A Coffin Full Of Dollars (16 page)

The chest was lifted to the ground, the lid thrown back. Inside was a stack of neatly folded dresses, together with Dandy's swallow-tailed coat and his high silk topper, collapsed to a flat disc.

The bandit chieftain uttered a high, wordless shriek and whirled on Dandy. The knuckles of his gun hand looked as if they were coated with frost.

"Do you take Apachito for nothing but an
estupido idiota
—a stupid idiot? No one is crazy enough to just give away a half-million dollars. You have taken the money out of the chest and hidden it somewhere in one of your wagons. But we will find it, never you fear, if we have to tear your wagons and everything in them to little pieces." He turned on his pack, his swarthy face black with rage. "Don't just stand there, you fools! Start unloading the wagons. Take
everything
out of all three and break it open or tear it apart to see if anything is hidden inside. Then if you do not find it, strip them all to the skin. The big woman alone could have half the money stowed under that full dress and long skirt."

Dandy squawled, "You wouldn't
dare
, you—you ape!"

Lupo swung his arm in an almost casual swipe. The back of his big hand took Dandy in the mouth and sent him reeling backward.

"Watch your talk, smart one. There is nothing Apachito does not dare." Lupo turned to his chief. "That one simply has the cold feet when he thinks of giving up the money that really belongs to us. If we were to build a hot fire and warm his cold feet in it for a time, he might find it easier to tell us what we want to know. That would spare us all much work and trouble unloading all that junk and searching it."

"And he would amuse us all with his screams," Apachito said, grinning savagely. "A very good idea, my old and trusted friend. But I have an even better one. The big woman has yet to pay the penalty for striking Apachito with a whip. So we will roast
her
tender feet in the fire to teach her respect for the most terrible
bandido
of them all. Also, old friend, I think she will not scream very long before Mister Forked Tongue, here, will be happy to tell us exactly where our money is hidden."

"Goddam you, you monster," Dandy howled. "If you dare to touch Molly, I'll kill you with my bare hands."

He lunged wildly at Apachito who leaped backward, grabbing for his gun. Lupo whipped his own pistol out first and slammed the barrel down on Dandy's bare head. The circus man took a couple more rubber-legged steps and pitched onto his face. Molly uttered a small, tight shriek, scrambled down from the wagon and ran to kneel beside him.

"Good work, friend Lupo," Apachito said. "Before he wakes up, have both him and the woman handcuffed and a good, hot fire built up."

On her knees, Molly looked up, her face contorted with hatred. "You—you
animal!
"

"My dear
senora
," the outlaw said blandly. "I am not
an
animal; I am
all
animals. In Apachito you will find combined the cleverness of the wily fox, the stealth and ferocity of the mountain lion, the courage of—"

"How about the polecat?" came the icy voice of the bounty hunter.

He was standing a few feet from where Shadrach knelt by the wagon wheel that held him trapped. The rifle in his manacled hands pointed unwaveringly at Apachito's midsection. The expression on his face was a chilling mask of death itself. Shadrach's head whipped around, a look of stunned disbelief on his face.

"Oh,
no
," he gasped. "Oh, you damned fool! Why did you have to barge in and practically invite them to blow your dumb head off? Why didn't you stay in the clear and wait your chance to slip in and cut me loose?"

After the first frozen moments of shock, there was a ripple of beginning movement, a visible tensing among the outlaws.

"Don't try it," the bounty hunter said sharply. "If anybody reaches for his gun, your boss-rat gets a slug right in his belly, where the pain is the worst and lasts the longest."

"Do what he says," Apachito cried hoarsely. "They do not call him Mister Sudden Death for nothing."

His swarthy face glistened with the sheen of cold sweat. The hunter took a half-dozen quick steps that brought him directly behind Apachito, making the bandit chieftain both a hostage and a human shield. The muzzle of the rifle dug into the squat man's back.

"You and Lupo, drop your guns. The rest of you, unbuckle your gun belts, lay them down easy and step away from them. And don't anybody make any sudden moves that might make this trigger finger jumpy."

