Outlaw's Prayer (ch. 3)
Title: Outlaw's Prayer (3/?)
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann, various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: I have been working on this story for the past six months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
"My advice to the boys in this country is not to steal horses or sheep, but either to rob a train or a bank when you have got to be an outlaw, and every man who comes in your way, kill him; spare him no mercy, for he will show you none." - Black Jack Ketchum, on the date of his execution
Kyle wasn't expecting to spend his first day as an outlaw sitting around camp, waiting hours for news to arrive and doing absolutely nothing in the interim. Well, he reconsidered, technically it was his second day as an outlaw; his first day had him staring down the barrel of David Cook's revolver, with the other three members of the Kings at the ready to follow suit. Considering how that had transpired, perhaps Kyle should reconsider the advantages to sitting around all day.
He had certainly had his own brand of activities and excitement that day: after David had informed him that his eager, industrious striking of camp that morning was simply a test to determine his worth, Kyle had the task of setting everything he packed back into place, albeit at a slower pace than that morning. There was no rush now, David assured him; Andy wasn't slated to return until late, when the town was asleep and dark, and wouldn't notice one missing traveler escaping on his horse into the night. Kyle wondered how any of the Kings knew that Andy would immediately return, that nothing would impede him from getting back to camp that night; he voiced his concerns only once, and only to David, who answered with a grim simplicity that, though a little late at times, Andy always returned.
What had surprised the young man was the lightening of some moods with the brightening of the day: Joey, the one who sported a shotgun and a head of unruly hay-colored hair, had softened his attitude toward Kyle immensely since the previous night, when he had felt the stare of those shotgun barrels behind his back and feared for some moments that they would go off. Joey had clapped a friendly hand on Kyle's back and thanked him for the job he had done on Joey's sandy-maned horse, Gilbert, who had stomped and snorted unpleasantly at Kyle until he took a grooming brush to Gilbert's coat. "I'm not very good with hair," the outlaw jokingly admitted, patting down the volume of his own hair and causing Kyle to laugh for the first time since he left California.
Joey took to the eager Kyle right away, the two members with least seniority in the gang forming a fast bond. He took a lighter perspective on situations than the other men of the Kings, preferring to laugh during their down time instead of contemplating their next heist, like David, or silently brooding, like Neal. When Kyle prepared lunch for the four of them, he instructed Joey on how to properly cook their meat stores using what little provisions and cooking heat they had, showing him how to rely on something other than canned beans. And in turn, Joey helped Kyle improve his shot, providing him with practical theory on firing at targets that would not be as stationary nor as harmless as what Kyle had encountered before. Kyle confided in him, once he was sure David was out of earshot, that he had only shot rabbits before, his admission weak as he held up his two pistols ineffectively.
"The good part is, people are usually slower than rabbits," Joey countered, helping Kyle practice sighting objects and movement from far distances instead of actual shooting, which would certainly lead to some questioning by anyone within earshot of the pistols. "Bigger, too. The bad part is, rabbits don't usually shoot back."
The only man at camp that hadn't warmed yet to Kyle was Neal--he hadn't spoken a word to the newcomer that entire day, and Kyle thought it was just as well, heeding David's warning and keeping well away from the Dr.'s notorious temper. The only times the sharpshooter moved from his perch on the deadwood log was to converse very briefly with David, or to tend to Sixx and keep him watered in the sweltering Nevada sun. All other times, Kyle noted, his eyes were on the horizon, a thousand-mile stare towards the direction of Fox Canyon--the location of their next heist, David informed him, and subsequently the location of Andy Skib, their fourth rider whom Kyle had called a shadow.
Careful not to overstep his boundaries, Kyle asked only when the sun hung low in the sky and he and Joey watched with amusement as prairie dogs popped in and out of their underground hovels, greeting the cooler air of dusk and avoiding capture and certain death by patrolling hawks. Joey was equally unsure what his fellow Kings would prefer the young greenhorn to know, but he answered as best he could. If David was so set on seeing the kid's worth and bringing him along for the ride on this heist, he may as well be privy to a bit of history.
"Andy and Neal've known each other the longest," he began, after Kyle asked--in the most polite, unassuming manner possible--why Neal appeared to get even more irritated when Andy wasn't around camp. "Eight years, around, or something like that. They started this whole thing: Andy sneaking into towns, casing the place out, and Neal coming in later to do the actual deed. Met with Dave about two years into it; that's when they started hittin' banks, calling themselves the Kings. Gettin' in all the papers." Joey grinned as he watched a falcon swoop down in a death-defying nose dive to the ground; one prairie dog was apparently not quick enough. "I came aboard on this ride about a year ago. Funny story, really; you should ask Dave about it. He loves to tell stories."
Kyle figured he would ask David, eventually, but considered the evening before his first bank heist wasn't the best time to get inquisitive with the leader of the Kings. There were a lot of things he was looking to ask, so many more things his young mind craved to know and discern what was true about the Kings and what was fabricated in legend. But the opportunity faded with the sun, the desert cast yet again into its nightly routine of darkness and shadow, of firelights and the sounds of a land teeming with nocturnal life. The four men's chatter descended down to silence along with the sun, further words unnecessary until Andy would return with more information on Fox Canyon; Kyle only spoke up once during the night, questioning David if it were wise to leave such a bright, burning beacon as the campfire when bounty hunters and lawmen scoured the West for their whereabouts. But David was adamant that the fire remain burning, if only to keep the scavengers of the desert away from camp, and it was Neal's voice that spoke up in rare protest that the light was necessary for Andy to find his way back.
It was late into the night, the sliver of a moon near completing its grand course through the night skies and Kyle seriously contemplating joining the sun and sinking down on his bedroll to rest, when the faint sound of galloping hooves startled him, effectively shaking any weariness from his bones. The sounds grew louder, the horse and its rider growing closer to their camp. Taking the cue from the others he watched silently as the rider approached the camp, their inaction a clear indication this man was no threat.
Neal had spoken to him first, the only visage from his perch that would have moved him from his eagle-eyed position, and even more, bring a smile to his face.
"You got a shave," were his first words to Andy upon the younger man's return, reaching out to rub a playful thumb along his smooth cheek. Andy smiled and scrunched his nose in amusement at the intrusion, and gave a wink as his only response while the other men welcomed him back to camp. Although his mood seemed light and thankful to be back with his partners, and he greeted David with a warm handshake and accepted Joey's playful punch on the arm--Kyle was noticing that was Joey's preferred method of salutation--Andy had not warmed to Kyle's presence any since the previous evening. It seemed even a day alone with his thoughts on David's decision and the one chance the Kings were giving the young man could not change his view.
"Coffee?" Kyle asked meekly, holding out the tin pot he had brewed at dusk and kept simmering atop the fire. Andy said nothing to him, granting him but a dark stare in greeting, his face grave and unwelcoming by the flickering light of the flames, and while he had no kind words for Kyle, he accepted a mug of coffee when it was offered, now a thick, sludgy liquid far past its prime. Andy took a sip of the coffee, then examined the mug's contents with a sour look on his face before turning to Neal, mug outstretched, and requested a draught of whiskey to remedy the drink.
"Why is there bacon?" Joey asked quizzically as he unpacked Vera's saddle bags, the disparaging hock of meat not previously on the Kings's provisions list, but somehow making its way into camp. Though, perhaps now that the iron frying pan had passed hands from Joey to Kyle, the bacon would be put to better use.
Andy eased himself down in front of the campfire, using its light to help him search through his own bag at his hip. "Impulse buy," he deadpanned, elaborating no further. Neal snickered, eyes on Andy, remembering some long ago inside joke known now only by himself, and possibly one other. David watched with a stoic patience as Andy found what he had been looking for, and tossed it lazily over the fire to him, warmed but unscathed. David carefully fanned out the crisp new set of playing cards in his fingers, their blacks and reds dulled in the fire's orange glow, selected four cards from the fifty two without a word, and discarded the rest into the fire, watching the flames lick at the cardstock before engulfing them, obliterating any trace of the deck save for the four kings safely residing in David Cook's shirt pocket. Once again Neal snickered, this time shaking his head and being joined by Andy, another joke among them that Kyle hoped one day to understand.
Kyle was quickly entranced by the way the Kings seemed to fall into a comfortable, near instinctive pattern when the four of them were together, a camaraderie built upon years of partnership and trust. With the little amount of communication at the camp during the day, there seemed to be even less now with the return of their final member, a buzzing, full silence that told Kyle more was being said without words than most could say with epic poetry. Once the provisions were unpacked, Joey settled down at the fire next to Kyle, already knowing from the calm yet insistent stare David cast around at his fellow outlaws that something was indeed about to begin. "Watch the magic happen," he instructed Kyle under his breath, but fell silent as their attentions yielded to Andy and his findings.
"There's a wedding tomorrow," he began, recalling the conversation he had with the shopkeeper and the errand boy in the general store, as well as the chatter he gathered while listening patiently in the barber's chair, his attentive ears ignored by the other patrons fancying themselves up for the occasion. The barber, a tall man with kind blue eyes and no hair to speak of on his head--he claimed the best way to advertise his ability with a razor was on his own dome--was more than pleased to take Andy's patronage. "Reception's at nine, the 'I do's at eight."
"And here I am without my Sunday best," Neal joked, patting his chest with a tattooed hand, chuckling as a cloud of desert dust arose from his shirt and vest, effectively proving his point. David laughed, a lighthearted shine to his eyes, and reached around the fire to slap a hand on Neal's back, causing another miniature dust storm. Kyle goggled in disbelief, never imagining he would be witness to one of the West's most notorious outlaw gangs pulling jokes and laughing like schoolboys or old drinking friends. They contributed to Kyle losing the grand mystique of the Kings the townspeople's rumors and the sensationalized newspaper articles helped build up in him, but he was coming to determine he didn't mind it at all.
