Outlawed(38)

“Think,” the Kid went on, ignoring her, “without our doctor, we wouldn’t have been able to do the Fiddleback job at all.”

“And?” Cassie asked. “I mean no disrespect to News and Agnes, but Fiddleback was supposed to hold us for the winter. Now we’ve got nothing until the pass opens up.”

“Not nothing,” the Kid said. “We have this.”

I recognized the envelope from Bixby’s satchel. The Kid opened it and read the letter aloud.

“We’ve all seen that,” Cassie said. “So McBride’s in debt. If we’d known that, we wouldn’t have tried to rob him in the first place.”

“That’s right,” said the Kid. “We wouldn’t have tried to rob McBride.”

“So I fail to see why—” Cassie began.

“McBride doesn’t own Fiddleback,” the Kid said. “The bank does.”

Agnes Rose caught on first. “We’re going to rob the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank?” she asked.

The Kid smiled. “We’re going to buy it.”

The Kid’s plan had many steps. First, we would, in fact, have to rob the bank. Thanks to Henry, we knew we’d only have to get past two men instead of the usual four. But it wouldn’t be enough just to clean out the tills—we’d have to empty the bank’s reserves, which meant robbing the vault. That would take time, not just to get the vault open but also to unload the heavy gold inside. The horses alone wouldn’t be able to carry it in their saddlebags; we’d have to get a wagon. All of that meant we’d need a distraction, so before we even went into the bank, we’d set fire to one of the buildings next door—either a butcher shop or a store that sold ladies’ necessaries, according to the Kid’s maps.

Amid the noise and commotion caused by the fire, we’d break into the bank from the back and dynamite open the vault—faster and surer, the Kid said, than forcing someone at gunpoint to unlock it for us. Then, as we loaded the gold into the wagon, a few of us would hold up the clerks and steal whatever was in the tills at the front of the bank. When we’d scoured the premises for every note, coin, and gold bar, we’d ride away and wait seven days.

During that week, the Kid said, the ranchers in Casper wouldn’t be able to pay their cowboys. The shop owners wouldn’t be able to take out money to buy cotton or shovels or sugar. Every grandmother who tried to withdraw from her life savings would find out there was nothing left. Panic would set in.

Then, when the owners of the bank were afraid to show their faces to their neighbors, when they were holed up in the bank with revolvers to protect not their money but themselves, one of us would show up in the guise of a wealthy landowner from Chicago. This rich man would offer to buy the bank, and all its remaining assets, including its deeds to any lands and properties in Powder River country, for a sum around half of what had been stolen. He would be prepared to haggle—even three-quarters would be acceptable—but in their desperation, the owners were sure to accept eventually. The Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Fiddleback would be ours.

“And then we’ll own the town of Fiddleback,” the Kid finished, “down to the grain in the silos and the cattle in the fields. It will be ours, as God gave Canaan to Abraham, and we will use it to build our nation.”

In the silence that followed I could hear the snow ticking against the windows. Lo looked confused. News and Agnes Rose looked intrigued. Elzy turned to Cassie and opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Her small body bundled in a pinwheel quilt, Texas was the first to speak.

“I thought this was Canaan,” she said.

The Kid’s voice went cold. “What did you say?”

Texas held the Kid’s gaze, her gray eyes steady.

“You heard me,” she said. “I thought this was Canaan, Kid. Our promised land. Now you’re talking about Fiddleback?”

The Kid paused, as though considering, then smiled.

“Canaan was large, sweet Texas. Remember what the Lord told Moses: ‘The border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea.’ ”

“I don’t remember what the Lord told Moses,” Texas said. “All I know is this plan sounds liable to get us killed. And for what, I don’t understand.”

“How long have we lived in this valley?” the Kid asked.

Texas looked confused.

“I’ve been here seven years,” she said. “I understand that you and Cassie were here a good five years before that. So thirteen years, give or take.”

“And in those thirteen years,” the Kid asked, “how much have we profited from thieving?”

Texas turned to Lo, who shrugged. News and Agnes Rose were whispering to one another.

“Well,” Texas said, “we have ten horses—I assume you started with one or two. We have the bunkhouse and the sheds, and the barn I built, and our pots and pans and other effects—”

“You see,” said the Kid, addressing all of us again. “We’ve been raiding and robbing more than a dozen years, and our profit is ten horses and the roof over our heads, nothing more. If we go along as we have been, we’ll never be able to shelter many more than we have now—and even what we have, we struggle to maintain. We must set our sights higher. We must reach out and claim our due.”