Authors: Glendon Swarthout
“Okeh, okeh. But you won’t get it from those two,” he asserted.
“I won’t wear an iron bar for the necktie either. And they’ll beat those Ginger bitches all hollow in bed.”
“Church girls,” scoffed Bat. “About as much in them as a collection box.”
“Farmers’ daughters,” corrected Wyatt. “And we’re traveling salesmen.”
“We better think about banks, not babes.”
“Same thing.” Wyatt gave him a man-of-the-world wink. “Deposits first, withdrawals later.”
They took in a moving picture at the Bijou because it was too early to retire and also because the feature playing was Bill Hart’s latest, “Hell’s Hinges,” the one he had been in New York to promote the night Runyon and the rest hatched the idea of hiring a gun-thrower to confront Bat in the Knickerbocker Bar.
The theater was small, the seats squeaky, the piano player inept, and the film standard fare. The setting was Hell’s Hinges, which, according to the subtitle, was “a good place to ride wide of... a gun-fighting, man-killing, devil’s den of iniquity.” Hart played Blaze Tracey, “the embodiment of the best and the worst of the early West. A man-killer whose philosophy of life is summed up in the creed: shoot first and do your disputin’ afterwards.” After he met Faith, however, who turned upon him “a different kind of smile, sweet, honest, and trustful,” a close-up showed Hart in the grip of doubt: “One who is Evil, looking for the first time on that which is Good.” The villain was “Silk Miller: mingling the oily treachery of a Mexican with the deadly craftiness of a rattler, no man’s open enemy, and no man’s friend.” With its leads thus cast in concrete, the plot unreeled. Silk Miller and a mob tried to break up Sunday service officiated over by Faith’s brother, a young minister, only to be thwarted by Blaze Tracey, who drew a gun and proclaimed: “I’m announcin’ here and now that there ain’t goin’ to be no more pickin’ on the parson’s herd.” Faith smiled again, creating more conflict in the hero’s soul: “I reckon God ain’t wantin’ me much, Ma’am, but when I look at you I feel I’ve been ridin’ the wrong trail.”
Then came considerable footage of men riding hell-bent across deserts and over mountains, during which the piano player, who should have been doing “The Light Cavalry Overture,” rendered “The Road to Mandalay”— a glaring error accounted for either by ennui or ignorance of his art. Matters came to a climax, conventionally enough, in a saloon. Silk Miller murdered the minister. Faith wept buckets over the body. Hart arrived on his stalwart stallion “Fritz,” kicked open the doors, and over drawn guns shouted, “Hell needs this town, and it’s goin’ back, and goin’ damn quick!” With a passion almost pyromaniacal, he then proceeded to gun Miller and several of his henchmen down, to ignite the saloon by shooting out the kerosene lamps, to save Faith, allow the “soiled doves” to escape, and finally to see to it that the entire degenerate town went up in flames.
At the height of the conflagration, Wyatt nudged Bat and muttered “Let’s go.” They headed for a side exit, and Bat was about to open the door when, to his flabbergastment, Wyatt pulled his pistol, aimed, and fired a round right through the sheet music on the instrument in front of the piano player. This made for a big night at the Bijou. There were shouts and screams, and patrons tried to do headers under seats, and the piano player streaked off his stool like a rocket and leaped on stage and ran across the screen, and Bat and Wyatt took a powder outside to stroll down the street as though out for an evening’s constitutional.
“What in hell did you do that for!” demanded Bat.
“The piano player,” said Wyatt, cool as lemonade made in the shade. “He wasn’t doing the best he could.”
“Well, my God!”
Wyatt stretched himself. “Got a crick in my neck. Also, he reminded me of Al, at the Belasco—you remember him. Wanted my autograph.”
“Wyatt, I don’t know what’s got into you.”
“Also, I never saw such a pile of sheepshit. I was proud to meet Hart back east, but he should be ashamed of himself.”
They strolled a block in silence.
“They really roll up the sidewalks in Dodge now, don’t they?” commented Bat. “No action anywhere—you can’t even get a drink. Hell, the old days this town never closed.”
“How about if we see the girls are off work yet?”
“You don’t mean it.”
“I beg to differ.”
“But it’s late!”
“Can’t be ten o’clock yet.”
“Well, I’m whipped.”
“You? The night-lifer? Why, you never fold before five in the morning.”
