Written in Time (48 page)

“Wha’s this heah?” He stabbed a very dirty right index finger toward the C-96.
 

“It’s called a Mauser, sir. It’s a brand new type of handgun that fires ten rounds as rapidly as you can pull the trigger.”
 

“Fotty-fie o’ fotty-fo?”
 

It took David a beat to catch the fellow’s meaning. “Forty-five or forty-four? Neither. It fires a very special cartridge called the seven point six three millimeter Mauser. Very accurate and quite effective.”
 

“Thet don’ soun’ right, sonny.”
 

Mercifully, Billy arrived. “Billy, show this gentleman the C-96 Mauser.” David turned to the old man, and pasted a smile on his face as he suggested, “If you think you might be interested in purchasing the pistol, we have a demonstrator model. My assistant here can take you out back behind the store and let you fire a few rounds through it. Have a nice day.”
 

And David was gone, grabbing three tan dusters off the rack. With them over his left arm, he scooped up three large bandannas in assorted colors, stuffing them into the pocket of one of the dusters.
 

David didn’t know Clarence’s hat size, but figured that it was close to his own. He grabbed a gray hat and a white hat. His father’s head size was seven and three-quarters. There wasn’t that much of a selection, but he found a broad-brimmed black Stetson with a high crown that already had what his father had always referred to as a Tom Mix crease. In 1900, it was still called a Carlsbad crease. He remembered his father watching Hopalong Cassidy movies, and this hat was identical to the one worn by William F. Boyd.
 

With all three hats, the dusters and the bandannas, David went into his office. He jotted down a note to list the clothing as “free samples to customers” and left his office as quickly as he’d entered.
 

He exited the selling floor, entered the storeroom, passed through it, opened the back door and stepped into the alley. As he was locking the back door, he heard the sound of hooves and turned. His father and Clarence had returned with fresh horses from the livery stable. David took the bandannas from the pocket of the top duster as Clarence called out, “You can bring these back and get our own horses next time you come to town, David.”
 

David didn’t bother telling his father and Clarence “Thanks a lot.” Instead, he handed them their hats and dusters and bandannas, otherwise known as western desperado disguise kits. Time was wasting. He grabbed his saddle horn and swung up onto the back of the big gray mare.
 

Cutting cross country was the only way to keep up with the three white vans. Certain of their approximate destination, and with fresh horses under them and Jack, his son and nephew rode with abandon. David’s horse slipped and fell, but didn’t come up lame. David’s right shoulder would bruise, but wasn’t otherwise damaged. Checking the horse more thoroughly than he checked his son, Jack announced, “Let’s keep going!” and climbed up into the saddle.
 

Using the vans this far away from the time-transfer base was asking for discovery and myriad unanswerable questions; the stagecoach road leading to Carson City was well-travelled. Yet, it was obvious why the vans were being used: in order to save time.
 

Distant gunshots, fired too rapidly and for too great duration to be from weapons of the period, filtered up into the high rocks through which Jack, David and Clarence forced their mounts. “The afternoon stage, I bet,” Clarence shouted over the thrumming of their horses’ hooves. “Probably killed the driver and any passengers. Can’t leave witnesses. The bastards.”
 

“Good point to remember,” Jack called back.
 

An hour and a half later, their lathered horses rubbed down, grained and watered—but sparsely, lest they bloat— Jack stood in a mountain meadow, smoking a cigarette.
 

Clarence was on watch. Equipped with binoculars, he was posted a little over a quarter mile away, keeping a vigil over the stagecoach road. Both Jack and his son watched for Clarence to flash the signal mirror, alerting them that riders were coming.
 

Two miles farther out on the stagecoach road, the tracks of the vans had turned off, then traveled on for over a mile before the anachronistic transports parked in a narrow canyon. A corral had been built there; horses were saddled and waiting for the occupants of the vans. Jack had crawled close enough to observe in some detail, while David and Clarence stood watch with the horses. The “salesmen” were, as predicted, breaking up into groups of two. Each man was equipped with a gun belt complete with a revolver and a sheath knife, and each pair of men was issued a lever-action rifle.
 

