Authors: J.A. Johnstone

Hard Luck Money (4 page)

BOOK: Hard Luck Money

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The job would have to be considered a success, even though the take might not be as big as Grey expected. Lupo had passed his first test. He had been recognized, sure, and that would get him in deeper trouble with the law, but the undeniable truth to that old saying was they could only hang him once. The murder of that prison guard was enough to doom him to spending the rest of his life as a fugitive.

His plans to go straight were ruined. He would never be able to give Katie any sort of a normal life. She would always be the daughter of an outlaw and a killer.

He’d wait for his chance to turn the tables on Alexander Grey.

If he had to be an outlaw again, then by God he would be the boss outlaw!

Chapter 7

Three men died in the La Grange bank robbery: the bank vice-president, the rancher who’d been shot, and the heavyset bank president whose heart gave out from the fear and strain of the holdup.

The robbery itself netted a little under nine thousand dollars. Alexander Grey took about a third of that, leaving a thousand apiece for the men who had done the actual work.

That difference in the payoff might make a nice wedge to drive between Grey and the other men sometime in the future, Lupo thought.

A few days after the La Grange job, the bounty on Quint Lupo rose to four thousand dollars.

Two weeks later, Lupo, Brattle, and the rest of the gang held up the bank in Hallettsville, down on the Lavaca River. Nobody was killed, although a townsmen caught a slug through the thigh during a brief flurry of shots as the outlaws were riding out of town.

A month later, they ventured farther west to San Marcos and hit the bank there. One of the tellers made a grab for the gun in his cash drawer and got a bullet through the brain from Brattle’s gun.

Three weeks after that, they stopped a train near Seguin and emptied the safe in the express car. The express messenger and the conductor both died in that holdup when they tried to put up a fight.

Three things remained constant during that stretch. Lupo was the only one of the gang who wasn’t masked during the jobs, so he was recognized each time. With each new crime, the bounty on him was raised, especially after they hit the train. With the money the railroad kicked in, the reward on Lupo’s head rose all the way to twelve thousand dollars.

The third thing was that Alexander Grey took approximately a third of the loot as his share, even though he didn’t run any of the risks.

It was time to make his move, Lupo sensed.

No one had ever tracked them back to the old plantation. He knew all the tricks of throwing a posse off his trail, so the place was their sanctuary, where they could take it easy between jobs.

The men grew more and more restless, though. Each had a pretty good poke of stolen loot built up, with nothing to spend it on. Whiskey, women, cards ... all those things called to the outlaws, but Grey insisted they had to lie low.

Lupo planned to use that dissatisfaction to his advantage.

He wasn’t guarded all the time, as he had been at first, although Grey still didn’t trust him enough to allow him to carry a gun while he was there.

At least when he went on a job, his gun had bullets in it. So far he hadn’t had to fire it. Brattle and the other men had taken care of all the gunplay.

He was in his second floor room one evening when a knock sounded on the door. He’d been sitting in a chair, smoking one of Grey’s cigars, and reading a book he’d taken from the library downstairs, some far-fetched adventure yarn by an Englishman named Stevenson. Some of the pages were crinkled from water damage, but he could still read them.

When the knock came, he set the book and the cigar aside and called, “What is it?”

“Boss wants to see you downstairs,” Brattle replied through the door.

Lupo stood up. It had been a week since the last job, so he figured Grey probably wanted to start talking about the next one. Lupo opened the door and grinned at Brattle standing there wearing his six-gun and Stetson, as usual.

“What’s so funny?” Brattle demanded.

“I was just remembering how Grey called you his butler, the night you first brought me here.”

Brattle snorted. “The boss gets some funny notions in his head. Do I look like a butler to you?”

“No, you look like a bank-robbing outlaw.”

“Damn right. Come on.”

As they went down the stairs covered by a frayed runner, Lupo asked, “Do you know what this is about?”

“Nope. The boss don’t let me in on his plans unless he figures I’ve got a good reason for knowin’ about ’em. He just said to fetch you.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll know soon enough.”

“I expect so.” Brattle escorted Lupo to the library. Lupo didn’t say anything else as they walked through the plantation house.