Though smiling, Andy shook his head; that wasn't what he was getting at, and Neal full well knew it. But, Andy thought rather pleasantly, a planning session wasn't quite the same without a little levity from the Dr. "We're not going," he reasoned. "But the whole town will be. Stores shuttered, school's closed...even shutting down the sheriff's office." David wasn't particularly interested in the comings and goings of Fox Canyon, not to the extent of Andy Skib, but he couldn't help but perk up at attention from this last detail in Andy's report. A wedding in a small frontier town like this could easily be the sole social event of the year, but rarely did it take the sheriff and his deputies from their post. The leader of the Kings raised an eyebrow at the other man; a silent cue to elaborate.
Andy grinned in satisfaction; despite the tedious nature of his work and the bellyaching it caused from action-minded Neal, sometimes it paid off in a substantial way. "The sheriff's the one getting married," he revealed, which garnered a celebratory whoop from Joey, who was usually complacently silent during the planning process. "It's a big to-do; all the deputies, all the citizens, everyone's getting tied up in this wedding." He looked over at David with playful, pleading large eyes, remembering the harried errand boy at the general store and the purpose of his orders. "There'll be cake."
"No cake," David said sternly, and Andy's smile downturned into a mock pout. Kyle didn't think he'd ever understand the intricacies of the Kings's partnership.
"So it's an open and shut job," said Joey excitedly; after the last heist and the problems it caused, he was eager to get through a relatively easy robbery with no unforeseen surprises.
Holding up a finger to still Joey's excitement, Andy continued. "The bank," he said, gaining Neal's attention through his interest in each individual bank's layout and obstacles, "is on the other side of town from the church. We've got eight, nine minutes before anyone from the wedding could even get to the bank, and that's only if someone's around to set off any warning alarms." He took his outstretched index finger and drew a line in the dusty ground at his feet, followed by a triangle at one end and a square at the other. Sitting directly across from Andy, Kyle had to strain his neck around the fire to get a glimpse of the other man's diagram, but from the two pairs of eyes still trained on Andy's face and not on the lines in the dust, Kyle determined David and Neal didn't even need to see it to understand him. "The building itself is wood; no troubles there. No back room, no fortifications; bars are all brass, and so are the door fittings. There's a safe," he pointed his finger into the square; this he had confirmed for himself, partly because it was more than necessary to case the bank itself and not simply the town, and partly to see if all the town's mutterings about the ostentatious banker were true. "But it's a sphere-lock, easy enough for the banker to open himself if there's a bit of persuasion."
David nodded solemnly, his demeanor as well as his entire body growing rigid and serious at the talk of the heist the next morning. Neal may have been the sharpshooter, Joey may have been the intimidating lookout, and Andy may have been the shadow, but no man inside the Kings or out could rival David Cook's methods of persuasion. "Anything else?"
Shrugging noncommittally, Andy drank down the contents of his mug, both the coffee and the whiskey sure to put hair on his chest. He remembered his visit to the town's saloon in vain: usually a hotbed of gossip from the saloon girls lounging inside and a blind eye to the more sinister and curious of Andy's questions from staff well acquainted with outlaws and thieves, Fox Canyon's watering hole was a bust. The bartender, who in most other towns was a fountain of knowledge vital to Andy's investigations, could barely hold himself together to pour the liquor, much less spin yarns about the quality of bank security in the town. "Only that the saloon's bartender has it bad for the preacher's daughter," he supplied, the extraneous detail being gleaned from the man's habitual tears throughout Andy's respite in the saloon, and the other local patrons chiding him for bellyaching over a match that was never meant to be in the first place. David gave a disinterested snort in response; there was a fine line between useful information about the town and its people, and gossip not even worth the breath it took to speak it.
"Sounds easy," Kyle tried to contribute, but was quickly silenced by David, the first time the outlaw had used a rough tone towards him since that morning, when Kyle had underestimated David's calculating cunning. He was learning quickly not to underestimate anything about the Kings.
"This is never easy."
Feeling sufficiently rebuked, Kyle shrank back into his seat, remaining silent for the rest of the meeting in order to give leeway to the seasoned outlaws and, as Joey had claimed before, to watch the magic happen. He certainly didn't know what he was looking for in those terms but he expected something quite exciting: everything about a bank robbery must have been planned to the letter, the timing of the break-in, the heist, and the getaway synchronized perfectly, before any lawmen or authorities could figure out a crime had even been committed. When he first set out from California to the wide worlds of the unknown plains, Kyle could hardly keep his excitement at the mere thought of witnessing a bank robbery, of the chaos and mayhem blanketing a masterfully orchestrated plot. Now, not only was he going to witness a heist, but watch its planning, experience it from inception to execution.
Kyle kept waiting for it to happen but all he saw around that campfire was a wagonload full of nothing.
The Kings fell into a lull of silence, with Joey easing back against a log, hands lazily cradling his head, while the other three matched a stalemate staring contest at one another above the campfire's flames. Their gazes were stark and full of purpose, any greenhorn could determine that, but Kyle couldn't fathom how any of them could decipher what was behind each other's eyes. Dark brown, cold blue, and an undefinable hazel made for a trio of glares, none of which Kyle ever wanted to be caught staring into with a gun pressed to his throat again. There were no words passed among them but they all seemed to have an understanding of one another, a comfort that only came with years of trust and reliance, very literally entrusting each other's lives in their hands.
Then came their voices, words and phrases detached from any meaning for Kyle, but were processed, decoded subconsciously, by the three Kings. "So the safe--" David began, but cut himself off after an affirmative nod from Andy.
"Only one," he said, an answer to a question unspoken, but a question known to the young man all the same. "We could come in through--"
David waved this proposition off before Kyle could even determine what it entailed. Boy, were these guys good. "Too risky," he justified, then paused for a beat, his brow creased in thought. "But if the banker..."
This time, the rejection came from Neal, gaze shifting from Andy to David, shaking his head. "Not risky enough."
The banter went back and forth, words and disjointed phrases batted around and lobbed to one another over the campfire, an orchestration Kyle's mind could barely keep up with. He had been to a rodeo once, a spectacular treat as a boy to see the trained riders race their horses around impossible barriers and curves, darting through obstacles so quickly a young boy could get whiplash trying to keep up. This felt oddly similar to that situation, Kyle's neck feeling worn from following the parts of conversation the three men were actually verbalizing, but different, in that there was a determined conclusion to trick horsemanship and rodeo games; it might have been fast, but he could see everything that was happening and what would happen because of it. This was entirely new, and he wasn't quite sure he'd ever understand it.
After a few more dizzying moments where Kyle came quite close to keeling over in confusion, the three men nodded, their strings of phrases cut short, and a conclusive silence overtook the group. "Well, that settles it, then," Neal pronounced, procuring a cigarette from his vest pocket and lighting it over the campfire.
There was no official word of disbandment, but the atmosphere around the fire changed decidedly, from one of conspiracy and creation to that of finality and rest. Neal dragged on his cigarette and departed from the group, though his manner seemed far less brooding than before, and more as an indication that he did not enjoy the planning process of a heist. Watching the Dr.'s retreating frame, Andy leaned back on his elbows, kicking at errant sparks from the fire with his boot heel and wishing the investigation of Fox Canyon had taken longer than a night; perhaps he could have splurged for a big feather bed in their inn instead of sleeping on the ground. David remained still but closed off, no longer sending or interpreting the nuances of his partners' clipped phrases or eyes. The meeting was certainly over, but Kyle felt more confused than when the Kings had sat down for the discussion.
No one else seemed to be confused or even slightly fazed by the recent meeting with nary a full sentence uttered; Kyle feared he thought he was hallucinating the whole thing, again.
"You should get some rest," Joey said with a half-hearted, exhausted swing at Kyle's arm. He was already yawning and searching for a comfortable place to lay down his bedroll. "Gonna be a big day for you, I'd bet."
Joey's light punch awoke something in Kyle, jump-started him out of his wide-eyed confusion, and his face contorted into a confused stare. "But..." he shook his head. "What are we doing??"
"I," declared Joey, "Am going to bed."
"You understood all that?" Kyle waved his arm at the fire and the empty spaces surrounding it where the members of the Kings once laid their best plans for bank robbery before them--or, at least, that's what Kyle assumed he just witnessed.
The older man shrugged. His was not to reason why, he had always believed. His was but to do or die, or do and not die, truly; he was never much of a philosopher. "Don't have to," he said; the unique non-communication Kyle had seen transpire was only realized among the three founding members of the Kings, and Joey was simply along for the ride. "My job is to stand by the door and shoot anyone that comes near--not that complicated. And if it is complicated--" he threw a thumb in the direction of the other outlaws, David finally rising from his position out of a contemplative stare. "--I trust whatever plan they come up with." His voice grew low, and despite his exhaustion there was a seriousness to Joey's tone that Kyle had not heard all day, and hadn't been aware existed before that moment. "I trust them with my life."
Still wholly unsure of the events of the Kings's meeting--and becoming more unsure by the moment of his eagerness to join with the Kings--Kyle watched the fire glumly as the men around him began to depart and prepare for sleep. All except David, the leader, the man who ultimately made the decision to give Kyle a chance that the Californian would do anything to live up to. David was friendly yet firm, his lightheartedness during the day overshadowed by Joey's gusto, and he did seem to warm to Kyle's presence at camp...but the harsh glare he received that morning when he talked back to David, and the memory of the cold gunmetal of David's revolver on Kyle's skin added up to the man being more of a mystery than even the newspapers made him out to be.
He doused the fire with piles of mud and dirt, scattering the charred logs with his boot heel and eliminating the main source of light for the camp. Phantom flames still lingered in Kyle's eyes as they adjusted to the dark, the stars from the heavens seeming so much brighter now in contrast to the fire's absence. He felt a hand clamp on his shoulder, and only then had he realized he had been holding his breath.
"Just clean up camp tomorrow like you did this morning," David told him, his tone more of a reassurance than an order, though it was still not to be ever taken lightly. "And keep your ass out of trouble."