The first two pairs of riders set out at once, not seeming terribly skilled as horsemen.
 

Crawling back until it was safe to crouch, then moving in a crouch as rapidly as he could until it was safe to stand, Jack Naile made his way back to David and Clarence. “I just saw riders, four men heading back toward the stagecoach road,” David announced. “Do we chase them?”
 

“No. The groups will pace each other a little. Let’s find a spot up ahead where we can rest the horses and ourselves. We’ll let the next four go past, too. We’ll try for the third set of riders. That way, if we miss them, we’ve still got one more chance.”
 

They’d urged their weary animals—animals at least as exhausted as their riders—away from the mouth of the canyon, then along the stagecoach road until they’d found a suitable spot. There were broad rocks, just high enough to shield the hat of a mounted man waiting on the other side. Up a little distance from the road, concealed from the view of any riders coming from the canyon, lay the meadow.
 

An hour passed before four men in period business suits, all identically equipped, rode past the rocks. David had stood the watch, Clarence replacing him.
 

Assuming hour intervals, by the black face of his Rolex, Jack announced to David, “It’s just about time, if they keep to regular intervals.”
 

Jack and his son and nephew had already changed into the dusters, replacing their own hats with the ones from the store. Jack noted to David, “I approve of the selection, by the way. The same style I’ve seen Tom Selleck use, as a matter of fact.” Jack Naile thought he caught a smile flicker across his son’s face, but thought nothing more of it. Their own hats were wrapped in a blanket and hidden behind an easily identified fir tree. Jack checked his saddle and set to tightening his cinch strap.
 

All three of them crouched in their saddles, just in case the angle of the road was steep enough that the crown of a hat might be visible to the four riders.
 

Jack told them, “Clarence, you’ve watched a lot of westerns. David, you haven’t. Follow our lead.” Looking at Clarence, he said, “Just like the classic thing you’d see on television back in the fifties. We’re the three outlaws, hiding behind the rocks beside the stage road. That gave the effect of a robbery without having to go to the expense of filming a chase scene. Instead of springing out when the stagecoach carrying the mine payroll is passing, we’re going after four men. If we can avoid it, no chase scene, because I don’t want a shot fired, but don’t take any chances.
 

“David—I want you to be the last man out from behind the rocks. I’m first, cutting them off, then Clarence on their left flank. You cross behind them and take their right flank. We want, in order of importance, the mochillas, then anything else they’ve got. We get them to hand over their weapons, which is what I’d prefer; it’s probably safer. These guys may know nothing about older firearms and have loaded rounds under the hammers. They fling the guns down, we could have an A-D, and the noise from an accidental discharge is going to attract just as much attention as a shot being fired intentionally. The people with those vans may have automatic weapons, and we don’t, so a gunfight with the Lakewood Industries guys back in the canyon is the last thing we want.”
 

It was difficult getting used to his father as a field commander, a general, the leader of a gang. Maybe a family was, in a way, a gang, or at least a small tribe. David’s only experience with his father in a leadership function beyond the scope of normal family activity was as a scout leader back when he—David—was about eight or ten years old.
 

So far, David had to admit, his Dad seemed to be doing okay.
 

Their high-crowned cowboy hats were pulled down low over their eyes, bandannas covering their faces below the eyes—his father’s, of course, was black. And long tan dusters covered their clothes from the neck and shoulders to well below their knees. It would have been hard for even someone who knew them—let alone total strangers—to identify them as part of the Naile family.
 

David drew the three-inch-barreled Colt revolver from beneath his duster. The gun might be recognizable, but there were a decent number of these stubby Colts available. Theoretically, anyone could have had one.
 

