The Chase Part 19

Already, Bell was looking at him with a questioning expression on his face, as if the female customer looked familiar. Bell was a master of identification and had a photographic memory when it came to faces. His eyes betrayed the fact that he was trying to recall where he'd seen her. Then his eyes dropped to Cromwell's hands, which were covered by leather gloves. Abruptly, as if he had seen an apparition, he realized that he was staring at the bandit. It struck him like a hammer blow to the head. Bell's eyes flared open and he gasped: "You!" "You!"

Cromwell did not waste another second. He reached into his large cloth purse and jerked out his .38 Colt, which had a heavy cloth taped around the muzzle. Without the slightest hesitation, he pointed the Colt at Irvine's chest and pulled the trigger. A loud thump reverberated in the bank's lobby. Then he swung the muzzle around and shot at Bell even before Irvine hit the floor like a rag doll.

If Bell hadn't instinctively whirled around and thrown his body over the top of the desk, cras.h.i.+ng to the floor behind it, the bullet would have caught him square in the stomach. The violent thrust saved him, but the bullet still plowed through the fleshy part of his thigh. He hardly felt the piercing blow. In a single movement, he reached up and s.n.a.t.c.hed his Colt from the desk drawer. Without the luxury of time, he snapped off a shot at Cromwell that missed the neck of the bandit by less than half an inch.

Then, faster than lightning could strike, both men fired again, the shots coming so closely together they sounded as one.

Cromwell's second bullet gouged a small trench across the side of Bell's head, barely piercing the skin but creasing the skull. Bell's vision became a blurred mist and he fell into the black pit of unconsciousness. Blood quickly seeped from the wound and covered the side of his head. It had not been a decisive wound, but to Cromwell, who was still standing, it looked as if he had shot off half of Bell's head.

The bandit did not come out of the gun battle unscathed. Bell's bullet had caught Cromwell in the waist but had pa.s.sed through without striking any internal organs. He swayed, and only by reaching out and grasping the edge of the teller's cage did he prevent himself from falling to the floor. He stood there for a few moments, fighting the pain. Then he turned and unlocked the rear door, standing aside as Margaret burst in.

"I heard shots outside," she shouted shock. "What went wrong?"

"It was a trap," he murmured as anger replaced fear. Holding a hand over his wound, he motioned the muzzle of his Colt toward the office floor. "I killed Isaac Bell."

Margaret stepped into the office and looked down at the bloodied Van Dorn agent and a look of horror came into her eyes as she recognized Bell despite the blood covering much of his face. "Oh, my G.o.d!" She felt as if she was going to be sick, but the nausea quickly pa.s.sed when she turned and saw that her brother was also bleeding. "You're hurt!" she gasped.

"Not as bad as it looks," he said through clenched teeth.

"We've got to get out of here. The shots will bring the sheriff and rouse half the town."

Margaret half carried, half dragged her wounded brother through the rear door of the bank. Outside, the horse and buggy were waiting. She used all her strength to push him onto the seat of the rig, untied the horse from the fence post, and climbed aboard.

She raised the whip to urge the horse to a gallop, but he grabbed her wrist. "No, go slowly, as if we're two women out for a buggy ride. It will look suspicious if we charge out of town."

"The sheriff is a smart man. I know him. He won't fool easily."

"Even a smart man won't suspect a woman of robbing a bank and killing two men," muttered Cromwell.

At the end of the alley, Margaret turned the buggy up a side street and then headed west toward the town limits. Cromwell took off the wolfskin coat and draped it over his lap to cover the blood that soaked his sweater. He slipped the Colt into one of his cowboy boots and sat back, trying to keep his mind clear by ignoring the throbbing pain in his side.

BELL HAD instructed Sheriff Pardee that he would fire a shot as a signal if the bandit made his appearance. But Pardee knew there was trouble when he heard five shots, some of them m.u.f.fled like the distant dynamite charge in a nearby mine. He rushed into the street from a hardware store where he had been hiding, fearful that the woman he'd seen walk into the bank might have been shot by the bandit.

Seeing him running toward the bank, four of his deputies leaped from their hiding places and rushed after him, while a fifth deputy ran to the railroad depot to alert Curtis. With his single-action Smith & Wesson drawn and the hammer pulled back, Pardee burst through the door of the bank. At first, he didn't see anyone. Irvine was lying out of sight, behind the teller's cage, and Bell was down on the other side of the desk. Then he came around the cage, saw the Van Dorn agent sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. He checked to make sure Irvine was dead before he entered the office and found Bell.

"Is he a goner?" asked one of his deputies, a great bear of a man with a huge stomach bulging over pants with suspenders stretched to their limits, who stood poised with a sawed-off shotgun at the ready.