“You’re not funny. I need to hit the hay—must be the fresh air out here.”
They neared the O’Neal House.
“Maybe you’re getting too old,” Wyatt mused.
“To what?”
“Hear the wolf howl.”
Next morning, that of the 4th May, at three minutes of ten, they stood across the street from the Drovers Bank of Dodge City. It was an imposing two-story structure, built of white glazed brick with glazed Grecian columns on either side of the doors, which opened, evidently, at ten. Two women waited at them, and a man.
“Pretty fancy for a hick bank,” said Bat.
“Just sitting there waiting to be taken. Easy as shuckin’ corn.”
“Wonder how much cash they keep on hand. D’you suppose as much as fifty, sixty thousand?”
Wyatt shrugged. “They might. Town’s ten times as big as it was then. And all that wheat money.”
“Why don’t I ask?”
Wyatt looked at him. “Sometimes I think you’ll never carry a full string of fish. No, just go to a teller and change some bills. Meantime, I’ll get the layout of the place.”
“Have you got a plan yet?”
“I’ll think of something.”
The doors were unlocked, and the man and two women admitted.
“Off to the races,” said Bat, cocking his derby.
To the left
were three tellers’ windows. Bat went to one of them.
Wyatt leaned an elbow on one of the high customers’ tables centered down the marble floor.
The interior of the Drovers Bank was as plush as the ex. To the right, as you entered, behind a low oaken rail, a carpeted open area ran the length of the bank. Here were desks for clerks and minor officers. Behind these, in the center, was the open door to the vault.
Bat was talking to a lady teller who, unfortunately, happened to be young and, even more unfortunately, as far as Wyatt was concerned, a looker.
He could locate only one enclosed office, to his immediate right, on the street end, with a plaque on the door. After a couple of squints he made out what he thought was “Win. J. Beanstone, President & Cashier.”
Bat talked to the looker.
Hung on the walls in great gilt frames were oil paintings of subjects indigenous to and symbolic of Kansas—grain elevators and barns and farm machinery such as reapers and threshers and cornhuskers and manure spreaders.
The looker talked to Bat.
Search as he might, Wyatt could find only one back door, to the right, in the rear of the open office area.
Bat and the looker talked to each other.
Wyatt rearranged some splayed hairs in his mustache. Then he drummed on the customer table with fingertips. Then he bit a lip. When it was all he could manage to resist going to Bat and grabbing him by the collar, he walked out of the bank and took up position across the street.
Bat strutted across the street humming “The Darktown Strutters Ball.”
“Say, did you see the dolly I was talking to? What a looker!”
“Damn you—I told you to change some bills and get out! What in hell were you up to?”
“Talking, is all. I said we’re new in town and might be depositors and what was she doing tonight?”
Wyatt bit the other lip and blew some air. “Well, it should be a cinch. There’s one back door in plain sight, the vault’s in the center.”
“Her name’s Millie Sughrue—her father-in-law’s the Sheriff.”
“The Sheriff!”
“So she’s married. I told her that’s no problem, so am I.”
“Now listen. Two men can do it. One minute after the doors are unlocked, like this morning, we go in, masked. We get the tellers and any customers down on the floor. The others stay at their desks, hands up—they have guns in those desks sometimes. One of us goes in with the tellers and cleans out the cash drawers while the other covers everybody. Then the first one covers while the other takes an officer into the vault. We’ll use their money bags— they’ve always got bags lying around.”
“She gave me a ruler.”
“What we’ll have to watch is the President—he’s in an office in the front. He could telephone the law or set off an alarm or open a window and yell—one of us better go in right away and bring him out and put him on the floor. Name on the door’s Beanstone.”
“They give rulers to everybody, she said, to encourage thrift. I said I was hot for thrift.” Bat held it up to display the maxim in large black letters: “A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned.” “Nice, huh?”
“Any more customers come in while we’re working, they hit the floor, too. I’d say, if we work easy and steady, we should be out of there in five minutes.”
“Where do we hold the horses?”
Wyatt looked at him.
“Where do we hold the horses?” Bat repeated. Wyatt looked at him as one looks at a child. “Horses, Bat? Horses?”
“Horses.”
Wyatt took him gently by both shoulders. “You’ve been taking in too many Western movies. Either that or you’re going dotty. Now listen to me, Bat. How many years since you’ve been up on a horse?”
