CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURE COMES SMILING
Luck, in the course of his enthusiastic picture making, reached thepoint where he must find a bank that was willing to be robbed--in broaddaylight and for screen purposes only. If you know anything at all aboutour financial storehouses, you know that they are sensitive about beingrobbed, or even having it appear that they are being subjected to sohumiliating a procedure. What Luck needed was a bank that was not onlywilling, but one that faced the sun as well. He was lucky, as usual. TheBernalillo County Bank stands on a corner facing east and south. It isan unpretentious little bank of the older style of architecture, andmight well be located in the centre of any small range town and hold theshipping receipts of a cattleman who was growing rich as he grew old.
Luck stopped across the street and looked the bank over, and saw how thesun would shine in at the door and through the wide windows during thegreater part of the afternoon, and hoped that the cashier was a humanbeing and would not object to a fake robbery. Not liking suspense,he stepped off the pavement and dodged a jitney, and hurried over tointerview the cashier.
You never know what secret ambitions hide behind the impassive courtesyof the average business man. This cashier, for instance, wore a greeneyeshade whenever his hat was not on his, head. His hair was thin andhis complexion pasty and his shoulders were too stooped for a man ofhis age. You never would have suspected, just to look at him through thefancy grating of his window, how he thirsted for that kind of adventurewhich fiction writers call red-blooded. He had never had an adventurein his life; but at night, after he had gone to bed and adjusted theelectric light at his head, and his green eyeshade, and had put twopillows under the back of his neck, he read--you will scarcely believeit, but it is true--he read about the James boys and Kit. Carson andPawnee Bill, and he could tell you--only he wouldn't mention it, ofcourse--just how many Texans were killed in the Alamo. He loved guncatalogues, and he frequently went out of his way to pass a store thatdisplayed real, business-looking stock-saddles and quirts and spurs andthings. He longed to be down in Mexico in the thick of the scrap there,and he knew every prominent Federal leader and every revolutionist thatgot into the papers; knew them by spelling at least, even if he couldn'tpronounce the names correctly.
He had come to Albuquerque for his lungs' sake a few years ago, and hestill thrilled at the sight of bright-shawled Pueblo Indians paddingalong the pavements in their moccasins and queer leggings that lookedlike joints of whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobileout to Isleta, which is a terribly realistic Indian village of adobehuts, made the blood beat in his temples and his fingers tremble uponhis knees. Even Martinez Town with its squatty houses and narrow streetsheld for him a peculiar fascination.
You can imagine, maybe, how his weak eyes snapped with excitement underthat misleading green shade when Luck Lindsay walked in and smiled athim through the wicket, and explained who he was and what was the favorhe had come to ask of the bank. You can, perhaps, imagine how he stoodand made little marks on a blotter with his pencil while Luck explainedjust what he would want; and how he clung to the noncommittal mannerwhich is a cashier's professional shield, while Luck smiled his smileto cover his own feeling of doubt and stated that he merely wanted twoMexicans to enter, presumably overpower the cashier, and depart with abag or two of gold.
The cashier made a few more pencil marks and said that it might bearranged, if Luck could find it convenient to make the picture justafter the bank's closing time. Obviously the cashier could not permitthe bank's patrons to be disturbed in any way--but what he really wantedwas to have the thrill of the adventure all to himself.
With the two of them anxious to have the pictured robbery take place,of course they arranged it after a polite sparring on the part of thecashier, whose craving for adventure was carefully guarded as a guiltysecret.
At three o'clock the next day, then--although Luck would have greatlypreferred an earlier hour--the cashier had the bank cleared of patronsand superfluous clerks, and was watching, with his nerves all atingleand the sun shining in upon him through a side window, while Pete Lowryand Bill Holmes fussed outside with the camera, getting ready for thearrival of those realistic bandits, Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas. Onthe street corner opposite, the Happy Family foregathered clannishly,waiting until they were called into the street-fight scene which Luckmeant to make later.
The cashier's cheeks were quite pink with excitement when finally Ramonand the Rojas villain walked past the window and looked in at him beforegoing on to the door. He was disappointed because they were not masked,and because they did not wear bright sashes with fringe and stripedserapes draped across their shoulders, and the hilts of wicked knivesshowing somewhere. They did not look like bandits at all--thanks toLuck's sure knowledge and fine sense of realism. Still, they answeredthe purpose, and when they opened the door and came in the cashier gotquite a start from the greedy look in their eyes when they saw the goldhe had stacked in profusion on the counter before him.
They made the scene twice--the walking past the window and coming in atthe door; and the second time Luck swore at them because they stoppedtoo abruptly at the window and lingered too long there, looking in atthe cashier and his gold, and exchanging meaning glances before theywent to the door.
Later, there was an interior scene with reflectors almost blinding thecashier while he struggled self-consciously and ineffectually with RamonChavez. The gold that Ramon scraped from the cashier's keeping into hisown was not, of course, the real gold which the bandits had seen throughthe window. Luck, careful of his responsibilities, had waited while thecashier locked the bank's money in the vault, and had replaced it withbrass coins that looked real--to the camera.