Kyle thought it was the least he could do; his mind was barely able to process the past day's events, of confronting the Kings and living to see the morning, of being given this one chance to prove himself worthy and join them on their adventures. He didn't think his brain could function well enough now to even attempt to get into trouble. When David lifted his hand from Kyle's shoulder and spotted a place to rest for the night, Kyle suddenly felt the weight of the day on his limbs, an exhaustion stemming from his excitement, his liveliness, that he had never experienced before. Without putting thought to his bedroll or any other nightly precaution rituals commonplace in the desert, Kyle laid back, embracing the chilled night air as his blanket and the desert dust as his bed, and immediately fell asleep.
***
A sharp poke at his side awoke Kyle from his exhausted slumber. He had forgotten about the events of the night before, or perhaps still imagined they were a dream; he thought he was still back at the ranch, fallen asleep in the grassy hills of California, being nudged awake by a cow's hoof or Gangles's caring nose. It was only when he tried to swat the intrusion away and pull his blanket back over top him that he realized he had no blanket, that these were the barren deserts of Nevada instead of his fertile home, and the intrusion calmly poking at his side were the twin barrels of Joey Clement's shotgun.
That was pretty effective in waking Kyle up and bringing him to his feet in record time.
"What?" Joey asked cluelessly as Kyle's body fought hard not to allow his heart to stop, his eyes wide and trained on the gun in Joey's hand, his breath coming in panicked gulps. The older man followed Kyle's stare, a bit slow on the uptake. "Ohh," he sighed, finally catching on, though his indifferent shrug was less than the apology Kyle expected for waking him up with a gun to his ribs. "Well, it wasn't like I was planning to shoot you."
Kyle had barely enough time to register his displeasure, much less voice it to Joey; his eyes darted around the camp, readjusting himself to this reality with the Kings, and saw that the others were wide awake as well, beating the sun and its daily rise. Neal, a determined look on his face replacing the scowl that had resided there yesterday, soothingly patted the flank of an already saddled Sixx, irritated by the early hour just as much as Kyle had been. And while Joey's horse was also saddled and ready to ride, Kyle noticed very conspicuously that David's pride horse, Sugarfoot, was still yet to be prepared.
"That's your job." A voice answered his thoughts directly behind him, startling Kyle and causing him to jump, yelping in surprise. Joey tried not to snicker; Neal gave no such effort. Whirling around, Kyle found himself face to face with David, a serious expression doing nothing to mask his disappointment in the newcomer sleeping in. He nodded once again towards the horses, eyes narrow and voice unforgiving. "You proved you're good with the horses, you saddle them." David read the confused look on Kyle's face, and found it necessary to explain the state of Sixx and Gilbert. "Joey got restless, didn't want to wait around for you to saddle Gilbert. And as for Neal...well, Neal just doesn't trust you."
Kyle waited patiently for the "yet" tagged onto David's observations, that glimmer of optimism and hope he had given the young man the day before when he spoke of his efforts, but it never came, and it caused Kyle's heart to sink, hoping his one chance to prove himself to the Kings was not lost. "This is...early," he commented instead, his eyes barely adjusting to the dim light of predawn, the camp, horses, and the Kings themselves cast in indigo shades, like icy ghosts along desert plains.
David shrugged indifferently, his eyes and attentions on the far horizon of Fox Canyon instead of on the kid beside him. "Andy said, 'I do's at eight," he recalled about the sheriff's wedding from last night's fireside conversation, the beginning of their silent plan that Kyle still knew nothing about. Sometimes he thought it might be safer that way. "We want to make sure we hit when there are as few people around as possible--we don't want stragglers leaving before the reception."
The mention of the fourth rider's name brought him to Kyle's attention once again; or, to be more accurate, brought the absence of any trace of him to the forefront of Kyle's mind. Once again there appeared to be no sign the man had ever been at camp in the first place; even the hoofprints of his horse seemed to have been eroded away by the desert sands. Kyle knew that he was not hallucinating the shadow's existence this time, but one could never be too sure. "He's gone again," he found his mouth forming the words without his permission; while the leader of the Kings had been quite accommodating towards Kyle, there was a time and a place for curiosity, and this was neither.
"Andy will be fine, don't worry about him," David assured Kyle, just as he assured himself every time the other man rode out without security or cover. His tone, however, held nothing reassuring about it. He had been handling this kid with, appropriately, kid gloves since he stumbled upon their camp and asked to join them, seeing potential and a thirst for adventure that could lead to his success; but this was do or die time, and he would prefer Kyle Peek not end up the latter. "What you need to worry about is getting your own job done."
He hiked a thumb over his shoulder towards the camp, Kyle's eyes taking in doused and filthy remains of the fire, their cooking remnants, and the sludge-like contents of the coffee pot Andy chucked into the plains grass before he had fallen asleep the night before. He had a lot more work to do to make the Kings untraceable, and a lot less time to do it. Kyle set his jaw, his resolve firm and determination fired in his veins, and set to work striking the camp with as much enthusiasm as he had for the task the day before. If this was to be the way he'd prove himself to David Cook and the other Kings, then he was damn sure he'd do it right.
***
Cleaning up camp that morning was, apparently, not the only task charged to Kyle during the bank robbery of Fox Canyon, and he would have really liked it if someone had informed him beforehand.
The four men set out from camp before the sun broke over the horizon; they took the trail into town at a slow pace, making sure to keep their horses rested while they could and keep their energy in reserve for a speedy getaway. Keeping Gangles at a walk was close to painful for Kyle; his enthusiasm and excitement over the day's events had only been building in his body while he cleaned camp and saddled both his and David's horses. He had never seen a true bank robbery before, only read about them in newspapers and whatever sensationalized dime novels he could get his hands on between here and California. And the dim, harsh truth was that he had never witnessed anything spectacular or exciting in his life, nothing to compare to the thrill he had the past two days simply by being in the vicinity of the Kings. And he wasn't merely going to watch a robbery: he was a part of this plan. Though his role was pitifully small compared to the other four men involved, it was more excitement and responsibility that had ever been bestowed upon Kyle while he lived. Barely able to contain his energy, he nearly kicked Gangles twice from flailing in the saddle, and that would have truly given away his greenhorn status.
Ironically, the one man among them that shared Kyle's energy was the Dr., the ill-tempered sharpshooter who hadn't warmed to Kyle's presence with the Kings in the least since he arrived. He spoke rarely that morning, as he had done the previous day, and David warned once again that Neal's temperament might remain a bit sour, but he was smoking less frequently and itching to spur Sixx into a gallop towards the bank. He had no patience for David's planning or Andy's stealthy observation; Neal was all about the heist itself, feeding off the adrenaline from bursting into a building and striking terror in its inhabitants, wielding the power of life or death in his hands and doling it out to any man foolish enough to get in their way. It was certainly not the most secure of career choices, one where most who follow its path find themselves in shallow, early graves, but in the moments of the robbery, the smell of victory in the breeze when they would all gallop away scot-free...Neal knew loving this job was an acquired taste.
He saw the jittery excitement of the new kid atop his horse, wondering each time if he was going to kick that poor horse into a frenzy, at best providing some amusement at the kid's expense on their ride, at worst announcing their presence to anyone they did not desire to alert. Neal shook his head, still cold toward the matter, and in disbelief that David wanted to keep the young man on indefinitely. It was one thing to take advantage of what little skills he had for this one instance and leave him in some beaten, one-horse town to lighten their burden, and quite another to induct him wholeheartedly into the Kings. And, Neal thought darkly as he watched Kyle lean over towards his horse's ear, apologizing for his outburst, he wasn't going to prove himself in the Dr.'s eyes by simply cleaning up camp.
The distance between their encampment and the borders of Fox Canyon was not far, but it felt like ages at the pace David set before them, the sun peeking up past the dusty plain, rousing the animals of the desert, by the time the frontier town came into view. Even from their faraway vantage point Kyle could see the makings of a celebration on the far end of town, its drab, wooden buildings swathed in white and pink bunting, the smell of fragrant, fresh wildflowers lingering in the air and mixing with the unmistakable smell of fire-roasted beef, cooked in the open air. The church's Sunday bell rang through the air, its brassy clang smashing through the silence of the open desert like a lead hammer, a welcome bout of noise to Kyle after the slow, silent ride he and the Kings had just endured.
None of the riders had anything to keep the time along with them, but they were all well aware that the bell beckoned the people of Fox Canyon to its call, rang in the wordless news that a wedding was about to commence.
David couldn't help but eke out a smirk at the sound of that bell, clear and loud, reverberating through the desolate canyon that gave the town its name. With such a sonorous church bell, calling farmers and miners from miles away to sermons and celebrations, christenings and funerals and everything in between, he knew it had to be the only instrument for miles that could make such a sound. That settled it in his mind: the church bell was the town's only alarm, for good news or bad, and by the time anyone came to sound the warning of a bank robbery it would be all too late.
Without a word, David slowed Sugarfoot to a stop, his eyes on the gathering of townspeople by the whitewashed church, like little ants in their best suits and new dresses from their distance, emptying the tiny town, unwittingly leaving it vulnerable. He dismounted without dropping his gaze from Fox Canyon, and Neal and Joey quickly followed suit, leaving a perplexed Kyle atop his horse, wondering if this was part of the plan devised through broken phrases and decisive looks he couldn't hope to understand.
"There's the bank," David pointed to the near end of the town, away from the gathering of wedding guests to a building that was not whitewashed like the church but just as bright and gleaming in the rising sun. Andy's observations were more on point than David gave him credit for: the bank building seemed to shine and glitter in the sun due to its gaudy brass fittings on the doors and windows, the malleable and easily broken metal making for a showy yet superfluous spectacle that could be seen by travelers from miles around. It was a sight more suited to a circus grandstand rather than a bank, though David always considered Barnum's addage that there's a sucker born every minute fit ironically well for financial investors as well as sideshows and snake oil salesmen. Maybe Hicks the banker was just trying to give that irony a physical manifestation.