Apachito and his lieutenant let their pistols fall. The others hesitated, their faces twisted with rage as they measured the overwhelming odds and weighed their chances.

"I wouldn't if I were you," the hunter said softly. "Oh, you outnumber me so you'd gun me down, of course—providing you're willing to pay the price, but it won't be cheap. You all know my reputation, and some of you have seen me shoot. You know I'm not bluffing when I promise you I'll take one of you down with me for every bullet in this gun."

"You heard him," Apachito croaked. "
Move
, damn you! Our turn will come later."

Slowly and sullenly, cursing under their breaths, the outlaws dropped their gun belts and moved back. In every eye was the hot unspoken promise that at the first moment of inattention, vengeance would be swift.

On the ground beyond Lupo, Dandy was groaning and stirring with returning consciousness. Molly helped him sit up. He stared around dazedly until he discovered the bounty hunter. His eyes went wide.

"
You!
What are you doing here?"

"Trying to save your worthless hide, you double-crossing rat—but only for Molly's sake. If it weren't for her there's nothing I'd enjoy more than leaving you to the mercy of this pack of coyotes masquerading as wolves."

Anger flared in Molly's eyes and she spat furiously, "You ought to be ashamed, ta
l
king like that to Dandy after all he's done for you. Who were you? A nobody without even a name—or at least none you'd admit to. A saddle tramp living by his gun. Dandy took you in and treated you like one of the family. He helped you build an act, paid you for it, made you a star..."

"And cheated me out of a fortune," the hunter growled. He glared at Dandy. "When you claim you gave the money back to the bank, I'm inclined to believe you. That's exactly the kind of stupid thing only you would be dumb enough to do. But don't think you're going to beat me out of my share of the reward."

"
Reward?
" Apachito yelped, his avarice overcoming his fear for the moment. "What reward?"

Shadrach rolled his eyes heavenward and cursed in a thick, choked voice.

"The twenty-five thousand dollars the bank was offering for the return of its money," the hunter said, "which is plain outrageous. If they had to, they'd be tickled to death to pay a hundred thousand to get their
five
hundred thousand back, and that's what I planned to hold out for. I'd have gotten it, too, if this cheap crook hadn't spoiled the deal. Knowing Dandy, I'm willing to bet he didn't settle for peanuts, either. But whatever he got, I'm getting my share right now or I'll take it out of his thieving hide."

Dandy's eyes were shuttling wildly. The hunter could almost see his mind spinning, whipping up a plausible story. Molly started to say something, caught Dandy's sharp look and subsided. Dandy scrambled to his feet.

"Look, Nameless, I haven't gotten it yet. I swear to God I haven't gotten it. The only one at the bank with the authority to pay the reward money is Markert, the president, and he was out of town. He'd rushed off to El Paso for a new supply of cash so the bank could stay open and operating. They tried to telegraph him there, but the line is down somewhere east of Bowie and won't be repaired for days. He'll be back next week and that's when I'm to go back to Hangville and collect the reward money."

"Then, little man," the hunter said grimly, "until next week you and I are going to be closer than two peas in a pod, and heaven help you if you try a sneak-out. When you ride back next week to collect, I'll be right beside you every foot of the way. Once my share is in my hand, we'll go our separate ways, and as far as I'm concerned, good riddance."

"Crazy," Shadrach was mumbling. "He's got to be crazier than a steer in a patch of loco weed. He not only tips Apachito off to a reward he didn't even know about, but he even tells him how easy it will be to grab."

The bounty hunter had shifted the rifle to his left hand. He squatted down slowly and reached out with his right hand for the gun Apachito had let fall. With the short handcuff chain connecting his wrists, reaching the pistol meant that for a moment the rifle had to be tipped downward, no longer pointing at Apachito's back.

He caught the flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Two of the more desperate outlaws were taking advantage of that moment to dive for their discarded guns. The hunter made a lightning snatch. His right hand caught up the pistol as his left triggered the rifle.

