Shotgun Charlie by Ralph Compton Page B

to her was confusing, but he liked her. She had spunk. But maybe she was too smart for her own good. “You accusing me of thinking of robbing that bank?”
    She’d snorted at that, chuckled. “You think you’re the first to ever think of that? I was you I’d get at it right quick before Marshal Wickham sobers up. Once he’s back on the job, you won’t stand a snowball’s chance, you hear me?”
    â€œWho’s he? Why should I be concerned about him?”
    She’d only sighed and begun tugging on her stockings. But he kept on peppering her with questions. Finally she turned back to him.
    â€œWhat part of ‘lawman’ don’t you understand? Look.” She tugged her dress back down over her breasts and sighed again. “I like you. You’re . . . strange and kind of exciting. But I don’t want to know what you’re thinking of doing and I don’t want any part of it. As far as I’m concerned, anything you’ve said to me, and anything I’ve said to you, is just that . . . talk to be forgotten, and nothing more.”
    â€œSuits me fine,” said Grady. And that was the way they’d left it. He’d not seen her since, but found it curious that he still thought of her now and again.
    . . .
    After Grady clubbed the old man, he rummaged behind the teller counter, slamming drawers and shouting orders to the other men. He’d told them he wasn’t going to call them by name, but he did the same.
    â€œAce! Dutchy! Get on up to the front where the money’s at.” The two men looked at each other, then strode forward to the front, doing what he bade them. It also became apparent to every customer in the bank that they were there to rob the place.
    Haskell felt that worn grip in his hand, comfortable as a broken-in boot, and he regretted that he had only been able to bean the old gent to keep him from squawking. He would have preferred to shoot him, but it was too early in the proceedings to make such noise. He’d tried to club him out of sight, but the old man was quicker than he looked. With the drooped mouth on that old hangdog face of his, Grady knew he’d been about to yelp and spill the frijoles to everyone in the place.

Chapter 18
    The old man, whom Grady thought he’d laid low with that temple blow, had only sagged back against the counter. The old gent clawed at Grady’s gun hand and tried to knock the weapon free. Grady growled, took a step back, and in a single familiar motion, raised the weapon, thumbed back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger, a smile blooming on his face even as the weapon barked a harsh sound and rammed its deadly fist into the old man’s shoulder.
    The shot caught the old warhorse of a prospector in the right shoulder, plowing a bloody canal, shredding meat and splintering bone, and spinning the veteran around on his feet as if he were engaged in a dervish dance.
    â€œNo shooting!” shouted Dutchy. “You said there’d be no shooting!”
    Grady turned the gun on him. “You shut up or you’re next!”
    Dutchy bit down on the angry oaths building inside him.
    The old man, who went by the name of Muley Timmons, and had done so since the War of Northern Aggression, had always appeared older than his years. Even when he was a child of seven or eight, his parents had watched in confusion as he would roam the dooryard of their homestead in Nebraska, hunched over as if he were ailing from a bad back, hands thrust in his trousers waistband, a look of seeming concern pulling his little boy eyebrows together.
    He’d kept that perpetual overall elderly look his entire life and now that he was actually an old man at sixty-four, near as he could recall, he felt for certain that it was all over. He’d made it through the war all those years before without so much as a sniffle, though the prospect of being shot at any moment had weighed him