Hard Luck Money Read online

  “And Lupo will get the blame for the killing?”

  “I don’t see any other way to work it,” Hagen said.

  The stranger thought things over for a moment, then nodded.

  “I think there’s a good chance the boss can turn that to our advantage.”

  “If he does—”

  “I know, you’ll want a cut of whatever extra we make. You’ll have to take that up with the boss. All I’m doing is picking up Lupo and taking him back.”

  “All right.” The tone of Hagen’s voice made it clear he would have preferred to come to some sort of arrangement right then.

  The stranger motioned to one of the men with him. He led a saddled but riderless horse forward. As Lupo’s captors muscled him forward, he knew he was going up on that horse. Again the thought of making a break for freedom crossed his mind. Once he was in the saddle, there weren’t many men who could keep up with him.

  As if reading Lupo’s mind, the stranger drew his gun. So did the men with him.

  “Here’s the deal, mister,” he said, addressing Lupo directly for the first time. “We’ve got a use for you ... but you ain’t the only huckleberry in the world who fits the bill. You understand me? You try to get away or give us too much trouble, and we’ll just kill you and leave you layin’ where you fall. Simple as that.”

  They had a use for him, the man said. That meant they would keep him alive, at least for a while. Lupo didn’t see anything he could do except cooperate. He lifted his head and made noises through the gag.

  The stranger jerked a hand toward it. “Take that out of his mouth. We don’t want him to choke before we get him back to the boss’s place.”

  Lupo wanted to meet the mysterious boss. Anybody who could set up something like what was happening had to be a pretty smart man, as well as a powerful one.

  Boozer pulled the rag out of Lupo’s mouth. Lupo spat and worked his jaw back and forth for a moment before he looked up at the stranger. “I’ll cooperate with you, mister. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Good. I was hopin’ you’d be smart.”

  Hagen said, “Let him go.”

  Lupo took a deep breath. He put his foot in the stirrup, grasped the horn, and swung up onto the riderless horse’s back.

  “That just leaves one thing,” Hagen said.

  The stranger shook his head. “That’s your lookout, not mine,” he said flatly.

  “You could give me a hand with the chore.”

  “Sorry,” the stranger said, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.

  Hagen grunted. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and brought it out holding a revolver. With no more warning than that, he turned, pointed the gun at Boozer’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  The shot was sharp and vicious in the night. Boozer’s eyes widened in shock as the bullet bored into his brain, leaving a small, red-rimmed hole in his temple. He went down like a dropped sack of grain.

  The other guards were ready for the moment. They pulled guns, too, and emptied several rounds apiece into the other two convicts who had helped with the escape. They never had a chance.

  Lupo sat on his horse, his eyes wide with shock and horror, as he watched the two men jitter around in a grotesque dance for a couple seconds before death dumped them in gory heaps on the ground.

  The big, ugly man who was in charge of the riders grinned at Hagen. “Looks like Lupo’s the only one who got away.”

  “Yeah,” Hagen agreed. “Lucky son of a bitch, ain’t he?”

  With that, the riders closed in around Lupo and forced him to turn with them. They set a fast pace as they rode off through the trees, fast enough that Lupo worried he would run into something and bash his brains out.

  The men seemed to know where they were going, and surrounded as he was, he didn’t run into anything. They came out on one of the roads near the prison and paused momentarily.

  Lupo was still stunned by what had happened, but he understood the reasoning behind it. Hagen would claim Boozer and the other two convicts had been part of the escape, too. He and the guards with him would be hailed as heroes for stopping three of the four fugitives. Hagen would probably even claim Lupo must have been the mastermind behind the prison break.

  Back inside the walls, bells began to clang as the alarm was sounded. Soon bloodhounds would be baying through the East Texas woods, but Lupo was willing to bet Hagen would mislead the dogs somehow and put them on the wrong scent. Hagen’s part in everything would be covered up completely.

  “Let’s go,” the man in charge said. “Hagen won’t be able to keep them off our trail forever.”

