Ever since he was a kid, Barrett had never been able to contain his own excitement. Even now that he was in his early twenties, he seemed more like the boy who was jumping out of his skin to reveal his plot to sneak a peek into a whorehouse with a broken window without getting caught. “There’s a bank less than two miles from here…”
“Oh no,” Nick said. “Hell no!”
“What? Why? You didn’t even hear what I’ve got to say!”
“I heard ‘bank,’ and that’s enough. We’re stuck out here because of that posse that tore after us after that bullshit in Leadville. We ain’t heard from anyone else in the gang since then, and we ain’t set to meet up with no one for another couple weeks.”
Barrett listened to all of this without losing the grin on his face. He simply nodded, waited for Nick to run out of steam and then said, “It’ll only take two of us to rob this bank.”
Rubbing his ears with the palms of his hands, Nick winced at the pain that caused and then leaned forward to stare even harder at his friend. “What?”
“You heard me. I figured out a way for the two of us to rob this bank.”
“You must be shit out of your mind.”
The wind kicked up again and roared so hard that it rattled the entire shack around both of the young men huddled inside. Barrett started to speak, but was cut short as the cold seized up his lungs like a fist clamping around his chest. As the wind kept howling, neither of the two could move. When it finally let up, both young men slumped forward and vigorously rubbed their hands together.
“I’d like to see you swear around your pappy like that,” Barrett said as he blew into his cupped hands.
“My pa ain’t nothing but a goddamn gravedigger and he won’t never be anything more than that. I already got more people who know my name than…them that…know his.”
“All right, you’d better stop trying to talk. I think your tongue’s frozen. Just sit there and hear me out.” Even though Nick opened his mouth to speak, Barrett kept saying his piece before Nick could get rolling. “This bank I saw is a little place on the edge of Willhemene Pass. With the cold and all, there ain’t been more than two or three folks working inside at any given time.”
Suddenly, Nick found the strength required to lift himself and all those coats up off the floor. Once on his feet, he hunched over like a cobra eyeing an unsuspecting mouse. “You been into town enough times to gather all of that?”
“Yes,” Barrett said. “I thought you would have figured that out since I’ve been gone so much.”
“You said you was out getting wood and scouting for the law.”
“I brought back wood and I’ve done plenty of scouting. Haven’t you been listening?”
“You know what I been doing? I’ve been freezing my balls off out here in this goddamn shack while you’ve been warming yourself in a fire somewhere in town, which is where I wanted to be!”
There were only a few years separating Barrett and Nick, but the calmness in Barrett’s eyes made that gap seem a whole lot wider. “You would’ve spent our money,” Barrett said. As soon as those words were out, Barrett realized they’d been poorly chosen. He quickly added, “Besides, your face is the one the law’s getting to know. I can still get around fairly well without being noticed.”
Nick’s eye twitched as he struggled to keep himself from lunging at Barrett’s throat. As he thought about that first reward notice he’d seen with his likeness drawn on it, Nick felt his anger subside. “All right, then. But I still want to get into town to make up for it.”
“I can show you the bank,” Barrett said. “We should be able to live in fancy hotels for a while after knocking that one over.” He paused and backed up a bit before adding, “I still need your money.”
Nick actually laughed this time. “I ain’t holding out on any more than what I already told you about. That means we’re still a long ways from that hundred or two you said you needed. What the hell do you need that much for anyway?”
“The two of us can rob that bank, but only if we get one of the local law dogs on our side. I figure we’d need a pretty good bribe to get that done.”
“You want me to hand over that much money to some fucking lawman? You must be crazy. How do you know one of these lawmen is even crooked?”
Barrett stomped his feet and rubbed his hands together as another gust of wind ripped through the shack. “There ain’t many lawmen out there who can’t be bought off. We may find one cheaper, but I just want to be prepared in case we need to kick in a little extra. Believe me, we’ll make up our losses.”
Nick cracked his knuckles and worked out some of the knots that had been frozen into his neck. “You got any prospects as far as these lawmen are concerned?”
“I found the one that looks to be the weakest link in the chain, and the one that’s the strongest.”
“Take me to both of them.”
“Why?” Barrett asked.
“Because I’m going to save us a hundred dollars or so. Now, tell me the rest of this plan you thought up.”
The deputy was the youngest one in town. He walked with his head hanging low and his arms tight against his body as if he was afraid of getting punched in the ribs at any moment. The hat and coat he wore were a bit too big for him. Every time a stiff breeze came along, it nearly plucked the hat from his head or knocked him over.
Main Street consisted of two short rows of storefronts facing each other and very few people walking between them. Only a few carriages traveled the street throughout the day, leaving the sparse population of Willhemene Pass to huddle inside their homes or in one of the town’s two saloons to keep warm.
A wind kicked up and howled between the buildings on either side of the street, filling the deputy’s ears with a cold roar. That roar was more than loud enough to cover the sounds of footsteps rushing up behind him. When his hat was knocked off his head, the deputy assumed it was from the wind. If he’d bothered turning around, he would have seen Barrett standing there with his arm still outstretched.
“Damn,” the deputy whispered as he rushed forward to chase his hat. He bent to pick it up as the wind died down. Suddenly, he could hear the second set of footsteps rushing toward him from the side.
Nick placed a hand flat upon the lawman’s back to keep him from standing up. “Evening, Marshal,” he said with a grin. The deputy was holding a rifle in his hand, but Nick kicked it down and stepped on the barrel to hold it against the ground.
To his credit, the deputy kept his bony fingers wrapped around the rifle even after the gun was trapped under Nick’s boot. Once Nick put a bit more of his weight down though, the crushing pain shooting through the deputy’s half-frozen fingers was too much to bear.
Nick shoved the deputy toward Barrett with one hand and scooped up the rifle with the other. “It’s all right,” he said as he glanced around to make sure they weren’t being watched. “You’re not the first one to fall for that trick. Now, how about you come along with us so we can have a little talk?”
The deputy flinched and looked over at Barrett when he realized what had happened. Although Barrett didn’t have his own gun drawn, he had his hand upon his holster to make it clear that he could pull his weapon at any time.
“I’d suggest you do what he tells you,” Barrett said through the bandanna wrapped around the lower portion of his face. “Or this could get real ugly.”
Nick walked with an easy stride and dropped his arm around the deputy’s shoulders as if they were just three friends headed out to get a drink. He kept the rifle in his grasp and pointed in the deputy’s direction. “This won’t take long, and you might just be glad you bumped into us.”
They led the deputy away from the center of town and around a corner. It wasn’t a very long walk before they found themselves in front of a darkened store, with a mountain range behind them. The sun had set some time ago, and the moonlight reflected off the snow.
Squinting into the pale shadows, Nick couldn’t see another living thing for miles in that direction. The street was more than quiet enough to suit his purposes, so Nick grabbed the deputy by the throat with his left hand and used his right to jam the rifle’s barrel into the lawman’s gut.
The deputy looked even younger up close than he did from afar. His skin was pale and his cheeks had the sunken appearance of someone who had been deathly ill. With so much fear showing on his face, his eyes looked wider than the sockets that held them. “Who…who are you?”
“I’m the son of a bitch that’s robbing your bank tomorrow,” Nick snarled. “And if you know what’s good for