“Well, that’s—”
“You’d fall off.”
“I don’t think—”
“Bat, this is 1916.”
“There’s more automobiles on the road than horses now. We’ll use an automobile.”
“Oh. How about a taxi?”
“No. This isn’t New York.”
“Oh. Can you drive a car?”
“No. But you can.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Barney Oldfield.”
Coat off, shirtsleeves rolled up, hat hung over the MotoMeter, Mr. Masterson cranked and cranked and cranked.
When the engine caught, he raced around to reach under the steering wheel to move the spark and throttle levers from starting position to idle—but not in time. The engine died. This was his third exercise in futility. Puffing, face red with rage, he pounded a fist on the doortop.
“Goddamn this thing to hell!”
Mr. Earp lounged on the passenger side of the seat, one foot up at ease on the dashboard. “How can we make a getaway tomorrow morning,” he inquired reasonably enough, “if you can’t even start the car?”
They had gone directly from the bank to the Dodge City Livery and hired a Ford Model T Touring Sedan—two dollars a day, cash money, two days or four dollars in advance as a deposit, and the proprietor had given Mr. Masterson rudimentary instruction in starting and operating the vehicle free of charge. It started for him at once, and ran. Parked behind the livery garage, it would start for Mr. Masterson, but refused to run.
“Maybe you’re not getting around here from the front end fast enough,” theorized Mr. Earp. “Not as spry as you used to be.”
Mr. Masterson glared. “Why do I have to do the leg work?”
“I plan the job, you handle the car. And collect rulers.”
“Why do we have to hire this sardine can? Why can’t we show some class? How about a Chandler? Or a Hudson Super-Six?”
“More T’s on the road than anything else. One more won’t be noticed.” Mr. Earp pointed at a pile of empty quart oilcans. “Pitch me a couple of those, will you?”
Mr. Masterson stepped to the pile, picked up two cans, toed the rubber, wound up, and one after another hurled them at him with the control and velocity of a Grover Cleveland Alexander. Mr. Earp gloved one neatly in each hand and dropped them on the floor of the rear seat compartment.
“If at first you don’t succeed,” he hinted.
Again Mr. Masterson bent to his toil and whirled the crank. Again the engine came to life and the chauffeur raced around the hood to the levers under the steering wheel. This time the twenty horses under the hood calmed down to a contented canter.
A sneer of success about his lips, Mr. Masterson rolled down his sleeves, donned his coat, retrieved his hat, and eased into the driver’s seat.
As he understood it, there were three pedals in the floorboard under the wheel—clutch to the left, reverse in the center, and brake on the right—or was it the other way round? And there were nine lever settings on the notched quadrant on the steering post—spark to the left, throttle to the right—or was it the opposite?
He pushed the clutch pedal halfway down, which was neutral, advanced spark and throttle levers a couple of notches, pushed the clutch to the floor, simultaneously and confidently hit one of the other pedals, and with a grind of gears and a crunch of metal bucked them backward into the brick wall of the garage.
“Hey, hey! How’m I doin’?”
His passenger did not respond.
Ooooo-gah! Ooooo-gah!
Bat banged the hand-operated brass-belled Klaxon horn.
His passenger did not respond.
“I love it! I could ride this flivver till the cows come home!”
His passenger did not respond. Hands gripping the top of the windshield, Wyatt sat rigid on the edge of the seat as though the Twentieth Century were a muzzle and he was staring into it.
They chugged along at ten mph, according to the Stewart speedometer attached to the dashboard, on a narrow macadam road headed east out of Dodge. Instead of a cap, the radiator was crowned by the latest accessory—a winged brass Boyce Moto-Meter, faced with glass and inset with a red-level temperature gauge scaled from “Good Average” to “High Efficiency” to “Danger—Steaming!” The red line stood at “Good Average.” With the top of the touring sedan down, the morning breeze was fresh in their faces. A sign informed them that four miles down the road lay the village of Garden of Eden, but without the grain elevator which stuck out above the flatland like a sore thumb, they would never have known there was a village. Habitations and inhabitants were hidden in trees.
“Stop!” shouted Wyatt.
“Why?”
“Stop!”
Bat found the clutch and brake and stopped. Wyatt opened his door, dismounted, closed the door, looked up and down the road. Except for a wagon a mile or more away, it was clear. Wyatt stepped clear of the car.