Authors: J.A. Johnstone
Hard Luck Money (3 page)
Chapter 5
They rode for miles, following roads and trails that twisted through the thick forest. Lupo had always had a pretty good sense of direction—it came in handy in his line of work—but he knew he would never be able to retrace their path.
Finally the leader called a halt. “Put the sack on him.”
One of the men crowded his horse close to the one Lupo rode and pulled a canvas sack over Lupo’s head. A few stray grains of something landed on Lupo’s lips. He licked them off and found that they were sweet. It had been a sugar sack.
Now it was an effective blindfold. He couldn’t see a blasted thing.
“Try to sling that off and you’ll be sorry,” warned the man.
“Don’t worry,” Lupo replied. “I don’t want to see where we’re going.”
“That’s bein’ smart,” the leader said. “Come on.”
Once more they rode through the night, one of the men leading Lupo’s horse. Lupo rocked along in the saddle, waiting to see what was going to happen.
The waiting gnawed at his nerves. In the past, he’d always been the one to make plans and take action. As the captive, he was just reacting to what his captors did.
Five years in prison must have softened him up, he thought.
On the other hand, he was smart enough to know when the odds were overwhelmingly against him. Being cautious wasn’t the same as being soft.
After what seemed like several more miles, the leader called another halt. “Take it off of him now,” he ordered.
The sugar sack was jerked from Lupo’s head. Enough moonlight shone down for him to see his surroundings. They had stopped in a straight, tree-lined lane running about a quarter mile to a large building gleaming white in the silvery illumination.
It was an old plantation house, Lupo realized. East Texas had more in common with the Old South than it did with the frontier. Cotton plantations were plentiful although many of them had been broken up after the Civil War when Reconstruction stripped the owners of their riches.
The riders moved at an easy trot toward the mansion, which had massive columns flanking its entrance. When they got closer, Lupo could see the place wasn’t in as good repair as it had seemed from a distance.
The white paint was flaking and peeling in places, and the stucco on the walls had started to crumble. The flowerbeds along the front of the house were overgrown with weeds. It had been a fancy, elegant home at one time, but no longer.
The leader reined to a stop in front of the portico. “You been pretty well-behaved so far, Lupo. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep on actin’ like that. The boss is a fair man, but he won’t put up with any trouble.”
Lupo put a hint of the old steel in his voice as he said sharply, “Can’t you get it through your head that I don’t want to cause trouble? Hell, you fellas busted me out of prison. I’m grateful to you.”
“You looked like you wanted to put up a fight back there, where we met up with Hagen.”
“That’s because I thought Hagen was going to kill me! I didn’t trust him. Boozer and those other two convicts shouldn’t have trusted him, that’s for sure.”
The big, ugly hombre chuckled. “You’re right about that,” he admitted. “Do we need to tie your hands before we take you to see the boss?”
“Nope. All I want to do is thank the man.”
That was true as far as it went. Lupo didn’t trust his captors.
But maybe he was being too suspicious. Maybe the mysterious boss didn’t mean him any harm. Maybe the man had some reason of his own for wanting Quint Lupo out of jail.
The easiest way to find out, and to figure out what he needed to do next, was to play along.
The leader dismounted and drew his gun. “Don’t take offense, Lupo,” he said as he motioned for the prisoner to dismount. “No new man gets to see the boss without being covered.”
Lupo swung down from the saddle. “None taken. Can’t blame a man for being careful.”
The other men dismounted as well. Some of them tended to the horses while two men drew their guns and followed the leader and Lupo into the house.
A lamp in a wall sconce burned in the foyer. Its glow revealed the shabby former elegance of the house’s exterior continued inside.
The once-thick rug on the floor was threadbare, and the wallpaper was stained in places. The furnishings, which in the plantation’s heyday would have been kept shined and polished to a high gleam by house slaves, were dull and tarnished.
With some work, the place could have been restored to its former glory, Lupo thought. Obviously, the current owner didn’t care that much about it.
Big Ugly led the way along a corridor to a pair of double doors. He knocked on one of them. “It’s Brattle, Mr. Grey.”