The cashier lived then the biggest moments of his life. He was forcedupon his back across a desk that had been carefully cleared of thebank's papers and as carefully strewn with worthless ones which Luckhad brought. A realistically uncomfortable gag had been forced into themouth of the cashier--where it brought twinges from some fresh dentalwork, by the way--and the bandits had taken everything in sight thatthey fancied.
Ramon and Luis Rojas had proven themselves artists in this particularline of work, and the cashier, when it was all over and the camera andcompany were busily at work elsewhere, lived it in his imaginationand felt that he was at least tasting the full flavor of red-bloodedadventure without having to pay the usual price of bitterness and bodilysuffering. He was mistaken, of course--as I am going to explain. Whatthe cashier had taken part in was not the adventure itself but merely arehearsal and general preparation for the real performance.
This had been on Wednesday, just after three o'clock in the afternoon.On Saturday forenoon the cashier was called upon the phone and askedif a part of that robbery stuff could be retaken that day. The cashierthrilled instantly at the thought of it. Certainly, they could retake asmuch as they pleased. Lucks voice--or a voice very like Luck's--thankedhim and said that they would not need to retake the interior stuff. Whathe wanted was to get the approach to the bank the entrance and goingback to the cashier. That part of the negative was under-timed, said thevoice. And would the cashier make a display of gold behind the wicket,so that the camera could register it through the window? The cashierthought that he could. "Just stack it up good and high," directed thevoice. "The more the better. And clear the bank--have the clerks out,and every thing as near as possible to what it was the other day. Andyou take up the same position. The scene ends where Ramon comes back andgrabs you."
"And listen! You did so well the other day that I'm going to leave thisto you, to see that they get it the same. I can't be there myself--I'vegot to catch some atmosphere stuff down here in Old Town. I'm justsending my assistant camera man and the two heavies and my scenicartist for this retake. It won't be much--but be sure you have the bankcleared, old man--because it would ruin the following scenes to haveextra people registered in this; see? You did such dandy work in thatstruggle that I want it to stand. Boy, your work's sure
going to standout on the screen!"
Can you blame the cashier for drinking in every word of that, and foremptying the vault of gold and stacking it up in beautiful, high pileswhere the sun shone on it through the window--and where it would bewithin easy reach, by the way!--so that the camera could "register" it?
At ten minutes past twelve he had gotten rid of patrons and clerks, andhe had the gold out and his green eyeshade adjusted as becomingly as agreen eyeshade may be adjusted. He looked out and saw that the streetwas practically empty, because of the hour and the heat that was almostintolerable where the sun shone full. He saw a big red machine drive upto the corner and stop, and he saw a man climb out with camera alreadyscrewed, to the tripod. He saw the bandits throw away their cigarettesand follow the camera man, and then he hurried back and took up hisstation beside the stacks of gold, and waited in a twitter of excitementfor this unhoped-for encore of last Wednesday's glorious performance.Through the window he watched the camera being set up, and he watchedalso, from under his eyeshade, the approach of the two bandits.
From there on a gap occurs in the cashier's memory of that day.
Ramon and Luis went into the bank, and in a few minutes they came outagain burdened with bags of specie and pulled the door shut with thespring lock set and the blinds down that proclaimed the bank was closed.They climbed into the red automobile, the camera and its operatorfollowed, and the machine went away down the street to the post-office,turned and went purring into the Mexican quarter which spreads itselfout toward the lower bridge that spans the Rio Grande. This much a dozenpersons could tell you. Beyond that no man seemed to know what became ofthe outfit.
In the bank, the cashier lay back across a desk with a gag in his mouthand his hands and feet tied, and with a welt on the side of his headthat swelled and bled sluggishly for a while and then stopped and becamean angry purple. Where the gold had been stacked high in the sunshinethe marble glistened whitely, with not so much as a five-dollar pieceto give it a touch of color. The window blinds were drawn down--the bankwas closed. And people passed the windows and never guessed that withinthere lay a sickly young man who had craved adventure and found it, andwould presently awake to taste its bitter flavor.
Away off across the mesa, sweltering among the rocks in Bear Canon,Luck Lindsay panted and sweated and cussed the heat and painstakinglydirected his scenes, and never dreamed that a likeness of his voice hadbeguiled the cashier of the Bernalillo County Bank into consenting to berobbed and beaten into oblivion of his betrayal.
And--although some heartless teller of tales might keep you in thedark about this--the red automobile, having dodged hurriedly into ahigh-boarded enclosure behind a Mexican saloon, emerged presently andwent boldly off across the bridge and up through Atrisco to the sandhills which is the beginning of the desert off that way. But anotherautomobile, bigger and more powerful and black, slipped out of this sameenclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. Thismachine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged,by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland,to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From therethe driver drove as fast as he dared until he reached the hill thatborders Tijeras Arroyo. There being no sign of pursuit to this point, hecrossed the Arroyo at a more leisurely pace. Then he went speeding awayinto the edge of the mountains until they reached one of those deep,deserted dry washes that cut the foothills here and there near CoyoteSprings. There his passengers left him and disappeared up the dry wash.
Before the wound on the cashier's head had stopped bleeding, the blackautomobile was returning innocently to town and no man guessed whatbusiness had called it out upon the mesa.