Wolf Creek (10 page)

The front page listed the sixty players in
alphabetical order, with a short comment from each. Neither Chuck
Waters nor Nick Brant said much, and their comments were nearly
alike. “I know I will be competing with the best in the territory.
All I can hope is that Lady Luck smiles on me.”

A small news article on the back page caught
Billy’s eye.

NO PROGRESS ON FARMER’S BANK ROBBERY

Since the robbery of Farmer’s bank on
Thursday last, with the thieves having left a calling card in the
form of a note, no progress has been made in the way of
apprehending said perpetrators. Rumor has attributed the deed to
the bank-robbing duo known as Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid.
Young lawbreakers oft-times take the name Kid, perhaps to say that
their lawlessness is merely the impulsiveness of youth. But no kid,
from Sweetwater or Hoboken, is known in this territory.

Billy sighed, folded the newspaper, and set
it back on the marshal’s desk. He tipped his hat down over his
eyes, leaned his chair back against the wall, and nodded off.

He awoke enough to greet Sam Gardner when he
came back from his rounds. “Quiet night for a poker tournament,”
Gardner said.

“Hmm.” Billy went to sleep again.

Melvin Lohorn thundered up the steps to the
marshal’s office and crashed in the front door. Breathless, he had
to huff and puff several times before he could speak.

“What is it, Lohorn?” Sam Gardner said.

“Gone!” Lohorn croaked. “All gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“All the money in the bank’s safe is gone.
We’ve been robbed.”

“Robbed?” Gardner said, like he didn’t
believe Lohorn, or didn’t want to.

“They even left a note, signed by the
Sweetwater Kid.”

Then the newspaper article in the
Expositor
clicked with Sarah Sue’s whining voice. “Back in
Clearwater, they just called him ‘kid.’” Clearwater Kid. Sweetwater
Kid?

Billy glanced at the clock. Ten to nine. He
jammed his hat on his head and left for the Wolf Creek train
station at a trot. He got there just before the train was ready to
pull out. The last of the passengers were climbing the steps to the
cars. He slowed to a walk and went up to the conductor. “Official
business,” he said, tapping his badge. “Don’t let this train move
before I get back.”

“I’ll hold the train, deputy,” the conductor
said.

Chuck Waters was in the second car. Billy
Below saw the swirl of cigar smoke and recognized the top of his
dove gray bowler. He drew his six-gun. Just behind Waters, he
stopped. “If it ain’t the Kid,” he said, cocking the revolver. “And
Devon Day, I dare say. Alias Nick Brant—alias ‘Chance Knight from
San Francisco.’”

“Are you speaking to me?” Waters said,
somewhat surprised.

“To you, Kid.” Billy stepped around so he
could look Waters in the eye. “You, Kid. You’re not going nowhere.
Off the train with you. And you, Devon Day. Shuck your hardware and
leave it on the seat.”

“He’s got the drop on us,” Waters said. “I
have no idea what in the world he’s talking about, though. Just do
what he says.”

The men left their weapons on their seats,
stood, and made their way back to the vestibule.

“Where’s your carpetbag, Kid?”

“I have no carpetbag,” Waters said. “I have
only what you see, less the Colt Police revolver I left on my
seat.”

Billy nodded. “We’ll see. Off the train,
both of you.”

Waters and Nick Brant went slowly down the
steps and onto the platform. Sam Gardner and Seamus O’Conner stood
there with the conductor.

“Whatcha got here, Billy?” Gardner said.

“The man they call Kid and the other one’s
Devon Day,” Billy said. “They’re prolly the ones what robbed the
Farmer’s Bank in Kansas City the other day.”

“Is that right?”

“We take ʼem to jail and I’m reckoning we’ll
find they’ve got something to do with the money what disappeared
from the Wolf Creek Bank, too.”

“Seamus and I will march ʼem straight over
to the jail,” Gardner said.

Seamus was staring at the two men, curious,
shaking his head slightly. “These fellers might match up to the
descriptions we have…maybe. I ain’t sure.”

“We’ll sort it out at the jail,” the marshal
said.

“Be there directly,” Billy said.

“Marshal. Marshal. My name is Chuck Waters.
I know nothing of anyone called the Kid.”

