Sheriff on the Spot (5 page)

She caught her underlip between her teeth and shook her head wearily. “Why are you asking all these questions? What business is it of yours?”

“Sam Sloan's my best friend. If he's in any kind of trouble, I'm going to back him up.”

“What kind of—trouble?” Kitty asked faintly.

“That's what I reckon we'll find out when we go upstairs. How about it?” Pat urged. “Hasn't Joe Deems tried to be more than just a boss since you've been working for him here in Dutch Springs?”

“You're talking a lot about things you don't know anything about,” Deems put in. “Kitty happens to be a married woman. Do you think I'd be fool enough to make love to her?”

Kitty gasped, “Joe! You shouldn't—”

“Is that right?” Pat pounded the question at her.

Bright color flamed in her cheeks, dimming the artificial rouge. “Suppose it is?”

“Why didn't you tell anyone here in town?”

Kitty threw back her head and asked scornfully, “How many men would have come here to drink and dance with me if they'd known? My job depended on being popular.”

“So you tricked them all,” Pat said in deep disgust. “It's a hell of a way to make a living, Ma'am—beggin' your pardon.”

“Don't be so high and mighty,” sneered Joe Deems. “There wasn't anything wrong with the arrangement. Kitty needed a job and she was good for my business. She didn't encourage the men particularly—except Sam Sloan.” There it was again. That curious sound of baffled anger as he spoke Sam's name.

“It's not my business what anybody does as long as they stay inside the law,” Pat admitted sourly. “But some things don't smell good in my nose even if they aren't criminal.” He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “All right. We're gettin' nowhere in a hurry standing here talkin'. We'll all go upstairs, an' maybe both of you will decide it'd be better to tell the truth.” He stepped back politely and motioned for Kitty to precede him up the stairway.

She hesitated, glancing quickly at Joe Deems, but his face remained stonily emotionless. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, then went past Pat slowly, keeping her face averted and not looking at him.

Deems took her arm and they started up together.

The front door of the hotel burst open to admit a running and excited young cowboy. He slithered to a stop and shouted, “Sheriff! The bank's bein' robbed. C'mon quick!”

Pat whirled to face him. “What's that?”

“The bank! It's bein' robbed. I seen 'em just now. Breakin' in the back door. You can ketch 'em if you hurry.”

Pat ran to the door leading into the saloon and shouted loudly: “Listen every one of you. You're deputized. Every man that's got a gun, come an' help me surround the bank. That is—all except you, Harold Morgan.” He singled out one of his close neighbors, a sober, steady rancher who had been drinking less than the others in the saloon.

“You go upstairs, Morgan. Stand guard at room fifteen an' the next one to it. That's Kitty Lane's room. Don't let anybody in or out. The rest of you come on out the back way, an' be quiet about it. We can circle around behind the bank before anyone knows we're comin'.”

He trotted across the saloon floor to the rear exit, and two dozen armed men swarmed after him eagerly.

5

The back door of the hotel opened onto an alleyway with small residences on the other side of it. Pat Stevens swung to the right around the hotel with his informally deputized crew right at his heels. He slowed as he approached the front of the building on the street corner, motioned his deputies to stay back while he cautiously peered around the corner and down Main Street toward the Dutch Springs bank on the opposite side and near the other end of the block.

He drew back after a slow survey of the street, said grimly, “Everything looks quiet in front of the bank. You: Jim, Todd, Ben, Max, an' Slim. You five string out on both sides of the street an' saunter down to the bank slow-like. Just act like nothing's happened, an' don't tell nobody nothing. Couple of you stay on this side of the street opposite the bank. Other three cross over an' mosey up close. Stay right there where you can cover the front, but don't start nothing less'n they try to come out that way. If they do, don't waste any lead tryin' to cripple 'em.

“Mark Johnson,” Pat went on swiftly to a grizzled rancher right behind him, “you gather up ten men an' take 'em back around the hotel an' through the alley to the end of the block. Start driftin' 'em across the street an' around behind the bank. Spread your men out to block off the street an' that side of the bank. Pick your men an' get started.”

