I had some extra time to write today, so here's a short "teaser" chapter. See you all soon
The small sorrel gelding tossed his head and snorted, jogging to the other side of the corral away from Heyes, who stood by the fence with a dried apple in his hand. He climbed over the top rail and dropped inside the muddy pen, walking slowly toward the gelding and whistling the same three notes, over and over. The horse eyed him as he neared and then jogged away. He heard a chuckle behind him and turned to see his partner watching him.
"He's a real jughead, Kid."
"No, he ain't. He just ain't Fannie. No horse is gonna measure up, Heyes."
Tossing the apple into the bucket tied to the rail, Heyes walked back to Curry wearing a sad smile. "She sure was something, wasn't she?"
"She still is, and now she'll be making more somethings. You ain't sorry you gave her to Allie, are you?"
"No. Fannie was the only thing I had that was good enough for Allie. I'm not sorry." Heyes sorely missed that woman and that mare. His partner knew it.
"You did the right thing for Fannie. She's too fine a filly to be risking her getting shot or breaking a leg. She ought to be making babies."
Heyes smiled and looked back at the gelding who still eyed him warily. "Guess I'll have to get used to riding other horses."
"You will. When do you plan on riding into Laramie?"
"I thought we'd head out of here about four or so; that ought to put us in town pretty late. We'll steer clear of the saloons and that way we ought to miss the law."
"I sure hope so, partner."
OOOOOOOOOO
It was a Wednesday night, and Laramie was fairly quiet. There were still a few drunks milling around outside a couple of the saloons when the Kid and Heyes rode in, but they were the serious sort of drunks, the kind that drank themselves into oblivion, not the Saturday-night-rowdy-cowboy-call the sheriff kind of drunks.
The Kid kept a close eye out for any sign of the law while the two partners rode down Thornburg Avenue to the Kuster Hotel. They planned to stay the night. Curry was looking forward to it, the Kuster was a nice place and the food was good; he could already taste that big, juicy, beefsteak he was going have.
Dismounting in front of the hotel, both men knocked the trail dust from their clothes. Heyes removed his carpetbag from his saddle, the Kid grabbed his saddlebags, and they stepped inside the building. A night clerk was dozing at the desk, balanced precariously on a small stool with his head down on the register. Heyes walked noisily up to the counter and the man never stirred. He cleared his throat. No response. He looked at his partner, looked at the bell next to the man's right ear, and grinned broadly. He rang the bell enthusiastically causing the startled clerk to fall off his stool. Embarrassed, the poor man quickly pulled himself upright, straightened his checkered vest, and tried to regain his dignity. "Good evening, sirs, how might I be of service to you?"
"We'd like a room, two beds, two baths; for one night, please," said Heyes.
"Yes sir, I can accommodate you. That will be three dollars for the room and a dollar for both the baths. Would you care to board your horses as well?" the man asked politely. "That would be an extra dollar, sirs, but I can have my man take them around for you."
"Sounds good to me," Heyes spun the register around and signed them both in.
"Is the dining room still open?" asked the Kid.
"Yes sir, until midnight, sir. It's eleven-twenty-three right now, sir." The clerk held out the room key to the Kid. "Your room is upstairs on the second floor, third door on the left overlooking Thornburg, Mr…aah" he looked at the upside down register, "…Lingelbach."
"Thanks," said Curry. Heyes picked up his bag and they started up the steps.
"Lingelbach? You know, it sure is a good thing you never had children. I shudder to think of the names you'd have saddled them with."
"The stranger the name, the less it looks like an alias. Trust me, with a name like mine, if I was naming a kid; it'd be Bill or John."
OOOOOOOOOO
At two a.m., the door to room twenty-five eased open, and a dark head peered out. Heyes crept out into the hallway followed by Kid Curry. They slithered down the stairs along the wall edge to avoid any creaky treads and snuck past the sleeping desk clerk. Once out on the street, the two men picked up the pace and ducked down the alley alongside the hotel. They stuck to the alleyways until they reached the back door to the Wells Fargo office. Heyes took a few minutes to pick the three locks that secured the back door and he and the Kid slipped inside. Curry crossed the room quickly and lowered a partially opened shade before checking the other rooms.
Heyes lit a single small candle and put it inside a shielded miner's lantern. It cast very little light, but enough for their purposes. He went into the front of the building and began opening and closing the desk drawers. He pulled out the papers in each drawer and quickly scanned them, pausing to study a few more slowly. In one of the last drawers, he found a set of keys, left by a careless employee. He picked them up and rattled them lightly to get the Kid's attention. Curry was keeping watch out the front window. He turned and looked at Heyes who held up the keys. The Kid smiled then gestured that it was time to go. They'd been there less than three minutes.
Using the keys, Heyes re-locked all three locks on the back door. He would've had to have left the large deadbolt open and had been hoping that the opening clerk coming in the morning would chalk that up to a co-worker's carelessness. This way, no one would be the wiser about their little late night visit and no self-respecting Wells Fargo clerk was going to admit he'd lost a set of keys to the bank, either. Heyes slipped the key ring into his pocket.
OOOOOOOOOO
Closing the door to their hotel room, Heyes chuckled happily, "Can you believe it? What is up with these banks, they're practically handing the money to us."
The Kid flopped on the bed and yawned, "Too bad they didn't leave you the combination to that safe."
Heyes was brimming with energy and nearly bounced as he walked back and forth at the foot of the Kid's bed. "We don't need the combination, Kid. I've changed my mind; we aren't robbing the bank."
"We ain't? Why not? I thought that's what tonight was all about? We were casing the place to figure out when the money came in."
"We were and I did figure it out, but then I got another idea."
Curry groaned and rolled his eyes, "I hate your ideas."
"No you don't, not all of them, and you're gonna love this one." Heyes was smiling maniacally, his dimples carved deeply into his cheeks.
"Tell me in the morning, I ain't listening anymore," the Kid turned onto his side and pulled the pillow over his head.
Heyes walked over and sat next to him, pulling the pillow away, and causing his partner to look up at him. "We rob banks all the time. What if we did something the law won't expect us to? Wells Fargo is beefing up security. They're nervous after the Fort Collins robbery and they got a big shipment coming in real soon so they're putting on more guards. No one's taking any chances. Now, the problem with the job I had planned is that Wells doesn't hold onto the money long before it gets shipped back out. We'd have to time everything real close to catch that safe full of money, and you can bet your ass that, when it's full, Wells is going to have plenty of guards watching it.
So, I got to thinking…" Heyes held up a hand to stop his partner from interjecting, "hold on now, don't say anything, hear me out. Wells ships gold and money all over the west by stagecoach. It's their business. Now, this big shipment is coming in and Wells is figuring it'll be safer to ship it in two parts; they're gonna use two brand-new specially fortified stages to deliver it. They're hiring on more drivers and shotgun riders, too, just to keep an eye on the money that's being brought in and make sure it gets into their brand-new safe."
"We don't rob stagecoaches, Heyes, particularly not fortified ones. Remember, you made that rule?" mumbled the Kid, turning his back to his cousin again.
"We ain't robbing the stagecoaches."
The Kid rolled onto his back once more and stared at his partner. "If we ain't robbing the bank and we ain't robbing the stages, what the hell are we doing?"
"We're going to steal the stages, Kid, it'll be faster and safer that way."
"Two stagecoaches? Ain't they going to be a little hard to carry off?"
OOOOOOOOOO