A few times lately, he had made some idle comments to the other men about how they were running all the risks while Grey claimed the lion’s share of the loot. The men seemed to resent that arrangement, which was encouraging for Lupo’s long-term plans.

So far, he hadn’t approached Brattle in the same way. Since Brattle was closer to Grey than the other men it seemed a bigger risk.

The last thing Lupo needed was somebody telling Grey that he was trying to stir up a mutiny.

Brattle didn’t pause to knock on the library door, just opened it and motioned for Lupo to go on in. He did so and was surprised to see Alexander Grey sitting at the desk with a stranger in the red leather chair in front of him.

Grey looked up with a smile of greeting on his lean face and got to his feet. “Come in, Quint. We have a visitor I want you to meet.”

The stranger stood, too, and turned around. He was a dour, medium-sized man with slightly graying dark hair above a tanned face. He was dressed all in black, including his gunbelt and the grips of the Colt he carried. A black Stetson sat on the corner of Grey’s desk.

“This is Angus Murrell,” Grey introduced him. “Angus, you know all about Quint Lupo.”

“Yeah, I should.” Murrell held out a hand. “Howdy, Lupo.”

Lupo shook hands with the man, then asked, “How do you know about me?”

That brought a laugh from Grey. “You may have wondered how I got those wanted posters on you, Quint. Angus takes care of things like that for me. In fact, he’s brought a new one tonight.” Grey picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and extended it toward Lupo. “Here, take a good look at it.”

Lupo took the paper. He recognized the familiar photograph of himself printed on it, but the amount of the reward listed below his face was new. He let out a low whistle to show that he was impressed. “Fifteen grand. I’m worth a lot of money.”

“You certainly are,” Grey agreed, and something about his voice made Lupo glance up sharply.

Boot leather scraped on the floor behind him. Brattle was still back there.

Lupo had forgotten all about him, but his instincts shrieked a warning.

That warning came too late. With stunning force, something crashed against the back of Lupo’s head as he started to turn. He felt himself falling.

He didn’t feel himself hit the floor in front of Grey’s desk.

He was already out cold by then.

Awareness seeped back into Lupo’s brain and brought with it pain and fear. He knew he had been the worst kind of fool. He had been making his plans, scheming to double-cross Grey and take over the gang, when all along Grey had been using him, setting up a double cross of his own.

He lay sprawled uncomfortably on a hard-packed dirt surface, his arms tied behind his back. He opened his eyes, and realized he was in one of the plantation’s old barns. The big, drafty building was slowly rotting away, but it was still intact for the moment.

They had taken him out there because Grey didn’t want to get blood on the floor of his study, Lupo thought grimly.

A lantern hung from a nail in one of the beams holding up the hayloft. Its harsh light spread over a circle that held Grey, Brattle, and Murrell. Lupo saw a couple of saddled horses waiting patiently behind them.

“I’m sorry, Quint,” Grey said when he saw that Lupo had regained consciousness. “That head of yours has taken quite a pounding in the past few months, hasn’t it?”

“You ... son of a bitch,” Lupo panted. He strained at his bonds, but the ropes were too tight.

“There’s no need to take that attitude, simply because you were outsmarted,” Grey said. “These things happen. A man figures the odds as best he can and then makes his play. It just so happens I figured them a bit better than you.”

“You ... set me up. You planned all along ... to double-cross me.”

“Of course. And as a matter of fact, we made an excellent team while it lasted. You’re a very good bank robber, Quint. But the reward for you is high enough now that you’re more valuable to me in other ways.”

“How do you plan on collecting?” Lupo asked. He didn’t really care all that much how Grey was going to work the scheme, but the longer he kept the man talking, were a few more minutes of life he could cling to. Maybe a miracle would happen. “You can’t turn me in. I’d tell the law all about you.”

Grey smiled and spread his hands. “Well, of course you would,” he agreed. “That goes without saying.”

“So you have to kill me.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How will you collect the reward? You’re an outlaw, too.”

“Ah, but no one knows that,” Grey said smugly. “I could ride into the nearest town with your body and claim the reward myself, and no one would ever be the wiser. But that might make the authorities curious about me, and I’d prefer they remain completely unaware of my existence. The same goes for Brattle here.”