While Johnson was swiftly selecting ten men to go with him, Pat told the others, “We'll string out and cross the street to this end an' go up behind the bank from this side. Last two men stay at this end to block off the street. You others spread out about fifty feet apart so there won't be a chance of anybody gettin' through. We don't want nothing like the last time the bank was robbed, 'bout seven years ago that was, when Sam an' Ezra an' me had to trail the gang all the way down into New Mexico. I'll go first an' get right up in behind the bank.

“You, Walter,” Pat ordered the young puncher who had brought the alarm. “Come along with me an' tell me more about this. We'll get goin'.”

He stepped forward from behind the concealment of the building and sauntered across the moonlit dusty street. Walter followed him at about fifty feet, and when Pat reached the shadow of a building on the other side, he stopped and waited for the cowboy to reach his side.

He nodded with grim satisfaction as another man stepped out into the bright moonlight and started across as Walter stepped up on the boardwalk. That would do it. If they'd all be casual and take their time in following each other, the chances were that the lookout wouldn't notice anything amiss—that was, if the bank robbers had a lookout posted to watch the street.

He caught Walter's arm as the youth reached his side, started hurrying him around to the alley leading down behind the bank, and questioned him.

“How'd you come to get onto it, Walter? You think anybody noticed you coming for me?”

“I don't think so, Mr. Stevens.” Walter's teeth were chattering but he made a manful effort to hide his nervousness. “I was coming across the alley when I heard a funny noise at the back door of the bank. It's in a dark shadow and I couldn't see good. So I stopped and listened.”

“What were you doing back in the alley?”

“I'd been to see—I was visiting Miss Grubbs that lives across the alley from the bank. Miss Jane. And I took the short-cut when I left her house.”

They turned into the alley. Pat said, “Keep talkin'.”

“Well, like I say, I heard a funny noise but I couldn't see anything. So I sort of crouched down and waited. I heard it again—then a loud creaking. Like the back door was maybe being pried open. Then I saw a flame like a match striking,
inside
the bank. So I knew something was wrong and I hightailed it around and asked at the Gold Eagle for you. Someone said you were at the Jewel. And—that's all, I reckon.”

“You didn't tell 'em at the Gold Eagle what was up?”

“No. I thought I ought to find you.”

“An' you didn't see anyone? Don't know how many there are? Don't know where they got their hawses hitched for a fast getaway?”

“No, I don't, Mr. Stevens,” the youth admitted regretfully. “I thought I ought to hurry and get you.”

“You did just right.” Pat squeezed his arm and lowered his voice. “We're comin' up to the bank now. You're right, son. There is a light inside. Mighty dim. Comin' out of the vault, I reckon.”

Pat stopped and ordered briskly, “You stay right here. Stop the first man to come up an' keep him here with you. The others'll be scattered out behind. We got 'em trapped,” he went on grimly. “They ain't got a chance to get away. I'm going to Injun up to that back door an' be a reception committee of one when they try to come out with the money.”

He left the lad posted there, and moved forward slowly and cautiously toward a dull square of light showing through a dirty back window of the bank. There were empty tin cans and debris scattered out in the rear of the bank building, and Pat had to move with the utmost caution to keep his progress noiseless.

He had one gun out and ready to fire as he crept forward. The darkness here was made black and complete by the high wall of a building on the east blocking off the rays of the moon that was still low above the horizon.

It would be smart, Pat figured, for the robbers to have left one man outside the bank on guard with their horses. If he could surprise that man and seize the horses, their only means of escape would be effectually cut off.

He crouched far forward to make his body into the smallest target possible, and moved forward one cautious step after another, without seeing or hearing anything to indicate the presence of any other living thing in the area of blackness behind the bank.

A dog came trotting up the alley behind Pat. He stopped and sniffed the air, then let out a short, curious bark. Pat sank back to his haunches and set his teeth together tightly. The dog started toward him slowly, on stiff legs. Pat stayed very still, cursing all dogs under his breath, and this member of the breed in particular.

