and I’ll make just over four thousand dollars. Well, I won’t even make that, because that does not count the salaries I pay my men. I tell you the truth. I’ll do well to break even.”
“If it is any consolation to you, Smoke, this is happening everywhere and to everyone. The folks back East have gotten a taste of Hereford. Nobody wants longhorn beef anymore. But, as always, the final decision is up to you. Do you want to sell at that price?”
“No, I don’t want to,” Smoke replied resolutely. He sighed. “But it doesn’t look like I have any choice.”
“All right, I’ll get you a contract. What about the train cars? Do you want me to book them for you as well?”
“Yes,” Smoke said. “Oh, and tell Mr. Bidwell I’ll be needing the holding pens for a couple of days.”
“That’ll be thirty cents a head,” Steve said.
“Right. That means it will cost me another three hundred sixty dollars just to do business,” Smoke said. “I don’t know but what this might not work out better if I just paid somebody to take the beeves off my hands,” he added with a sarcastic laugh. “At least I wouldn’t have to be worryin’ about feeding them and taking care of them.”
“It’s good you can laugh about it,” Steve said.
“When you get right down to it, Steve, I have to laugh about it,” Smoke said. “What else can I do?”
“I guess you have a point there. All right, once I get this all set up, how soon can you get the herd in?”
“How soon can you get everything set up?” Smoke wanted to know.
“I can send wires back to Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago. I reckon I can have everything set up by tomorrow.”
“Then I’ll bring my herd in tomorrow.”
“I’ll have everything ready for you.”
The two men shook hands.
“As always, Smoke, it’s good doing business with you,” Steve said.
Emil Sinclair was one of the four horsemen Smoke had seen riding into Big Rock. He and the other three riders stopped just across the street from the biggest store in town. A huge, brightly painted sign that spread across the front of the store read:
Big Rock
MERCANTILE
The store was very large and exceptionally well stocked, and one wag had commented that when it said, “Goods for all mankind,” it literally referred to all mankind.
“Why, I’ll bet there’s enough socks for every man, woman, and child in Colorado,” he’d said.
The store was not only well stocked. It had a wide variety of merchandise from groceries, to clothes, to furniture, to tools. In one section of the store, it had baby cribs, and in another, coffins, eliciting the oft-repeated comment that the “Big Rock Mercantile can supply you with everything you need from the cradle to the grave.”
“Emil, you stay here with the horses,” Logan Taylor said. “Jason, Stu, you two come with me.”
Emil, Jason, and Stu Sinclair were brothers. They had been recruited by Logan Taylor a week earlier to “do a job that will make us two or three hunnert dollars each, and there ain’t goin’ to be no risk to it at all.”
“There ain’t no such thing as a job with no risk,” Emil had replied.
“There ain’t no risk to this one. We’re goin’ to rob us a store.”
“A store? You think we can rob a store and get a couple hundred dollars apiece?” Emil had asked. “I ain’t never heard of a store with that much money.”
“This one does. It’s one of the biggest stores in Colorado, and does so much business that it has purt’ near as much money as a bank. Only, there ain’t no guards, the store clerk ain’t armed, and more than likely the only customers inside will be women.”
“Sounds pretty good to me, Emil,” Jason had said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Stu had added.
Although the whole operation sounded a little fishy to him, Emil had allowed himself to be talked into it, and now he sat on his horse, holding the reins of the other three horses as Taylor, Jason, and Stu walked across the street, then went inside.
There were seven people inside: the clerk, who wasn’t armed, and six customers, all of whom, as Taylor had said, were women.
“Oh, Julia, look at this material,” one woman gushed to another as they stood by a table that was filled with brightly colored bolts of cloth. The woman pulled some of it away and held it against herself. “Have you ever seen a more beautiful color? Wouldn’t this make a lovely dress?”
“Oh, yes, it would be perfect with your—”
“Good afternoon, ladies!” Taylor shouted loudly. “I’m going to ask all of you to step back into the storeroom for a little while.”
“What?” one of the women asked.
“Here! What is the meaning of this?” the only male, the store clerk, said.
“We’re robbin’ your store,” Taylor said.
One of the women drew a deep breath and put her hand to her mouth. Taylor swung his pistol toward her, pulling the hammer back as he did so.