Lupo’s gaze darted toward Murrell. “But this man—”

“He’s a bounty hunter,” Grey finished for him. “The law is already quite familiar with him, and no one will think twice when he brings in the body of a fugitive wanted for murder, bank robbery, and breaking out of prison.”

Lupo felt like crying. But he hadn’t shed tears in more than forty years and he was damned if he was going to start.

But he was damned no matter what he did, he thought. He sighed. “Get it over with.”

“What? You’re not going to beg for your life?”

Lupo lunged up off the floor as best he could with his hands tied behind him. It wasn’t much.

“Damn you to hell, Grey! Don’t taunt me! If you’re going to kill me, go ahead and kill me!”

Grey took out a cigar and put it in his mouth without lighting it. He said around the cigar, “You might as well oblige him, Angus.”

Murrell drew the black Colt on his hip and pulled back the hammer. Lupo wanted to glare furiously at the killer, but he couldn’t do it. He closed his eyes instead and whispered, “I’m sorry, Katie.”

Grey said, “Wait, what did he—”

Murrell’s finger had already tightened on the trigger. The gun roared like thunder, echoing in the old barn. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, Lupo saw an explosion of red, then ... nothing.

No miracles tonight.

Chapter 8

San Antonio

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Kid Morgan said. “You want to send me to prison.”

Captain John R. Hughes looked solemnly across the desk at him and nodded. “That’s right, Mr. Morgan.”

“No offense, Captain, but you’ve gone loco!”

Culhane shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He and The Kid were sitting in front of Hughes’s desk.

“No, sir, I’m completely serious.” The grave look on Hughes’s rugged, mustachioed face confirmed his statement.

Culhane had explained to The Kid that Captain Hughes was the commander of Company D, Texas Rangers, part of the famous Frontier Battalion that had brought law and order to so much of the far-flung state. They were sitting in Hughes’s office in the adobe building that housed the Battalion’s headquarters.

“Maybe you don’t understand, Kid,” Culhane said.

“Oh, I understand, all right,” The Kid said. “It’s pretty plain. You want to send me to prison so I can get shot in the head.”

“That’s what happened to Quint Lupo,” Hughes said. “The idea is to keep it from happening to anybody else, and to round up the outlaws behind the scheme.”

“You don’t know there actually is a scheme. You said the reason that fella Lupo was behind bars to start with was because he was a bank robber.”

“And a good one,” Hughes said with a nod. “Or maybe I should say a talented one. I’m not sure there is such a thing as a good bank robber.”

The Kid wanted to get up and walk out of the captain’s office. He wished he hadn’t let Culhane talk him into going there in the first place.

But now that he was, he didn’t want to get Culhane in trouble with the boss Ranger, so he said, “All right. I’ll hear you out, Captain. But I’ve got a special dislike for the idea of going to prison ... especially when I haven’t done anything to deserve it!”

“Yes, I understand. I did some checking into your background after Sergeant Culhane came up with this idea.” Hughes shook his head. “But we’ll get to that. Let me finish filling you in on the facts as we know them.”

Hughes had already gone over some of it, but The Kid could tell the captain was the sort who liked to be thorough. He nodded. “Go ahead.”

Hughes glanced down at the documents on his desk. “Five years ago, Quint Lupo was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a term of fifteen years in the state penitentiary on numerous charges of bank and train robbery. The record shows that prior to his arrest, no one was ever killed during the commission of one of his crimes.”

“We don’t have any evidence to show he ever took a shot at anybody,” Culhane put in.

The Kid shrugged. “All that tells me is he planned his robberies well enough he didn’t have to shoot anybody.”

“That’s how it appears,” Hughes agreed. “And except for a few minor scrapes of the sort that occur all the time in prison, he stayed out of trouble while he was at Huntsville ... until he provoked a fight with another convict and wound up in the infirmary.”

“Which you think was deliberate.”

“It looks like it,” Culhane said. “That ain’t necessarily the same thing.”

“While Lupo was in the infirmary, he and three other convicts made an escape attempt,” Hughes went on. “They murdered a guard, a Sergeant Alonzo Flynn, and slightly injured two others. They made it outside the walls of the prison, but were pursued by a guard detail led by Corporal Bert Hagen. The other three convicts were shot down by Hagen and his men, but Lupo gave them the slip and got away in the woods.”

