“How does it look?” Ike asked.
“Like a graveyard. They'll never know what hit them.”
Ike halted the main body and went forward with Cal and Wes Longstreet to see for himself. Cal was right. The sprawling warehouse, flanked on three sides by loading platforms, showed no signs of life. The freight office, a squat log building, was set apart from the warehouse; Ike noted it briefly and was satisfied. The stables were on the other side of the freight office, and in the faint light Ike could see a few horses and the vague shapes of two old Concords and a mud wagon. Several big Studebakers were lined up beside the main stable, but those were ignored. Not even an eight-team hitch could pull those heavy freighters through that roadless hill country to which they had to return. Most of the horses, Ike noted, were in a pole corral by the wagons.
Ike went back to the main body and called the men around him. “It looks even easier than I figured,” he said confidently. “The guards will be in the warehouse. They may be asleep, but they'll wake up soon enough when they hear us coming. But you've got to forget the warehouse at first and take care of the horses. Dunc,” he said to Dunc Lester, “you take about ten men and get those horses away from the trouble; the rest of us will stand off the warehouse until you're through. It shouldn't take long. But those horses are important; they have to be used as pack animals if we're to haul anything back to the cave. Are you ready?”
Heads nodded silently. Ike and Cal reined about, and this time the gang followed.
The freight-company guards never knew what hit them— not until it was too late. The band of horsemen rode out of the dark hills yelling and hollering like crazy men, firing their rifles and shotguns wildly in the direction of the warehouse. Ike and Cal directed the fire on that big shed while Dunc Lester and his men rounded up the heavy draft horses and herded them out of the way.
“All right!” Ike yelled. “Go to it!”
The guards began giving ground as the gang rushed the warehouse. Cal started to go with them, but his brother grabbed him roughly. “Come with me. We've got some important things to do.”
Quickly he untied the clumsy bundle and took it down from behind his saddle. Cal stood puzzled, oblivious of the rattle of gunfire. “What are you doin', Ike?”
“Stop askin' questions and follow me!”
He knew the men would have their attention focused on that warehouse for several minutes. The sound of shooting was becoming sporadic now; probably the guards had seen that they didn't stand a chance and were making a run for it. At a dead run, Ike headed for the log freight office, his younger brother right behind him. “Ike, where the hell are you goin'?” Ike didn't bother to answer. He reached the front porch of the office and stopped for a moment to get his breath. Very gently he placed the bundle of dynamite beside the door and drew his pistol. Cal reached the porch about three jumps behind his brother.
“Goddamn it, Ike, I don't see—”
“You will! Just stay here at the door and keep me covered. Don't let anybody come near this place. Not even one of the gang: If they do, kill them!”
Cal drew his pistol, ready to shoot the first person to come near the office. Ike's word was law.
Ike had already kicked the office door open and was inside. In the grayish light of dawn he saw that the room was much smaller than he had first guessed, and this puzzled him for a moment. Almost too late he realized that this front part of the cabin was the freight office, and the rear part was the living quarters for the company manager.
Quickly Ike opened a second door and saw that it led into a small parlor. On the far side of the room there was another door, and beneath the door a thin slice of orange lamplight gleamed. Ike Brunner snarled with the sound of an animal and kicked this third door open.
A man in long red underwear was just pulling on his pants when the door burst open. A woman in a white nightgown screamed as the man lunged for his pistol, which was hanging by its cartridge belt on the bedpost. Ike shot him immediately and the man slammed back against the wall. The woman tried to scream again, but she must have glimpsed the deadly thin smile that played along the corners of Ike Brunner's mouth, and no sound escaped her.
Cal Brunner burst excitedly into the small office as the second shot jarred the cabin. “Ike, where are you?”
He saw the open door and rushed in, pistol ready. Then he saw Ike coming out of the other room, and he also saw the white motionless shape of a woman lying on the floor, and the man staring glassily from the corner of the room.
“Ike, my God!”
“Forget it!” his brother said harshly. He ran from the room and out to the porch, Cal right behind him.
“Ike, what have you done?”
Ike gave his brother such a blinding look that Cal cringed back against the wall. “I said forget it. Watch this front door. I'll be through in a minute.”
Unhurriedly Ike unwrapped the dynamite. Cal waited nervously outside as his brother attached the explosives to the hinges of the freight-company safe. They waited outside in a gully while the fuses burned down, and suddenly the windows of the cabin glowed like fire, part of the wall fell in, and the roof lifted crazily.
The shock of the explosion still rang in Cal's ears as Ike hurried back inside the cabin. He thought of that woman lying so still on the floor. That was more than he had bargained for.
Perhaps two minutes passed. Ike came out of the cabin again, this time carrying an opened steel chest. “Look at this, Cal! We're rich!”
Chapter Four
Judge Lochland came on Monday.
Unlike Ben McKeever, Lochland came down to the field where Owen was hoeing corn. Owen looked up in surprise, watching the white-haired, black-clad figure tramping solemnly down the grassy slope toward the creek. The County Judge was an old-timer in a young country; in 1880 he had been an official in David L. Payne's Boomer
