horses were picketed. Fenner trotted after him.
“Where you going, Fenner?” asked Harper.
“I want my hat back. It’s my hat and I want it.”
Kimbro said, “Watch him, Kaw, and make sure none of that loot sticks to his fingers.”
A new voice made itself heard:
“That’s penny-ante stuff. How about a looksee at what’s in the wagon?”
The speaker was Hap Englehardt. Balding, with a beaky nose and vulture face, he was lean, spare and as tough as a strip of beef jerky. A lifetime in the saddle had left him so bowlegged that a hogshead barrel could have passed lengthwise between them without touching the insides of his thighs.
He was in his late fifties, old for an outlaw. That meant he was good at what he did because he’d been at the business of robbing and killing since boyhood days, and few men in his peculiar trade lived long enough to grow ripe and full in years. “Hap” was short for “Happy,” a moniker that had been hung on him long ago by some sagebrush wag, in the same humor as calling a big man “Tiny.”
He looked around at some of the others. “We’d like to see what we been working so hard for,” Englehardt said.
“You speaking for this bunch now, Hap? What do you think is in the crates, eggs?”
“I sure as hell hope not, Brock. If we come all this way for nothing—” Engelhardt broke off, swearing, swiping a fist in the air.
Harper faced him, hands on hips. “Yeh? What’ll you do then, Hap?”
“. . . I’ll be purely disappointed, Brock,” Englehardt said, backing off.
Harper grinned. “What I thought. You were born sour, Hap, and whatever’s in that wagon, honey or horse turds, you’ll stay sour.”
He eyed the rest of the gang. They were taut, keyed-up. Feral dogs straining at the leash. “I suppose none of you will rest easy until you’ve had a look so let’s get it over with,” Harper said, growling.
He went to the wagon, the others swarming around it, crowding in. Their faces were eager, rapt, like players at a gambling table intent on a turn of the wheel. Some of them were breathing hard as if they were running a race.
Down came the freight wagon’s tailgate. The ropes tying down the canvas tarpaulin over the cargo were cut loose and the tarp folded back, baring stacked wooden crates.
“You like to brag on your strength, Neal. Get up there and haul one of those crates down.”
“Right, Brock.” Neal was a strongback, big, beefy, athletic. He clambered up on the tailgate. Squaring his stance, he took hold of one of the topmost crates and wrestled it loose from the stack.
“Easy does it. Lower it down, don’t drop it,” Harper said.
Words in big black letters were stenciled on the top and sides of the crate. A rail-thin gunman in his late teens squinted at it, Adam’s apple bobbing in a turkey neck. “What’s that say?”
“Whatsa’ matter, Dewey, can’t you read?” a badman demanded.
“No, can you?”
“Well . . . no.”
“It says, ‘Property of U.S. Army,’” Harper said.
“Not no more, it ain’t,” Kimbro said quickly.
That got a laugh all around. Neal manhandled the crate, red-faced, veins bulging, breathing hard. He started lowering it down from the tailgate and lost his grip. The crate fell heavily to the ground, breaking open a corner of the nailed-down lid.
“Damn it, Neal, I told you to be careful!”
“Sorry, Brock, it got away from me.”
“Use your knife to pry it open the rest of the way, Dewey,” Harper said.
Dewey used a long-bladed sheath knife to lever open the lid. It came undone with a shriek of pulled nails and a splintering of wood. Dewey threw back the lid, exposing the contents.
The crate was filled with brand-new repeating rifles.
The outlaws pressed inward, all avid, eager acquisitiveness. The prettiest young whore in the territory might have been stripped naked and sprawling before them, for all the oohs and aahs rising up from their number. A magical moment for the badmen.
Brock Harper