—
STAYING OFF THE main road, the Jewetts rode north for several hours before finally stopping in a thicket to give the horses a rest. Cane opened the green cloth bag the bank manager had provided them with and counted the money while they finished eating the rest of Tardweller’s ham. “Three hundred and fifty-four dollars,” he finally said.
Though Cob had never been able to comprehend exactly how numbers worked—three hundred and fifty-four didn’t mean any more to him than a million—he detected disappointment in his brother’s voice. But if the old boy at the bank wasn’t upset, then why should they be? Heck, he had been one of the nicest fellers they had ever met. He swallowed a piece of meat and said, “Well, heck, that ain’t bad.”
“Shit, that ain’t nothing but chickenfeed,” Chimney said. “Especially once you go to splittin’ it three ways. Why, a good whore probably costs two or three dollars.”
Cane began putting the money back in the bag. “I got a feeling that fancy boy pulled one over on us,” he said.
“How do ye figure?”
“Things just seemed a little too easy in there. Hell, he seemed almost glad to see us. I’m bettin’ he had the biggest part of it hid somewhere else.”
“I knew I should’ve killed the bastard,” Chimney spat.
“Fuck, that won’t work. How’s he gonna tell us where the money is if he’s dead?” Cane wiped some sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and squinted up at the huge yellow sun bearing down on them. In less than twenty-four hours they had become murderers, horse thieves, and bank robbers, and all they had to show for it was three hundred dollars? Christ Almighty, he’d planned on that safe being stuffed with more money than they could carry away.
“Yeah,” Chimney said, “I see what you mean. Just need to scare ’em a little. Like when Bloody Bill chopped that ol’ boy’s fingers off that claimed he couldn’t open the safe.”
“Well, maybe not quite…”
“But I thought we only had to rob the one?” Cob said. “Wasn’t that the—”
“I made a mistake,” said Cane.
“Don’t you worry,” Chimney went on. “Next bank we come across, I’ll have the boss man squeezin’ silver dollars out of his ass by the time I’m done with him.”
—
A COUPLE OF hours later, as they made their way through a thorny brake in single file, Cob turned in his saddle and looked back at Chimney. “Can I ask ye something?” he said.
“What’s that?”
“If’n one of them whores you talk about is worth two or three dollars, how much ye figure a good ham cost?”
“Oh, probably about the same, I reckon. They wouldn’t be much difference between a whore and a ham.”
“Well, then,” Cob said, “how many of them could we buy with the money we got?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”
“Whew,” Cob exclaimed. “That sounds like a lot.”
“Yeah, it’d take a day or two to fuck that many.”
“No, I mean, that’s a lot of hams, ain’t it?”
Chimney laughed. “You’re goddamn right it is. Why, if ye was to eat that many hams, ye’d probably turn into a pig yourself.”
“Oh, that’d be fine with me,” Cob said. “All they do is lay around in the mud all day while somebody feeds ’em horseweeds and slop. Shoot, what more could a feller want out of life than that?”
18