Leading Sugarfoot carefully over to Kyle, David nodded in the town's direction, his face devoid of amusement; now was not the time for poking fun or pleasantries. "It shouldn't take long," he said, handing over his reins to the kid, who, despite maintaining a thoroughly confused expression on his face, accepted the reins numbly, never turning down an opportunity to form a bond with the outlaw leader's horse. "You can see us enter and leave the bank from here." David waited until Kyle nodded, still without a clue to the Kings's plan, but with enough sense to remain quiet and do as he was told. "Once we're in, count to three minutes--you can count, right?" He had to make sure, after all; David had been in some pretty gruesome bar fights over a hand of cards where his opponent couldn't tell a ten of diamonds from an eight.
Kyle nodded once again, but he couldn't hide the confused expression on his face, and finally his curiosity and frustration bubbled up beyond his polite silence. "What am I--" he began, but David held up a hand, quickly cutting him off. This was no time for interruptions.
"When three minutes are up," he instructed, wasting no words as sometimes he was apt to do in less urgent situations, "Lead all the horses down to the edge of town, and wait for us there." Something in David's face grew dark and serious in the daylight, a stark change from the jovial, laughing visage with the other Kings Kyle had witnessed the night before. There was much more to David Cook, he was learning, than what first meets the eye. "Don't come any closer to the bank. Don't come in to the bank. Don't make a sound, don't try to be any kind of hero. We've been doing this a long time," The Kings had honed their skills and devised their plans down to a science, a well-oiled bank robbing machine. The boy was worth having around for the skills that he had, but David set a hard line with himself on letting Kyle interfere with their business. "I don't want you messing this up."
He couldn't admit--not to the kid, not in front of Joey and especially Neal, and not even to himself--that he had ulterior motives to keeping the inexperienced would-be outlaw away from the action in town. David didn't dare let the young man stick around and get into the thick of the action, not for all the thrill-seeking in the world. If Andy had been wrong with his observations and a stray sheriff's deputy was patrolling the area, or some gunslinging good Samaritan gathered the balls to take on the Kings, the situation could get dangerous, and even deadly, very quickly. He remembered his knee-jerk reaction during the last heist, how he panicked at the unexpected for the first time in years, and, for the first time in years, regretted the bullet he shot in another man's head. He wasn't going to be responsible for another innocent death; if he was going to get somebody killed that morning, it sure as hell wasn't going to be Kyle Peek.
"But what if there's trouble?" Kyle made a last-ditch attempt to work his way into the heist; he had gone so far, traveled with the Kings and was only minutes away from witnessing a real, exhilarating bank robbery. He couldn't let this slide without trying to go the extra mile, both figuratively and literally.
David frowned; and Kyle shirked back slightly, disappointed in himself that he once again got on the wrong side of David Cook. While Andy had treated him with cold indifference last night and Neal with silent hostility, David's moods towards Kyle were unpredictable and harsh, welcoming and joking one moment, darkly serious and emotionless the next. Kyle almost preferred it when he at least knew someone despised his existence. "Andy handles lookout," he said succinctly; it explained the mysterious fourth rider's disappearance, yet again, from the camp long before Kyle had awoken. He pointed a stern finger at Kyle, who felt like a reprimanded child, the legendary outlaw his schoolmarm. "Just stay out of our way, you got that, Kid?"
Before Kyle knew it, the three gunmen disappeared down into the canyon, appearing more to be enjoying a Sunday promenade rather than preparing themselves for a bank heist, leaving Kyle with their horses, alone on the ridge. It was another blow to his anticipation, his excitement over confronting the Kings and attempting to join them; perhaps he had been too presumptuous to think that a clean camp and calm, saddled horses guaranteed an easy ticket to the more dangerous aspects of the outlaw life. He knew tending the horses of one of the most notorious bank robbing gangs in the West was a monumental responsibility, that the amount of trust and belief David had in him over such a short period of time rarely ever occurred. But despite all this, Kyle still stared, dejected, out towards sleepy, unassuming Fox Canyon and the retreating outlaws coming to turn it on its head, wishing that he could join them.
***
Fox Canyon was a ghost town by quarter of eight, and Andy didn't like the feel of that one bit. The streets were already barren, like a pox or plague had swept through the town, decimating the population, preserving buildings and roads and everything else that couldn't wither and die. Even the church bell joyously luring the townspeople to its call echoed the unending warning bell of a funeral, a death. It unsettled him, how eerily silent and still the streets became, though he couldn't have asked for better conditions to overtake a town and liberate them of their finances. But the empty town felt almost too perfect, too easy to infiltrate.
After riding through the town the previous day, meticulously mapping out each building, each crack and crevice, Andy settled upon the space between Jon Peter Lewis's general supply store and the telegraph office as a prime location to hold watch: narrow yet accommodating, the tiny breezeway left as a fire precaution gave him a perfect view of the bank's facade at the end of the street. Even more important was the quick and easy concealment the location provided him from the avenue, and from any stragglers that may have decided to leave before the happy couple tied the knot.
He smirked to himself; a shadow, hiding in the thin, long shadows of a Sunday morning sun. The other guys would think it was hilarious.
His eyes were wide and attentive when he saw the three familiar figures approaching from beyond the canyon, slowly at first, and on foot, as they had planned the night before. With the eager young Californian now bounding around their boot heels, David thought it would be the best time to arrive on foot and have him monitor the getaway. Andy and Neal's glares showed their disapproval of David's trust in the kid, but the leader of the Kings stood firm, planning to fully utilize the horsemanship skills Kyle touted the first night they met. David surely got what he wanted, but Andy still feared the expense; he no longer doubted Kyle Peek's intentions, only his ability, and it wasn't just David's life he was gambling with by entrusting such an important element of the heist in the kid's hands.
As the others reached the edge of town they paused, readying themselves, and then broke out into a run towards the bank, their guns drawn, their positions in this job well known and well practiced. Instinctively, Andy's hand unholstered his own gun and kept it at the ready by his side, though considering the empty streets and the dull, faraway drone of a preacher's matrimony sermon on the far end of town, he didn't believe he'd need it. The adrenaline rushed to his head though he was standing still as a corpse, his ears buzzing with energy as he watched Neal kick in the bank's door, the flashy yet unsound fittings easily giving way to the force, and they entered the bank with the determination and confidence of professionals.
Andy took in a deep breath; just as always, once David and Neal entered the bank, with Joey entrusted to guard the front door, the plan was set in motion and there was no way anyone could attempt to stop it.
***
Taylor Hicks didn't have a wife, or children--none that he knew about anyway--but if he did, he supposed he might feel the same kind of love towards them as he felt about his bank.
Those simple-minded, bull-headed townspeople would probably claim the contrary, but Hicks knew in his heart that he only wanted one simple and pure thing in life, and that was beauty. There was nothing rewarding or beautiful in the base, filthy mining and farming with which these people seemed to love occupying their time; Hicks sought beauty in the threads of the finest suits imported from the Northeast, the curvy hips of seductive saloon girls, the unparalleled austerity of a Baroque facade. His love for beauty was what brought him to this wasteland the locals called the Nevada Territory, though the prospect of adding onto his fortunes was also a favorable motivator: he wanted to bring true marvels to these simple people's lives, these rank farmers and tireless miners who had probably only seen the shine of the sun and not that of polished metal, of precious stone.
His bank, his gleaming, unrivaled monument to beauty, was his gift to Fox Canyon.
Of course, money was also a factor--there was nothing more beautiful to Hicks than the smell of bank notes, the cool, slippery feel of gold in hand--and the tales of the great West had informed him Nevada was full of it, the potential to make more money even higher. Silver mines had sprouted up throughout the territory, with the opportunistic and the desperate alike looking to dig for their fortune. Had to have some place to store all that wealth for safekeeping, Hicks thought, and so he had set out across the plains in his own unique journey to strike it rich.
The bank he had constructed in the fledgling town was beyond even his own expectations: glinting in the sun and outshining the tired whitewashed church, sparkling by starlight like it was Fox Canyon's very own star come down to Earth. He spared no expense on polished wood and brass, with bright, bronze-plated statues of classical nudes flanking the front door and stained glass adorning the iron-latticed windows, casting a rainbow of light into the lobby at any time of day. He wanted to splurge for marble or granite for the facade, and cart in the finest architectural painters from the other side of the Mississippi to decorate every surface with lavish narrative and color, but the resources were dismal here, and Taylor had to make do with what he could muster from the local slack-jawed labor.
There was no reason to open the bank that Sunday, no soul particularly interested in their financial future on a typical day of rest, especially when that day incorporated a raucous wedding celebrated by the entire town. But Hicks was not one for the frontier weddings that were little more than excuses for gluttony and debauchery, when the townspeople did not even know the meaning of such words, such finery that he was accustomed to at parties and celebrations. Besides, he thought as he stood proudly in the bank lobby, surveying the splendor he created, the brass bars and window fittings would tarnish quickly from the dusty atmosphere if he did not polish them, and he wouldn't entrust the duty to just anyone.
Yes, Fox Canyon's First National Bank was Taylor Hicks's pride and joy, his beauty and his only love, and in three minutes it was going to be no more.
The front door to the bank burst open with a bang, sending glittery, shattered brass, and splinters of wood scattered to the polished floor. Hicks spun around in shock, his eyes unaccustomed to the already unbearably bright sun pouring into the lobby through the now demolished door. Three silhouettes broke into the unfettered sunlight, their frames casting looming, ominous shadows along the floor, stretching towards Hicks as if the shades themselves could reach out and destroy him. His eyes were still adjusting but there was no mistaking the firearms in the three men's hands, how their grips tightened around the triggers as they strode inside.
No one was supposed to be at the bank, no one was supposed to break away from the gaiety of the wedding and disturb Hicks this early Sunday morning. As the banker's eyes widened with terror, perhaps that was exactly what the outlaws were counting on.