It was a small, spotted dog with one floppy ear and the other one pointed and alert. He stopped ten feet from Pat and barked again. Pat sucked air between his lips to make a soft, welcoming sound.

The dog trotted closer and stopped again to sniff the air suspiciously, then came on and rubbed against the sheriff ecstatically, making small whimpering sounds to indicate his delight.

Pat scratched him behind the ears with his left hand, patted him and whispered, “Stay here, dawg. Better not get any closer to trouble.”

But the dog was not willing to lose his new-found friend so easily. When Pat started forward on hands and knees, he trotted past him toward the bank, then stopped to look back and wag his tail encouragingly.

Pat moved on, staying close to the ground and disregarding the spotted pup as best he could. Complete silence blanketed the dark-shadowed scene. Not a sound came from Main Street beyond the bank. The deputized men had been wholly successful in closing in to surround the bank on all four sides without warning the robbers.

Pat Stevens was grimly sure the trap was effectively set this time, and he gave up his plan of trying to locate the horses of the thieves. With every avenue of escape closed to them, Pat turned directly toward the bank, bent on smoking them out into the open where they could be disposed of or captured.

The little dog ran ahead of him to the back door of the bank. He stopped there, wagging his tail furiously. When Pat got close enough, he saw that the heavy door sagged open.

Still, no sound came from within the bank itself. The yellow blotch of light remained as the only concrete evidence of marauders within.

Pat Stevens lifted himself to his feet when he was ten feet from the open back door. He hesitated, then stepped sideways toward the lighted window. The dog trotted to him and rubbed against his legs. Pat stopped to pat him on the head, then went close to the window and tried to peer inside.

The glass was so dirty with accumulated grime that Pat could see nothing at all. He stood close to the window and listened intently, but could hear no sound from inside.

They were damn funny bank robbers, he told himself morosely. What were they doing inside the lighted bank so long? They must realize their danger, yet they were staying long enough to be having a picnic. It didn't make sense, didn't add up to the way bank robbers were supposed to act.

He pushed his Stetson back and scratched his head, turned to make a long slow survey of the darkness behind him. He could still see nothing, but he knew that armed men waited back there, waited impatiently for a chance to throw lead.

He knew how volunteer posses were. Sooner or later, one of the deputized men was going to get tired of waiting and would do something that would give the alarm. That might be disastrous. At the very least, it was likely to bring on more bloodshed than would probably be spilt if the robbers walked out into the trap unknowing.

Pat turned back from the window and cat-footed along the wall to the open back door.

He paused on the threshold, gun in hand, staring inside to the blackness and trying to get the layout of the rear interior of the bank clearly in his mind.

There was only a faint glow of light from far inside to the right. That meant the thieves were on the other side of the wooden partition where the bank's money was kept in a fireproof vault. He knew the door to that vault was none too strong. It could be forced by determined men. As a director of the bank, he had often urged the purchase of a burglar-proof safe, but the other directors had always voted him down on the idea, insisting that no one in Powder Valley was likely to rob the bank, and that no strangers could possibly know how easily the money could be obtained.

The rear door, for instance, had only a stout chain and padlock on it, yet that precaution was considered sufficient. Pat felt along the side of the door frame curiously, and discovered that the three heavy staples holding the chain had simply been pried out of the yielding wood. With an iron bar or a pick handle for leverage, it had been absurdly simple for a strong man to open the door and walk in.

Suddenly, while he hesitated there, the light went out inside the bank. Pat's body stiffened and his fingers tightened on the butt of his gun.

He heard furtive, scraping sounds on the other side of the partition. He took one step forward over the threshold, flattened himself against the inside wall beside the door.

The little dog whimpered outside, and then trotted confidently through the open door. He nuzzled his cold nose against Pat's bootleg, then trotted on across the wooden floor toward the point where the dim light had shone. His toenails made a light, clacking sound against the bare pine boards.