“Men have broken out of prison before,” The Kid pointed out. As a matter of fact, he was one of them.

“Yeah, but that ain’t all of it,” Culhane said.

Hughes shifted around some of the papers on his desk and picked up another document.

“Lupo dropped out of sight and wasn’t spotted until a couple weeks later, when half a dozen outlaws held up the bank in La Grange. They were all masked except for Lupo, who was recognized by one of the victims. That man wound up being killed when he pursued the robbers outside the bank, but he identified Lupo in the hearing of several other witnesses before the shooting started.”

The Kid frowned slightly. “Wait a minute. Lupo was the only one who wasn’t wearing a mask?”

“That’s right. Two men were gunned down during that robbery, and another, the bank president, died of a heart seizure.”

“That doesn’t sound much like the jobs Lupo pulled before.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Hughes said.

Culhane put in, “When Rangers questioned some of the folks who were in the bank the day of the holdup, they said Lupo wasn’t the one who killed those fellas. He waved a gun around, but he didn’t shoot.”

The Kid had to admit this was getting more interesting, even though he was still reluctant to get involved. He scratched his jaw. “All right, go on.”

“Over the next couple months, Lupo turned up at several more robberies, including stopping a train and looting the express car over by Seguin,” Hughes said. “Three more men were killed in those crimes, and one was wounded.”

“Did Lupo do any of the shooting?”

“Not as far as we’ve been able to determine.”

The Kid leaned back in his chair. “So probably what you’ve got is a fella who didn’t like killing when he started out, but hardened up while he was in prison and threw in with some trigger-happy hombres after he escaped. You could explain it that way.”

“And no one would doubt it for a second,” Hughes said. “Just like no one lost any sleep over it when a bounty hunter named Angus Murrell brought in Lupo’s body a couple weeks ago. He claimed he’d been trailing the gang and caught up to them while Lupo was away from the other outlaws. Murrell shot and killed him ... and collected the fifteen thousand dollar reward on his head.”

The Kid grunted. Fifteen thousand dollars wasn’t much money to Conrad Browning, as he had thought earlier when he was talking to Lace, but it was a mighty big price for an outlaw. “Bounty hunters bring in fugitives all the time,” he said, thinking about her again. “There’s nothing unusual about that.”

“No, and this man Murrell is well-known to the authorities. Lupo wasn’t the first wanted man he’d brought in, not by a long shot.”

“So what makes Lupo’s case different?” The Kid wanted to know.

Hughes smiled slightly. “It’s not the differences but the similarities. Six months ago, Angus Murrell brought in the body of an outlaw named Henry Bedford. A few months before that, Bedford escaped from the penitentiary where he was serving a term for several bank holdups.”

The Kid sat forward, intrigued despite himself. “Let me guess. After breaking out, Bedford turned up leading a gang of robbers, only they were all masked and he wasn’t.”

Culhane slapped a hand against his thigh. “Dadgummit, Cap’n, I told you this young fella was smart!”

Hughes nodded. “You’re right, Mr. Morgan. That’s exactly what happened. Then Murrell tracked Bedford down and killed him, earning himself ten thousand dollars bounty in the process.”

“Is there more?” The Kid asked.

“One more case. Last year another bank robber named Lew Tolbert escaped from prison and took part in another series of holdups in which he was positively identified. Eventually Murrell brought
his
body in and claimed an eight thousand dollar reward for him.”

“The payoff’s going up every time,” The Kid murmured.

“That’s right. So you can see where all this is leading us, Mr. Morgan.”

“It’s not leading to me volunteering to go to prison, that’s for sure,” The Kid said. “I had enough of that over in New Mexico Territory.”

Hughes tapped a finger against another document on his desk. “Yes, I’ve got a report here about how you were locked up in Hellgate Prison because of a case of mistaken identity. You were identified as an outlaw named ... Bledsoe, was it?”

“Ben Bledsoe,” The Kid said. “Bloody Ben, they called him, and he deserved the name.”

“That matter was cleared up. There are no charges against you in New Mexico Territory or anywhere else.”