  The riders pounded along the road, with Lupo still caught in the middle of the group and unable to do anything except go along with them.

  Lucky, Hagen had called him, Lupo thought. Lucky because he was out of prison and not dead like Boozer and the others.

  But somehow, as he was forced to flee into the night, Lupo had a bad feeling he wasn’t lucky at all.

  Chapter 5

  They rode for miles, following roads and trails that twisted through the thick forest. Lupo had always had a pretty good sense of direction—it came in handy in his line of work—but he knew he would never be able to retrace their path.

  Finally the leader called a halt. “Put the sack on him.”

  One of the men crowded his horse close to the one Lupo rode and pulled a canvas sack over Lupo’s head. A few stray grains of something landed on Lupo’s lips. He licked them off and found that they were sweet. It had been a sugar sack.

  Now it was an effective blindfold. He couldn’t see a blasted thing.

  “Try to sling that off and you’ll be sorry,” warned the man.

  “Don’t worry,” Lupo replied. “I don’t want to see where we’re going.”

  “That’s bein’ smart,” the leader said. “Come on.”

  Once more they rode through the night, one of the men leading Lupo’s horse. Lupo rocked along in the saddle, waiting to see what was going to happen.

  The waiting gnawed at his nerves. In the past, he’d always been the one to make plans and take action. As the captive, he was just reacting to what his captors did.

  Five years in prison must have softened him up, he thought.

  On the other hand, he was smart enough to know when the odds were overwhelmingly against him. Being cautious wasn’t the same as being soft.

  After what seemed like several more miles, the leader called another halt. “Take it off of him now,” he ordered.

  The sugar sack was jerked from Lupo’s head. Enough moonlight shone down for him to see his surroundings. They had stopped in a straight, tree-lined lane running about a quarter mile to a large building gleaming white in the silvery illumination.

  It was an old plantation house, Lupo realized. East Texas had more in common with the Old South than it did with the frontier. Cotton plantations were plentiful although many of them had been broken up after the Civil War when Reconstruction stripped the owners of their riches.

  The riders moved at an easy trot toward the mansion, which had massive columns flanking its entrance. When they got closer, Lupo could see the place wasn’t in as good repair as it had seemed from a distance.

  The white paint was flaking and peeling in places, and the stucco on the walls had started to crumble. The flowerbeds along the front of the house were overgrown with weeds. It had been a fancy, elegant home at one time, but no longer.

  The leader reined to a stop in front of the portico. “You been pretty well-behaved so far, Lupo. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep on actin’ like that. The boss is a fair man, but he won’t put up with any trouble.”

  Lupo put a hint of the old steel in his voice as he said sharply, “Can’t you get it through your head that I don’t want to cause trouble? Hell, you fellas busted me out of prison. I’m grateful to you.”

  “You looked like you wanted to put up a fight back there, where we met up with Hagen.”

  “T
hat’s because I thought Hagen was going to kill me! I didn’t trust him. Boozer and those other two convicts shouldn’t have trusted him, that’s for sure.”

  The big, ugly hombre chuckled. “You’re right about that,” he admitted. “Do we need to tie your hands before we take you to see the boss?”

  “Nope. All I want to do is thank the man.”

  That was true as far as it went. Lupo didn’t trust his captors.

  But maybe he was being too suspicious. Maybe the mysterious boss didn’t mean him any harm. Maybe the man had some reason of his own for wanting Quint Lupo out of jail.

  The easiest way to find out, and to figure out what he needed to do next, was to play along.

  The leader dismounted and drew his gun. “Don’t take offense, Lupo,” he said as he motioned for the prisoner to dismount. “No new man gets to see the boss without being covered.”

  Lupo swung down from the saddle. “None taken. Can’t blame a man for being careful.”

  The other men dismounted as well. Some of them tended to the horses while two men drew their guns and followed the leader and Lupo into the house.

