Tawny took a deep breath and let it out again. Her horse’s sides heaved while he caught his own breath from loping through the deep snow toward the bank.
She stood behind it now, in the dark. She checked her watch and felt the canvas bag she had tucked into her coat. It was almost 3 a.m.
The town was still blackened from the electrical outage. The tell-tale beeping of some kind of work truck was carried on the frigid air to her ears. It was probably the electrical crews working somewhere on Main Street.
She rode the gray closer to the backside of the bank and past a dumpster that bore little resemblance to trash receptacles. Instead, it looked like some frosty monolith meant to frighten off stupid people who thought they could make the bad things in life go away by doing more stupid things.
“What in the hell am I doing here?” she whispered to her horse.
She sat frozen in her spot on her horse, happy for the rest.
If she did this and was caught, her life was over.
There she was, on a horse with the money stolen from the bank. They would believe she had robbed the bank. And since they were such bumbling idiots, they would never even consider she had a clear alibi for the time, let alone any other facts that did not add up. They would just say they caught their bank robber.
Nevertheless, Zeke’s voice echoed in her mind.
“So make sure ya don’t screw it up,” he’d said. Since he had ridden over the butte and south, she thought of what he had said to her and how she let fear hobble her in life.
She took one more look around the bank, a tan brick building with fashionable Holly bushes planted just outside a huge window. The bushes seemed to wrap around the building.
It was an old building that appeared to have been built on a small hill. There were stairs up to the north entrance where the night deposit was located, but there was a large, six-foot drift preventing her from riding directly up the steps next to the deposit box.
Suddenly, with a level of purpose and determination that she had not seen in herself for four years, she spurred the gray, and he leapt up and onto the drift. The two sank somewhat, into the still wet and unpacked snow but made it nearly up to the bank deposit box.
Then it happened. Her horse slipped sideways, struggling to stay upright but slipping quickly toward the plate window.
The two crashed sideways through the huge window, righting themselves on the tan carpet covering half of the bank lobby.
The gray snorted and stood shaking, as if to move would bring more trauma.
“Whoa Gray,” Tawny said, panting and smoothing the gelding’s black mane.
She glanced at the lobby and to her left at the office of the bank vice president, Skip Hall.
Skip was, by all accounts a nice man who had helped her father as much as he could, when he had lost it all and sold the ranch.
He was, perhaps the most well known in Cheyenne for his almost constant presence and support of the town.
Mr. Hall had been the only one who would give her dad a loan then, so he could buy a place in town for the family after they had to sell out.
She listened quietly, no alarm from what she could hear, but surely there must be some type of electrical back up for a silent system or something.
She would have to act quickly.
Jumping off the gray onto the tan carpet, she sprinted into Hall’s unlocked office.
She set the money on his computer key board and then, with gloved fingers wrote a note on a pink piece of paper she tore from a pad on his desk.
“What do I write,” she asked herself. This question had never occurred to her.
“Dear Mr. Hall. Sorry. I regret my actions,” the note read.
It wasn’t very eloquent, but it said was it needed to say.
Tawny taped the note to Skip’s computer.
She stepped to his door, closed, and locked it.
“What bank president leaves his office door open Gray?”
The only answer she got was the wind and snow now coming through the gaping hole in the plate glass window.
Quickly and quietly, she trotted out of Skips office hallway and giggled when she approached her horse, who still wore a look of shock on his face as he stood with his head near one of the bank teller windows, as if he was a customer.
She jumped back onto him.
This time, she guided the horse carefully out the shattered window, through the Holly bushes and leapt back through the drift.
The two loped through the snow toward the street. She would have to take a chance on being in the street to avoid anyone following the tracks back to where she was really going.
Before anyone understood what had taken place, the snowplow would come through and erase any trace of her direction. She could hear it in the downtown area now and she caught a glimpse of its flashing yellow lights.
As she made her way down the plowed back streets, toward a little-known alley running past the city dump, she stopped and looked at the dark town once more. She had done it.
“You made a pretty awful mess of it, but you done it.”
It was Zeke’s voice in her head again. She knew it’s what he would say, and he’d mean it as a compliment.