His father had borrowed the ‘97 Winchester pump and tromboned the action, holding the weapon in his right hand, the reins to his horse in the left. Clarence drew his revolver.
 

There was the sound of hoofbeats from several horses.
 

“Let me do all of the talking,” David’s father cautioned. “And, Clarence, especially you, for God’s sake, don’t laugh.”
 

“Why not laugh? What?”
 

“Later.”
 

David closed his eyes, shook his head. What was a successful retailer and budding entrepreneur doing skulking around wearing a mask and about to pull a holdup, even considering that these four guys riding along the road were world-class bad guys? “Nuts.”
 

“What?” Clarence asked in a low whisper.
 

David merely shook his head.
 

The hoofbeats were so loud now that the four horsemen had to be nearly upon them, ready to ride past them at any second. David’s palms were sweating; his father’s palms sweated even when his father wasn’t nervous. Was this perspiring-palms deal a genetic trait? That was just fucking wonderful.
 

The hoofbeats were ringing in David’s ears; the horsemen had to be about to burst into sight.
 

And then they were there, and the thing was getting started.
 

David’s father rode out ahead of the two lead horsemen, the shotgun to his right shoulder. “Sus manos arriba! Ahora!”
 

The four riders reined in, holding their horses back clumsily. The Mexican accent made Clarence start to cough as he took up his position, the cough a patently obvious means—at least to David—of choking back a laugh. Then, in English, but heavily accented, David’s father repeated. “Up with thee hands! Now, gringos! Thees shotgun! She has the hair trigger, sí!”
 

The four men tried raising their hands and holding the reins of their horses at the same time; they weren’t doing a very good job of it as David rode around behind them and took up his position on their right. With three guns trained on them, one of the guns a twelve gauge shotgun, the four— ordinary-looking guys—appeared extremely nervous. “You dismount, los caballos! Off the horses! Andale! Quick!”
 

The four men, almost as one, started climbing down from their saddles.
 

“Do nada with thee pistolas, gringos! Or Murietta, he kill you!”
 

The four men stood beside their mounts. “Miguel! Ayúdame! Toma las pistolas. Miguelito!”
 

David looked at his father. It dawned on him, in the same instant, that his father was looking at him. Michael was to have been his middle name and his father, come to think of it, probably didn’t know the Spanish equivalent for David or Alan.
 

Trying to fake an accent and simultaneously hide it within a mumble, David used close to half his knowledge of Spanish. “Sí.”
 

Clarence coughed very loudly.
 

“Cuidado, amigo! Thee cough—it does not sound so good. No está bien.”
 

Carefully dismounting, David shoved his pistol almost into the face of the business-suited man nearest him, opening the man’s gun belt at the waist and letting it ease to the ground. Gesturing with the pistol, he forced the man to step back. He repeated the process with the other three men.
 

“Ahora, toma las mochillas, Miguelito.”
 

The first mochilla slipped off rather conveniently. He moved on to the next animal.
 

“Sus ropas, pendejos! Your clothes and boots! Take them off! Ahora! Now!”
 

The men began to undress, right down to their proper period underwear: white one-piece union suits. David tried to dress authentically to the period, but would not be caught dead in something like a union suit; nor, to his father’s credit, would he. Was Clarence wearing underwear like that? David hoped not, if for no other reason than Peggy’s sake.
 

David’s father gestured with the shotgun at the four underwear-clad Lakewood Industries men. “Y ahora, gringos. Now! You walk down along thee road and no look back, I think, or Murrieta, he kill you and laugh. Andale!”
 

The four men started walking, their feet obviously hurting them with nothing but woolen or cotton socks between their skin and the rocks and pebbles and ruts of the road surface.
 

Not one of the men looked back.
 

After a few moments, returned to his own voice and speech patterns once again, David’s father directed, “Put all four mochillas on one of the horses. Lash them on securely. Put all the weapons on one of the other horses. Let me see one of the gun belts.”