Chapter 4
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann, various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: I have been working on this story for the past six months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
"My advice to the boys in this country is not to steal horses or sheep, but either to rob a train or a bank when you have got to be an outlaw, and every man who comes in your way, kill him; spare him no mercy, for he will show you none." - Black Jack Ketchum, on the date of his execution
Kyle wasn't expecting to spend his first day as an outlaw sitting around camp, waiting hours for news to arrive and doing absolutely nothing in the interim. Well, he reconsidered, technically it was his second day as an outlaw; his first day had him staring down the barrel of David Cook's revolver, with the other three members of the Kings at the ready to follow suit. Considering how that had transpired, perhaps Kyle should reconsider the advantages to sitting around all day.
He had certainly had his own brand of activities and excitement that day: after David had informed him that his eager, industrious striking of camp that morning was simply a test to determine his worth, Kyle had the task of setting everything he packed back into place, albeit at a slower pace than that morning. There was no rush now, David assured him; Andy wasn't slated to return until late, when the town was asleep and dark, and wouldn't notice one missing traveler escaping on his horse into the night. Kyle wondered how any of the Kings knew that Andy would immediately return, that nothing would impede him from getting back to camp that night; he voiced his concerns only once, and only to David, who answered with a grim simplicity that, though a little late at times, Andy always returned.
What had surprised the young man was the lightening of some moods with the brightening of the day: Joey, the one who sported a shotgun and a head of unruly hay-colored hair, had softened his attitude toward Kyle immensely since the previous night, when he had felt the stare of those shotgun barrels behind his back and feared for some moments that they would go off. Joey had clapped a friendly hand on Kyle's back and thanked him for the job he had done on Joey's sandy-maned horse, Gilbert, who had stomped and snorted unpleasantly at Kyle until he took a grooming brush to Gilbert's coat. "I'm not very good with hair," the outlaw jokingly admitted, patting down the volume of his own hair and causing Kyle to laugh for the first time since he left California.
Joey took to the eager Kyle right away, the two members with least seniority in the gang forming a fast bond. He took a lighter perspective on situations than the other men of the Kings, preferring to laugh during their down time instead of contemplating their next heist, like David, or silently brooding, like Neal. When Kyle prepared lunch for the four of them, he instructed Joey on how to properly cook their meat stores using what little provisions and cooking heat they had, showing him how to rely on something other than canned beans. And in turn, Joey helped Kyle improve his shot, providing him with practical theory on firing at targets that would not be as stationary nor as harmless as what Kyle had encountered before. Kyle confided in him, once he was sure David was out of earshot, that he had only shot rabbits before, his admission weak as he held up his two pistols ineffectively.
"The good part is, people are usually slower than rabbits," Joey countered, helping Kyle practice sighting objects and movement from far distances instead of actual shooting, which would certainly lead to some questioning by anyone within earshot of the pistols. "Bigger, too. The bad part is, rabbits don't usually shoot back."
The only man at camp that hadn't warmed yet to Kyle was Neal--he hadn't spoken a word to the newcomer that entire day, and Kyle thought it was just as well, heeding David's warning and keeping well away from the Dr.'s notorious temper. The only times the sharpshooter moved from his perch on the deadwood log was to converse very briefly with David, or to tend to Sixx and keep him watered in the sweltering Nevada sun. All other times, Kyle noted, his eyes were on the horizon, a thousand-mile stare towards the direction of Fox Canyon--the location of their next heist, David informed him, and subsequently the location of Andy Skib, their fourth rider whom Kyle had called a shadow.
Careful not to overstep his boundaries, Kyle asked only when the sun hung low in the sky and he and Joey watched with amusement as prairie dogs popped in and out of their underground hovels, greeting the cooler air of dusk and avoiding capture and certain death by patrolling hawks. Joey was equally unsure what his fellow Kings would prefer the young greenhorn to know, but he answered as best he could. If David was so set on seeing the kid's worth and bringing him along for the ride on this heist, he may as well be privy to a bit of history.
"Andy and Neal've known each other the longest," he began, after Kyle asked--in the most polite, unassuming manner possible--why Neal appeared to get even more irritated when Andy wasn't around camp. "Eight years, around, or something like that. They started this whole thing: Andy sneaking into towns, casing the place out, and Neal coming in later to do the actual deed. Met with Dave about two years into it; that's when they started hittin' banks, calling themselves the Kings. Gettin' in all the papers." Joey grinned as he watched a falcon swoop down in a death-defying nose dive to the ground; one prairie dog was apparently not quick enough. "I came aboard on this ride about a year ago. Funny story, really; you should ask Dave about it. He loves to tell stories."
Kyle figured he would ask David, eventually, but considered the evening before his first bank heist wasn't the best time to get inquisitive with the leader of the Kings. There were a lot of things he was looking to ask, so many more things his young mind craved to know and discern what was true about the Kings and what was fabricated in legend. But the opportunity faded with the sun, the desert cast yet again into its nightly routine of darkness and shadow, of firelights and the sounds of a land teeming with nocturnal life. The four men's chatter descended down to silence along with the sun, further words unnecessary until Andy would return with more information on Fox Canyon; Kyle only spoke up once during the night, questioning David if it were wise to leave such a bright, burning beacon as the campfire when bounty hunters and lawmen scoured the West for their whereabouts. But David was adamant that the fire remain burning, if only to keep the scavengers of the desert away from camp, and it was Neal's voice that spoke up in rare protest that the light was necessary for Andy to find his way back.
It was late into the night, the sliver of a moon near completing its grand course through the night skies and Kyle seriously contemplating joining the sun and sinking down on his bedroll to rest, when the faint sound of galloping hooves startled him, effectively shaking any weariness from his bones. The sounds grew louder, the horse and its rider growing closer to their camp. Taking the cue from the others he watched silently as the rider approached the camp, their inaction a clear indication this man was no threat.
Neal had spoken to him first, the only visage from his perch that would have moved him from his eagle-eyed position, and even more, bring a smile to his face.
"You got a shave," were his first words to Andy upon the younger man's return, reaching out to rub a playful thumb along his smooth cheek. Andy smiled and scrunched his nose in amusement at the intrusion, and gave a wink as his only response while the other men welcomed him back to camp. Although his mood seemed light and thankful to be back with his partners, and he greeted David with a warm handshake and accepted Joey's playful punch on the arm--Kyle was noticing that was Joey's preferred method of salutation--Andy had not warmed to Kyle's presence any since the previous evening. It seemed even a day alone with his thoughts on David's decision and the one chance the Kings were giving the young man could not change his view.
"Coffee?" Kyle asked meekly, holding out the tin pot he had brewed at dusk and kept simmering atop the fire. Andy said nothing to him, granting him but a dark stare in greeting, his face grave and unwelcoming by the flickering light of the flames, and while he had no kind words for Kyle, he accepted a mug of coffee when it was offered, now a thick, sludgy liquid far past its prime. Andy took a sip of the coffee, then examined the mug's contents with a sour look on his face before turning to Neal, mug outstretched, and requested a draught of whiskey to remedy the drink.
"Why is there bacon?" Joey asked quizzically as he unpacked Vera's saddle bags, the disparaging hock of meat not previously on the Kings's provisions list, but somehow making its way into camp. Though, perhaps now that the iron frying pan had passed hands from Joey to Kyle, the bacon would be put to better use.
Andy eased himself down in front of the campfire, using its light to help him search through his own bag at his hip. "Impulse buy," he deadpanned, elaborating no further. Neal snickered, eyes on Andy, remembering some long ago inside joke known now only by himself, and possibly one other. David watched with a stoic patience as Andy found what he had been looking for, and tossed it lazily over the fire to him, warmed but unscathed. David carefully fanned out the crisp new set of playing cards in his fingers, their blacks and reds dulled in the fire's orange glow, selected four cards from the fifty two without a word, and discarded the rest into the fire, watching the flames lick at the cardstock before engulfing them, obliterating any trace of the deck save for the four kings safely residing in David Cook's shirt pocket. Once again Neal snickered, this time shaking his head and being joined by Andy, another joke among them that Kyle hoped one day to understand.
Kyle was quickly entranced by the way the Kings seemed to fall into a comfortable, near instinctive pattern when the four of them were together, a camaraderie built upon years of partnership and trust. With the little amount of communication at the camp during the day, there seemed to be even less now with the return of their final member, a buzzing, full silence that told Kyle more was being said without words than most could say with epic poetry. Once the provisions were unpacked, Joey settled down at the fire next to Kyle, already knowing from the calm yet insistent stare David cast around at his fellow outlaws that something was indeed about to begin. "Watch the magic happen," he instructed Kyle under his breath, but fell silent as their attentions yielded to Andy and his findings.
"There's a wedding tomorrow," he began, recalling the conversation he had with the shopkeeper and the errand boy in the general store, as well as the chatter he gathered while listening patiently in the barber's chair, his attentive ears ignored by the other patrons fancying themselves up for the occasion. The barber, a tall man with kind blue eyes and no hair to speak of on his head--he claimed the best way to advertise his ability with a razor was on his own dome--was more than pleased to take Andy's patronage. "Reception's at nine, the 'I do's at eight."
"And here I am without my Sunday best," Neal joked, patting his chest with a tattooed hand, chuckling as a cloud of desert dust arose from his shirt and vest, effectively proving his point. David laughed, a lighthearted shine to his eyes, and reached around the fire to slap a hand on Neal's back, causing another miniature dust storm. Kyle goggled in disbelief, never imagining he would be witness to one of the West's most notorious outlaw gangs pulling jokes and laughing like schoolboys or old drinking friends. They contributed to Kyle losing the grand mystique of the Kings the townspeople's rumors and the sensationalized newspaper articles helped build up in him, but he was coming to determine he didn't mind it at all.