Blood trickled down unplanned paths created by the creases in Zeke’s shoulders, back and belly. It dripped from the cliff of his body and then drizzled tiny, red rivers on the dark mane of the piebald mare and froze there into some macabre slushy.
The two stood in the lee of a ridge that overlooked more than 2,000 acres of snow-covered sand hills.
Zeke hunched over his saddle horn and rested his head on the side of the shivering mare’s neck. By now, he figured Tawny would have reached the bank, judging by the distance of the ridge from which they had surveyed the town. He hoped she was able to return the money without any sign of her coming and going.
He didn’t know why he had chosen to become involved in all of this, but he knew one thing was sure, he felt better than he had for the last two years. He wasn’t sure why, but Zeke wasn’t questioning the whys. He just knew he was and that was enough.
He felt the mare tense as she lifted her head slightly to a sound only she heard.
He righted himself in the saddle for a moment and peered into the vastness, straining to see or hear what she sensed.
Was it the sound of a motor? Or could that just be an oil pumping unit he heard in the distance?
Shaking, he opened his coat and pulled back the tattered cloth of his shirt, high and to the right of his collarbone. Blood poured steadily from it. Reaching with his left hand over the top of his shoulder, he felt of the place where the bullet had entered and gasped at the size of the wound.
Suddenly, from his right, he was struck by something so forcefully it knocked him out of his saddle and into a drift of snow to the left of the startled mare. For a split second, all Zeke could envision was his once, nearly fatal encounter with a mountain lion while gathering cattle in the Grand Tetons. But when he looked up, it was no cat he saw, it was Mitch Thornton.
Zeke felt Mitch’s hands around his neck. He was struck by the evil that shone from the man’s eyes as he looked into them while Thornton tightened his grip.
The two men struggled in the drift, one weak from the cold, the other addled by blood loss.
In any other circumstance and location, the two might have been viewed as school boys tussling in fun on a rare snow day off from school. Yet the two were locked in a fight that both knew might be a death roll for one of them.
“You can’t be allowed to live now,” Thornton growled the words breathlessly, almost apologetic sounding, as he watched Zeke’s face turning a purplish shade from the lack of oxygen.
With his only good arm, Zeke used all the strength he had, landing a punch to the right jaw of his assailant that sent him, dazed, into the rocky side of the ridge under which Zeke had been sheltering.
Quickly and with energy he was surprised he still had, Zeke launched himself onto Thornton’s back and then slid his left arm under the neck of the man who had almost choked him out seconds before.
Zeke wound his legs and locked them around Thornton’s body, pinning the man helplessly. Holding him just tight enough to allow him to breathe,
Zeke whispered into Thornton’s ear, “You could have let this go. I’da just been gone. Ida left you and all yer dealin’s without a word. I’da just gone on with my life.”
“It can’t be that way, it never can,” Thornton said in a voice made raspy by the strangle hold on his neck. “You think you’re different than me but you’re the same.”
“Your choice,” Zeke said, and with the skill he had learned as a high school wrestler, he spun around, grasped Thornton at the ankle and twisted his leg, waiting for the sound of snapping bone.
Thornton screamed in a voice like a woman. The sound, captured by the still howling wind, trailed off, muffled by the snow, unheard by anyone.
Zeke stood, gasping for air and moved to his horse and struggled to mount the animal.
“You can’t leave me like this,” Thornton screamed, rocking back and forth, grasping his broken knee.
“I’ll freeze to death out here.”
“That’s the choice you made.” Zeke grunted, as he gathered his reins. “You got your snow mobile and one good leg. If you come after me ever again, I will break the other one. I won’t kill ya. I’ll leave that game to you since yer so good at it. I’m not the same as you. I’m proving that right now.”
Zeke clucked to the mare, moving her into the still falling snow.
“Kill me you bastard! You coward! Kill me!”
The sound of Thornton’s voice softened, like it was only whisper in Zeke’s head as the snow storm gathered he and his horse back into its killing embrace. The two loped in long leaping strides back toward the cabin.
Zeke had to warn Landry and the girl he was with that there still might be another agent trying to find him, if he could only get there before he bled to death.
Bright lights burned hotly on Tippi’s face and she shifted nervously in front of the microphone in which she was speaking.
“According to authorities, the two agents had been involved in organized crime for more than five years,” Tippi said in her first television interview since writing her story.