  A lamp in a wall sconce burned in the foyer. Its glow revealed the shabby former elegance of the house’s exterior continued inside.

  The once-thick rug on the floor was threadbare, and the wallpaper was stained in places. The furnishings, which in the plantation’s heyday would have been kept shined and polished to a high gleam by house slaves, were dull and tarnished.

  With some work, the place could have been restored to its former glory, Lupo thought. Obviously, the current owner didn’t care that much about it.

  Big Ugly led the way along a corridor to a pair of double doors. He knocked on one of them. “It’s Brattle, Mr. Grey.”

  Lupo heard a reply from the other side of the doors, but couldn’t make out the words. Brattle grasped one of the once-bright knobs and turned it, so Lupo knew they’d been told to come in.

  Brattle went first. Lupo followed with the guns of the other two men covering him. He stepped into a room that appeared to be a combination library and office.

  Bookshelves covered three walls. They were lined with dark, leatherbound volumes, but the layer of dust on the books told Lupo no one had disturbed them in quite a while. The sour smell of mold and mildew hung in the air.

  Lupo’s nerves crawled. Everything about the place reminded him of death and decay ... including the man standing in front of the old desk that dominated the room.

  He was tall and thin, probably in his thirties, dressed in a dark suit. He might have been handsome if his face hadn’t been gaunt to the point that he resembled a cadaver. His skin, which seemed more pale when contrasted with his shock of coal-black hair, added to his corpse-like appearance.

  When he smiled, he was somehow transformed and didn’t seem nearly as grotesque. He stepped forward and extended a hand with long, slender fingers.

  “Quint Lupo!” he said in a deep, commanding voice. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Lupo took the man’s hand, which was smooth and cool, and shook it. “Most folks wouldn’t consider it an honor to meet a bank robber.”

  That brought a laugh from his host. “I’m always glad to meet any man who’s good at what he does, and you were one of the best, Mr. Lupo. Or should I call you Quint?”

  Lupo shrugged. “Whatever you’d like. And I wasn’t good enough to stay out of prison.”

  “Yes, but you’ve left those iron bars and gray walls behind now, haven’t you?” The man let go of Lupo’s hand and gestured toward a red leather chair in front of the desk. The chair had a couple small rips in the upholstery, but appeared to be in better shape than many of the furnishings. “Please, have a seat. Brattle, fetch us some brandy.”

  “Sure, boss.” Brattle slid his gun into its holster. The other two men stayed in the background, alert and clearly ready for trouble.

  “Cigar?” the pale, gaunt man asked as he reached for a humidor on the desk.

  “Sure,” Lupo said. The sheer bizarreness made him nervous, but he kept the feeling under control. He didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. He took the thick cylinder of tightly rolled tobacco the man held out to him.

  Brattle brought over a silver tray with a couple snifters of brandy on it.

  Mr. Grey smiled. “You wouldn’t think someone as large and formidable-looking as Brattle here would be an excellent butler, but he is.”

  “I’ve told you, boss, I ain’t a butler,” Brattle objected. “You can call me your segundo if you want.”

  “I’ll call you whatever I please,” Grey said with an undertone of irritation coming into his voice.

  “Well, yeah, sure, I reckon,” Brattle agreed quickly as he set the tray on the desk.

  “Help yourself,” Grey told Lupo with a nod toward the brandy. He went behind the desk and sat down in a large, brown leather chair.

  Lupo picked up one of the snifters and took a sip. It seemed all right, not drugged or anything. Grey had given him his pick of the glasses, which supported that idea.

  The fiery liquor was good, although Lupo was far from an expert on such things. When he was on the owlhoot trail he’d drunk beer and whiskey.

  Grey took a cigar from the humidor for himself and fired up both smokes. He leaned back in his chair. “You’re bound to be wondering why I’ve gone to so much trouble to have you brought here, Quint.”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind,” Lupo admitted dryly.

