Double The Bounty

Prologue

I

Heartless, Wyoming

Brian Foxx knew he was a legend.

Oh, maybe he wasn’t as much of a legend as he wanted to be—but then no man ever is—except for Wild Bill Hickok. Hickok was the only man in history who might have been more famous than even he believed.

And Brian Foxx was certainly no Wild Bill Hickok.

Brian Foxx was a bank and train robber, and he was wanted in three states for robberies committed over the past two years. What made Brian Foxx a legend was the fact that he had robbed two banks on the same day on more than one occasion—hundreds of miles apart! It was physically impossible, yet witnesses in both places had identified the man as Brian Foxx, whose face had adorned enough posters and newspapers to be recognized.

Brian Foxx sat in a straight-backed wooden chair across the street from the Bank of Heartless, Wyoming. He was observing the bank’s activities, as he always did before robbing one. Also, he knew that he still had two days before everything would be set for the robbery to take place.

He had to wait for his twin brother, Brent Foxx, to get into position hundreds of miles away in Doverville, Arizona. This was they could rob their respective banks at the same time.

Witness would swear that the man who robbed the bank was the infamous brain Foxx.

This would certainly add his legend!

II

Denver, Colorado

In Denver, Colorado, inside the federal marshal’s office, Marshal Charles Edward Chesbro counted out one thousand dollars into the hand of a tall, dark-haired man with dark, penetrating eyes and a heavy mustache.

“Cole was a little worse for wear when you brought him in here yesterday,” the marshal said after he’d finished his counting.

“He was alive, wasn’t he?” the other man asked. He counted the money himself, which seemed to annoy the marshal.

“Uh, what are you going to do with all that money?”

The man put the money away and looked at the marshal.

“That’s none of your damned business. You got any new paper?”

“Outside on the wall,” the marshal said, stung by the reproach.

Without a word of thanks or good-bye, the man turned and walked outside.

The marshal shook his head, watching the man’s retreating back. He couldn’t understand why the man’s presence—no matter how many times he had dragged a prisoner back here—always unnerved him.

Outside, the man looked over the posters. He stopped at the one that said:

WANTED: BRIAN FOXX

$1500 REWARD

DEAD OR ALIVE

The man took the bottom of the poster between his thumb and forefinger and snapped it off the wall.

Poster in hand, he walked to his horse, a small but powerfully built gelding, and mounted up. Hanging from his saddle pommel, in plain sight, was an expertly tied hangman’s noose.

The man’s name was Decker. And he was something of a legend himself.

He was a bounty hunter.