Though smiling, Andy shook his head; that wasn't what he was getting at, and Neal full well knew it. But, Andy thought rather pleasantly, a planning session wasn't quite the same without a little levity from the Dr. "We're not going," he reasoned. "But the whole town will be. Stores shuttered, school's closed...even shutting down the sheriff's office." David wasn't particularly interested in the comings and goings of Fox Canyon, not to the extent of Andy Skib, but he couldn't help but perk up at attention from this last detail in Andy's report. A wedding in a small frontier town like this could easily be the sole social event of the year, but rarely did it take the sheriff and his deputies from their post. The leader of the Kings raised an eyebrow at the other man; a silent cue to elaborate.
Andy grinned in satisfaction; despite the tedious nature of his work and the bellyaching it caused from action-minded Neal, sometimes it paid off in a substantial way. "The sheriff's the one getting married," he revealed, which garnered a celebratory whoop from Joey, who was usually complacently silent during the planning process. "It's a big to-do; all the deputies, all the citizens, everyone's getting tied up in this wedding." He looked over at David with playful, pleading large eyes, remembering the harried errand boy at the general store and the purpose of his orders. "There'll be cake."
"No cake," David said sternly, and Andy's smile downturned into a mock pout. Kyle didn't think he'd ever understand the intricacies of the Kings's partnership.
"So it's an open and shut job," said Joey excitedly; after the last heist and the problems it caused, he was eager to get through a relatively easy robbery with no unforeseen surprises.
Holding up a finger to still Joey's excitement, Andy continued. "The bank," he said, gaining Neal's attention through his interest in each individual bank's layout and obstacles, "is on the other side of town from the church. We've got eight, nine minutes before anyone from the wedding could even get to the bank, and that's only if someone's around to set off any warning alarms." He took his outstretched index finger and drew a line in the dusty ground at his feet, followed by a triangle at one end and a square at the other. Sitting directly across from Andy, Kyle had to strain his neck around the fire to get a glimpse of the other man's diagram, but from the two pairs of eyes still trained on Andy's face and not on the lines in the dust, Kyle determined David and Neal didn't even need to see it to understand him. "The building itself is wood; no troubles there. No back room, no fortifications; bars are all brass, and so are the door fittings. There's a safe," he pointed his finger into the square; this he had confirmed for himself, partly because it was more than necessary to case the bank itself and not simply the town, and partly to see if all the town's mutterings about the ostentatious banker were true. "But it's a sphere-lock, easy enough for the banker to open himself if there's a bit of persuasion."
David nodded solemnly, his demeanor as well as his entire body growing rigid and serious at the talk of the heist the next morning. Neal may have been the sharpshooter, Joey may have been the intimidating lookout, and Andy may have been the shadow, but no man inside the Kings or out could rival David Cook's methods of persuasion. "Anything else?"
Shrugging noncommittally, Andy drank down the contents of his mug, both the coffee and the whiskey sure to put hair on his chest. He remembered his visit to the town's saloon in vain: usually a hotbed of gossip from the saloon girls lounging inside and a blind eye to the more sinister and curious of Andy's questions from staff well acquainted with outlaws and thieves, Fox Canyon's watering hole was a bust. The bartender, who in most other towns was a fountain of knowledge vital to Andy's investigations, could barely hold himself together to pour the liquor, much less spin yarns about the quality of bank security in the town. "Only that the saloon's bartender has it bad for the preacher's daughter," he supplied, the extraneous detail being gleaned from the man's habitual tears throughout Andy's respite in the saloon, and the other local patrons chiding him for bellyaching over a match that was never meant to be in the first place. David gave a disinterested snort in response; there was a fine line between useful information about the town and its people, and gossip not even worth the breath it took to speak it.
"Sounds easy," Kyle tried to contribute, but was quickly silenced by David, the first time the outlaw had used a rough tone towards him since that morning, when Kyle had underestimated David's calculating cunning. He was learning quickly not to underestimate anything about the Kings.
"This is never easy."
Feeling sufficiently rebuked, Kyle shrank back into his seat, remaining silent for the rest of the meeting in order to give leeway to the seasoned outlaws and, as Joey had claimed before, to watch the magic happen. He certainly didn't know what he was looking for in those terms but he expected something quite exciting: everything about a bank robbery must have been planned to the letter, the timing of the break-in, the heist, and the getaway synchronized perfectly, before any lawmen or authorities could figure out a crime had even been committed. When he first set out from California to the wide worlds of the unknown plains, Kyle could hardly keep his excitement at the mere thought of witnessing a bank robbery, of the chaos and mayhem blanketing a masterfully orchestrated plot. Now, not only was he going to witness a heist, but watch its planning, experience it from inception to execution.
Kyle kept waiting for it to happen but all he saw around that campfire was a wagonload full of nothing.
The Kings fell into a lull of silence, with Joey easing back against a log, hands lazily cradling his head, while the other three matched a stalemate staring contest at one another above the campfire's flames. Their gazes were stark and full of purpose, any greenhorn could determine that, but Kyle couldn't fathom how any of them could decipher what was behind each other's eyes. Dark brown, cold blue, and an undefinable hazel made for a trio of glares, none of which Kyle ever wanted to be caught staring into with a gun pressed to his throat again. There were no words passed among them but they all seemed to have an understanding of one another, a comfort that only came with years of trust and reliance, very literally entrusting each other's lives in their hands.
Then came their voices, words and phrases detached from any meaning for Kyle, but were processed, decoded subconsciously, by the three Kings. "So the safe--" David began, but cut himself off after an affirmative nod from Andy.
"Only one," he said, an answer to a question unspoken, but a question known to the young man all the same. "We could come in through--"
David waved this proposition off before Kyle could even determine what it entailed. Boy, were these guys good. "Too risky," he justified, then paused for a beat, his brow creased in thought. "But if the banker..."
This time, the rejection came from Neal, gaze shifting from Andy to David, shaking his head. "Not risky enough."
The banter went back and forth, words and disjointed phrases batted around and lobbed to one another over the campfire, an orchestration Kyle's mind could barely keep up with. He had been to a rodeo once, a spectacular treat as a boy to see the trained riders race their horses around impossible barriers and curves, darting through obstacles so quickly a young boy could get whiplash trying to keep up. This felt oddly similar to that situation, Kyle's neck feeling worn from following the parts of conversation the three men were actually verbalizing, but different, in that there was a determined conclusion to trick horsemanship and rodeo games; it might have been fast, but he could see everything that was happening and what would happen because of it. This was entirely new, and he wasn't quite sure he'd ever understand it.
After a few more dizzying moments where Kyle came quite close to keeling over in confusion, the three men nodded, their strings of phrases cut short, and a conclusive silence overtook the group. "Well, that settles it, then," Neal pronounced, procuring a cigarette from his vest pocket and lighting it over the campfire.
There was no official word of disbandment, but the atmosphere around the fire changed decidedly, from one of conspiracy and creation to that of finality and rest. Neal dragged on his cigarette and departed from the group, though his manner seemed far less brooding than before, and more as an indication that he did not enjoy the planning process of a heist. Watching the Dr.'s retreating frame, Andy leaned back on his elbows, kicking at errant sparks from the fire with his boot heel and wishing the investigation of Fox Canyon had taken longer than a night; perhaps he could have splurged for a big feather bed in their inn instead of sleeping on the ground. David remained still but closed off, no longer sending or interpreting the nuances of his partners' clipped phrases or eyes. The meeting was certainly over, but Kyle felt more confused than when the Kings had sat down for the discussion.
No one else seemed to be confused or even slightly fazed by the recent meeting with nary a full sentence uttered; Kyle feared he thought he was hallucinating the whole thing, again.
"You should get some rest," Joey said with a half-hearted, exhausted swing at Kyle's arm. He was already yawning and searching for a comfortable place to lay down his bedroll. "Gonna be a big day for you, I'd bet."
Joey's light punch awoke something in Kyle, jump-started him out of his wide-eyed confusion, and his face contorted into a confused stare. "But..." he shook his head. "What are we doing??"
"I," declared Joey, "Am going to bed."
"You understood all that?" Kyle waved his arm at the fire and the empty spaces surrounding it where the members of the Kings once laid their best plans for bank robbery before them--or, at least, that's what Kyle assumed he just witnessed.
The older man shrugged. His was not to reason why, he had always believed. His was but to do or die, or do and not die, truly; he was never much of a philosopher. "Don't have to," he said; the unique non-communication Kyle had seen transpire was only realized among the three founding members of the Kings, and Joey was simply along for the ride. "My job is to stand by the door and shoot anyone that comes near--not that complicated. And if it is complicated--" he threw a thumb in the direction of the other outlaws, David finally rising from his position out of a contemplative stare. "--I trust whatever plan they come up with." His voice grew low, and despite his exhaustion there was a seriousness to Joey's tone that Kyle had not heard all day, and hadn't been aware existed before that moment. "I trust them with my life."
Still wholly unsure of the events of the Kings's meeting--and becoming more unsure by the moment of his eagerness to join with the Kings--Kyle watched the fire glumly as the men around him began to depart and prepare for sleep. All except David, the leader, the man who ultimately made the decision to give Kyle a chance that the Californian would do anything to live up to. David was friendly yet firm, his lightheartedness during the day overshadowed by Joey's gusto, and he did seem to warm to Kyle's presence at camp...but the harsh glare he received that morning when he talked back to David, and the memory of the cold gunmetal of David's revolver on Kyle's skin added up to the man being more of a mystery than even the newspapers made him out to be.
He doused the fire with piles of mud and dirt, scattering the charred logs with his boot heel and eliminating the main source of light for the camp. Phantom flames still lingered in Kyle's eyes as they adjusted to the dark, the stars from the heavens seeming so much brighter now in contrast to the fire's absence. He felt a hand clamp on his shoulder, and only then had he realized he had been holding his breath.
"Just clean up camp tomorrow like you did this morning," David told him, his tone more of a reassurance than an order, though it was still not to be ever taken lightly. "And keep your ass out of trouble."