Lupo heard a reply from the other side of the doors, but couldn’t make out the words. Brattle grasped one of the once-bright knobs and turned it, so Lupo knew they’d been told to come in.
Brattle went first. Lupo followed with the guns of the other two men covering him. He stepped into a room that appeared to be a combination library and office.
Bookshelves covered three walls. They were lined with dark, leatherbound volumes, but the layer of dust on the books told Lupo no one had disturbed them in quite a while. The sour smell of mold and mildew hung in the air.
Lupo’s nerves crawled. Everything about the place reminded him of death and decay ... including the man standing in front of the old desk that dominated the room.
He was tall and thin, probably in his thirties, dressed in a dark suit. He might have been handsome if his face hadn’t been gaunt to the point that he resembled a cadaver. His skin, which seemed more pale when contrasted with his shock of coal-black hair, added to his corpse-like appearance.
When he smiled, he was somehow transformed and didn’t seem nearly as grotesque. He stepped forward and extended a hand with long, slender fingers.
“Quint Lupo!” he said in a deep, commanding voice. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. It’s an honor to meet you.”
Lupo took the man’s hand, which was smooth and cool, and shook it. “Most folks wouldn’t consider it an honor to meet a bank robber.”
That brought a laugh from his host. “I’m always glad to meet any man who’s good at what he does, and you were one of the best, Mr. Lupo. Or should I call you Quint?”
Lupo shrugged. “Whatever you’d like. And I wasn’t good enough to stay out of prison.”
“Yes, but you’ve left those iron bars and gray walls behind now, haven’t you?” The man let go of Lupo’s hand and gestured toward a red leather chair in front of the desk. The chair had a couple small rips in the upholstery, but appeared to be in better shape than many of the furnishings. “Please, have a seat. Brattle, fetch us some brandy.”
“Sure, boss.” Brattle slid his gun into its holster. The other two men stayed in the background, alert and clearly ready for trouble.
“Cigar?” the pale, gaunt man asked as he reached for a humidor on the desk.
“Sure,” Lupo said. The sheer bizarreness made him nervous, but he kept the feeling under control. He didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. He took the thick cylinder of tightly rolled tobacco the man held out to him.
Brattle brought over a silver tray with a couple snifters of brandy on it.
Mr. Grey smiled. “You wouldn’t think someone as large and formidable-looking as Brattle here would be an excellent butler, but he is.”
“I’ve told you, boss, I ain’t a butler,” Brattle objected. “You can call me your segundo if you want.”
“I’ll call you whatever I please,” Grey said with an undertone of irritation coming into his voice.
“Well, yeah, sure, I reckon,” Brattle agreed quickly as he set the tray on the desk.
“Help yourself,” Grey told Lupo with a nod toward the brandy. He went behind the desk and sat down in a large, brown leather chair.
Lupo picked up one of the snifters and took a sip. It seemed all right, not drugged or anything. Grey had given him his pick of the glasses, which supported that idea.
The fiery liquor was good, although Lupo was far from an expert on such things. When he was on the owlhoot trail he’d drunk beer and whiskey.
Grey took a cigar from the humidor for himself and fired up both smokes. He leaned back in his chair. “You’re bound to be wondering why I’ve gone to so much trouble to have you brought here, Quint.”
“The thought’s crossed my mind,” Lupo admitted dryly.
“I’m sorry it had to be such an unpleasant experience for you.” Grey touched his head, obviously making reference to the wallop Lupo had gotten from Hagen. “My influence inside the walls goes only so far. We needed you in the infirmary in order to be able to secure your freedom.”
“Well, I reckon Boozer had it a lot worse in the end,” Lupo said.
Grey frowned and glanced sharply at Brattle. “What’s he talking about?”
Brattle’s thick shoulders rose and fell. “Hagen brought some of the convicts in on the deal. Of course, we knew he’d do that to put Lupo in the infirmary, but he used ’em in the actual escape, too.”
“That was running quite a risk.”
