Hot Lead, Cold Justice Page 6

  The citizenry throughout the raid were a craven bunch, in his view—fleeing to cellars, cornfields, thickets, and ravines, some trying to swim to safety across the Kansas River. The raiders picked off many like the sitting ducks they were.

  There was the occasional light moment, as when one woman and her two kiddies came out of a house that Burnham was about to set to flame. Hugging her little ones to her, she begged the raiders on horseback to leave her house standing, and claimed she was just a poor young widow woman. She was fetching enough for some fun, but, again—they were warriors, not barbarians, no matter what was said of them!

  When Burnham set the house afire, it wasn’t long before the supposedly dead husband came running out of the house like he was on fire! Then some shots rang out and the craven, lying bastard really was dead.

  By sundown, the attack was over.

  Tragically, one of the raiders had lost his life. But it was a fair trade, Burnham felt, as something like two hundred boys and men, who had at least had the sand to stand up for themselves, were cut down like wheat to a scythe. As darkness fell, the triumphant raiders rode to a bluff and watched the orange flames lick the sky as billowing smoke rose to add clouds to the night.

  Those that considered Quantrill and his men nothing but robbers and murderers ignored the retribution from the other side that soon came down upon them and their supporters. Homes of their sympathizers were evacuated and ruthlessly looted, then burned to the ground. The time had come to leave this Missouri-Kansas no-man’s land, with Texas the next stop for the raiders.

  No one talked about the bravery they would show in the days ahead, and the good they would do. There was what some called the Barter Springs Massacre, which in Burnham’s mind was really a battle that had their band of four hundred reducing a Union general’s escort of one hundred to a mere twenty.

  Then, at Bonham, Texas, at General McCulloch’s direction, they’d been sent after conscription dodgers and chicken-hearted deserters, bringing some back, dispatching the rest with the kind of mercy such cowards deserved, which was none at all. The general sent the raiders to do the same with some of those uncivilized savages, the Comanches, but they proved too devious to be brought to justice.

  Around then, the captain’s lieutenant broke away and went off with his own band, and meanwhile Quantrill himself fell out with McCulloch, who objected to an assassination plot against a Confederate general—didn’t these fools know this was war?

  Suddenly some three hundred Confederate regulars were pursuing the raiders, who made it across the Red River and got resupplied as Confederate troops themselves, at a fort where nobody knew the guerillas were wanted men. After this, they made the long trek back to Missouri, pausing only for looting and burning.

  Through it all, Burnham stuck by the captain. Luke never was a regular soldier, but like a lot of the raiders, he wore a gray uniform jacket, taken from the body of an actual Confederate soldier who’d been riding with the raiders; whenever one of these got themselves killed, a raider would help himself to Confederate gray.

  Burnham to this day wore the jacket he’d acquired off the body of the only raider killed at Lawrence, a soldier. It was in good shape, too, as its prior wearer had got himself shot in the head. Went right through him, damn near between the eyes, so no gore or nothing got on the gray.

  Things kind of fell apart after a while, and there were some that stopped believing in the captain. “Bloody Bill” Anderson, a mean son of a bitch as the necklace of Yankee scalps he wore attested, broke off a bunch of the boys. Another faction was led by George Todd, a Quantrill lieutenant, who’d even got himself elected by the men over the captain.

  Things had got that bad.

  But Burnham had been part of the remaining company of raiders who Quantrill assembled, intending to ride right into Washington, D.C., and kill that damn traitorous President Lincoln. Only they had to turn back when the Union forces east of the Mississippi, amassed like they were, made the plan impractical.

  So they had gone back to raiding.

  One such raid, in Taylorsville, Kentucky, went off the rails. With their ranks reduced to thirty or so, the guerillas were waylaid by Union irregulars, and though the captain and his men fought valiantly, a bullet took William Quantrill down when the cowards (some not in uniform) cornered him in a barn. The bullet traveled through the captain’s spine, but he did not die right away. Summer of ’65 it was, when William Quantrill passed away in the military prison at Louisville.

