The Old Colts (20 page)

“‘Um. Let’s see if we draw fire.”

“Okeh.”

They walk again, toward the elevator.

Ninety yards, eighty yards, and they are fired on, one warning round apparently from the side of the tower, and missed by a mile. They neither flinch nor falter, but walk on at a left oblique, keeping the tower between them and the men behind it.

There are a thousand and more grain elevators in Kansas, like as peas in a pod and called, in the vernacular of the grain trade, “bins.” They are cylindrical and built of concrete, with walls eight inches thick. They stand eighty to ninety feet high. The diameter of a bin is approximately fifteen feet, the circumference forty-seven. The sole function of such a structure is storage. Wagons or trucks loaded with wheat or corn are driven from the fields to the bins and weighed at the “scalehouse” by the “scaleman” to determine the weight, hence the number of bushels, of the load. The wagon or truck is then moved over a grated pit, the sides of the vehicle are removed, and the grain is shoveled into the pit, where a power-driven “belt leg” lifts it to the top of the bin and dumps it in. The average elevator stores approximately eighteen thousand bushels, or nineteen million pounds. When orders to ship grain are received by the cooperative, boxcars are shunted along the spur line and positioned by the elevator. Car doors are slid open, “grain doors” or planks eight feet long and eighteen inches high are laid atop one another inside the open doors to prevent spillage, and the long “unload spout” of galvanized steel, built into the elevator, is swung over and down and into the car and opened. Grain flows by gravity into the boxcar, which holds two thousand bushels. When the car is full, doors are shut and the next car moved to the unload spout. The bin of the Garden of Eden Co-Op is on this dramatic day in May filled to far less than its capacity with two thousand plus bushels of wheat known as “hard winter red,” the pride of Kansas and a variety invaluable in the milling of flour.

Bat and Wyatt reach the wall of the elevator. Wyatt nods to the right, indicates that he will take the left, and revolvers raised, backs tight to the wall, they inch along the concrete, moving in opposite directions round the mighty mulberry bush.

At the edge of his left eye
Bat can perceive the rear half of the Studebaker, parked in behind the bin. It is raised two feet off the ground. They’ve had time to jack it up by the bumper, but not enough to pry off the tatters of the tire and install the spare. He squats. Under the sedan, on the far side, he spots pantlegs and a pair of black brogans. He eases erect, crosses his chest with the Colt, aims at the jack from forty feet, and fires. The jack whangs from the bumper, the car comes down with a thud, exposing a head on the far side, and Bat fires again, instantly, drilling the thug between the eyes. He crashes on his back. Astonished and delighted by his accuracy, Bat bounces toward the sedan like a boy, out and away from the protection of the elevator.

He’d be perforated, but Wyatt, stalking round the other side of the tower, sees a man near the top of a ladder leaning against the wall aim a .38 automatic at the unsuspecting Bat, and yells. Distracted, the crook fires and misses, allowing Wyatt the split second needed to get off a snap shot which hits him squarely. The man drops his pistol. Wyatt comes out of concealment. The man on the ladder reaches into his shirt as though for another weapon, and deliberately Wyatt puts a second slug in him. Still he does not fall from the ladder. To the amazement of the two spectators, he begins slowly to descend the ladder, rung by rung.

He is a gross crook, broadshouldered and bullnecked and bald as a hen’s egg, and, despite his agony, despite the internal damage done by the two doses of lead, he continues to come down the wooden ladder, which is at least eighteen feet long and stands against the wall with its upper end propped just below a manhole with a hinged iron cover. Bat and Wyatt stare at him. He turns his head to speak.

“You’re not cops,” he groans.
 
“Not your business.”

“We made it ours,” says Wyatt. “Where’s the other two?”

“Where’s the money?” asks Bat.

Rung by rung Baldy descends, turning to see Bat. “Who the hell’re you?”

“Bat Masterson. That’s Wyatt Earp.”

“Like shit,” groans Baldy, lets go of the ladder, slides the last rungs, and hits the ground dead as a carp in a cup of spit.

Bat and Wyatt approach the varmint, stand over him, stare down at him.

“That’s two for Harvey Wadsworth,” says Wyatt. “Two to go.”

“He didn’t believe us either, the dumb son-of-a-bitch,” says a scornful Bat. “Who else did he think could shoot like this?”

They proceed to the Studebaker to inspect the yegg Bat has deceased. The hole between his eyes is neat as a pin.

“My God, look at that!” Bat exclaims.

“What is it?”

“That, my friend, is a tommygun.”

