B. M. BOWER: Historical Novels, Westerns & Old West Sagas (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
pulling off that robbery at the bank today.” The sheriff could be pretty blunt, and he shot the charge straight, without any quibbling.
Luck looked a little blank; and old Applehead, shaking with a very real anger now, shoved Luck away and stepped up where he could shake his fist under the sheriff’s nose.
“We don’t know, and we don’t give a cuss, what you’re aimin’ at,” he thundered. “We been out here workin’ in this brilin’ sun sense nine o’clock this mornin’. Luck ain’t robbed no bank, ner he ain’t the kind that DOES rob banks, and I’m here to see you swaller them words ‘fore I haul ye off’n that horse and plumb wear ye out! Yuh wanta think twicet ‘fore ye come ridin’ up where I kin hear yuh call Luck Lindsay a thief, now I’m tellin’ ye! If a bank was robbed, ye better be gittin’ out after them that done it, and git outa the way uh that camery sos’t we can git t’ work! Git!”
The sheriff did not “git” exactly, but he did look considerably embarrassed. His eyes went to Luck apologetically.
“Cashier come to and said you’d called him up on the phone about eleven, claimin’ you wanted to make a movin’ pitcher of the bank being robbed,” he explained—though he was careful not to lower his gun. “He swore it was your men that done the work and took the gold you told him to pile out on the—”
“I told him?” Luck’s voice had the sharpened quality that caused laggard actors to jump. “Be a little more exact in the words you use.”
“Well-l—somebody on the phone ‘t he THOUGHT was you,” the sheriff amended obediently. “Your men—and they sure WAS your men, because three or four fellers besides the cashier seen ‘em goin’ in and comin’ out—they gagged the cashier and took his keys away from him and cleaned the safe, besides taking what gold he’d piled on the counter for y—for ‘em.
“So,” he finished vigorously, “I an’ my men hit the trail fer the ranch and was told by the women that you was out here. And here we are, and you might just as well come along peaceable as to make a fuss—”
“That thar is shore enough outa YOU, Hank Miller!” Applehead exploded again. “I calc’late you kin count ME in, when you go mixin’ up with Luck, here. I’m one of his men—and if he was to pull off a bank robbery I calc’late I’d be in on that there performance too, I’m tellin’ you! Luck don’t go no whars ner do nothin’ that I AIN’T in on.
“I’ve had some considerable experience as shurf myself, if you’ll take the trouble to recolleck; and I calc’late my word’ll go about as fur as the next. When I tell ye thar ain’t goin’ to be no arrest made in Bear Canon, and that you ain’t goin’ to take luck in fer no bank robbery, you kin be dang shore I mean every word uh that thar!” He moved a step or two nearer the sheriff, and the sheriff backed his horse away from him.
“Ef you kin cut out this here accusin’ Luck, and talk like a white man,” Applehead continued heatedly, “we’d like to hear the straight uh this here robbery. I would, ‘n’ I know Luck would, seein’ they’ve gone t’ work and mixed him into it. His bunch is all here, as you kin see fer yourself. Now we’re listenin’ ‘s long’s you talk polite—‘n’ you kin tell us what men them was that was seen goin’ in and comin’ out—and all about the hull dang business.”
The sheriff had not ridden to Bear Canon expecting to be bullied into civil speech and lengthy explanations; but he knew Applehead Furrman, and he had sufficient intelligence to read correctly the character of the group of men that stood behind Applehead. Honest men or thieves, they were to, be reckoned with if any attempt were made to place Luck under arrest; any fool could see that—and Hank Miller was not a fool.
He proceeded therefore to explain his errand and the robbery as the cashier had described it to the clerks who returned after lunch to finish their Saturday’s work at the bank.
“Fifteen thousand they claim is what the fellers got. And one of your men that runs the camera was keeping up a bluff of taking a pitcher of it all the time—that’s why they got away with it. Nobody suspicioned it was anything more’n moving-pitcher acting till they found the cashier and brought him toy along about one o’clock. It was that Chavez feller that you had working for yuh, and Luis Rojas that done it—them and a couple fellers stalling outside with the camera.”
“I wonder,” hazarded Pete Lowry, who had come down and joined the group, “if that wasn’t Bill Holmes with the camera? He was a lot more friendly with Ramon than he tried to let on.”
“The point is,” Luck broke in, “that they took advantage of my holdup scene to pull off the robbery. I can see how the cashier would fall for a retake like that, especially since he don’t know much about picture-making. Gather up the props, boys, and let’s go home. I’m going to get the rights of this thing.”
“You’ve got it now,” the sheriff informed him huffily. “Think I been loading you up with hot air? I was sent out to round you up—”
“Forget all that!” snapped luck. “I don’t know as I enjoy having you fellows jump at the notion I’m a bank-robber—or that if I had robbed a bank I would have come right back here and gone to work. What kind of a simp do you think I am, for gosh sake? Can you see where anyone but a lunatic would go like that in broad daylight and pull off a robbery as raw as that one must have been, and not even make an attempt at a gateway? I’ll gamble Applehead, here, wouldn’t have fallen for a play as coarse as that was if he was sheriff yet. He’d have seen right away that the camera part was just the coarsest kind of a blind.
“My Lord! Think of grown men—officers of the law at that—being simple-minded enough to come fogging out here to me, instead of getting on the trail of the men that were seen on the spot! You say they came in a machine to the bank and you never so much as tried to trace it, or to get the license number even, I’ll bet a month’s salary you didn’t! It was a moving-picture stall, and so you come blundering out here to the only picture company in the country, thinking, by gravy, that it was all straight goods—oh, can you beat that for a boob?” He shook back his heavy mane of gray hair and turned to his boys disgustedly.
“Pete and Tommy, you can drive the wagon back all right, can’t you? We’ll go on ahead and see what there is at the bottom of this yarn.”
Chapter X. Deputies All
At the ranch, whither they rode in haste, Luck meant to leave his boys and go on with the sheriff to town. But the Happy Family flatly refused to be left behind. Even old Aleck Douglas—whom years and trouble had enfeebled until his very presence here with Jean and Lite was a health-seeking mission in the wonderful air of New Mexico—even old Aleck Douglas stamped his foot at Jean and declared that he was going, along to see that “the boy” got a square deal. There wouldn’t be any railroading Luck to the pew for something he didn’t do, he asserted with a tragic meaning that wrung the heart of Jean. It took Lite’s arguments and Luck’s optimism and, finally, the assurance of the sheriff that Luck was not under arrest and was in no danger of it, to keep the old man at the ranch. Also, they promised to return with all speed and not to keep supper waiting, before the two women were satisfied to let them go.
“Oh, Luck Lindsay,” Rosemary bethought her to announce just as they were leaving, “you better keep an eye out for Annie, while you’re in town. She’s gone—and the dog and all her clothes and everything. Maybe she took the train back to the reservation. I just wanted you to know, so if you feel you ought to bother—”
“Annie gone?” Even in his preoccupation the mews came with a stab. “When did she go?”
“We don’t know. She set up an awful yowling when you boys went to work. And the dog commenced howling, till it was simply awful. So we rode in to town after the mail, and when we came back she was gone, bag and baggage. We didn’t see anything of her on the trail, but she could