  A great man taken too soon, Burnham had felt, and always would.

  For a time he rode with Archie Clement’s splinter group of raiders, keeping up the good fight after the official fighting was over, all through ’66. But pretty soon the raiders—like Jesse and Frank James, and the Younger brothers—took the skills they’d honed under the captain and carried them over into the outlaw life.

  Luke Burnham was one of those.

  He had started small, as a road agent, stopping riders and demanding their money and valuables. Worked his way up to stagecoach holdups, which he got very good at, and put together his own gang of half a dozen men. They had pulled several bank jobs, and were planning a train robbery, when Wells Fargo detective Caleb York took to their trail. That had been a humiliating turn of events, as York had caught Luke in bed in a Kansas City brothel with a colored girl.

  “What would your precious Quantrill say,” York had wondered aloud, pressing the nose of his .44 Colt into the throat of the naked-in-bed Burnham, “if he knew you were giving money to a dusky jewel like this?”

  Burnham had told the Wells Fargo man where he could go, and the Wells Fargo man had replied by cuffing him a good one with the .44. When Burnham woke up, he was in shackles in his long-johns, and that was the way York took him in.

  One day York would die for that.

  But the ex-Wells Fargo man, current sheriff of Trinidad, New Mexico, had not died the night before, as had been intended. Burnham and his boys had learned as much at the livery stable, when the blacksmith who ran it told them about it, just making conversation. Seemed York’s deputy had been wearing Caleb’s coat and got mistook for his boss.

  Burnham, who had fired the shots, had no one to blame but himself for that. Perhaps, after the day’s work, when they rode back to Trinidad, he could rectify his mistake.

  The thirty-some-mile trek from Trinidad to Las Vegas, on horseback, had taken them all night. The weather had turned cold enough and the snowfall picked up enough that even with their Missouri Fox Trotters, known for distance, the riders arrived well after sunup. Their canvas dusters had done a fair job keeping out the chill, but Burnham and his boys were happy to drop their mounts off at the stable, where he’d arranged things in advance.

  They headed to the posh Plaza Hotel, where their two rooms were a real step up from sleeping in a stable stall back in Trinidad. Two to a bed, they snored the morning away in crisp sheets and plenty of woolen blankets.

  The city was blanketed, too, by the time they arose around noon, but in heavy white, the snow coming down steady—wet, heavy stuff that turned the modern little city into a wintry ghost town.

  And despite the current lack of activity, Las Vegas was indeed modern, making Trinidad and so many other desert bumps in the road seem like relics of an increasingly fading yesterday. Nestled where the end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains met the start of the Great Plains, the town had a telephone company and waterworks, and a busy train yard just east of the Gallinas River. Residential sections were chock-a-block with Victorian homes that shouted money, echoed by a thriving commercial district where two- and three-story brick buildings loomed everywhere you looked. Hell, you had to go to Denver or Tucson or El Paso to rival the place.

  The amount of business here, cattle in particular, was why the Bank of Las Vegas was said to keep so much cash on hand to meet weekly payrolls.

  The four men—three in their black suits, with Burnham out of place in his customary gray Rebel jacket—sat in the dining
room of the Plaza. They were among the few wearing gun belts, another sign of how civilized the town had become, when not long ago Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid had been welcome. The grill bustled with business—it was lunch hour, after all—at odds with the street out the windows where only a hardy few walked against the wind and driving snow.

  Moody Bender was his usual gloomy self, talking between gulps of coffee. “I say we call it off. How the hell do we fight this weather?”

  As if to underscore Moody’s point, the wind past the windows howled.

  “Can’t last forever,” Ned Sivley said. Then the gray little scarecrow coughed into his napkin and bloodied it some, before adding, “We can wait it out. Hotel like this ain’t a bad place to do it.”

  “Not bad at all,” Jake Warlow said. The handsome bounder was grinning lasciviously, watching a pretty waitress go by with a steaming dish in hand.

