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CHAPTER 2

      HE CAME to Denver on the Denver & Rio Grande, pulled by a locomotive named Montezuma. It was late afternoon on a blustery day, and he drifted along Larimer Street, where he found a hotel and paid one day in advance.

      The name he checked in under was William Purdy. Purdy had been his mother's maiden name. All his possessions were in a cardboard suitcase that was just about falling apart.

      When he finished cleaning up from the long trip, he put on his only set of fresh clothes, put the mask and the sack into his pockets, buckled on the belt with his Colt .44, wrapped a length of thin rope around his waist, and buttoned up his black coat. Then he walked a block over to Market Street where he mingled with the crowd.

      He had never been in Denver before, and he liked it at once. It was a lively place. The roadway teemed with wagons and nice carriages. He admired the tall buildings. Everywhere he looked, he saw men working construction, some laying a big water main, others with surveying equipment. Bricklayers plied their trade on scaffolding high above street level. Denver had just been made the state capital by popular vote, and construction was already underway on a huge new domed capital building that, along with a park, would occupy a whole city block.

      He spent a few minutes in Briggs Saddlery, admiring a handsome tooled saddle that glowed golden in the gas lights that seemed to him to have a friendlier glow than the new electric incandescent lamps some of the stores were installing.

      Before he left the store he asked a clerk where the telegraph office was, and the clerk pointed out the corner where he needed to turn in order to reach it. He had no trouble finding it, but he was astonished, looking through the window, that it had one of Mr. Bell's inventions for sending the voice for long distances over wires. He had heard Denver was up to date, but that took the cake in this wondrous year of 1881.

      He walked for more than a mile, rubbernecking like any rube. He passed several mansions, some with wide expanses of lawn, now dried and brown near the end of autumn, and banked-up flowerbeds that must have been magnificent when they were in bloom. A drummer he'd met on the train had told him that Denver had grown six-fold in the past ten years — almost 30,000 people now.

      He stopped at a saloon and looked inside. The warmth was tempting, the place was full of people, and he heard the sound of a piano. On a dismal cold evening like this, it would be pleasant to go in, stand at the bar and sip a glass of rye whiskey, and listen to the music. Instead, he moved on, drifting with the crowd.

      As dusk fell, the wind picked up and the cool breeze became a biting wind. As he walked on, his eyes began tearing from wind-blown grit. He wrapped his coat more tightly around him, and as he passed a darkened shop window, he glimpsed his reflection — a middling man, not tall, not short, neither dark nor fair. He wouldn't stick out in a crowd. His only distinguishing feature was the white scar on his scalp, and that was covered up by his hair. Few people noticed him, and those who did saw only the pleasant averageness that he wanted them to see. He was the sort of man women liked, and men felt kinship to. Dogs came to him to be patted, and cats, in the rare instances that he was near cats, jumped uninvited on his lap. But he could hate and plot, and he wanted revenge.

      But for now he was just good-humored, agreeable Bill Purdy. Who would fail to get along with good old Bill Purdy?

      On Blake Street, he found what he was looking for — a single-story red-brick building with the words "First Bank of the Platte" painted in gold and black on the window. He crossed the street and leaned against the corner of a building, waiting.

      At 5 o'clock, a man wearing an eyeshade locked and barred the door and turned over the sign that hung from string in the window. Previously, the sign had read "Open." Now that the other side was visible, it read "Closed."

      Purdy walked over and looked in the window. The clerk was still writing in a ledger behind his counter. A couple of doors led off from the main room, and a stout dark-haired man appeared at one of them, said something to the clerk, then turned and returned to an inner office.

      Purdy felt a thrill of excitement when he saw the stout man. He walked to the corner and down the alley to the bank's back door. He tried the knob and gave the door a gentle push, but it was barred.

      He stepped back into the shadows and, making sure nobody was watching, he took the mask out of his pocket and put it on his head under his hat in such a way that it could be pulled quickly into place. He drew his .44 and slipped it into his coat pocket. Then he went back to his waiting.

      Several people walked down the alley, but nobody seemed to notice him.

      After almost half an hour, he heard the bar being removed and the door swung inward. The clerk came out, saying good night to someone still inside who closed the door and replaced the bar. Purdy smiled grimly.

      It had taken him a long time to reach this point. He had drifted through one-horse towns and farming centers, in and out of state and territorial capitals throughout the West looking for a man named Weitnaur who might — just might — have something to do with banking. He remembered the words well, the leader of the killers saying, "All right, Weitnaur, we'll give you a chance at our bank." And the man who had taken the real Weitnaur's identity saying, "I'll not disappoint you."

      The words were scalded into Purdy's memory. They had burned in his mind during the two years he had spent back home in Pennsylvania after the war, when he worked in his father's feedstore and healed himself. It was there that he asked his mother for his Baptismal Certificate. He remembered her concerned expression. "You don't need this piece of paper to know who you are. You are the same person you always were," she said gently. But she gave him the paper, which was crisp and clean and carefully folded.

      His mother was wrong. He wasn't the same person he had been. The war and the business down by the creek had changed him from the eager, good-humored youngster he had been when he went to war. The scar under his hair changed him. And the thought of a killer running around with his name changed him. The feedstore and the small town he lived in had proved too confining. He had things to do — a wrong to avenge. Killers to kill.

      After leaving home, he had gone to New York and spent a year working on the docks until the need for revenge pulled him West. He had floated from job to job. For several months he'd been a cowboy in West Texas, then mucked ore in a deep mine in Deseret with the Mormons. He'd roamed for over a year all across California, but no matter where he went, he had been listening to the local talk, asking questions, waiting to hear the names Weitnaur, Hopper, Amhearst, Watson, and Nugent, who had been their leader.