“Where was Agent Thornton’s body found?” The questions were coming from Matt Jones, the face of Channel Six in Oklahoma City.
“Agent Thornton’s body was located just north of Cheyenne.”
Tippi continued. “No more is known about his reason for being in this area or if he was, in any way linked to the robbery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Is it true that it was a bullet from Agent Thornton’s gun that killed Agent Frank Adler,” asked another reporter who Tippi didn’t know.
“Yes, that is, according to the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation. The FBI, who has claimed jurisdiction, is not commenting on what the cause of Agent Adler’s death was.”
“What is known about the bank robber at this time,” Jones asked.
“Nothing is known of the identity or whereabouts of the bank robber at this time. But for his cooperation in bringing this story to you and for returning the money to the Cattleman’s Exchange Bank of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, this reporter is indebted.’
“Ms. Townsend, what is the status of the obstruction case filed against you for refusing to reveal your source?”
Tippi glanced past the crowd and the lights and squinted to see who the reporter was asking the questions.
“Could you please stand, I can’t see you.”
The reporter stood in the throng of other reporters and Tippi grinned.
“The case has been dropped, Mom.”
Skip Hall stood with a pleased look on his face and talked with his construction foreman Chad Compton about the rebuild on the bank.
Circular saws screamed and moaned. Hammers tapped and pounded and filled the bank with the music of growth.
The bank, now empty of customers and covered with plastic sheets, was open and touched by a new season.
Birds chirped in trees nearby and sang a song that seemed to celebrate spring.
“It’s going to be a great change for the bank,” Skip said and patted Chad on the back.
“I appreciate the business. Times were getting a little thin,” Chad said. “But then you know that, you have my loan.”
Skip just waved his hands at him in a dismissive way.
“You’ve always been good for it and that is what this town should be about, helping our own instead of tearing them down.”
Chad stared at the man, trying to figure what miracle had returned the color to his banker’s face.
Skip walked over to the empty space where the plate glass window was smashed when the bank robber reentered to return the money.
“It’s almost like the robbery prodded us to do things we’ve needed to for a long time,” Skip said and chuckled. “It’s funny really. He did more damage to the building when he brought the money back.”
The two men laughed together.
“I guess that was good for me, since that was finally what spurred you to refurbish this old building,” Chad said.
Bees hovered in the doorway and a light spring breeze accompanied what felt like a new beginning through the yawning front window of the bank as the crew worked on the remodel of the bank.
“You’re right. It is odd how things happened,” Skip said and rubbed his hands on the new, marble teller counters as he thought about things.
He had always been a spiritual man, attending church with his family every Sunday and even most Wednesday evenings. But it had been, he had to admit, a formality until now.
Despite the years spent in those pews, he now guiltily admitted his mind had always wandered back to the bottom line of the bank and ways to help it survive the hard times. They were hard times that were simply part and parcel of ownership of an agricultural lending bank in a harsh part of the country.
When had he lost his commitment to those people? When had it changed from being about the community to being about the bottom line? He couldn’t pinpoint the time or the shift. He only knew it had slowly sucked the heart out of him.
In the early years, when times turned tough, he had plied himself with the platitude that he did this because he loved and had faith in the people of the small ranching community.
But as times got harder, he began to hate even seeing one of his ranchers come through the door.
Finally, he knew, in the last half a decade, that he had begun to hate what he did and had all but lost his faith in the very people he supported with loans. That was until the robbery.
Ironically, he thought to himself now, as he again rubbed his hand across the canvas bag that had held the money found in his desk a few short months ago, it was the events of that day and the days following, that ushered him back into a life, which was no longer black and white.
Now, it was a place brushed by the color of the people he again recognized and who, all along, had been serving him instead of the other way around. They had served him, but he had not seen it.
It had begun the day of the robbery. There had been the regulars in there since it was Friday.
Frank Bossal depositing his end of week profits from his tractor repair shop that he took over from his dad.
Ema Norton had just walked in to make her weekly payment on the loan she had taken out, startup money, which allowed her to open her bakery.
Skip smiled to himself, remembering Ema. If she hadn’t been so insistent about making weekly payments, she probably wouldn’t have been in the bank to witness the robbery.