  Burnham knew they couldn’t afford even another day in a palace like this, but all he said over the clank of china and silverware was “No.”

  “No?”

  “No?”

  “No?”

  “No,” Burnham said. “We use this to our benefit.”

  None of his boys had been military men, Burnham knew, so the obvious strategic advantages of the situation were lost on them.

  But at least now he had Warlow’s attention. The clean-shaven ladies’ man said, “How is a blizzard a goddamn benefit?”

  “We’ll be riding out ahead of it. Anyway, who’s to say it’s a blizzard? Snow like this don’t last long in these parts.”

  Moody said, “Those damn horses was half dead and nose-froze when we got here.”

  Burnham turned over a hand, lifting his coffee cup for a sip with the other. “And they had all morning to thaw out and rest up. Anyway, you can’t stop those Trotters. They just keep a-goin’.”

  Warlow, looking at another pretty waitress, who gave him a practiced sincere smile, said, “So you figure we can get back to Trinidad before the snow catches up with us.”

  “Or this downfall peters out,” Burnham said, shrugging. “Look out the windows.”

  The dining room was warm enough that frost only edged the glass, giving a good view of the white, unwelcoming world out there, its underpopulated nature evident.

  “You really think,” Burnham asked, “there will be many customers at the bank today?”

  “Not likely,” Moody admitted. “Everybody but us would have more sense.”

  Burnham smirked back at him. “Why, would you rather make our withdrawal with an audience of spooked civilians lookin’ on? Men who might decide to play hero, women to get all hysterical, little ones that’d start cryin’?” He was almost whispering now. “Or would you rather walk in where the bank is enjoying a dull day as lazy as a summer afternoon?”

  Sivley coughed into his red-spotted napkin again, then nodded toward the frost-edged windows. “That ain’t no summer afternoon out there, Luke.”

  “No. But it’s every damn bit as lazy.”

  No further argument ensued. The boys knew not to question their boss too hard or he might lose his temper. They used to be five, this little gang, until Burnham shot dead that mouthy son of a bitch, Lon Dooley.

  Anyway, a nice warm meal had arrived, the Blue Plate Special—roast beef, whipped potatoes, and asparagus. Perfect for cold weather, and fine fuel for the job ahead.

  Before long, the Burnham bunch had checked out of the hotel and, gun belts under dusters, headed through the wet, near-blinding snowfall. They might have been hiking a snowy mountain path for all the citizens they encountered.

  The Bank of Las Vegas was in the middle of a block on the plaza—banks almost always had a building to either side of them, leaving only the front and back exposed, often situated in the middle of town. That was one reason why bank robberies were more rare in the West than the dime novelists thought—but an experienced raider like Luke Burnham was happy to be the exception.

  When Burnham tried the double front doors, he found them locked, though the hours painted on the glass indicated the bank should be open. A week before, he had cased the place, and taken stock of its security measures and the number of employees, and knew what to expect under normal circumstances.

  That the bank might have closed due to the weather was a possibility he’d considered. Through the building’s frosted-over windows, the quartet could see only lamp glow, but that was enough to say that someone was in there, and they shared nods to that effect.

  With his gloved left hand—his right was gloveless and stuffed into the slit of his duster, giving him easy access to his Colt Lightning .32-20—Burnham pounded his fist on the door, rattling it.

  Nothing.

  He did the same again, and still no response.

  Glancing at his boys, all of whom were frowning, concern growing that Mother Nature had upended their plans, the outlaw leader kept pounding.

  Then came the scrape and click of the door unlocking, cracking open to reveal a distinguished-looking gent with white hair and white muttonchops, who Burnham recognized from his scouting as the bank president.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” the banker said, in a deep, mellifluous voice. He was about fifty, tall and slim, and wore a tailored brown sack suit with a wingtip collar and four-in-hand tie. “Due to the lack of business, and the unfortunate weather conditions, we’ve closed early, I’m afraid.”

