses, but the good folks of Greenville prized solid horseflesh, so McCoy swung into the saddle of his piebald mare, fired his last round from the Winchester, and waited until Maxwell found the saddle. Both men spurred their mounts and rode west toward Indian Territory, leaving two of their gang dead on the streets, poor old Stoney Post dead inside the bank, along with the corpse of a fool bank teller with a chest full of buckshot.

 

 

Mike Crawford's head was splitting. The knot on his skull felt like it would split his scalp, at least the part of his scalp that hadn't been split wide open by that buffaloing hoodlum in the wheat sack. He held a rag trying to stanch the flow of blood, trying to ease the agonizing pain in his head, and trying—and failing—to hear everything Grover Cleveland, president of the Greenville Independent Bank but no relation to the president of the United States, was saying.

“You opened the vault, you fool! How many times did I tell you that if robbers ever demanded money, you were to tell them that the safe is on a time lock? How many times? Those rascals have absconded with one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three dollars and sixty-seven cents! Because of you. A time lock, you fool. You were to tell them about the time lock.”

“I did,” Crawford moaned when Cleveland stopped to catch his breath. He wanted to tell that idiot that no intelligent robber would believe that time lock lie anyway. Safe on a time lock? How would the bankers get money out if they needed to cover a withdrawal? He wanted to tell Cleveland to drop dead, but his head ached too much. Why didn't he send someone to fetch a doctor? Crawford was bleeding, for goodness sakes!

“Spencer Tillman lies dead,” the president roared. “He died a hero. Defended my money—the money of our depositors—defended it carrying the pistol I carried during the War for Southern Independence.”

Leaning beside him, County Sheriff Whit Marion turned his attention to the small derringer he held in his left hand, thinking
you carried
this
during the war?
And suddenly, he recognized Grover Cleveland for a liar, a fraud, and a blowhard.

Cleveland decided to turn his rage onto the law. “Sheriff, why are you here? Why aren't you pursuing those murderous, scum-sucking thieves?”

Marion said calmly, “U.S. marshals will be goin' after 'em, I expect.”

“Marshals? Why? Ain't it your job?”

“For one, those bandits will be in the Nations, by now. My jurisdiction ends at the state line. For another, they didn't just kill your teller, cashier, manager or whatever that boy was. They shot Don Purcell dead in the streets. Don wasn't just my deputy. He had a commission as a deputy marshal. Judge Parker, well, he frowns upon folks killin' his deputies. So we'll get 'em. Rather, the marshals will.”

“How?” Cleveland spoke with contempt. “How can we even identify them? They wore masks, and you said none of the vile fiends killed in the raid had any identifying marks. Nothing. Nothing but bullets, gold watches, and horses they had stolen in Rogers.”

Whit Marion shoved the .30-caliber Sharps into his vest pocket, then realized he had no use for it, and handed it, butt forward, to the bank president, whose meaty hand swallowed the pocket gun.

“I know who they were,” Mike Crawford said at last.

The sheriff eyed him curiously.

Cleveland leaned closer to Crawford's face. “Who were they, my good man?” he demanded, his breath reeking of cigarettes and brandy. “Who were they? How could you recognize any of them when they all wore hoods?”

“Let him speak, Grover,” the sheriff said.

Cleveland stiffened at such a rebuke.

“One of them had a shotgun, a sawed-off Winchester lever-action with a pistol grip. I remember reading about such a weapon in . . . a newspaper.” The latter part was a lie. It had actually been in a dime novel he had picked up over in Flint when he was with the Cherokee soiled dove.

Some truth must have been in that piece of fiction, because Sheriff Whit Marion leaned backwards and whistled.

“What is it?” Cleveland demanded.

“Congratulations, Grover,” the sheriff said, “you just made history. Your bank got robbed by the McCoy-Maxwell Gang.”

Folks had been producing salt there for longer than Link McCoy could remember, likely before he was even born. Indians had been going there before the Cherokees had been kicked out of Tennessee and Carolina or wherever they hailed from.