But the young woman had insisted on weekly payments because she feared falling behind if she went to a monthly payment. That decision had been two long years ago, when she had come to him about opening the bakery and he had loaned her the money.
Now, she was nearly finished paying off the loan and all because he had listened to her, not she him.
But most interesting was how the afternoon had begun with Lloyd Pointer who walked through the door to fill out some paperwork to extend his loan.
That wasn’t so remarkable in and of itself, but when shortly after, Wayne Coulten walked in to make a deposit, Skip had wondered if there would be a fight. The two had long been mortal enemies ever since Pointer had purchased Coulten’s land at auction when it had been foreclosed on.
Coulten had gambled and lost the place nearly 10 years earlier when a big city banker talked him into putting the ranch up for collateral on a risky commercial land investment in California.
He hadn’t been the only one to lose it all, but he’d suffered the largest loss of anyone in the region.
When the ranch had gone up to auction that day, Lloyd Pointer, who had yearned for that section of land, was there to purchase it.
Truth was, it made sense. Coulten’s land butted against Pointers. But the purchase had turned the two men against each other. In fact, the whole ordeal had turned Wayne Coulten into a reclusive, bitter man. From what he’d heard, he was not even talking to his daughter-hadn’t for more than four years now.
But that day, when a bank robber held everyone hostage for just a moment, it turned out different. The events and how each of Skip Hall’s customers reacted to each other reminded him about why he had remained here, in this one-horse town, instead of taking the offer from Bank of America in Newark when he had the chance.
“What’s got you so deep in thought?” Chad asked the question after pointing out some corrections to one of his men.
“Oh, I was just thinking about that day.”
“Yeah, I think of it still too. I just heard about it. But it sure was something for this town.”
“I still can’t believe Wayne Coulten jumped in front of ol’ Lloyd Pointer to keep him from getting shot,” Skip said while he shook his head and smiled.
“I guess that is when you really find out about what makes yer neighbor, well yer neighbor.”
“Funny thing is, it wasn’t just then and there,” Chad added.
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“I guess not.”
“Seems old Lloyd called Wayne and asked him to take over the cattle portion of his operation that is located on Coulten’s old ranch.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yeah and told him that since he needed a full-time cattleman out there, that he might as well move into his old house that has remained empty since Wayne and his wife moved out of it.”
“What’d ol Wayne do?”
“I heard he said, ‘Not yes, but hell yes’,” Chad nodded in an exaggerated way while he talked, imitating what he thought Wayne Coulten would have looked like when he said it.
“Shshshshs,” Skip hushed Chad quietly. “Wouldn’t you know, Wayne is coming this way.”
Skip and Chad strode to the entrance of the bank and reached out their hands to the man who they’d just been talking about.
Wayne walked with purpose in his crisp white felt and starched Wranglers.
“Wayne, good to see you this fine, spring day,” Skip said and grasped the older gentleman’s hand.
“Good to see you too, fellas.” Wayne’s grin was genuine and warm.
“Just came to see what all the fuss was about. Heard the place was getting some sprucing up and wanted to see it.”
“Yeah, we figured we’d take advantage of the damage already done and start a new image for the bank.”
Skip waved his hand in front of the building. “Let’s go stand outside and get away from this noise.”
Skip led the way to the Holly planter outside and then turned toward Wayne and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Heard you might be moving?”
“You heard right,” Wayne talked and added with an easy smile. “Moving in the right direction finally.”
Involuntarily, Wayne dug the toe of his boot into the dark dirt of the planter. He still felt weird about the foreclosure. He guessed that pain would never really leave, even though things were looking up.
“You let us know if you need anything Wayne,” Skip said, with his hand still on Wayne’s shoulder. “Your name on the line is good enough.”
“I will fellas,” He smiled. “I surely will and good luck with this project. You got your hands full with this one Chad.”
Wayne remained in the planter for a moment as the two men sauntered back in to discuss how they would replace the carpeting.
A shiny object glinted for a moment in the sun and caught his attention. He leaned closer to the ground and brushed the object lightly with his hand.
Uncovering it, Wayne picked it up and rubbed his work hardened fingers over it. It was a single horseshoe. He ran his thumb along the handcrafted edges and the welded cleats and knew the shoe instantly.