"The bullet only creased his skull," answered Pardee. "He's still alive."

"What about the woman?"

Pardee's mind did not register for a moment. Then it hit him. "The woman who came into the bank before the gunshots?"

"That one."

"She must have been abducted by the bandit."

"But we saw no one else enter the bank before or after her."

Pardee stood up in confusion and disbelief. It took all his imagination to believe a woman was the Butcher Bandit.

"The bandit must have entered through the back door."

"I don't know, Sheriff," said the deputy, scratching his chin. "The door should have been locked from the inside, like it always is."

Pardee rushed over to the rear door and found it unlocked. He jerked it open and peered up and down the alley but saw no one. "h.e.l.l's fire," he muttered. "She got away."

"She can't get far," said the deputy.

"Round up the men!" snapped Pardee. He motioned to another deputy, who was standing at the entrance of the bank. "Get Doc Madison. Tell him the Van Dorn agent is down with a head wound and to get over to the bank double-quick." Pardee knelt down and quickly examined Bell again. "Also tell him there looks like there's a bullet in the agent's leg."

The deputy was no sooner out the door than Pardee was on his heels, running toward his horse tied to the hitching post in front of his office. It didn't seem possible, he thought, that everything had gone so terribly wrong. Only then did it begin to strike him that the bandit was a man disguised as a woman and that the poor widow he and his wife had taken in was an accomplice.

AS SOON as they left the city limits of Telluride and pa.s.sed the road leading to the mines of Ophir to the south, Margaret gave the horse the whip and urged it to run through the canyon and down the road heading west toward Montrose. During the ten minutes since they left the bank, Cromwell had time to think. He pointed to a break in the trees that led to a bridge over the San Miguel River. It was an overgrown access road used by the railroad for maintenance crews repairing the track.

"Get off the road," Jacob said to Margaret. "Go over the bridge and head down the track bed."

She turned and looked at him. "I thought you said they'd never be suspicious of two women in a buggy?"

"That was before it occurred to me that the sheriff and his deputies were watching the bank."

"That goes without saying, but what does it have to do with our escape?"

"Don't you see, dear sister? I was the last one to enter the bank and never came out. If what you say is true, Pardee is no fool. He must have put two and two together by now and is looking for both of us. But he'll never think to search for us riding over the track bed. He'll be certain we took the road."

"And if he doesn't find us, what do you think he'll do then?"

"He'll backtrack, thinking that we hid out in the trees while he and his posse rode past. By then, we'll be on a train out of Montrose, dressed as two men."

As usual, Cromwell was miles ahead of his pursuers when it came to matching wits. Though he was disheartened that Bell had out-smarted him in laying a well-conceived trap, he gained a certain amount of satisfaction believing he had killed the famous Van Dorn agent.

Just as he had predicted, the sheriff and his posse charged down the road that was out of sight of the railroad tracks in the trees and, not finding any sign of their quarry, had doubled back toward Telluride. It was a b.u.mpy ride over the railroad ties, but it was compensated for by knowing that Pardee had been hoodwinked and would end up empty-handed.

27.

BELL WAS CARRIED TO THE TELLURIDE HOSPITAL, where he was treated by the town doctor. The first bullet out of Cromwell's Colt had entered and exited his thigh, causing only minor damage to the tissue. The doctor said it would heal within a month. The doctor then st.i.tched the scalp wound, sewing up the crease as neatly as a tailor mending a torn suit pocket.

After ignoring the doctor's demands that he remain in the hospital for a few days, Bell limped to the depot to take the next train to Denver. Wearing a hat to cover the bandage around his head, he, along with Curtis, watched with anger and sadness as the coffin containing Irvine was lifted into the baggage car by Sheriff Pardee's deputies. Then he turned and held out his hand to Pardee. "Sheriff, I can't thank you enough for your cooperation. I'm grateful."

Pardee shook Bell's hand. "I'm sorry about your friend," he said sincerely. "Did he have a family?"

"Fortunately, no wife or children, but he lived with an aging mother."

"Pour soul. I suppose it's the county poorhouse for her."

"She'll be taken care of in a good nursing home."

"A good nursing home doesn't come cheap. Did Irvine have money?"

"No," replied Bell, "but I do."

Pardee refrained from any more questions. "If only things had fallen our way."

"Our well-laid plans certainly turned into a fiasco," said Bell, seeing the baggage car door close behind the coffin. "The bandit made me out the fool."

"Not your fault," said Pardee. "He fooled us all, and I was the biggest fool. I'm certain now the dest.i.tute widow who my wife and I took in was in cahoots with him. I should have been suspicious when she finagled information out of me about the bank's operations."

"But you didn't tell her there was a trap being set. Cromwell would have never walked into the bank if he suspected a trap."

