They were packing up, getting ready to ride out of the valley, when they heard the buzzing sound. “There it is,” Chimney said, pointing at what looked like a giant mosquito high up in the sky coming toward them. As it got closer, the airplane began to descend, and by the time it passed over them, it was close enough that they could make out two goggled men inside. They saw the one in the seat behind the cockpit lean out a little and look down at them. Cob raised his hand and waved. “I bet there’s one of them carnivals or county fairs goin’ on around here somewhere,” he said. “I wish we could go.”
At the other end of the valley, the plane turned and began to circle back. The pilot, Reese Montgomery, was a golden-haired playboy who had spent the last two years traveling around the country spending his tycoon father’s money like water and looking for adventure and unique items of interest. Three months ago, he had leased a private coach from the B&O for himself and his butler and cook, and another rail car to carry two of his latest acquisitions: a German-built Fokker two-seater biplane he found on the Brownsville black market, and the Eau Claire County Nut Cracker, a burly cage-fighter raised in the Wisconsin logging camps who had recently gained a certain notoriety for castrating several of his opponents with his teeth. Also traveling in the second car was Arnold Whistler, the playboy’s mechanic and go-to man in an emergency. A former maintenance supervisor at one of the Montgomery textile mills, he had been an employee of the family since before Reese’s birth. There had been a time when he thought, if he demonstrated enough diligence and loyalty, he might be made head manager at one of the bigger factories, but that time had passed, and his primary duties these days consisted of covering up felonies and filth and secretly wiring back reports to John Montgomery from time to time, informing him of his brat’s whereabouts and latest erratic behavior. Still a little wary of the Nut Cracker’s mood swings, he slept in the cockpit of the Fokker with a small five-shot Colt within easy reach; and every morning he reminded himself that if he could put up with their shit just a few more months he could retire to a little cottage he had purchased on a hill overlooking Camden, Maine, and never again have to negotiate a payment plan with a battered woman or end another telegram to Montgomery senior with “Your Faithful Servant.”
The train had just arrived in Atlanta when Reese heard about the three outlaws who had robbed the banks in Farleigh and Danville and were also accused of murdering some hick squire named Tardweller. Though the reward, a pitiful two hundred and fifty dollars, didn’t interest him in the slightest, the DEAD OR ALIVE notice at the bottom of the wanted poster was too good to resist. If nothing else, he told Whistler, hunting them down might be good sport. And besides, he was bored, bored shitless with life as well as with the woman who was this summer’s companion, a raven-haired English tart advertised by her bankrupt brother-in-law as the most titillating piece of romance this side of the Mississippi, but who had turned out to be just another brainless suction pump looking for a rich husband. Indeed, though her pedigree supposedly extended as far back as Charlemagne, her entire bag of tricks could have easily been replicated by half a dozen other mammals. Just that morning he had said so, comparing her to a baby calf, and then left her bawling like one on the marble floor. God, she was boring.
He had his train cars parked at the first siding outside Atlanta, then unloaded his plane and flew to Danville with the mechanic and several firearms. After talking to the local constable, he had several caches of fuel sent ahead to various towns within a hundred-mile radius, and set off looking for the bandits, described as three dipshit farm boys in dirty white shirts riding horses. Landing that evening in a small junction called Coon Crossing to top off his petrol tank and find some shelter for the night, he was picking at a supper of overdone quail in the local boardinghouse when he heard about a young berry picker who had told about an almost constant barrage of shooting in the hills to the northeast just that afternoon. At sunrise the next morning, after downing several cups of chicory coffee laced with brandy, he and Whistler flew off in that direction.
And lo and behold, there they were, right out in the middle of an open field. This was going to be almost as easy as the time he shot the muzzled lion in a cage over in New Jersey. As he turned the plane to make a second pass, Montgomery indicated to the mechanic with shouts and hand signals to hold his fire until he got as close as possible. The three men down below were still looking up, their mouths gaped open in curiosity. Whistler leaned out over the fuselage and fired several times as the plane got within a hundred yards of the ground. After passing them, Montgomery pulled back on the joy stick and the plane ascended sharply, then banked to the left and began still another swoop.