Kyle thought it was the least he could do; his mind was barely able to process the past day's events, of confronting the Kings and living to see the morning, of being given this one chance to prove himself worthy and join them on their adventures. He didn't think his brain could function well enough now to even attempt to get into trouble. When David lifted his hand from Kyle's shoulder and spotted a place to rest for the night, Kyle suddenly felt the weight of the day on his limbs, an exhaustion stemming from his excitement, his liveliness, that he had never experienced before. Without putting thought to his bedroll or any other nightly precaution rituals commonplace in the desert, Kyle laid back, embracing the chilled night air as his blanket and the desert dust as his bed, and immediately fell asleep.
***
A sharp poke at his side awoke Kyle from his exhausted slumber. He had forgotten about the events of the night before, or perhaps still imagined they were a dream; he thought he was still back at the ranch, fallen asleep in the grassy hills of California, being nudged awake by a cow's hoof or Gangles's caring nose. It was only when he tried to swat the intrusion away and pull his blanket back over top him that he realized he had no blanket, that these were the barren deserts of Nevada instead of his fertile home, and the intrusion calmly poking at his side were the twin barrels of Joey Clement's shotgun.
That was pretty effective in waking Kyle up and bringing him to his feet in record time.
"What?" Joey asked cluelessly as Kyle's body fought hard not to allow his heart to stop, his eyes wide and trained on the gun in Joey's hand, his breath coming in panicked gulps. The older man followed Kyle's stare, a bit slow on the uptake. "Ohh," he sighed, finally catching on, though his indifferent shrug was less than the apology Kyle expected for waking him up with a gun to his ribs. "Well, it wasn't like I was planning to shoot you."
Kyle had barely enough time to register his displeasure, much less voice it to Joey; his eyes darted around the camp, readjusting himself to this reality with the Kings, and saw that the others were wide awake as well, beating the sun and its daily rise. Neal, a determined look on his face replacing the scowl that had resided there yesterday, soothingly patted the flank of an already saddled Sixx, irritated by the early hour just as much as Kyle had been. And while Joey's horse was also saddled and ready to ride, Kyle noticed very conspicuously that David's pride horse, Sugarfoot, was still yet to be prepared.
"That's your job." A voice answered his thoughts directly behind him, startling Kyle and causing him to jump, yelping in surprise. Joey tried not to snicker; Neal gave no such effort. Whirling around, Kyle found himself face to face with David, a serious expression doing nothing to mask his disappointment in the newcomer sleeping in. He nodded once again towards the horses, eyes narrow and voice unforgiving. "You proved you're good with the horses, you saddle them." David read the confused look on Kyle's face, and found it necessary to explain the state of Sixx and Gilbert. "Joey got restless, didn't want to wait around for you to saddle Gilbert. And as for Neal...well, Neal just doesn't trust you."
Kyle waited patiently for the "yet" tagged onto David's observations, that glimmer of optimism and hope he had given the young man the day before when he spoke of his efforts, but it never came, and it caused Kyle's heart to sink, hoping his one chance to prove himself to the Kings was not lost. "This is...early," he commented instead, his eyes barely adjusting to the dim light of predawn, the camp, horses, and the Kings themselves cast in indigo shades, like icy ghosts along desert plains.
David shrugged indifferently, his eyes and attentions on the far horizon of Fox Canyon instead of on the kid beside him. "Andy said, 'I do's at eight," he recalled about the sheriff's wedding from last night's fireside conversation, the beginning of their silent plan that Kyle still knew nothing about. Sometimes he thought it might be safer that way. "We want to make sure we hit when there are as few people around as possible--we don't want stragglers leaving before the reception."
The mention of the fourth rider's name brought him to Kyle's attention once again; or, to be more accurate, brought the absence of any trace of him to the forefront of Kyle's mind. Once again there appeared to be no sign the man had ever been at camp in the first place; even the hoofprints of his horse seemed to have been eroded away by the desert sands. Kyle knew that he was not hallucinating the shadow's existence this time, but one could never be too sure. "He's gone again," he found his mouth forming the words without his permission; while the leader of the Kings had been quite accommodating towards Kyle, there was a time and a place for curiosity, and this was neither.
"Andy will be fine, don't worry about him," David assured Kyle, just as he assured himself every time the other man rode out without security or cover. His tone, however, held nothing reassuring about it. He had been handling this kid with, appropriately, kid gloves since he stumbled upon their camp and asked to join them, seeing potential and a thirst for adventure that could lead to his success; but this was do or die time, and he would prefer Kyle Peek not end up the latter. "What you need to worry about is getting your own job done."
He hiked a thumb over his shoulder towards the camp, Kyle's eyes taking in doused and filthy remains of the fire, their cooking remnants, and the sludge-like contents of the coffee pot Andy chucked into the plains grass before he had fallen asleep the night before. He had a lot more work to do to make the Kings untraceable, and a lot less time to do it. Kyle set his jaw, his resolve firm and determination fired in his veins, and set to work striking the camp with as much enthusiasm as he had for the task the day before. If this was to be the way he'd prove himself to David Cook and the other Kings, then he was damn sure he'd do it right.
***
Cleaning up camp that morning was, apparently, not the only task charged to Kyle during the bank robbery of Fox Canyon, and he would have really liked it if someone had informed him beforehand.
The four men set out from camp before the sun broke over the horizon; they took the trail into town at a slow pace, making sure to keep their horses rested while they could and keep their energy in reserve for a speedy getaway. Keeping Gangles at a walk was close to painful for Kyle; his enthusiasm and excitement over the day's events had only been building in his body while he cleaned camp and saddled both his and David's horses. He had never seen a true bank robbery before, only read about them in newspapers and whatever sensationalized dime novels he could get his hands on between here and California. And the dim, harsh truth was that he had never witnessed anything spectacular or exciting in his life, nothing to compare to the thrill he had the past two days simply by being in the vicinity of the Kings. And he wasn't merely going to watch a robbery: he was a part of this plan. Though his role was pitifully small compared to the other four men involved, it was more excitement and responsibility that had ever been bestowed upon Kyle while he lived. Barely able to contain his energy, he nearly kicked Gangles twice from flailing in the saddle, and that would have truly given away his greenhorn status.
Ironically, the one man among them that shared Kyle's energy was the Dr., the ill-tempered sharpshooter who hadn't warmed to Kyle's presence with the Kings in the least since he arrived. He spoke rarely that morning, as he had done the previous day, and David warned once again that Neal's temperament might remain a bit sour, but he was smoking less frequently and itching to spur Sixx into a gallop towards the bank. He had no patience for David's planning or Andy's stealthy observation; Neal was all about the heist itself, feeding off the adrenaline from bursting into a building and striking terror in its inhabitants, wielding the power of life or death in his hands and doling it out to any man foolish enough to get in their way. It was certainly not the most secure of career choices, one where most who follow its path find themselves in shallow, early graves, but in the moments of the robbery, the smell of victory in the breeze when they would all gallop away scot-free...Neal knew loving this job was an acquired taste.
He saw the jittery excitement of the new kid atop his horse, wondering each time if he was going to kick that poor horse into a frenzy, at best providing some amusement at the kid's expense on their ride, at worst announcing their presence to anyone they did not desire to alert. Neal shook his head, still cold toward the matter, and in disbelief that David wanted to keep the young man on indefinitely. It was one thing to take advantage of what little skills he had for this one instance and leave him in some beaten, one-horse town to lighten their burden, and quite another to induct him wholeheartedly into the Kings. And, Neal thought darkly as he watched Kyle lean over towards his horse's ear, apologizing for his outburst, he wasn't going to prove himself in the Dr.'s eyes by simply cleaning up camp.
The distance between their encampment and the borders of Fox Canyon was not far, but it felt like ages at the pace David set before them, the sun peeking up past the dusty plain, rousing the animals of the desert, by the time the frontier town came into view. Even from their faraway vantage point Kyle could see the makings of a celebration on the far end of town, its drab, wooden buildings swathed in white and pink bunting, the smell of fragrant, fresh wildflowers lingering in the air and mixing with the unmistakable smell of fire-roasted beef, cooked in the open air. The church's Sunday bell rang through the air, its brassy clang smashing through the silence of the open desert like a lead hammer, a welcome bout of noise to Kyle after the slow, silent ride he and the Kings had just endured.
None of the riders had anything to keep the time along with them, but they were all well aware that the bell beckoned the people of Fox Canyon to its call, rang in the wordless news that a wedding was about to commence.
David couldn't help but eke out a smirk at the sound of that bell, clear and loud, reverberating through the desolate canyon that gave the town its name. With such a sonorous church bell, calling farmers and miners from miles away to sermons and celebrations, christenings and funerals and everything in between, he knew it had to be the only instrument for miles that could make such a sound. That settled it in his mind: the church bell was the town's only alarm, for good news or bad, and by the time anyone came to sound the warning of a bank robbery it would be all too late.
Without a word, David slowed Sugarfoot to a stop, his eyes on the gathering of townspeople by the whitewashed church, like little ants in their best suits and new dresses from their distance, emptying the tiny town, unwittingly leaving it vulnerable. He dismounted without dropping his gaze from Fox Canyon, and Neal and Joey quickly followed suit, leaving a perplexed Kyle atop his horse, wondering if this was part of the plan devised through broken phrases and decisive looks he couldn't hope to understand.
"There's the bank," David pointed to the near end of the town, away from the gathering of wedding guests to a building that was not whitewashed like the church but just as bright and gleaming in the rising sun. Andy's observations were more on point than David gave him credit for: the bank building seemed to shine and glitter in the sun due to its gaudy brass fittings on the doors and windows, the malleable and easily broken metal making for a showy yet superfluous spectacle that could be seen by travelers from miles around. It was a sight more suited to a circus grandstand rather than a bank, though David always considered Barnum's addage that there's a sucker born every minute fit ironically well for financial investors as well as sideshows and snake oil salesmen. Maybe Hicks the banker was just trying to give that irony a physical manifestation.
