Nelson Nye: Rafe

Luce put the pen in the old man's fingers, guiding the gnarled and trembling hand. One by one the others stepped up and signed. Rafe, coming back from the door, said then, "Now we'll take care of that note, Mr. Chilton."

The banker's eyes juned around like a boxful of crickets. He stood there like he had stepped in hot glue.

"Well?" Rafe said, and it got powerfully quiet.

If ever a man looked caught out it was Chilton. He dug at his collar, "I—I can't seem to find them."

"What can't you find?"

The banker flapped his hands helplessly. "The papers—I seem to've mislaid them." The man squirmed in his clothes, peered distractedly at his sheriff. Bunny, with Bender's sack under one arm and the other hand carelessly holding a pistol, was likewise giving Sparks a close regard. Sweat came out on his cheeks like dew. But nothing else came out of him.

Chilton squirmed some more and finally said, "I suppose it really doesn't matter so long's I give him a receipt and mark it paid in the ledger?"

"Might not matter to you," Rafe said, "but we're campin' right here till them notes is turned over."

Chilton's face got red. "I've told you I can't find them—"

"You want us to think somebody stole 'em?"

"I don't care what you think," the banker snarled. "It is certainly not my habit to mislay important papers! I'll give him a receipt marked 'paid in full' and the deed—"

"I reckon that'll be bindin' enough, long as we've got this flock of witnesses."

Brownwater took the tow sack from Bunny and dropped it on the desk. The dull clink of metal was plainly audible. Audible too was the sound of hoof beats, and still Chilton stood there. "Spangler," Rafe said, "won't be no help to you."

The banker looked pretty wild, but he got pen and paper. The faint babel of outside voices swelled as the pen scratched into its final flourish. Chilton, sanding it, got up, dug into his safe, and, still clutching the paper, turned around with the deed. Rafe put a hand out.

"I'll count this first," Chilton growled, pulling the string off the neck of the tow sack. He opened it up, took one look, and went rigid.

"Think careful," Rafe grinned, "before you lay down your character."

"I'm not trading that mortgage," the banker yelled, livid, "for no bag of iron washers!"

Rafe looked at him coldly. "You'll trade," he said, "or produce that note. You ain't dealin' with no ol' man now. Any damn fool can slap a X on a paper! What these folks'll be plumb anxious to see is how a gent smart as you can make thirty thousan' outa the five Pa borried."

"Sparks!" Chilton shouted, beside himself. "Arrest this man! At once— do you hear? " So wild did he look he seemed almost to be frothing.

The sheriff, peering over the bore of Bill's rifle, said, "The worm has turned," and showed a slow grin. "What'd you do, forge the old man's name or change the amount?"

Whatever he had done, it was a cinch the banker had not expected to be faced with it. He looked to be standing on the brink of apoplexy. His mouth was working but no words came. There was a twitch in his cheek and the papers skidded out of his shaking hand. Brownwater, retrieving them, laid them in front of the dispassionate Pike who, considering them briefly, affixed his seal. Brownwater wheezed the papers over to Bender. "There you are, sir. Lock, stock an' barrel."

Chilton, glassy-eyed, sagged into a chair.

It was then that the silence outside became noticeable.

Spangler's harsh voice called, "Sheriff, can you hear me?"

"Speak on," Sparks said.

"I guess you know what we want. You sendin' him out or do we come in after him?"

"If you're yapping about Chilton—"

"I'm talkin' about that bank-robbin' Rebel what calls hisself 'Rafe'! We've got the place plumb surrounded! You givin' 'im up or ain't you?"

"He hasn't robbed any bank," Sparks told them mildly.

"Don't give me that! The whole town seen—"

"Spangler," Rafe called, "is Duke Bender out there?"

"An' if he is?"

"You better tell him his father, in front of six witnesses, just made a will—his last will an' testament. Maybe we ought to have Pike read it to him."

"You ain't pullin' no wool over my eyes!"

"Not fixin' to. Just tryin' to keep Duke from cuttin' himself out of what he's got comin'—"

"I'll look out fer Duke's interests!"

"Then you better help him listen." Rafe, scowling, said, "If you got the bank surrounded, another two-three minutes ain't goin' to make no never-mind, is it?"

A suspicious silence hung over the street. Then those in the bank heard the muttered sounds of a fierce altercation, after which Duke's prissy tones said, sneering, "Go ahead. Let him read it."

Pike, picking up a copy of the will, waddled over to the door, Sparks stepping aside for him. Rafe, while the surgeon-turned-notary was plowing through the whereases and aforesaids, slipped out the side door. The pair of rifle-packing punchers Spangler'd set to watch this exit had, the better to hear, drifted back to the bank's front corner, were now standing hipshot, faces half turned toward the notary's voice. Bathsheba, Rafe remembered, had been left behind the building.

A call would fetch her, ground-tied or not. It would also spin those rifles into focus. Rafe wasn't anxious to shoot those two fellers, and it wasn't very likely he could slip up behind them. He could probably a sight easier get to the mare.

The will would stop Duke, but it wouldn't stop Spangler. Someway Rafe had to get the drop on him; the crew would take Spangler's orders. Rafe doubted they would pay any attention to Duke. What was needed here, if a man wasn't craving to wade through blood, was another diversion. The terms of the will wouldn't be shock enough to keep Spangler's grip long away from his shooter.

Rafe skinned back to the mare, hardly believing even when he was slipping off her headstall he had actually reached her without triggering an alarm. He batted her nose away from his face, tossed reins and bridle against the wall of the bank. He had a terrible hankering to jump on her back when he thought of the odds he was fixing to buck. But he turned her around, hearing the drone of Pike's words, aimed her straight at the woods and, with a wild coyote yell, cuffed her hard with his hat.

Not waiting to watch, he ran on around the far side of the bank, coming into the street just as three of the crew, with shouted orders from Spangler, kicked their horses into a run. Though the unexpected sight of him obviously startled them, not one of them attempted to pull up or swerve. Reaching for their weapons they came, three abreast, straight at him.

Rafe jerked his pistol, firing as soon as it cleared the holster. The middle horse reared and, toppling sideways, crashed into the one on its left, kicking frantically. Something jerked at Rafe's vest. The pfutt pfutt of slugs was around him like hornets. He shot the third horsebacker out of his saddle and ran on, trying in the confusion of kaleidoscoping shapes to sight Spangler. The shouts and gunblasts beat at him like hammers. A whickering riderless horse slamming past nearly bowled him over and then, unbelievably, the street was empty, the drumming of hoofbeats rapidly fading in the south.

In front of the Cow Palace a man at the edge of its porch staggered upright. Another one's head came up back of a horse trough. Motionless, legs tangled, lay the horse Rafe had shot. There were three more still shapes between the bank and the harness shop.

Sparks, talking over the barrel of his rifle from one of the knocked-out windows behind Rafe, said, "All right, boys. Any pistol-bangin' jasper wantin' a fair shake from me had better tromp into sight with both a paws up an' empty."

The feller back of the horse trough let go of his hog-leg and, raising his dew-claws, got to his feet. The gent by the edge of the Cow Palace porch didn't appear to be heeled and had already stuck up his hands. Rafe, gun in fist and still cruising the street, didn't pay Sheriff Ed no more mind than a gopher. All his bitter attention when he slogged to a stop seemed glued to the third downed shape so shrunkenly huddled in its bottle-green coat with an arm twisted under it, the yellow curls fluttering in the dust of the street. It was Duke and he was dead. And the pair with their hands up cringed away from Rafe's stare.