The two shots thundered almost as one. The diving outlaws landed on their faces and lay unmoving, dead hands still reaching for the guns they would never use again. Still on his heels, the hunter grimly eyed the dead men's companions. None of them showed any inclination to follow the suicidal attempt. He got to his feet, the pistol now covering the outlaw chief while he laid the rifle across his arm and levered a fresh shell into the chamber.

"Lupo, you brought our handcuffs so you've either got the keys or know where they are. Trot 'em out and unshackle my partner, over there. Then hand him the key to my cuffs and stand back."

For a tense moment he thought the big man was going to lose all control of himself and make some kind of break. His small eyes burned with hate and his whole body trembled with the intensity of his emotions.

Then slowly he reached into a pocket, brought out two small, flat keys and selected one. He moved carefully to the back of the gold wagon and reached behind the wheel. A moment later Shadrach stood up, massaging his wrists. Lupo handed him the second key, then backed away.

Shadrach snatched Lupo's gun from the ground before sidling close enough to unlock the hunter's manacles with his left hand.

"You pulled it off," he muttered softly. "I never in the world thought you'd get away with it, but you did. I never figured these buzzards had enough respect for Apachito's authority to give up their guns because he tells them to."

"Respect—hell!" the hunter snorted. "I was gambling on that skunk's being clever enough to protect himself with life insurance. It's my guess he's got a big chunk of everbody's share of loot stashed away in a hiding place somewhere. If they should let anything happen to him, their chances of ever finding that horde would be just about zero."

"You're a whiz at coming up with the right answers, aren't you?" Shadrach said. "Now I've got a question I'd like to hear you answer. At the moment you've got this pack of desperadoes buffaloed, but every one is wetting his Long Johns for the chance to kill you. In case you haven't noticed, the sun has already set and night is closing in on us fast. So what do you plan to do, stand here pointing a gun at Apachito's belly button all night?"

CHAPTER 19

"If you hadn't been so busy making love to that wagon wheel," the hunter said sourly, "you might have noticed that second cabin back there. It has iron bars over the window and a heavy iron bolt on the
outside
of the door, so it's obviously a kind of jail. Probably it's where Apachito kept prisoners until they were ransomed or until he was ready to dispose of them one way or another."

"I'll be damned," Shadrach said, peering through the gloom. "You called it again. But if you get this whole lot jammed in there, they'll be standing on one another's boots. The place is hardly bigger than a two-holer privvy."

"That," the hunter said dryly, "will probably keep me awake all night, worrying about them."

The sullen prisoners were herded into the bare cabin. There were neither bunks nor chairs, the dirt floor serving in both capacities.

As the hunter slammed and bolted the door, Apachito called indignantly, "What about our drinking water and our supper? What are you going to do about our food?"

"The same thing," the hunter called back coldly, "you planned to do about ours while we were chained to the Wagon."

Over by the circus wagons, Dandy broke off an earnest, low-voiced conversation with Molly and came hurrying to meet them.

"Now that you're in control here, what are we supposed to do?"

"Make camp and stay put. There's only the one wagon road and two of Apachito's armed bandits are guarding it, so don't get any cute idea of sneaking out. And tell Molly when she fixes supper to include two extra mouths."

Dandy trotted off and Shadrach said disgustedly, "I'm everlastingly damned if I can figure you out. One minute you act ten times smarter than Moses. The next, you do something dumb like gallantly barging in to save Molly from a toe-warming. Or tipping Apachito off to that bank reward."

"For a smart man," the hunter said coldly, "you could stand to have your wits sharpened. If you believe Dandy's story that he gave the money back to the bank, you're a bigger chump than the ones he trims at monte. I'm betting it's hidden around one of his wagons, and I've got a pretty strong hunch where. It wasn't gallantry that sent me barging in. It was desperation. In another minute Dandy would have spilled the hiding place to Apachito to spare Molly from torture."