Mr. Ortway?”
The banker swallowed hard, his florid face almost crimson. “Yes, that will be all right.”
The teller was well trained. He brought the money, placed it in front of his employer, and left quietly, closing the door behind him. “You'll never get away with this!” Ortway started. “You'll never...”
The fair-haired man stopped the banker's words quickly and expertly with a sudden blow to Ortway's flabby jaw. Quickly he stuffed one blue bandanna into the lax mouth and secured the gag with another handkerchief. He took a length of pigging cord from his windbreaker and tied the banker hand and foot to his chair. At last he stood back and viewed his work professionally.
Not bad, he thought. He'll be good for an hour at least, if nobody finds him. He unbuttoned his shirt and put the bundle of bills next to his body, then he opened the door, nodding pleasantly to the teller on his way out of the bank. “Mr. Ortway's busy,” he said. “He asked not to be disturbed.”
“Thank you,” the teller said gratefully.
The fair-haired man stepped outside and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, thinking. From this moment on, he thought, I am a different man. Never again can I be the man who just left Ortway's office.
This posed a minor problem, one that he hadn't anticipated. He had to have a name. A new name. One that would connect him in no way to the past—he smiled—or the present. It was almost like being born again, except this time he was allowed to choose for himself any name he wanted.
Grant, he thought, picking the name out of the air. He liked it. Joe Grant. That is my name. He was pleased with this decision. The name was short and comfortable, easy to get used to....
So it was Joe Grant who walked casually to the end of the block, swung lazily atop a shaggy bay mare, and rode with brazen unconcern out of Joplin that day. It was Joe Grant who grinned easily to a few acquaintances and pointed the bay north at a quiet, unhurried gait, until the town lay well behind. Then he nudged his shaggy mount to an easy lope, quartering cross-country along a well-used trail to the northwest.
Everything had gone just the way he had planned it, right down to the last detail. Ortway had refused the loan extension—just the way Joe Grant had figured he would. Grant felt the uncomfortable bulge of twenty-five hundred dollars next to his body and grinned to himself. Ortway was going to raise a holler that could be heard clear to the Cherokee border when he finally got loose from that chair, but Grant had anticipated this, too, and was not worried.
After about thirty minutes Grant reined the bay up beside the road and let the animal blow. Maybe, he thought, Ortway was already hollering. Maybe a posse was already forming.
Calmly, he took a sack of makings from his windbreaker and methodically built a thin, compact cigarette, no trace of concern or worry in his lean face. All roads leading to Joplin were well trampled that day, and tracking would be a slow, tedious job at best. Sooner or later, though, he knew the posse would pick up the trail and head this way, so there was no sense being overly confident.
He rode for another mile along the muddy road, then swung abruptly across open country, leaving tracks in the snow that the greenest sort of dude could follow with perfect ease. He spurred the bay once more to a rocking lope, and his face sobered for a moment as he gazed straight ahead to the north. His thoughts sped far in advance of the grunting pony, across Boggy Creek and through the wild-plum thickets and over a familiar rise that he never expected to see again. And finally, in his mind, he was riding down the other side of the rise to where his farm lay in the shallow draw.
He smiled a bit thinly.
But this man who called himself Joe Grant was not one to dwell on unpleasantness. The past, he reasoned, was the past. No use for a man keeping himself stirred up over a thing that couldn't be helped. Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a farmer anyway. Sometimes a cowhand could get some pretty queer ideas about what he wanted out of life.
Joe Grant shook his head, faintly puzzled at his own thoughts. By rights I ought to hate Ortway's guts, he thought. Another man would have squealed like a stuck pig if he'd been robbed the way Ortway tried to rob me. Maybe, he reasoned, it's just as well that I'm not the kind to get too attached to a piece of ground, like some men. If I was...
He let the thought drop. He had drifted from place to place, from job to job, all his life. Oh, he had liked the farm well enough, but it was a lonely life. To be perfectly truthful, he was beginning to get a little tired of being staked out in one place all the time.