  “I’m sorry it had to be such an unpleasant experience for you.” Grey touched his head, obviously making reference to the wallop Lupo had gotten from Hagen. “My influence inside the walls goes only so far. We needed you in the infirmary in order to be able to secure your freedom.”

  “Well, I reckon Boozer had it a lot worse in the end,” Lupo said.

  Grey frowned and glanced sharply at Brattle. “What’s he talking about?”

  Brattle’s thick shoulders rose and fell. “Hagen brought some of the convicts in on the deal. Of course, we knew he’d do that to put Lupo in the infirmary, but he used ’em in the actual escape, too.”

  “That was running quite a risk.”

  “Not really,” Brattle said. “As soon as he’d turned Lupo over to us, Hagen and the guards with him killed the three cons.”

  Grey’s dark, deep-set eyes widened slightly. “Really.”

  “He had to kill a guard who wasn’t in on the plan, too,” Brattle added. “He figures he’ll put the blame for that killin’ on Lupo.”

  Grey thought about that for a moment and then nodded as if satisfied. “That’s interesting.” He looked across the desk at Lupo again. “It seems there’s going to be quite a high price on your head after this, eh, Quint?”

  “For breaking jail and killing a guard? I’d say so, yeah.” Lupo couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice as he added, “Even though I didn’t do either of those things.”

  “Ah, but the authorities don’t know that. I was going to offer you a very attractive proposition anyway, but it seems now you have even more reason to accept my offer, since we can help you stay out of the hands of the law.”

  Lupo downed a healthy slug of the brandy to fortify himself and asked, “Just what the hell is it you want from me, anyway?”

  Grey smiled. “I want you to do what you do best, Quint. I want you to rob banks.”

  Chapter 6

  The group of horsemen came to a stop on top of a high hill overlooking the thickly wooded valley where the Colorado River wound its way toward the Gulf of Mexico. On the other side of the river lay the town of La Grange, dominated by the big stone Fayette County Courthouse with its clock tower.

  “The bank’s right there on the square, so the streets will be busy around it,” Brattle said. “Nobody’ll be expectin’ trouble, so we ought to be able to get in and out without too many problems.”

  Lupo shifted in his saddle and felt the weight of the revolver on hi
s hip. “I’d feel better about things if you’d give me some bullets for this gun.”

  Brattle chuckled. “You know that ain’t the way Mr. Grey does things. You can swear you’re with us up one way and down the other, Lupo, but until you’ve proven it, none of us are gonna trust you. You got to earn it.”

  A wave of irritation went through Lupo. “What am I going to do, start yelling for the law as soon as we ride in? If I did that I’d be sticking my head right in a hangman’s noose.”

  “I’m not the one who makes the rules,” Brattle said. “That’d be Mr. Grey.”

  Yes, Alexander Grey was in charge, even though he wasn’t there, Lupo thought.

  Grey was still in that crumbling old plantation house eighty miles away, waiting for his handpicked crew of bank robbers to return with the loot.

  Before Lupo had set out with Brattle and the others for La Grange, Grey had shown Lupo the freshly printed wanted poster. Lupo’s photograph was on it, an improvement over the days when wanted posters had relied on drawings, along with the information that he was wanted for the murder of a guard at the Texas State Penitentiary, as well as for escaping from that prison.

  A reward of $2,500 for his arrest, or for his body, was offered, since the bounty would be paid whether he was dead or alive. The wanted poster made that clear in big, black letters.

  “You’ll appear to be in charge, Quint,” Grey had explained, “although Brattle will really be calling the shots. But your leadership will be important. If you perform well, things will get better for you. You have my word on that.”

  “It still seems loco to me. I don’t wear a mask, I don’t get a gun with bullets in it ... I’ll be the only one running any risk on this job!”

  “I’ve explained this to you,” Grey had said with the patient air of someone talking to a child, which also irritated Lupo. “You’re already a wanted man, but none of the others are. It doesn’t matter if you’re recognized. As for the gun, that’s simply a precaution.”

  “I don’t stand to gain a damned thing by double-crossing you.”