“We’ll let the judge figure that out,”
Gardner said. “Come with us. Turns out you never did the bank jobs,
you’ll go free.”

“Did the bank jobs?” Brant said,
incredulous. “Marshal, our money was in that bank, too! We got
cleaned out, we’re just lucky we had enough cash on us to buy these
train tickets.”

“So these fellas are traveling partners,”
Billy said. “Before they was actin’ like they never met before. And
why are they in such a hurry to leave they’re skippin’ out on their
lady friend?”

“We’ll see,” Gardner said.

After Gardner and O’Conner marched Waters
and Brant off toward the jail, Billy turned to the conductor. “I
need to get into the baggage car,” he said. “To get the carpet bags
they brought on with ʼem. Then you can go.”

The conductor was puzzled. “The gentlemen
had no baggage of any kind, sir.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“I’m quite certain.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Be that as it may, we really can’t delay
any longer, we must depart.”

Billy absently waved him away and made his
way to the jail.

Seamus was waiting for him on the front
porch, leaning back in a chair with his hob-nailed boots on the
rail. “Sheriff Satterlee has one of them runts, and Sam has the
other, in separate rooms, givin’ ʼem the old Inquisition. I wager
they’ll turn on each other like dogs quick enough, and we’ll get to
the bottom of this.”

It was not long before Gardner and Satterlee
walked out onto the porch.

“Did they talk?” Seamus asked.

“I thought they’d never shut up,” Gardner
answered.

“So what’s the story?”

“The story is, these aren’t the jokers that
robbed the bank in Kansas City. But they are the jokers that robbed
the bank in Abilene not long ago, and they were using that as seed
money to get into our bank and case it out with plans to rob it
today. But somebody beat ʼem to it. Lady Luck does not seem to have
taken a liking to ʼem.”

Seamus swore. “I’ll bet you anything it was
those other two puny little jaspers I’ve had my eye on! I couldn’t
catch ʼem at anything, but there was somethin’ fishy about
ʼem!”

“Well,” Sheriff Satterlee said, “only a
couple of the gamblers put their money in the bank, so at least the
tournament can go on. Everybody else is out of luck, though.”

Gardner snarled. “The Danby gang, then those
Danby leftovers, and we got the bank’s money back with the first
bunch and kept the second from taking it to begin with. Then we get
shafted by a couple of smart alecks.”

“A fine job I did as a deputy,” Billy
said.

“Well,” Gardner said, “you did catch some
bank robbers, just not the ones we were looking for, as luck would
have it.”

“There’s no such thing as luck,” said Billy
Below.

LONG WEEK IN WOLF CREEK

By J.E.S. HAYS

“It ain’t one of your brighter ideas, kid.”
Kye Devon tugged his Stetson more firmly onto his head. A white
line appeared between his brows, and his blue eyes narrowed and
turned icy. That glare had put the fear of God -- or at least of a
well-handled Colt Army pistol -- into many a troublemaker.

“Give it a rest, old man.” Chance Knight,
troublemaker extraordinaire, merely tilted his derby to show off
his big, brown eyes to any ladies they might happen to pass. “We’re
only here for a week.”

The young men made an interesting pair as
they strode the wooden boardwalks of Wolf Creek, Kansas, and not
just because of Chance’s citified suit. Kye, well over six feet
tall and gangly, had the pale skin and freckles to match his
red-blond hair. His face was dominated by an axe of a nose, beneath
which he was working on a mustache. The skimpiness of the latter
might have had something to do with his current mood. Chance,
nearly a foot shorter, sported a head of dark hair just getting
long enough to curl, and a face that escaped being pretty by the
width of a thick eyebrow. Chance had happily removed his own facial
hair just as soon as their recent job was finished, and now looked
far younger than his 18 years.

A passing lawman raised an eyebrow at
Chance’s suit, then tipped his hat to the pair. Chance waited until
the man had crossed the street to his office – and until his nerves
had stopped jangling like Kye’s spurs – before digging an elbow
into his partner’s ribs. Even seeing them together, this soon after
the Kansas City bank job, the deputy had noticed only a lanky
cowboy and his duded up young friend. Folks just couldn’t believe
that a couple of youngsters were two of the most successful outlaws
west of the Mississippi.