  “Sir,” Burnham said, firm but pleasant, his hat tugged down to conceal the milky eye that might be disconcerting, “we have a sizable deposit to make.”

  The bank president shook his head, shrugged. “I’m sorry. I fear my staff has gone home.”

  Good news.

  Burnham, his foot in the door, said, “We’re surveyors for the Santa Fe. Been working down Trinidad way—this new spur going in?”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  “Finished our work and we don’t want to walk around with this kind of money on our persons. Could you put it in your safe? Give us a receipt? We can make a formal deposit when you’re open for business.” Burnham smiled. “Storm can’t last forever.”

  The banker thought about it. He sighed, nodded, opened the door wider. The four “surveyors” stepped inside, Moody the last in and shutting the door behind them.

  Hurricane-lamp chandeliers cast a yellowish glow on the surprisingly modest facility, although the floor was marble and the usual gleaming brass touches were here and there. Three openings in a metal, fence-like framework atop a polished wooden counter served as teller windows, while a massive safe stood against the back wall, its four-inch-thick door open to reveal stacks of money below and small sacks of coin on shelving above.

  An open safe like this was a common practice in the West, meant to reassure customers their money was still on the premises, and well-protected in a safe that would shut tight after closing.

  The only other employee, besides the banker himself, was a security guard in a blue uniform with a blue cap, apparel that was obviously meant to suggest a police presence, but only made Burnham think of a Union soldier. The guard was a big, stupid-looking man with a handgun on his hip; he wore a mustache and suspicion, the latter manifested by resting the heel of his hand on the butt of the holstered weapon.

  The bank president gestured to a desk behind a wooden spindle rail with a gate. A tall, wide, metal cabinet with short, wide drawers for maps, blueprints, or other oversize official documents hugged the wall. This area apparently served as his office.

  “How much cash are we talking, gentlemen?” the banker asked, as he held open the gate door graciously, gesturing for them to join him. Only Burnham went in.

  “All of it,” the outlaw leader said.

  The banker smiled. “Well, of course, but could you be more specific? Tell me what your count is, for your combined pay, and I will verify it.”

  “Certainly,” Burnham said, and he turned and gave Moody a nod, and Moody—who was nearest to the guard—swung and shot him in the
head.

  The room was high-ceilinged enough to make the crack of Moody’s Merwin spur-trigger .38 resonate. The guard, who had just enough time to form a surprised expression but not enough to go for his gun, teetered for a moment, as if he weren’t already dead, then collapsed like a house of cards, landing with limbs going every which way. On the wall behind him, next to a framed hanging portrait of President Grover Cleveland, was a generous splash of red, dripping like too much carelessly applied paint.

  The banker froze and the weather had not a damn thing to do with it.

  “By all of the money,” Burnham said, withdrawing the Colt Lighting revolver from under the duster, “I mean all of your money. Well, your depositors’ money. Cash and coin. Do you have something we can put it in?”

  Their host had turned almost as white as his head of hair and muttonchops. He remained frozen, though now looking past Burnham at the fallen guard and the blood streaming down the wall past President Cleveland’s unconcerned face.

  Burnham got the banker’s attention by shoving the nose of the Colt into his belly, making him jump, but it did the job. And he let the man see that scarred, milky eye.

  “Do you,” Burnham repeated, “have something to put it in? The money?”

  Soon the banker was kneeling at the altar of the big safe, piling money into a canvas bag with his bank’s name on it. He put the coin sacks in first, which was thoughtful, since that was where the weight should go.

  But Burnham was frowning as the last banded money packets went in. “How much is that?”

  The banker’s voice, like his finger, trembled. “Current balance of our cash reserve is eighteen thousand dollars. The cash from the teller’s drawers . . . which we collected from them before they left early for the day . . . brings it to just over twenty thousand.”

  Burnham scowled and almost spat the words: “Where’s the rest of it?”

  The banker blinked. “The rest of what?”

  “The money!”

  He gestured at the bag, the top limp and hanging, like a night cap. “That’s all of it. That’s everything.”