The thunder of hooves beating against the ground and shots blasting through the air made it seem as if a storm had rolled in from the mountains to stir up some hell in Willhemene Pass. That storm rolled out of the town, leaving a body in the street and several confused locals standing with their mouths agape.
Inside the bank, the manager scrambled to the teller’s side. “Are you all right?” he asked.
The woman pulled in a few breaths, pressed her hand to her side, but eventually nodded. “It’s not so bad. At least, I don’t think it is.”
“We’ll get you to Doc Whistler.” Craning his neck to get a look past the teller through the bars to the front section of the bank, the manager shouted, “Can anyone hear me?”
Plenty of noise was coming from outside. One voice answered the manager’s question, though. It belonged to the only customer who’d spoken to the masked men before they’d left.
The customer’s steps echoed through the bank as his boots scraped against the floor. “Are you all right, ma’am?” the customer asked, peeking through the teller’s window.
“It looks like a flesh wound, but I’m no doctor,” the manager replied. “Are those robbers gone?”
The customer walked back to the door, looked outside and then shut it behind him. The sound of the lock being turned rattled through the small one-room building.
“The law rode off to chase after that robber. Looks like they got one of them before they left, though,” Barrett said in the same, calm voice he’d used to inform Nick about the sheriff and his men. He walked over to the cage and looked at the area behind it with mild interest. When he spotted the safe, he took a gun from under his coat and eased it between the bars.
The manager was in the process of helping the woman to the back door when he spotted Barrett pointing the gun at him. “What…what the hell is this?”
“Weren’t you listening before?” Barrett asked. “It’s a robbery. Now that we’ve got this place to ourselves, why don’t you finish emptying that safe?”
The confusion written across the manager’s face might have been funny under any other circumstances. In fact, Barrett knew that Nick would have been laughing if he was there to see it.
“But…we were…”
“Only told about two of us coming?” Barrett asked as a way to finish the manager’s question. “Things change. Now get that money before I start making more noise.”
The manager did what he was told; emptying the contents of the safe into another couple of bags as if he was in a daze.
Barrett took the bags, fitted them under his arms and then closed his coat over them. “Keep quiet until someone comes to get you,” he told the two behind the cage. “My other partner outside’s got an itchy trigger finger.” With that, Barrett turned his back on the cage and walked out the front door. By the time he stepped outside, his gun was tucked away and a panicked look was on his face.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed a local man who was kneeling next to the body of the masked man lying in the street.
Barrett and several other locals gathered around the body as the man kneeling beside it pulled the robber’s mask off. When the face of the drunkard deputy was revealed, Barrett let out a relieved sigh. As the locals got a look for themselves and started nervously chattering, Barrett was able to slip away and walk down the street to the horse waiting for him there.
It was well past nightfall and there was still no trace of Nick. Barrett sat huddled in the shack they’d claimed as their own, rubbing his arms and watching the steam curl upward every time he let out a breath. The cold had been gnawing at him for hours and had chewed all the way down to the marrow in his bones.
Outside, a few hearty animals scampered through the snow. The wind wasn’t as fierce as it had been earlier, but there was still a trickle of air seeping in through the walls. Barrett focused his eyes upon a spot on the floor just in front of his boots. As much as he wanted to go outside and watch for Nick, he knew he’d only last a matter of moments before his ears began to ache and his fingers went numb.
Instead of giving his eyes something to do, Barrett closed them and focused on what he could hear.
Barrett could never figure why, but winter nights always seemed to be especially quiet. Because of that, every footstep was a crash and every snowflake’s landing was like a pebble knocking against a tin roof.
When he heard the sound of heavy steps crunching in the snow, Barrett’s eyes snapped open and he jumped to his feet. Since he hadn’t stretched his legs for a while, every joint in his body ignited with pain. Barrett simply gritted his teeth and drew his pistol.
There was someone outside.
Whoever it was, they were most definitely on a horse.
The lighter steps could just be heard scattered among the heavier ones, but as hard as Barrett tried, he couldn’t decipher how many were out there.
The more he strained his ears listening, the louder each step got. Finally, he knew he had to take a look outside for himself. If it was a posse approaching the shack instead of Nick, showing himself now wouldn’t make much difference anyway.
Barrett tightened his grip on his gun and steeled himself to look out through the shack’s crooked window. Despite all the possible outcomes racing through his mind, Barrett kept going back to the one that ended with him catching a bullet in his face the moment he showed it to some approaching lawmen.
Letting out the breath he’d been holding, Barrett leaned to the side, looked out the window and found himself less than an inch away from Nick’s smiling face.
“Jesus Christ,” Barrett said as his finger clamped reflexively around his trigger and sent a bullet through the door.
Nick jumped away from the window and drew his own gun without even thinking about it. “What the hell?” he said as he took a quick look behind him and then around to either side.
Barrett charged outside, still holding his gun. “You scared the shit out of me, Nick. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“And that’s coming from someone who’s always telling me to watch my cussing?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Nick didn’t answer right away. Instead, he cocked his head to one side and held up a finger like an overly dramatic actor playing to his audience. “You hear that?”
“My ears are still ringing.”
“The posse’s on its way.”
“You’re not getting me twice,” Barrett said.
As if on cue, the sounds of more hooves pounding against the snow could be heard rumbling through the air.
“You led them back here?!” Barrett said.
“I lost ’em a while ago, but they’re combing this whole mountain. I thought I’d swing by here and get you out of here. I didn’t think you’d fire a shot to let ’em know we’re here, though.”
There were plenty of things Barrett wanted to say and not one of them was of the friendly variety. As he quickly gathered his few possessions and saddled his horse, Barrett felt his heart slamming against the inside of his ribs as if it was trying to escape his chest.
“You got the money?” Nick asked.
“Yes, now let’s get the hell out of here!”
Nick snapped his reins and got his horse moving past the shack toward a smaller trail he’d found the night before. As he rode down the narrow strip of dirt, which occasionally disappeared beneath the snow, he was smiling wide enough for his teeth to freeze. With the wind stirring again and the horses making their way down the narrow pass, Nick couldn’t hear much of anything else. He still knew the posse was coming after him, though. Lawmen all put the same stench into the air, just as much as the one lying face up in the street when Nick had ridden away from that bank.
The path down the mountain may have been narrow, but it wasn’t exactly treacherous. It led them down to a winding pass that would eventually link up with the trail leading to Denver. It had become second nature for Nick to avoid the main trails, so he turned away from that one and kept riding until he found a spot that suited him.
Barrett followed, but couldn’t keep from squirming. Between trying to steer his horse through the darkness and shifting to get a look behind or around him, he rarely sat still long enough to allow his eyes to focus. He saw