In fact, even after nearly five years on the
owlhoot trail, there were no accurate wanted posters on Devon Day
and the Sweetwater Kid. The best that could be said was that Day
was a tall galoot with a mop of sun-bleached hair, and his partner
was a little fellow with a short haircut and a bristling mustache.
This had baffled and frustrated the movers and shakers of the
country, as well as the lawmen assigned to protect their
properties

They did know that Day was the
self-proclaimed explosives expert, while the Kid bragged he could
open any safe ever made. These talents had recently been combined
to the detriment of the Kansas City Farmer’s Bank, which had been
holding the assets of several stockmen’s associations. Part of this
money had remained in Kansas City, unbeknownst to its lawmen or
citizenry. Messrs. Devon and Knight, prominent San Francisco
businessmen, had just invested in the Prairie Rose Coal Mine, which
Kye predicted would prove quite lucrative now that the new railroad
connection allowed direct shipment to the East. The carpetbag
containing the rest of their take now sat in the safe of the Wolf
Creek bank. This explained both the jubilant mood of the bank
manager and the uneasiness of Mr. Devon.

“We ain’t had time to look like our real
selves again,” Kye muttered, running a finger along the sparse
brush beneath his nose. “I ain’t sure the bank man believes we
brought all that money to buy into the railroad. It just ain’t your
brightest idea.”

“Doesn’t have to be. You’ll be spending the
week with your blacksmith buddies on one side of town. I’ll be down
at the Lucky Break winning the poker tournament. Even if people see
us together, we’ll be gone before they can connect the dots.”

“I ought to go to them games with you. What
if you get into trouble?”

“Gee, Mom.” Chance elbowed his partner
again, a bit harder than before, “how much trouble could I get
into, passing cards around a table in a reputable gambling
house?”

“My mind boggles.” Kye pulled his hat even
further down, shoved both hands into his pockets, and slouched away
in the direction of the blacksmith shop.

Chance turned in the opposite direction and
soon found himself in the middle of a “friendly” game at the Lucky
Break. He had to endure the usual cracks about his age, of course,
and the offers of a glass of milk from the bartender. It only took
one hand to show the locals he wasn’t as young as he looked, that
the “dude” knew the difference between a straight and a flush. They
soon forgot his appearance and settled down for a real game.

The night before the tournament started,
everyone in town wanted a chance to play against some of the
gamblers, to be able to tell themselves they’d have won if they’d
only had the entry fee. Men crowded the gambling hall, their
cigarettes adding to the blue haze overhead. The piano player could
barely be heard over the buzz of conversation. Between hands,
Chance played his second-favorite game, something Kye liked to call
“fishing for gossip.” As with the more traditional form of the
sport, this called for throwing out the right bait and sitting back
to wait.

“Little place like this,” he said,
ostensibly to the grizzled cowhand across the table, “I’ll bet this
tournament’s the biggest thing you’ve ever seen.”

Within five minutes, half the room had
corrected his error. Why, the bank had been robbed once -- by
outlaws just like Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid. Another gang
had tried the same stunt, but been thwarted by the vigilance of the
local lawmen. Renegade Kiowas had threatened the town’s peace, as
had any number of rowdies from the “bad” side of town. They’d even
weathered a range war.

Chance let the conversation go when someone
trotted out a crazy tale of ax-wielding Chinese headhunters. There
was always one joker in the crowd.

His table mate leaned close, a dimple
seaming the weathered cheek. “I hope you didn’t waste your money
entering that tournament, young fellow. Ain’t no way Cash Gibson is
gonna lose a poker game.”

This pronouncement encouraged the other half
of the room to air their opinions, and within five more minutes, a
couple of cowboys were shoving out of their seats, ready to defend
their personal favorites with fists or pistols. You never knew what
you’d get when you tossed a line into a crowded room.

Chance settled back for another hand of
cards. He was in his element here, just his mind against his
opponents. Poker was, after all, a game of Chance -- just not the
sort everyone thought it to be. It was a game of reading your
fellow man. A good player could win on a crap hand, or build his
bank up so slowly that the table was startled to find he’d walked
away with most of the money at the end of a long night. A bad
player could have a full house and still lose his shirt, pants, and
the horse he rode in on.