Desperadoes

Aleck McKenna was in a denim apron smoking a cigarette under the rolled-down awning of the McKenna and Adamson store to our left. He looked at us as we walked into Walnut Street and he later claimed he recognized Grat by his slouched walk, but he just stood there then, holding his elbow. Dray wagons were slanted up to the hitching racks of Union Street and a woman in a white bonnet walked down that board sidewalk from Barndollar’s store at the corner to Brown and Cubine’s shoe shop where a bell rang when she opened the door. Cyrus Lee chopped an ice block in the back of his wagon and shouted small talk to a man in Slosson’s drugstore to my right. Lee ceased stabbing his ice pick and frowned at my artificial beard.

We crossed the plaza and our boots rasped on the brick and I could see the three plate glass windows of the C.M. Condon and Company bank and the porch-shaded glass of the smaller First National on Union Street between Rammel Brothers drugs and the Isham hardware store which sat just opposite the alley. The bank looked green and the wood was dark. Bob said, ‘I made a mistake, Em. It should be the other way around

. You and I should take the Condon.’

But by then Grat had his hands down in his coat pockets and his rifle tilted down and Powers glanced from window to window in all the second-storey rooms, and when I turned and walked backwards I saw that Aleck McKenna was talking to Cyrus Lee about us and they were shading their eyes to stare. I almost lifted my gun.

Grat bent to spit a half-yard of tobacco juice; then he stomped up onto the porch of the Condon bank and jerked the closest of two pairs of doors as Bob and I ran across the bricks that were Union Street and ducked unnecessarily under the awning of the First National Bank. I held the screen door open and looked around. My brother turned the porcelain knob on the lettered door.

Charley Gump sat on the tailgate of his wagon with a toothpick and he soaked up what he’d seen—five men, five rifles, two banks—and when he noticed Broadwell and Powers lift blue bandanas over their noses inside the Condon bank, he limped down the sidewalk leaning big-eyed into the open stores, shouting, ‘By God, it’s true! It’s the Daltons! The Daltons are robbing the bank!’

The cry carried and women in bustles ran from the streets and dogs took up barking. McKenna walked up to his store and Cyrus Lee hustled down into Slosson’s to borrow a rifle and soon men were crouched behind windows staring out at us. I saw the beginnings of a commotion but I didn’t say anything. I slammed the door of the bank behind me, rattling the glass, and pulled down the shiny green curtains.

Three customers were already there: Deputy Sheriff Abe W. Knott, J.B. Brewster, the contractor, and C.L. Hollingsworth. They were big men in dark suits and Brewster had his hat off as he did arithmetic. He’d combed about six strands of black hair from one side of his head to the other. Knott had just cashed a four-dollar check.

The cashier’s cage was seven feet high with walnut up to the writing counter, then grillwork and frosted glass. It had a marble base and one barred teller’s window at which stood Thomas G. Ayres, the cashier. He had sleeve garters on. The teller was W.H. Sheppard who was Bob’s age and polite as you please and always unaccountably happy. He was slouched in the chair of the rolltop desk, his bifocals off and crossed on a page, when tall Emmett Dalton, the one with the fake dark beard of his summer hair, slammed the door and disturbed whatever was going on.

Sun streaked off Bob’s rifle when he swung it up from his hip. He yelled, ‘Hands up! Everybody! You men stay right where you are!’

The cashier flinched and the customers frowned like we were spoiling their morning.

I levered the hammer back on my rifle and shouted, ‘You pay attention to this machine, cuz I can put a chunk of lead in your chin that’ll rip your face off like it was only a washrag with eyebrows.’

Ayres said, ‘Oh, come now, Emmett.’

I ignored him.

Deputy Sheriff Knott kept trying to lower his hand to his vest and I was scared he might have a purse pistol there until I saw he had his four dollars wrapped on his fingers and wanted the money in his wallet. I said, ‘I don’t want your chicken feed, Abe.’

Knott said, ‘I think—’

‘Shut up.’

I tossed my brother the canvas feed sack I’d pulled out from under my vest and he wadded it and pushed it through the grill and the cashier slowly shoved ones and twos and fives and tens inside, then gathered coins from the tray in both hands and started heaving them in.

Bob said, ‘Keep that silver out. It’s too heavy.’ He tapped the counter’s marble base with the toe of his boot and smiled at Brewster next to him. ‘Was it a deposit or a withdrawal?’

Brewster said, ‘I was checking on a mortgage.’

‘We leave the papers whenever we can.’

Brewster nodded. ‘That’s considerate of you. It can be a real inconvenience.’

Bob kicked the swinging door and walked back to the private office where Tom’s son, Bert Ayres, was standing at a bookkeeper’s desk. He’d pissed his pants with fear and his shirttail was out to hide it.

My brother said, ‘You go up front and help out your dad. Just your paper money.’

Bert obeyed and Bob unlatched the spring lock to the irongrated back door and, with his pistol up next to his cheek, leaned out into the back alley. It was sunlit and vacant. Red maple leaves skittered and stuck to the screen. A black dog was leashed to a delivery door and was chewing at itself. A dozen other dogs in the town were barking the same news over and over again.

I had my rifle at my shoulder and I squinted from Sheppard to Hollingsworth to Knott. The gun turned them all into women. I heard the clomp of boots on the sidewalk and turned to see J.E.S. Boothby crouched at the plate glass peering in while the boy Jack Long watched the Condon bank with his elbows on a railing in front of Rammel’s drugstore.

I yanked the door. ‘You son of a gun, Jim! Get in here!’

Boothby was hardly fifteen then. He flung up his hands and his face drained white and he tottered when he walked in. I banged the window with my rifle stock and young Jack Long dashed next door into Rammel’s.

Boothby said, ‘I sure don’t know what I could’ve been thinking.’

Then Bob walked out of the back office and took the feed sack and Mr. Ayres with him into the vault room where there was a safe not much bigger than an oven, manufactured by the Mosler Safe Company. Bob slouched against the office door frame and glared over his shoulder at all the Kansans in the front room while Ayres knelt to turn the combination and toss out some currency rolled in rubber bands. He sat back on his heels and closed the vault door.