“Not really,” Brattle said. “As soon as he’d turned Lupo over to us, Hagen and the guards with him killed the three cons.”
Grey’s dark, deep-set eyes widened slightly. “Really.”
“He had to kill a guard who wasn’t in on the plan, too,” Brattle added. “He figures he’ll put the blame for that killin’ on Lupo.”
Grey thought about that for a moment and then nodded as if satisfied. “That’s interesting.” He looked across the desk at Lupo again. “It seems there’s going to be quite a high price on your head after this, eh, Quint?”
“For breaking jail and killing a guard? I’d say so, yeah.” Lupo couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice as he added, “Even though I didn’t do either of those things.”
“Ah, but the authorities don’t know that. I was going to offer you a very attractive proposition anyway, but it seems now you have even more reason to accept my offer, since we can help you stay out of the hands of the law.”
Lupo downed a healthy slug of the brandy to fortify himself and asked, “Just what the hell is it you want from me, anyway?”
Grey smiled. “I want you to do what you do best, Quint. I want you to rob banks.”
Chapter 6
The group of horsemen came to a stop on top of a high hill overlooking the thickly wooded valley where the Colorado River wound its way toward the Gulf of Mexico. On the other side of the river lay the town of La Grange, dominated by the big stone Fayette County Courthouse with its clock tower.
“The bank’s right there on the square, so the streets will be busy around it,” Brattle said. “Nobody’ll be expectin’ trouble, so we ought to be able to get in and out without too many problems.”
Lupo shifted in his saddle and felt the weight of the revolver on his hip. “I’d feel better about things if you’d give me some bullets for this gun.”
Brattle chuckled. “You know that ain’t the way Mr. Grey does things. You can swear you’re with us up one way and down the other, Lupo, but until you’ve proven it, none of us are gonna trust you. You got to earn it.”
A wave of irritation went through Lupo. “What am I going to do, start yelling for the law as soon as we ride in? If I did that I’d be sticking my head right in a hangman’s noose.”
“I’m not the one who makes the rules,” Brattle said. “That’d be Mr. Grey.”
Yes, Alexander Grey was in charge, even though he wasn’t there, Lupo thought.
Grey was still in that crumbling old plantation house eighty miles away, waiting for his handpicked crew of bank robbers to return with the loot.
Before Lupo had set out with Brattle and the others for La Grange, Grey had shown Lupo the freshly printed wanted poster. Lupo’s photograph was on it, an improvement over the days when wanted posters had relied on drawings, along with the information that he was wanted for the murder of a guard at the Texas State Penitentiary, as well as for escaping from that prison.
A reward of $2,500 for his arrest, or for his body, was offered, since the bounty would be paid whether he was dead or alive. The wanted poster made that clear in big, black letters.
“You’ll appear to be in charge, Quint,” Grey had explained, “although Brattle will really be calling the shots. But your leadership will be important. If you perform well, things will get better for you. You have my word on that.”
“It still seems loco to me. I don’t wear a mask, I don’t get a gun with bullets in it ... I’ll be the only one running any risk on this job!”
“I’ve explained this to you,” Grey had said with the patient air of someone talking to a child, which also irritated Lupo. “You’re already a wanted man, but none of the others are. It doesn’t matter if you’re recognized. As for the gun, that’s simply a precaution.”
“I don’t stand to gain a damned thing by double-crossing you.”
“And I don’t stand to gain anything by giving you the opportunity to double-cross me.” Grey had smiled. “Just be patient, Quint.”
It wasn’t like he had much choice in the matter, Lupo thought as he looked down across the river at La Grange. Grey had him over a barrel. The man could turn him in to the law at any time.
“All right,” Lupo said. “Let’s get this done.” They followed the road zigzagging down the side of the steep hill and clattered across the wooden bridge spanning the Colorado.
It was the middle of a warm June afternoon. The square was busy, with a number of wagons parked in front of businesses and horses tied to hitch racks. Not as busy as a Saturday, the day when farmers and ranchers in the area came into town, but still, too many people for Lupo to feel comfortable about what they were doing.
