Dempster jerked his hand away.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to put all the money into this gunnysack,” Shamrock said, pulling the sack from inside his shirt and tossing it toward him.
It took less than a couple of minutes for the sack to be filled. Shamrock took the bag from him, then hit Dempster over the head with the butt of his pistol. Dempster went down.
“Damn! You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“Nah, I didn’t hit ’im that hard. Just put ’im to sleep is all.”
The two men went out the back door of the bank. One block behind the bank they mounted their horses that had been inconspicuously tied at a hitching rail in front of a saloon.
* * *
Houser was returning to town to prepare the document. One mile from town, as had been arranged, he reached the intersection of two roads, one running east and west between Sulphur Springs and Phantom Hill, the other north to Albany and south to Belle Plain. He examined his watch, and if everything had gone as planned, he would be meeting Shamrock here. He saw two riders approaching. They were coming fast, and they reined up when they came even with him. This was as expected, and Houser pulled up on the reins to the horse that was drawing the surrey.
One of the riders was Sid Shamrock, but Houser didn’t know the other rider.
“Did you have any trouble?” Houser asked.
Shamrock smiled. “Nah, it was like you said, there warn’t no one but the banker, all by hisself when we was there, ’n he didn’t give us no trouble at all. Abe Sobel, this here is my brother, Brad Houser. He’s the one that set this up for us.”
“No!” Houser said, holding up his hand. “Say no more. The less everyone knows, the better it is.”
“All right, I won’t say nothin’ more.”
“Where’s the money?”
“Here it is,” Shamrock said, handing the gunnysack to Houser.
Houser opened the sack and looked into it. Some of the money was in loose bills, but much of it was in bound stacks of twenty-dollar bills, fifty to a stack. He took out fifteen stacks and gave them to Shamrock.
“Looks to me like there’s more ’n fifteen thousand dollars left in that sack,” Shamrock said. “How much did we get?”
“You got fifteen thousand dollars, the agreed-upon amount,” Houser said. “Whatever remains is none of your concern. Now, I suggest you two divide up your share, then separate here, at this intersection. Oh, and Thomas, uh, I mean Sid, we don’t need to meet, ever again.”
“Here’s the thousand dollars I promised you,” Shamrock said, giving one of the bound stacks to Abe.
“Seeing as you got fifteen thousand, one thousand doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s like the feller said,” Shamrock said. “One thousand dollars was what I said I’d give you. Hell, what are you bitchin’ for? How much money did you have when you woke up this mornin’?”
Abe nodded and reached for the money. “I reckon you have a point,” he said.
Houser had intended for the man Shamrock found to get five thousand, not one thousand dollars. But if Abe was satisfied with a thousand, who was he to comment? That would just mean more money for his brother and a greater likelihood that he would never have to see, nor hear, from his brother again. A prospect that he found most agreeable.
“I expect you two had better get going,” Houser said. “I’m quite sure there will be a posse along, soon. Oh, and I would suggest that you separate here.”
“Yeah,” Shamrock said to the other rider. “Come on, let’s go.”
The two men left, Shamrock going north and the other rider continuing to the west.
No more than five minutes later Houser saw Sheriff Peach and a body of men coming toward him. He stopped the team.
“Mr. Houser, what are you doing out here?” Sheriff Peach asked.
“I had a meeting with Mr. Stone, who is a client of mine. What is it, what is going on? If I didn’t know better, I’d say this looks like a posse.”
“It is a posse,” Sheriff Peach said. “The bank was just robbed.”
“The bank? Oh my goodness, that’s awful!” Houser said. “Wait, you wouldn’t be after two men, would you? I thought they were riding awfully fast.”
“Yes! One of them had a scar, here, ’n the other was wearin’ a white hat and a red shirt. Is that who you saw?”
Houser shook his head. “That’s exactly who I saw.” Houser pointed behind him. “I was just approaching the Phantom Hill and Belle Plains intersection. As I said, they were riding very fast, and they took the road south, to Belle Plains.”
“Thanks, Mr. Houser, we appreciate it,” Sheriff Peach said. “Come on, men!”
Peach and the ten men in the posse swerved around the surrey and continued west, toward the intersection. With a smile, Houser snapped the reins, and the horse pulling the surrey started out again at a comfortable trot.
In his room that night, Houser counted the money. If there was $100,000 as there was supposed to be, he should have $85,000 in the bag. To his pleasant and unexpected surprise, he had $88,297.
He closed the bag and contemplated his next move. He couldn’t stay in Sulphur Springs—there would be no way he could justify his sudden influx of cash. He was going to have to leave town . . . but he couldn’t just pull up stakes and leave, either, for to do so might arouse suspicion. He needed a reason to leave, and as he sat there, he knew what he was going to do.
Even though the boardinghouse where he stayed furnished a cleaning lady, he was not concerned that anyone would discover the money. He had pulled three boards away from the wall, put the money inside the wall, then replaced the boards. Even a most careful observation couldn’t detect any anomaly with the boards.
Chapter Four
The money was safely hidden and Shamrock and Abe had managed to avoid being caught by the posse, so