Leading Sugarfoot carefully over to Kyle, David nodded in the town's direction, his face devoid of amusement; now was not the time for poking fun or pleasantries. "It shouldn't take long," he said, handing over his reins to the kid, who, despite maintaining a thoroughly confused expression on his face, accepted the reins numbly, never turning down an opportunity to form a bond with the outlaw leader's horse. "You can see us enter and leave the bank from here." David waited until Kyle nodded, still without a clue to the Kings's plan, but with enough sense to remain quiet and do as he was told. "Once we're in, count to three minutes--you can count, right?" He had to make sure, after all; David had been in some pretty gruesome bar fights over a hand of cards where his opponent couldn't tell a ten of diamonds from an eight.
Kyle nodded once again, but he couldn't hide the confused expression on his face, and finally his curiosity and frustration bubbled up beyond his polite silence. "What am I--" he began, but David held up a hand, quickly cutting him off. This was no time for interruptions.
"When three minutes are up," he instructed, wasting no words as sometimes he was apt to do in less urgent situations, "Lead all the horses down to the edge of town, and wait for us there." Something in David's face grew dark and serious in the daylight, a stark change from the jovial, laughing visage with the other Kings Kyle had witnessed the night before. There was much more to David Cook, he was learning, than what first meets the eye. "Don't come any closer to the bank. Don't come in to the bank. Don't make a sound, don't try to be any kind of hero. We've been doing this a long time," The Kings had honed their skills and devised their plans down to a science, a well-oiled bank robbing machine. The boy was worth having around for the skills that he had, but David set a hard line with himself on letting Kyle interfere with their business. "I don't want you messing this up."
He couldn't admit--not to the kid, not in front of Joey and especially Neal, and not even to himself--that he had ulterior motives to keeping the inexperienced would-be outlaw away from the action in town. David didn't dare let the young man stick around and get into the thick of the action, not for all the thrill-seeking in the world. If Andy had been wrong with his observations and a stray sheriff's deputy was patrolling the area, or some gunslinging good Samaritan gathered the balls to take on the Kings, the situation could get dangerous, and even deadly, very quickly. He remembered his knee-jerk reaction during the last heist, how he panicked at the unexpected for the first time in years, and, for the first time in years, regretted the bullet he shot in another man's head. He wasn't going to be responsible for another innocent death; if he was going to get somebody killed that morning, it sure as hell wasn't going to be Kyle Peek.
"But what if there's trouble?" Kyle made a last-ditch attempt to work his way into the heist; he had gone so far, traveled with the Kings and was only minutes away from witnessing a real, exhilarating bank robbery. He couldn't let this slide without trying to go the extra mile, both figuratively and literally.
David frowned; and Kyle shirked back slightly, disappointed in himself that he once again got on the wrong side of David Cook. While Andy had treated him with cold indifference last night and Neal with silent hostility, David's moods towards Kyle were unpredictable and harsh, welcoming and joking one moment, darkly serious and emotionless the next. Kyle almost preferred it when he at least knew someone despised his existence. "Andy handles lookout," he said succinctly; it explained the mysterious fourth rider's disappearance, yet again, from the camp long before Kyle had awoken. He pointed a stern finger at Kyle, who felt like a reprimanded child, the legendary outlaw his schoolmarm. "Just stay out of our way, you got that, Kid?"
Before Kyle knew it, the three gunmen disappeared down into the canyon, appearing more to be enjoying a Sunday promenade rather than preparing themselves for a bank heist, leaving Kyle with their horses, alone on the ridge. It was another blow to his anticipation, his excitement over confronting the Kings and attempting to join them; perhaps he had been too presumptuous to think that a clean camp and calm, saddled horses guaranteed an easy ticket to the more dangerous aspects of the outlaw life. He knew tending the horses of one of the most notorious bank robbing gangs in the West was a monumental responsibility, that the amount of trust and belief David had in him over such a short period of time rarely ever occurred. But despite all this, Kyle still stared, dejected, out towards sleepy, unassuming Fox Canyon and the retreating outlaws coming to turn it on its head, wishing that he could join them.
***
Fox Canyon was a ghost town by quarter of eight, and Andy didn't like the feel of that one bit. The streets were already barren, like a pox or plague had swept through the town, decimating the population, preserving buildings and roads and everything else that couldn't wither and die. Even the church bell joyously luring the townspeople to its call echoed the unending warning bell of a funeral, a death. It unsettled him, how eerily silent and still the streets became, though he couldn't have asked for better conditions to overtake a town and liberate them of their finances. But the empty town felt almost too perfect, too easy to infiltrate.
After riding through the town the previous day, meticulously mapping out each building, each crack and crevice, Andy settled upon the space between Jon Peter Lewis's general supply store and the telegraph office as a prime location to hold watch: narrow yet accommodating, the tiny breezeway left as a fire precaution gave him a perfect view of the bank's facade at the end of the street. Even more important was the quick and easy concealment the location provided him from the avenue, and from any stragglers that may have decided to leave before the happy couple tied the knot.
He smirked to himself; a shadow, hiding in the thin, long shadows of a Sunday morning sun. The other guys would think it was hilarious.
His eyes were wide and attentive when he saw the three familiar figures approaching from beyond the canyon, slowly at first, and on foot, as they had planned the night before. With the eager young Californian now bounding around their boot heels, David thought it would be the best time to arrive on foot and have him monitor the getaway. Andy and Neal's glares showed their disapproval of David's trust in the kid, but the leader of the Kings stood firm, planning to fully utilize the horsemanship skills Kyle touted the first night they met. David surely got what he wanted, but Andy still feared the expense; he no longer doubted Kyle Peek's intentions, only his ability, and it wasn't just David's life he was gambling with by entrusting such an important element of the heist in the kid's hands.
As the others reached the edge of town they paused, readying themselves, and then broke out into a run towards the bank, their guns drawn, their positions in this job well known and well practiced. Instinctively, Andy's hand unholstered his own gun and kept it at the ready by his side, though considering the empty streets and the dull, faraway drone of a preacher's matrimony sermon on the far end of town, he didn't believe he'd need it. The adrenaline rushed to his head though he was standing still as a corpse, his ears buzzing with energy as he watched Neal kick in the bank's door, the flashy yet unsound fittings easily giving way to the force, and they entered the bank with the determination and confidence of professionals.
Andy took in a deep breath; just as always, once David and Neal entered the bank, with Joey entrusted to guard the front door, the plan was set in motion and there was no way anyone could attempt to stop it.
***
Taylor Hicks didn't have a wife, or children--none that he knew about anyway--but if he did, he supposed he might feel the same kind of love towards them as he felt about his bank.
Those simple-minded, bull-headed townspeople would probably claim the contrary, but Hicks knew in his heart that he only wanted one simple and pure thing in life, and that was beauty. There was nothing rewarding or beautiful in the base, filthy mining and farming with which these people seemed to love occupying their time; Hicks sought beauty in the threads of the finest suits imported from the Northeast, the curvy hips of seductive saloon girls, the unparalleled austerity of a Baroque facade. His love for beauty was what brought him to this wasteland the locals called the Nevada Territory, though the prospect of adding onto his fortunes was also a favorable motivator: he wanted to bring true marvels to these simple people's lives, these rank farmers and tireless miners who had probably only seen the shine of the sun and not that of polished metal, of precious stone.
His bank, his gleaming, unrivaled monument to beauty, was his gift to Fox Canyon.
Of course, money was also a factor--there was nothing more beautiful to Hicks than the smell of bank notes, the cool, slippery feel of gold in hand--and the tales of the great West had informed him Nevada was full of it, the potential to make more money even higher. Silver mines had sprouted up throughout the territory, with the opportunistic and the desperate alike looking to dig for their fortune. Had to have some place to store all that wealth for safekeeping, Hicks thought, and so he had set out across the plains in his own unique journey to strike it rich.
The bank he had constructed in the fledgling town was beyond even his own expectations: glinting in the sun and outshining the tired whitewashed church, sparkling by starlight like it was Fox Canyon's very own star come down to Earth. He spared no expense on polished wood and brass, with bright, bronze-plated statues of classical nudes flanking the front door and stained glass adorning the iron-latticed windows, casting a rainbow of light into the lobby at any time of day. He wanted to splurge for marble or granite for the facade, and cart in the finest architectural painters from the other side of the Mississippi to decorate every surface with lavish narrative and color, but the resources were dismal here, and Taylor had to make do with what he could muster from the local slack-jawed labor.
There was no reason to open the bank that Sunday, no soul particularly interested in their financial future on a typical day of rest, especially when that day incorporated a raucous wedding celebrated by the entire town. But Hicks was not one for the frontier weddings that were little more than excuses for gluttony and debauchery, when the townspeople did not even know the meaning of such words, such finery that he was accustomed to at parties and celebrations. Besides, he thought as he stood proudly in the bank lobby, surveying the splendor he created, the brass bars and window fittings would tarnish quickly from the dusty atmosphere if he did not polish them, and he wouldn't entrust the duty to just anyone.
Yes, Fox Canyon's First National Bank was Taylor Hicks's pride and joy, his beauty and his only love, and in three minutes it was going to be no more.
The front door to the bank burst open with a bang, sending glittery, shattered brass, and splinters of wood scattered to the polished floor. Hicks spun around in shock, his eyes unaccustomed to the already unbearably bright sun pouring into the lobby through the now demolished door. Three silhouettes broke into the unfettered sunlight, their frames casting looming, ominous shadows along the floor, stretching towards Hicks as if the shades themselves could reach out and destroy him. His eyes were still adjusting but there was no mistaking the firearms in the three men's hands, how their grips tightened around the triggers as they strode inside.
No one was supposed to be at the bank, no one was supposed to break away from the gaiety of the wedding and disturb Hicks this early Sunday morning. As the banker's eyes widened with terror, perhaps that was exactly what the outlaws were counting on.
Chapter 4