It lies beside the yegg—short stock and barrel, round steel drum attached below the point where stock ends and barrel begins, turnkey in the center of the drum. The words “Auto Ordnance Corp. Col. Thomas Thompson” are stamped into the drum.

“I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of ‘em,” says Bat. “The latest thing. Developed for the Army—but crooks would have ‘em first, of course. I expect Rothstein and his hoods have a-plenty. So these guys were real pros—prob’ly from Kansas City or somewhere.”

“How does it work?”

“Also called a submachine gun. Forty-five caliber, spring-loaded. Well, that drum holds fifty rounds in a clip. Jam in the drum, wind up the key, hold the trigger, and you get off fifty rounds faster’n you can say Jack Robinson.”

Wyatt holsters his Peacemaker and picks up the weapon. “Hold it like a baby,” warns Bat. “Good thing I got this bastard before he could open up. He’d have cut me to pieces.”

Wyatt is studying the elevator and the long ladder under the manhole. “They must be inside—the other two. And the money.”

“Or over there in the trees, on the lam.”

“Only one way to find out.” Wyatt points. “Why don’t you shinny up that ladder and open the cover on that manhole. Easy like. If they’re in there, they’ll let you know.”

Bat backs off. “Oh, no. I can’t stand heights. I can’t even get up on a stepladder.”

“O.K.” Wyatt hands over the tommygun and starts for the ladder.

Bat follows, reaching apologetically into his jacket. “Here—use this or they’ll take your fingers off.”

Wyatt accepts the ruler with its maxim, “A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned,” steps over Baldy’s body, and mounts the ladder.

Bat is glad to wait and spectate. “That Millie Sughrue,”
he recalls. “What a looker!”

It is an eighteen-foot ladder. The manhole has enough diameter to admit someone to clean the bottom of the bin—presumably its purpose—and a hinged lid or cover which is open a crack, perhaps to let in light. Keeping an eye on the cover, Wyatt climbs just high enough to reach with his right arm, to insert the ruler under the cover, and with a flick of his hand to swing it open wide.

It’s like busting a hornets’ nest. A blast of gunfire blows a spread of bullets through the hole, shredding the ruler and causing Wyatt to duck instinctively even though he’s shielded by eight inches of concrete.

Carefully he comes down the ladder. Together, he and Bat sidle out of range at the base of the tower.

“You were right, all right,” Bat admits.

“Wish I wasn’t.”

“Damn em.”

“We’ve got a bearcat by the tail. And we don’t have time to wait ‘em out.” Wyatt frowns and rearranges some splayed hairs in his mustache. “Everybody in Dodge knows the bank’s been hit by now, and Harvey went after ‘em—this way. Any minute now, half the town’ll be here—at least whatever law they’ve got left. Maybe the county Sheriff and deputies.”

Bat, too, studies the elevator. “Talk about holed up. How to get at ‘em, or get ‘em out. Tougher than lobster out of a shell.”

Wyatt nods, then does a double take. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“I know how. You just said it. Bat, we’re going up that big pecker—to the top. Look.” With an arm Wyatt follows a row of iron rungs built into the wall of the elevator all the way from ground level to the top—eighty or ninety feet. Bat goes white as a sheet. “It’s the only way,” Wyatt asserts.

“The hell you say!”

“Listen—on the other side of that wall are two more murdering bastards and fifty, sixty thousand dollars—d’you want ‘em or not?”

“I know, but my God—”

“What’d we come to Kansas for—learn how to drive a car?”

Bat shakes his head. “Wyatt, I’d never make it,” he implores. “I’d fall. And whatta we do when we’re up there? I don’t get it.”

“I’ll tell you on top. Let’s go.”

“You tell me now!”

“Trust me.”

“Goddammit!”

Rrrriiiippppp!

Halfway up, Bat first, Wyatt a close second for support, the one, the only Bat Masterson rips off a tremendous fart of fear in his friend’s face.

“Damn you,” growls Wyatt.

“I can’t help it! I’m scared!”

“Keep going.”

“I just remembered—we gotta climb down!”

“You shoot another rabbit, I’ll see to it you’re down damn fast.”

Before starting the ascent, Wyatt had pulled his belt from its loops and belted the tommygun to his side. He’d had Bat reload both revolvers, holster one and stick the other under his belt.

Near the top Bat stops. “No, no, I can’t. Wyatt, I’m finished.”

“Don’t look down.”

“I’m weak as a cat. After last night, this is too much for me. A man my age—”

Wyatt reaches up and raps him in the rump with a fist. “Onward and upward.”