Well, it wasn’t the first time he had ridden into a town in broad daylight to rob a bank, he told himself.
He and his companions moved along the street at an easy pace, not doing anything to draw attention to themselves as they approached the bank.
It sat on a corner of the square in a redbrick building with various offices on its second floor. Next to it was Al’s Grocery Store, where Lupo, Brattle, and the other men reined in and dismounted.
After tying up their horses, Lupo and Brattle moved along the boardwalk and went into the bank while the other men drifted into the grocery store.
Lupo wanted to take a look around first, and of course Brattle wasn’t going to let him out of his sight. The other outlaws would make their way into the bank, one by one, after approximately ten minutes had passed.
Right away, Lupo saw the place had a typical setup: a row of tellers’ cages to one side, several desks behind a railing where the bank executives did their business, the massive vault in the middle and to the back.
All the tellers were occupied with customers, and several more customers stood at a marble counter filling out slips to make deposits or withdrawals.
The key to a successful bank robbery, Lupo knew, wasn’t the physical layout of the place. It was the people involved.
Without being obvious about what he was doing, he studied the two men sitting at the desks. The middle-aged one, well padded with fat, would be the bank president. He had a broad, friendly face, and the reddish tinge of his nose revealed he liked to drink a little too much. He wouldn’t be a danger.
Lupo would stake his life on it ... which might well be what he was doing.
Ah, but the other man, the younger, slimmer one with the eager expression on his face as if he actually enjoyed the paperwork he was doing ... he might present a problem. He was the bank vice-president, more than likely, and he’d have his eye on the president’s job, which meant he would be quicker to defend the customers’ money. Ambition nearly always equaled foolhardiness.
In one of the drawers of the young man’s desk would be a gun, and when the holdup started he’d be tempted to make a grab for it.
Lupo caught Brattle’s eye and gave a tiny nod toward the bank vice-president. Brattle nodded back to show he understood Lupo was telling him where the greatest danger lay. He would be ready if the vice-president tried anything.
The three tellers were men approaching middle age, all with the resigned look of hombres who knew they would never do anything else with their lives. It was possible one might put up a fight, but it was just as possible they would be more concerned with their own hides and would cooperate with the robbers. Lupo would keep an eye on them, of course, but he really didn’t expect any trouble from that direction.
That left the customers. They were a mix of housewives depositing butter-and-egg money, local businessmen, and a couple rangy men in cowboy hats and boots who probably owned spreads in the area.
Those cattlemen weren’t carrying guns, which was good, because they looked like the sort of hombres who would use them, if they had them. Lupo preferred they not be there, even unarmed. Maybe the ranchers would finish up their business and leave before the other members of the gang were in position, he thought.
One of the cattlemen did indeed stroll out a few minutes later, but the other lingered to jaw with the bank president.
Lupo stood at the marble counter, holding a pencil and pretending to do some figuring on a piece of paper, as he watched the other members of the gang drift in casually. Nobody in the bank did more than glance idly at them, but if they stood around doing nothing for very long, people would start to get suspicious.
It was time to move.
Lupo looked over at Brattle and nodded.
Brattle reached for the bandanna tied around his neck and pulled it up over the lower half of his face. The other robbers did the same.
Lupo was the only one with his face still uncovered as he pulled his gun, stepped back so he could cover the whole room, and shouted, “Everybody put your hands up and stand still! This is a holdup!”
Telling people to stand still worked better than ordering them not to move, Lupo had discovered through experience. People were more likely to obey if they were told to
do
something rather than to
not
do something, even if the end result was exactly the same.
do
something rather than to
not
do something, even if the end result was exactly the same.
But there was always somebody who wouldn’t follow orders. The trick was to get on top of them right away and stop them from making trouble.
The rancher who’d been talking to the bank president whirled around and took a step toward the gate in the railing.
Lupo pointed his gun at the man and eared back the hammer. The sound of a gun being cocked when it was aimed right at him tended to freeze the blood of any man.