“Maybe not, but I spent more than enough time behind bars in that hellhole. I’m not anxious to go back.”

“Huntsville ain’t like that Hellgate place,” Culhane said.

“But it’s still a prison.”

Neither of the Rangers could argue with that statement.

After a moment, Hughes cleared his throat and went on. “It’s our belief there’s an organized gang breaking these men out of prison, forcing them to take part in bank robberies, and then killing them for the bounty once the price on their heads has gone up enough to make it profitable. In order to do that they’d have to be working with someone inside the prison. We want to put our hands on whoever that is, as well as the mastermind who’s orchestrating the whole thing.”

“You don’t have any proof that theory’s even right,” The Kid said.

“No, we don’t,” Hughes admitted. “But that’s where you come in.”

The Kid started to get up. “No, that’s where I go out. I think you may be on to something, Captain, I have to admit that, but the plan’s still loco.”

“It could work,” Hughes said quickly, trying to keep The Kid from leaving. “We can’t put a Ranger in there, because there’s too much of a chance one of the convicts would recognize him. But you’re not a lawman, Mr. Morgan, and you haven’t spent that much time in Texas. You could get away with it.”

“I’m not an outlaw, either,” The Kid said.

“No, but Waco Keene is.”

Taken by surprise, The Kid eased back down into his chair. “Who in blazes is Waco Keene?”

“You are, if you agree to help us,” Hughes said.

“He ain’t real,” Culhane added. “Or rather, he was, but he’s dead now. Deputy sheriff up in Comanche County killed him the other day when he tried to rob a store in Gustine. Thing is, not many folks know about it yet.”

“So he was a bank robber,” The Kid said.

Hughes said, “Not exactly. He and three other men stopped and held up half a dozen trains in various places around Central Texas. The other members of the gang were killed last week when a posse caught up to them. Keene got away, but he had been dodging the law on his own ever since and was pretty desperate. He tried to shoot it out with that deputy sheriff and lost.”

“I suppose I happen to look like him?” The Kid asked.

“No, not at all,” the captain said. “He was a scrawny little fella with dark hair, not a big strapping hombre like you. But that doesn’t matter. As far as anybody inside the walls at Huntsville would know, you’d be him. Nobody he ever rode with is locked up there.”

“As far as you know.”

Hughes shrugged and nodded.

“As far as we know. The plan certainly wouldn’t be without its risks.”

“And I’d be the one running them. No thanks.”

The Kid put his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet.

“Mr. Morgan, I can’t order you to do this—”

“You certainly can’t.”

“But from what I know of you, you’re the best man for the job. You stand a better chance than anyone else of getting on the inside of this gang and helping us bring them to justice.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” The Kid said. “I mean that. But I have no interest in going back to prison, for any reason.”

Culhane started to say something, but Hughes lifted a hand to stop him. “It’s all right, Sergeant. Mr. Morgan certainly has every right to refuse.” Hughes stood and extended his hand across the desk. “Thank you for coming in and hearing me out.”

The Kid shook hands with him. “I hope you find somebody who works out better than I did.”

Culhane followed The Kid out of the office, and as soon as the door was closed behind them, he said, “Dang it, Kid—”

“There’s no point in arguing with me, Asa. My mind’s made up.” The Kid paused. “You can satisfy my curiosity about something, though.”

“I ain’t sure I want to,” Culhane said with a frown. “But what is it?”

“If you and the captain are right about there being some sort of mastermind behind this, it’s a pretty complicated scheme. A lot of things would have to go just right to make it work. But if they did, it would be really hard to detect. What made you suspicious about it in the first place? It’s not the sort of thing that would jump out at anybody.”

“Are you sayin’ we’re too dumb to have figured it out our own selves?”

“No, I’m saying you wouldn’t have had any reason to think about it if somebody hadn’t tipped you off.”

“Well, that’s true, I reckon. Somebody did just about talk my ear off, and then the cap’n’s ear, too, tryin’ to convince us she was right about it.”

“She?” The Kid repeated.

“That’s right. You see, Quint Lupo had a daughter. Katherine’s her name, and she’s plumb convinced her old bank-robbin’ pa was murdered.”

BOOK: Hard Luck Money

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