Pardee shook his head. "They bought your story-hook, line, and sinker. If only we had known he was going to wear women's clothing, we might not have thought twice before we shot him down like the dog he is."

"According to reports of his other robberies, he never dressed as a woman."

"Even if the trap turned sour, my posse and I should have apprehended them. Stupidly, I thought they'd stay on the road. It never crossed my mind they would use the railroad track bed as an escape route until it was too late. By the time I figured out how they had outfoxed me, they were long gone."

"Were the train pa.s.senger lists checked in Montrose?"

"I wired the stationmaster, but they had already left on the train to Grand Junction," answered Curtis. "He didn't remember two women boarding, but he noticed two men. He said that one looked as if he were sick."

"There was blood on the back step of the bank," said Pardee with a tight smile. "You must have plugged him."

"Not seriously enough to stop him," Bell muttered quietly.

"I telegraphed the marshal of the territory. He had deputies in Grand Junction search all the trains going east and west but found no trace of two women traveling together."

Bell leaned on a cane given to him by Pardee. "I'm beginning to know how the bandit's mind works. He went back to wearing men's clothes and dressed his sister as a man, too. The marshal, looking for two females, never suspected them."

"A clever man, Cromwell."

"Yes," admitted Bell, "he is that."

"Where do you go from here?" asked Pardee.

"Back to Denver and start all over again."

"But now you know the bandit's name and habits."

"Yes, but making a case is impossible. No federal prosecutor would waste time on an indictment with such flimsy evidence."

"You'll nail him," Pardee said confidently.

"We'll work even harder now that we've got a personal reason to see him hung," said Bell.

WHEN BELL and Curtis reached Denver late in the evening, a hea.r.s.e was waiting to take Irvine to the local mortuary.

"He was my closest friend," said Curtis. "I'll console his mother and take care of the funeral arrangements."

"Thank you," Bell said. "I'll take care of the costs."

Bell took a taxi to the Brown Palace Hotel. Entering his suite, he removed his clothes and relaxed in a tub of hot water, propping his wounded leg on the edge to keep the bandage from getting wet. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander over the events of the past few days. Bell now knew the woman he'd pa.s.sed in the New Sheridan Hotel was Margaret Cromwell. When her brother entered the bank from the front door, she was waiting in the rear with a horse and buggy. The picture of Cromwell made up as a woman disgusted him, yet he could not help but respect the shrewd, calculating mind of the Butcher Bandit. Avoiding Sheriff Pardee's posse by driving the rig down the railroad track bed was a stroke of genius.

At first, Bell thought Cromwell would not tempt fate with another robbery. The possibility seemed extremely remote, but, as he had with all the criminals he'd apprehended, Bell began to make inroads inside Cromwell's mind. He trained himself to think like the bandit. The more Bell thought about it, the more he became convinced that Cromwell believed he was invincible and immune to every investigation by law enforcement officers, especially the agents of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.

The next step would have to be carefully thought out. His mind was considering alternatives to acc.u.mulate enough evidence to arrest Cromwell when he heard a knock on his door. Favoring his good leg and suffering a brief bout of dizziness caused by his head wound as he stood, Bell climbed awkwardly out of the tub, put on a robe, and limped to the door. After pulling it open, he was surprised to see Joseph Van Dorn standing in the hallway.

Van Dorn looked up at the bandage around Bell's head, which had seeped a spot of red, and he grinned tightly. "You're a sorry sight."

"Come in, sir, and make yourself at home."

Van Dorn studied his wounded agent. He was concerned, but he made an effort to look nonchalant. "Is there much pain?"

"Nothing aspirin won't cure."

Van Dorn stepped into the suite and looked around. "I like an agent who travels in style when it's not my money."

"Can I call room service and get you something to eat or drink?"

Van Dorn waved a hand. "No, thanks, I ate on the train from Chicago just before it arrived in Denver. A gla.s.s of port would hit the spot."

Bell phoned Van Dorn's request to room service and hung up the phone. "I did not expect the head man to travel over a thousand miles just to see me."

"A meeting between us is not only appropriate but vital to the investigation." Van Dorn sank into an overstuffed chair. "I prefer a detailed report to a few words on a telegram. Now, tell me what happened in Telluride, and leave out nothing."

"Most of what I can tell you went wrong," Bell said sourly.

"Don't blame yourself," Van Dorn consoled him. "I wish I had a dollar for every plan I conceived that turned bad."

A waiter brought a gla.s.s of port, and then Bell spent the next forty minutes filling Van Dorn in on the scheme to catch the Butcher Bandit and how Cromwell turned the tables on him and Sheriff Pardee. He told of the murder of Irvine and his own wounding, ending up with him waking up in the Telluride Hospital.