responsible for another one of your customers gettin’ killed?”
“No, please!” The man pleaded. He got down on his knees.
“Maybe your customers don’t mean anything to you,” Pettigrew said. “I reckon I’m shootin’ the wrong people. Maybe I should kill your friend here.” He pointed the pistol at Lisenby.
“No, wait!” Lisenby said. “I’ll open the safe for you!”
“You will open the safe? I thought you didn’t know the combination,” Malcolm said. “Tsk, tsk, Mr. Lisenby. It would appear that you lied to us.”
“That’s what Mr. Snellgrove told me to say if anything like this ever happened.”
“Lisenby, don’t do it!” Snellgrove said.
“Mr. Snellgrove, I’m not going to die for twenty dollars a week,” Lisenby said.
With shaking hands, Lisenby walked over to the safe and began turning the combination. It took only a few turns, then the big vault door swung open.
“Very good, Mr. Lisenby,” Malcolm said. He produced a cloth bag from under his jacket and handed it to Lisenby. “Now, if you would be so good, please put all of your money in here.”
“Lisenby, you are fired!” Snellgrove said.
“I can get another job, Mr. Snellgrove,” Lisenby said as he began dropping bundles of cash into the bag. “I can’t get another life.”
When the bag was full, he handed it to Malcolm.
“Thank you,” Malcolm said. He looked over at Snellgrove, who was seething with anger as he stared accusingly at Lisenby.
“Mr. Snellgrove,” he said. “Would you kindly step into the safe, please?”
“What! What do you mean, step into the safe? What are you talking about?”
“I know that ’tis a Scottish brogue I have,” Malcolm said. “But I’m for certain that you understood me. Step into the safe.”
“You don’t understand,” Snellgrove said. “I could smother in there!”
“Aye, you could indeed,” Malcolm said. “Unless Mr. Lisenby opens the safe door in time to let you out. Oh, but, wait. He can’t do that, can he? You just fired him.”
“Get in!” Shaw said gruffly, grabbing Snellgrove by the shoulders and shoving him toward the open door of the safe.
“Lisenby, get me out!” Snellgrove called out in terror as Shaw shoved him into the safe. “You aren’t fired! I take it back, you aren’t fired!”
The safe was large enough to hold Snellgrove, but barely.
“Mr. Lisenby?” Malcolm asked.
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t let him out until we have left.”
“Yes, sir.”
Just as the outlaws reached the door, the man on his knees, the one who had begged for his life, drew a pistol from some unseen place and fired.
“Uhnn!” Garcia grunted loudly. The bullet hit Garcia in the back, just to the left of his right shoulder blade. He stumbled, but did not fall. McKenna grabbed him and, helping him stay on his feet, half walked and half dragged Garcia through the front door.
Pettigrew, with a shout of anger, turned his pistol and shot the customer who had shot Garcia, hitting him in the forehead. The customer fell back with his eyes open and unseeing.
“What happened?” Johnny Carter shouted as he held his hand down for the other riders to grab the reins.
“Garcia got shot!” McKenna called back. “Shaw, help me get him into his saddle!”
With Shaw and McKenna on each side of him, Garcia was able to climb into the saddle. After that the others mounted as well.
“Yee-ha!” Pettigrew shouted as they started out of town. He began shooting. “Shoot away, boys!” he called. “Shoot everything that walks, slithers, or crawls!”
With pistols blazing, and the townspeople running, the nine bank robbers thundered out of town, though, not without shooting down two more citizens.
Under the cavernous dome of St. Louis’s Union Station, the sounds of the many trains moving in and out of the great car shed were a distant, rumbling echo that one could not only hear but feel in the stomach. Angus Somerled was two days out of New York and, according to his schedule, three days from Denver.
As he waited for his train, he visited the newsroom, where several papers were on display. He read with amusement the advertisements for Extract of Buchu, guaranteed to cure headaches. Then, next to the newspapers, he saw a book entitled
The name Falcon MacCallister jumped out at him, for that was the kinsman of Duff MacCallister. Somerled picked up the paperbound book and opened it to a random page.
Falcon stood at the opening to the canyon wherein Dangerous Dan and his villainous compatriots had gathered after the daring train robbery they perpetrated on the Express. They thought they had escaped all pursuit, but they were wrong. With the eye of an eagle and the cunning of a fox, Falcon followed, unerringly, the trail of the nefarious band until—