Suddenly he grinned, exhilarated by the knowledge that he was no longer tied to anything. Maybe he and Ortway had actually done each other a favor! After all, the banker had got himself a good farm at a good price, and Grant had got back most of the money he'd put into it, not counting the two years of work and worry. What could be fairer than that?
Fair or not, he knew that the banker's reasoning would not run along the same lines as his own, and Grant kneed the bay to a faster gait as he raised Boggy Creek in the distance.
Carefully he put the bay down the sloping bank of the creek, reining up in midstream. Then he jumped out of the saddle, grunting at the shock of icy water. Quickly he stripped his rig from the animal's back. “This is where we part company, boy!” he said, cracking the bay sharply across the rump.
He stood for a moment watching the animal streak up the opposite bank and cut sharply toward the west. This, too, was part of the plan. Only the day before he had traded a strong mule for that stunted bay, hoping that the animal, set free, would head for his old home to the west. It was exactly what the bay was doing.
Grant smiled, then shouldered his rig and headed downstream through the hip-deep water. Soon his legs were numb and without feeling. He stumbled on rocks and stirred up mud, but he knew that the stream would settle by the time the posse reached it. The bite of the cold water almost took his breath away, but he waded on for several minutes, keeping always in the middle of the stream.
At last he spotted the shale outcropping where a sturdy little dun was tethered in a clump of willows. Grant climbed stiffly to the outcropping, rubbing his legs until feeling began to return, then hobbled to the horse and slapped the animal good-naturedly. “Don't look so smug, boy. You'll get a taste of it before long.” He limped to the willows and drew a blanket roll from under a pile of dead leaves.
The dun cocked its head curiously as Grant stripped himself of shoes, trousers, underwear, and rubbed himself dry with a spare shirt from the roll. Puffing and grunting, he climbed into dry clothes, exchanged his soaked work shoes for riding boots. “That's better!” he said aloud, walking in a tight circle, stamping his feet to wedge them into the snug vamps.
There was just one more thing to be done. Joe Grant was a new man with a new name—it logically followed that such a man would need to
First he propped a small metal mirror against a willow trunk, then from the roll he took out a pint jar filled with dark liquid—water in which he had boiled walnut hulls and wild berries. This, too, was part of his plan.
With a small brush he began applying the liquid to his hair and eyebrows. He worked fast but cautiously; he had practiced it carefully. He knew exactly what the result would be. At last he held the mirror at arm's length, inspecting first one side and then the other. The fair-haired man now had glistening dark brown hair with a reddish cast. He knew from experience that the color would become dull and more natural upon drying.
All in all he was satisfied with the result. Perhaps his eyes looked a bit pale beneath the dark eyebrows, but he didn't expect to keep this stuff on his head forever. Just until he was safely out of Missouri. Soon he'd be headed for the Indian country, or Texas, or maybe Mexico, where the color of his hair would make no difference.
Now he repacked the roll and tied it. He threw his rig on the dun and lashed the roll behind the saddle. “Now it's your turn,” he told the horse and he swung up to the saddle and reined into the middle of the stream.
Everything was working perfectly. Not even the most expert sign reader could find anything on that hard shale where the dun had been tethered. The posse, when it came, would follow the bay's tracks miles to the west. By the time they figured out what had happened, their man would be well out of Missouri.
CHAPTER TWO
BY SUNDOWN GRANT was well east of Joplin, heading south with the eye of his mind on Arkansas. From Arkansas he'd head into the Cherokee Nation where it should be a simple thing to get himself lost in the crowds and excitement. Oklahoma was preparing for statehood, Indian lands were being cut up for individual allotments, there had been talk of oil strikes near Bartlesville and Dewey. With all those things to keep people worked up, Grant thought, it's not likely they'll pay much attention to another saddle tramp riding through.