“Oh my God.”

Wyatt raps him again.

Bat moves, but slowly. “I wish I was anywhere but here—even Grogan’s.” He stops.

Wyatt raps him again.

Bat moves, but slowly. “How I ever let you talk me into coming way out here in the sticks I’ll never know. I could be hoisting one with the boys on Broadway, I could be safe at home with my dear wife, I—”

“Shuddup and giddup.”

They reach the rim of the great cylinder and crawl onto the flat top. Bat stands, sways, Wyatt holds him, and they look out over the Lord’s majestic pool table, which is Kansas. Above them, puffing along like farm implements, little white clouds till blue and heavenly fields. From this vantage they command also, it seems, the entire U.S. of A., from the Catskills over the Rockies all the way to the Sierra Nevada. They scout the black highway arrowing through verdant green from Garden of Eden, below, to the trees and church steeples of Dodge. There is no unusual traffic on the road, which means no pursuit of the bankrobbers has yet been organized. Wyatt turns Bat by an elbow toward a large open manhole near the far edge, cover lying beside it.

“Keep your voice down,” he mutters. “See that hole? Maybe a ladder down there, inside, I dunno. Anyway, that’s my idea. Ricochet.”

“Ricochet?”

“You made me think of it, mentioning lobster. The night in that restaurant we were eating lobster—I recollect shell flying all over the place. Ricochet.”

“Oh, sure.” Bat unties his bandanna and mops his brow. “That shoot-out I had in Dodge with Peacock and Updegraff, in ‘81. Ricochet took a newspaper right out of a guy’s hands reading it in Dr. McCarty’s drugstore. Slugs’ll do funny things.”

Wyatt unbelts the machine gun. “O.K., they’re down there in the grain under us, way down, near that hole by the ladder. We can’t go in after ‘em, they can’t come out on account of us—but they don’t know we’re up here. So what we do, we unload our artillery down that hole—fifty rounds in this tommygun, twelve in your pistols. At an angle, so the rounds hit the cement going down and ricochet every whichway. Sixty-two slugs—odds are pretty good we’ll put some holes in ‘em. Should be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Bat nods. “You said it. Wonderful. Okeh, gimme the tommygun.”

“Nope. I carried it up.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“Neither do you. Besides, you had a hard night last night—I had a dandy. C’mon. You go for the other side of the hole, I’ll take this—we’ll mow those boys down. Now don’t make any noise, and as soon as we’re there, cut loose. I mean cut loose.”

“Well, okeh. That clip wound tight?”

Wyatt tries the turnkey. “Yup.”

Bat unholsters the .45 from his shoulder and unlimbers its mate from his belt. “You sure you can handle that thing?”

“Don’t get funny,” Wyatt deadpans. “‘Smile when you say that, stranger.’”

They tiptoe to the hole, Bat taking the far side, Wyatt the near. Wyatt falls to his knees and shoulders the Thompson and depresses the muzzle into the hole at an angle and pulls the trigger and holds it as Bat, bending over, empties the Colt in each hand at the inside wall of the bin on the opposite side. It’s like shooting blind into a deep dark well. The barrel of the submachine gun, like those of all rapid-fire weapons when on automatic, tends to rise, and Wyatt must exert real effort to keep it down. The sixty-two reports meld into one continuous explosion, the echo of which, when the firing has ceased, booms and booms back and forth from one interior wall of the elevator to the other.

Bat and Wyatt remain in place until, at last, the huge bin beneath them is silent as the grave.

Bat rises, removes his hat, and hangs it solemnly over his heart. “Keno.”

Wyatt rises. “Two more for Harvey.”

“Now by God the money.”

Evidencing not the least terror of height on the trip down the iron rungs, Bat talks a blue streak about the lovely loot and the splash he’ll make blowing his share when he hits good old Gotham again, and when they reach
terra firma
he hurries ahead of Wyatt and whooshes up the wooden ladder like a Hottentot after a coconut and sticks his head fearlessly through the manhole.

“Well?” Wyatt inquires, leaning the tommygun against the wall and commencing his own climb.

Bat withdraws his head and beams. “Got ‘em. Great shooting— we never miss, do we? Mind if I go first, Mr. Earp?”

“Age before beauty.”

Bat dives through the hole like a twelve-year-old and presently has company. There is ample light inside, provided both by the manhole and the larger aperture on top of the bin through which they have just hurled lightning bolts of lead. They pay scant heed to the two stiffs near the far wall, riddled apparently by ricochet, but begin at once to tromp in circles, ankle-deep in wheat.