Cow-Country by B. M. Bower (best color ereader txt) 📗

He did not want to appear in public until the bank was opened, and he was a bit troubled over identification. There could be no harm, he reflected, in confiding to Mrs. Hanson as much as was necessary of his adventures. Wherefore he dried the dishes for her and told her his errand in town, and why it was that he and his horse had slept in her corral instead of patronizing hotel and livery stable. He showed her the checks he wanted to cash, and asked her, with flattering eagerness for her advice, what he should do. He had been warned, he said, that Jeff and his friends might try to beat him yet by stopping payment, and he knew that he had been followed by them to town.

“What You'll do will be what I tell ye,” Mrs Hanson replied with decision. “The cashier is a friend to me—I was with his wife last month with her first baby, and they swear by me now, for I gave her good care. We'll go over there this minute, and have talk with him. He'll do what he can for ye, and he'll do it for my sake.”

“You don't know me, remember,” Bud reminded her honestly.

The widow Hanson gave him a scornful smile and toss of her head. “And do I not?” she demanded. “Do you think I've buried three husbands and thinking now of the fourth, without knowing what's wrote a man's face? Three I buried, and only one died his bed. I can tell if a man's honest or not, without giving him the second look. If you've got them checks you should get the money on them—for I know their stripe. Come on with me to Jimmy Lawton's house. He's likely holding the baby while Minie does the dishes.”

Mrs. Hanson guessed shrewdly. The cashier of the Crater County Bank was doing exactly what she said he would be doing. He was sitting in the kitchen, rocking a pink baby wrapped in white outing flannel with blue border, when Mrs. Hanson, without the formality of more than one warning tap on the screen door, walked in with Bud. She held out her hands for the baby while she introduced the cashier to Bud. In the next breath she was explaining what was wanted of the bank.

“They've done it before, and ye know it's plain thievery and ought to be complained about. So now get your wits to work, Jimmy, for this friend of mine is entitled to his money and should have it if it is there to be had.”

“Oh, it's there,” said Jimmy. He looked at his watch, looked at the kitchen clock, looked at Bud and winked. “We open at nine, in this town,” he said. “It lacks half an hour—but let me see those checks.”

Very relievedly Bud produced them, watched the cashier scan each one to make sure that they were right, and quaked when Jimmy scowled at Jeff Hall's signature on the largest check of all. “He had a notion to use the wrong signature, but he may have lost his nerve. It's all right, Mr. Birnie. Just endorse these, and I'll take them into the bank and attend to them the first thing I do after the door is open. You'd better come in when I open up—”

“The gang had some talk about cleaning out the bank while they 're about it,” Bud remembered suddenly. “Can't you appoint me something, or hire me as a guard and let me help out? How many men do you have here in this bank?”

“Two, except when the president's in his office in the rear. That's fine of you to offer. We've been held up, once—and they cleaned us out of cash.” Jimmy turned to Mrs. Hanson. “Mother, can't you run over and have Jess come and swear Mr. Birnie in as a deputy? If I go, or he goes, someone may notice it and tip the gang off.”

Mrs. Hanson hastily deposited the baby in its cradle and went to call “Jess”, her face pink with excitement.

“You're lucky you stopped at her house instead of some other place,” Jimmy observed. “She's a corking good woman. As a deputy sheriff, you'll come in mighty handy if they do try anything, Mr. Birnie—if you're the kind of a man you look to be. I'll bet you can shoot. Can you?”

“If you scare me badly enough, I might get a cramp in my trigger finger,” Bud confessed. Jimmy grinned and went back to considering his own part.

“I'll cash these checks for you the first thing I do. And as deputy you can go with me. I'll have to unlock the door on time, and if they mean to stop payment, and clean the bank too, it will probably be done all at once. It has been a year since they bothered us, so they may need a little change. If Jess isn't busy he may stick around.”

“No one expects him to round up the gang, I heard.”

“No one expects him to go into Catrock Canyon after them. He'll round them up, quick enough, if he can catch them far enough from their holes.”

Jess returned with Mrs. Hanson, swore in a new deputy, eyed Bud curiously, and agreed to remain hidden across the road from the bank with a rifle. He nodded understandingly when Bud warned him that the looting was a matter of hearsay on his part, and departed with an awkward compliment to Mrs. Jim about hoping that the baby was going to look like her.

Jim lived just behind the bank, and a high board fence between the two buildings served to hide his coming and going. But Bud took off his hat and walked stooping,—by special request of Mrs. Hanson—to make sure that he was not observed.

“I think I'll stand out in front of the window,” said Bud when they were inside. “It will look more natural, and if any of these fellows show up I'd just as soon not show my brand the first thing.”

They showed up, all right, within two minutes of the unlocking of the bank and the rolling up of the shades. Jeff Hall was the first man to walk in, and he stopped short when he saw Bud lounging before the teller's window and the cashier busy within. Other men were straggling up on the porch, and two of them entered. Jeff walked over to Bud, who shifted his position enough to bring him facing Jeff, whom he did not trust at all.

“Mr. Lawton,” Jeff began hurriedly, “I want to stop payment on a check this young feller got from me by fraud. It's for five thousand eight hundred dollars, and I notify you—”

“Too late, Mr. Hall. I have already accepted the checks. Where did the fraud come in? You can bring suit, of course, to recover.”

“I'll tell you, Jimmy. He bet that my horse couldn't beat Dave Truman's Boise. A good many bet on the same thing. But my horse proved to have more speed, so a lot of them are sore.” Bud chuckled as other Sunday losers came straggling in.

“Well, it's too late. I have honored the checks,” Jimmy said crisply, and turned to hand a sealed manila envelope to the bookkeeper with whispered instructions. The bookkeeper, who had just entered from the rear of the office, turned on his heel and left again.

Jeff muttered something to his friends and went outside as if their