McCoy stood by the campfire, watching with interest at the commotion below the hillside. Old Sam Mackey and his boys had had a good business. Pay a lease to the Cherokees and then send salty water from the springs into hollow logs, dump the water into giant brass kettles, boil the water until there wasn't anything left but salt, pack up the salt, and sell it. 'Course, with the Katy railroad coming through the Nations for the past twenty or so years, a body could buy his salt elsewhere. Link wasn't sure how much longer old Mackey could stay in business. Nobody went there anymore for salt, and Mackey had only a handful of hired men to mine the works.

That was why Link McCoy, Zane Maxwell, and the boys met there.

“Not much of a take, was it, Zane?” Jeff White said.

Maxwell shrugged. “Would've been better, but some sodbuster killed Clete McBee on the way out of town and I couldn't catch his horse.” He spit into the fire, frowning at the bad memory. Clete had wrapped his war bag heavy with gold coins around the saddle horn.

Maxwell's dark hair had lightened over the years and was streaked with gray. His girth had widened, too, and no longer could he mount a horse as quick as his slim, balding partner, Link McCoy. Yes, age had begun to show on both men. Outlawing wasn't getting any easier.

“Clete McBee,” Jeff White muttered. “Stoney Post. Pottawatomie Jake. Three good men. Dead.”

“More money for you, Jeff,” McCoy pointed out.

White let out a mirthless chuckle and brought a bottle of rye to his lips.

Tulip Bells came out of the tent and took the bottle from White. “Vann's done fer.”

White let out a curse. “Four men dead. Killed in some hayseed town by a bunch of square heads. Give me that bottle, Tulip. I need to get good and drunk.”

“Ain't that redundant?” Tulip Bells asked.

“Huh?”

Tulip pushed back his bell crown hat and sniggered. “I's too intellectual fer yer way tiny brain, White.”

“Shut up.”

Tulip Bells laughed again and sat beside McCoy. “He's right, though, Link.”

Bells was a lithe man with a crooked nose, pockmarked face, and graying droopy mustache and underlip beard. Two fingers on his left hand had been shot off during a robbery in Kansas back in '89, and he had been walking with a limp since taking a slug in the hip in Creek Country two years back. Tulip had been riding with Link and Zane as long as either could remember. He carried an Arkansas toothpick sheathed on his left hip, a double-action Starr Army revolver in .44 caliber on his right hip, a pearl-handled, nickel-plated Smith & Wesson No. 3 stuck in his waistband to the left of the buckle on his gun belt, and a Remington over-and-under. 41-caliber rimfire derringer in the pocket of his linen duster. He was a man that took few chances.

“Rode in to Greenville with ten men.” Tulip drank, and then tossed the bottle to Link. “I count four left. You, me, Zane, and Mr. White.”

McCoy did not drink. He cleaned the cut-down Winchester shotgun. “Smith and Greene got out of town, too.”

“Yeah.” Tulip's lean head bobbed. “But they've seen the light. Won't be seein' 'em weasels no more.”

“Good riddance to them,” Maxwell said from across the fire.

“Four men ain't much of a gang,” Tulip Bells said. “Law 'll be ridin' after us pretty soon.”

“Imagine so.” McCoy worked the action of the empty shotgun then wiped the case-hardened steel with an oily cloth.

“We can pick up some new boys,” Maxwell said. “Territory's full of eager beavers.”

“Like Smith and Greene,” Tulip said, shaking his head.

“They left their cut for us,” Maxwell said.

“Yeah.” White kicked at the saddlebags McCoy had escaped with. “Instead of six ways, four ways. To split four hundred dollars.”

“Makes the cipherin' easier,” Tulip Bells said.

“Shut up,” White snapped.

A minute passed then he spoke again. “We can't stay here.”

“Why not?” Bells said with a chuckle. “Make it easier on the law. They can use the salt to help preserve our corpses for the trip back to Fort Smith.”

“Shut up,” White said again.

Tulip Bells morosely laughed.

“Where to?” White asked.

McCoy had been doing some thinking. “South. We'll change our duds, become respectable cattle buyers. Buy our tickets in Muskogee and ride down to Texas. Law won't expect us to ride a train out in the open. Anybody can lose himself in Denison.”

Tulip Bells cackled again.

“What's so funny?” Maxwell demanded.

Bells shook his ugly head. “Buy a train ticket?” He howled harder.

Link McCoy, Zane Maxwell—and even Jeff White—joined in.