It worked with the rancher. He stopped in his tracks and glared at Lupo, but didn’t move anymore except to raise his hands slowly.
He had no way of knowing Lupo’s gun was empty ... unless he looked closely enough to see that no bullets were visible in the Colt’s cylinder. Lupo hoped the man wouldn’t be that observant.
Brattle had his gun pointed at the vice-president, who had bolted up out of his chair at the sound of Lupo’s shouted command. The young man froze just like the rancher as Brattle was quick to cover him.
Maybe they could get this job done without any gunplay, Lupo thought.
One robber kept his gun on the customers while the other three moved in on the tellers’ cages. They pulled out canvas sacks from under their shirts and tossed them to the frightened tellers.
“Fill ’em up,” one of the outlaws growled.
Lupo moved closer to the railing and told the bank president, “You’re going back there to open the vault now, friend. Do it and no one gets hurt.”
The man’s face had turned pale and looked like lumpy bread dough. “I ... I can’t open it. I don’t know the combination—”
“The hell you don’t,” Lupo interrupted. “Get back there and do it now.”
The rancher said, “You’d better do what he says, Carl. I recognize this fella. He’s that mad dog son of a bi ... gun Lupo who broke out of Huntsville a week ago. Killed a guard on his way out, the newspaper said.”
Lupo let a menacing smile curve his mouth. “That’s right, Carl. So move or I’ll kill you, too, and get somebody else to open the vault.”
Holding his hands up in plain sight, the bank president struggled to his feet. “I’m going. I ... I ...”
His eyes widened and he looked like he was about to choke. Instead of moving to follow Lupo’s order, he suddenly clasped both hands to his chest. With a strangled groan, he pitched forward across his desk.
That was so unexpected Brattle turned to look, giving the vice-president the chance he had been waiting for. Reaching down, he jerked open a drawer in his desk, and plucked out a gun.
He never had a chance. Brattle’s Colt boomed twice and sent a pair of slugs ripping into the young man’s chest. The bullets drove him off his feet and dropped him in a bloody heap.
The gunshots ended the possibility of emptying the vault—not enough time for that now.
But the canvas bags were already bulging with loot scooped from the tellers’ drawers.
“Move!” Lupo shouted through the echoes of Brattle’s shots. “Get to the horses!”
He swung his gun back and forth, keeping the rancher and the other customers covered as the masked men ran for the door and burst through it. Lupo was the last one out and the last one to hit the saddle.
As Lupo wheeled his horse, the rancher ran out of the bank with the gun the vice-president had dropped, and started shooting at the robbers.
Brattle returned the fire, his slugs striking the rancher and twisting the man off his feet.
The six outlaws galloped past the courthouse and headed for the river. People shouted curses and questions and scurried to get out of the way before they were trampled.
As he rode hard, leaning forward over his horse’s neck to make himself a smaller target, Lupo reached into the saddlebags for the items he had told Grey he would need after he’d scouted the job. He pulled out a bundle of three sticks of dynamite tied together with twine. Their fuses were twisted together.
As the horses pounded onto the bridge over the river, Lupo guided his mount with his knees and used his other hand to snap a match into life with his thumbnail.
Sparks flew in the air as he lit the fuses, hanging back to let the others get well ahead of him.
A glance over his shoulder told him several men had mounted up and were galloping in pursuit. When he reached the far end of the bridge, Lupo wheeled his horse and gave the dynamite an underhanded toss, sending it bouncing and rolling about forty feet away onto the span.
A bullet whined over his head at the same time a rifle cracked in the distance. Somebody was shooting at him from the town. He turned his horse and galloped for the hill.
Behind him, the pursuers had raced onto the bridge when the dynamite blew. The bridge was long enough that they weren’t caught in the explosion, but the blast made the horses rear up in panic. Several men were thrown from their saddles. Debris from the explosion rained down around them.
Another bridge was located two miles upstream. The closest bridge downstream was five miles away. By the time a posse could get across the Colorado and give chase, the bank robbers would have an insurmountable lead.
That was just the way Lupo had planned it.
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