“Is he a goner?” asked one of his deputies, a great bear of a man with a huge stomach bulging over pants with suspenders stretched to their limits, who stood poised with a sawed-off shotgun at the ready.

“The bullet only creased his skull,” answered Pardee. “He’s still alive.”

“What about the woman?”

Pardee’s mind did not register for a moment. Then it hit him. “The woman who came into the bank before the gunshots?”

“That one.”

“She must have been abducted by the bandit.”

“But we saw no one else enter the bank before or after her.”

Pardee stood up in confusion and disbelief. It took all his imagination to believe a woman was the Butcher Bandit.

“The bandit must have entered through the back door.”

“I don’t know, Sheriff,” said the deputy, scratching his chin. “The door should have been locked from the inside, like it always is.”

Pardee rushed over to the rear door and found it unlocked. He jerked it open and peered up and down the alley but saw no one. “Hell’s fire,” he muttered. “She got away.”

“She can’t get far,” said the deputy.

“Round up the men!” snapped Pardee. He motioned to another deputy, who was standing at the entrance of the bank. “Get Doc Madison. Tell him the Van Dorn agent is down with a head wound and to get over to the bank double-quick.” Pardee knelt down and quickly examined Bell again. “Also tell him there looks like there’s a bullet in the agent’s leg.”

The deputy was no sooner out the door than Pardee was on his heels, running toward his horse tied to the hitching post in front of his office. It didn’t seem possible, he thought, that everything had gone so terribly wrong. Only then did it begin to strike him that the bandit was a man disguised as a woman and that the poor widow he and his wife had taken in was an accomplice.

AS SOON as they left the city limits of Telluride and passed the road leading to the mines of Ophir to the south, Margaret gave the horse the whip and urged it to run through the canyon and down the road heading west toward Montrose. During the ten minutes since they left the bank, Cromwell had time to think. He pointed to a break in the trees that led to a bridge over the San Miguel River. It was an overgrown access road used by the railroad for maintenance crews repairing the track.

“Get off the road,” Jacob said to Margaret. “Go over the bridge and head down the track bed.”

She turned and looked at him. “I thought you said they’d never be suspicious of two women in a buggy?”

“That was before it occurred to me that the sheriff and his deputies were watching the bank.”

“That goes without saying, but what does it have to do with our escape?”

“Don’t you see, dear sister? I was the last one to enter the bank and never came out. If what you say is true, Pardee is no fool. He must have put two and two together by now and is looking for both of us. But he’ll never think to search for us riding over the track bed. He’ll be certain we took the road.”

“And if he doesn’t find us, what do you think he’ll do then?”

“He’ll backtrack, thinking that we hid out in the trees while he and his posse rode past. By then, we’ll be on a train out of Montrose, dressed as two men.”

As usual, Cromwell was miles ahead of his pursuers when it came to matching wits. Though he was disheartened that Bell had out-smarted him in laying a well-conceived trap, he gained a certain amount of satisfaction believing he had killed the famous Van Dorn agent.

Just as he had predicted, the sheriff and his posse charged down the road that was out of sight of the railroad tracks in the trees and, not finding any sign of their quarry, had doubled back toward Telluride. It was a bumpy ride over the railroad ties, but it was compensated for by knowing that Pardee had been hoodwinked and would end up empty-handed.

27

BELL WAS CARRIED TO THE TELLURIDE HOSPITAL, where he was treated by the town doctor. The first bullet out of Cromwell’s Colt had entered and exited his thigh, causing only minor damage to the tissue. The doctor said it would heal within a month. The doctor then stitched the scalp wound, sewing up the crease as neatly as a tailor mending a torn suit pocket.

After ignoring the doctor’s demands that he remain in the hospital for a few days, Bell limped to the depot to take the next train to Denver. Wearing a hat to cover the bandage around his head, he, along with Curtis, watched with anger and sadness as the coffin containing Irvine was lifted into the baggage car by Sheriff Pardee’s deputies. Then he turned and held out his hand to Pardee. “Sheriff, I can’t thank you enough for your cooperation. I’m grateful.”

Pardee shook Bell’s hand. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said sincerely. “Did he have a family?”

“Fortunately, no wife or children, but he lived with an aging mother.”

“Pour soul. I suppose it’s the county poorhouse for her.”

“She’ll be taken care of in a good nursing home.”

“A good nursing home doesn’t come cheap. Did Irvine have money?”

“No,” replied Bell, “but I do.”

Pardee refrained from any more questions. “If only things had fallen our way.”

“Our well-laid plans certainly turned into a fiasco,” said Bell, seeing the baggage car door close behind the coffin. “The bandit made me out the fool.”

“Not your fault,” said Pardee. “He fooled us all, and I was the biggest fool. I’m certain now the destitute widow who my wife and I took in was in cahoots with him. I should have been suspicious when she finagled information out of me about the bank’s operations.”

“But you didn’t tell her there was a trap being set. Cromwell would have never walked into the bank if he suspected a trap.”

Pardee shook his head. “They bought your story—hook, line, and sinker. If only we had known he was going to wear women’s clothing, we might not have thought twice before we shot him down like the dog he is.”

“According to reports of his other robberies, he never dressed as a woman.”

“Even if the trap turned sour, my posse and I should have apprehended them. Stupidly, I thought they’d stay on the road. It never crossed my mind they would use the railroad track bed as an escape route until it was too late. By the time I figured out how they had outfoxed me, they were long gone.”

“Were the train passenger lists checked in Montrose?”