Vengeance Creek: The Sons of Daniel Shaye

11

Cardwell and Davis spent the day sitting out in front of the hotel. James spent the day across the street watching them. Other strangers rode into town, but James didn’t pay them any mind. His job was to keep an eye on these two men. The fact that they hardly moved all afternoon was boring to him, but hardly significant.

Later in the afternoon, Thomas came to join him.

James was sitting in a wooden chair outside the general store. Thomas perched his hip on a nearby barrel and looked across the street.

“What have they been doin’?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” his brother said. “Just sittin’ there, all afternoon.”

“That’s it?”

James shrugged.

“Anybody talk to them?”

“Thomas,” James said, shaking his head, “they hardly have said a word to each other.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “why don’t you take a break and I’ll watch for a while.”

“You won’t get any argument from me,” James said, standing up. “I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

Thomas took his brother’s place in the chair. “Take a couple of hours, James,” he said.

Before he left, James said, “You might want to think about something I’ve been wondering about for a while.”

“Like what?”

“If they strand up and go separate ways,” James asked, “which one will you follow?”

“You’re right,” Thomas said. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

As James walked away, Thomas looked at the two men across the street and instinctively knew which one he would follow.

“They changed deputies,” Davis said.

“I can see that.”

“So…what are we gonna do?”

“Have you been keeping count?” Cardwell asked.

“Of what?”

Cardwell closed his eyes. “Okay, how many of our men have ridden in since we’ve been sittin’ here?”

“Uh…a few?”

“Six,” Cardwell said. “Six of our men are here.”

“Six…well, hey, that’s all of them.”

“Right,” Cardwell said, glad that at least Davis knew that much. “So we’re all in place.”

“Except us,” Davis said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cardwell said, “when the time comes we’ll be in position.”

The other six men had strict instructions from Cardwell not to be seen together in more than twos. They also had instructions to ignore both Cardwell and Davis whenever they saw them. And their final direction from Cardwell was when to be at the bank, because that’s what they were all in town to do—rob the bank.

But Cardwell had the robbery mapped out in steps, and each of the men had his own steps to take. In the event the job was called off, Cardwell would make direct contact with the others or would have Davis do it.

But so far Ben Cardwell had not seen anything in town that would make him change his plans. The sheriff might have been impressive when he was younger, but not now, and the fact that his deputies were his two sons—well, that didn’t exactly inspire Cardwell to cancel his plans either.

Things were going to go off as planned.