      At last he contacted the Pinkertons. It had taken many months and more than $400 in costs before their office in St. Louis had sent him a letter that said a bank in Denver, on Blake Street, was operated by a man named Weitnaur.

      So now Purdy was in Denver, wondering if the man inside the bank was Weitnaur — and if he was the right Weitnaur, by which he meant the false Weitnaur. The Weitnaur he soldiered with had been from Maine and he had brothers and sisters and uncles, and although they had been merchants, perhaps one of them had come out West and somehow become the president of this bank.

      Well, he would know soon.

      He came to sudden attention at the sound of the bar being moved again. He dropped the mask over his face; it showed a skull crudely painted in white on the black cloth.

      The door opened and the stout man he had glimpsed through the window started out, a heavy padlock and chain in his hands so he could secure the door from the outside.

      Purdy slammed into him before he could get through the doorway, and they both fell into the darkness inside. The banker was strong and, although he squealed like a pig, he put up a good fight until Purdy clipped him hard against the temple with the Colt and then he quieted down and he got cunning instead.

      "There's nothing in the safe. You're wasting your time," the banker wheezed.

      Purdy dragged him to his feet, and poked him under the chin with the .44's muzzle. "I'll see that for myself," he whispered, and together they moved down a pitch-black hall into a dark room.

      The gun in his hand didn't waver from the banker's head as Purdy dug a match out of his shirt pocket and struck it with his thumbnail. The sudden flare revealed the gaslight, and he turned it on and lit the mantle, and the cold light filled the room, and he saw the banker clearly for the first time. There was no doubt, this was the man who had shot him while he lay wounded. It had been almost 15 years, and Weitnaur — the man who called himself Weitnaur — had gained perhaps 50 pounds, but he still had the same cold eyes, the thin lips, the dark hair, graying a little now.

      "Who are you?" Weitnaur demanded.

      Purdy whispered, "If I wanted you to recognize me, I wouldn't have worn the mask. Give me all the money in the safe or I'll kill you."

      "I don't have the combination."

      Purdy slapped the gunbarrel against the side of Weitnaur's head again, this time so hard the banker's eyes rolled back and he almost lost consciousness. A thin stream of blood flowed from his scalp.

      "Must I hit you again?"

      "No, please," Weitnaur was shaken.

      "Then get busy on that safe!"

      Weitnaur got up on wobbly legs. He wondered if he could jump the masked man, then decided to let the little over-and-under Remington two-shot in the safe do the job. He'd used it once before on a drunk who had forced him to open the safe.

      While Purdy held the gun against his head, Weitnaur crouched before the safe and worked the combination. After a couple of tries, the door opened, and Weitnaur turned to Purdy with a greasy smile as he reached for the two-shot, but Purdy kicked the door hard against his hand, and the banker cried out with pain as he felt bones crack.

      Purdy pulled him back and threw him on the floor and taking the rope from around his waist, he tied Weitnaur's wrists behind him. Then he tied the man's ankles and ran a loop from them to his wrists and pulled it tight.

      After he had hogtied him, Purdy turned to the safe, which contained ledgers, several packets of greenbacks and a few small bags of golddust. He took the sack from his pocket and put the money and gold, and the little .41 two-shot in it, then tucked ledgers and other papers, under his arm.

      Standing over Weitnaur, he whispered, "I've never much liked you Weitnaur. This just evens things up for us, because you've taken more'n your share. Now say your prayers, because you're going to wake up in hell." And Purdy pointed the gun directly at Weitnaur's head.

      "Oh my God!" Weitnaur cried.

      Purdy squeezed the trigger and the gun roared. The bullet plowed into the floor an inch away from Weitnaur's ear. The banker fainted.

      Purdy put the mask back in his pocket, then walked out the back door into the alley and back to Larimer Street. He walked fast, like a man who wants to get home on a cold night. When got back to his room at the hotel he dropped the ledgers and other papers on the bed, and threw the bag of money and gold dust under it. He figured that Weitnaur would get loose in only fifteen minutes or so, despite the injured hand. Not much time.

      Then he walked back to Blake Street and waited where he could see the alley. In a few moments Weitnaur came out of the alley door, looked around to see if his assailant had gone, then hurriedly chained the door with his left hand and hotfooted it across a vacant lot toward the telegraph office. Purdy followed him and stood across the street where he could see through the window.

      Purdy could see him at the counter trying to write a message but his hand apparently caused him pain, so he dictated his message to the telegrapher who wrote it down and then tapped it out right then and there. The banker paid him and then went out on the street and headed back toward the bank.

      As soon as Weitnaur was out of sight, Purdy walked into the telegraph office. He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a worn leather wallet which he opened to show a Deputy U.S. Marshall's badge and identification papers. "I need to see a copy of that telegram the fellow with the broken fingers just sent," he said with an air of authority.

      The telegrapher studied the papers. "You're Deputy Marshal Feeney?"

      "You've seen my badge," Purdy said. "This is official business, sir."

      The telegrapher nodded and brought his note over to him.

      It was addressed to Frank Nugent in Tres Marias, Colorado, and said, "Met me at the Palace. I've got bad news." It was signed "Alex."

      "Where's the Palace? I'm new here."

      "Central City. That's where I had to send it because Tres Marias ain't got no wire yet."

      "Tres Marias?"

      "It's a mining camp west of here in the mountains. Message goes to Central City and a dispatch rider takes it up."

      Purdy passed the message back to the telegrapher. "Be a good citizen, don't tell anybody the U.S. Government was looking into the man's business." And while the clerk was assuring him he wouldn't, Purdy walked out of the office.

      On the way back to the hotel he thought he had done well to buy the deputy marshal's identification papers and badge. He'd gotten them from a man he'd met in Abilene, Texas, who said he'd bought them from the man who lifted them out of the pocket of a drunk lawman in Nebraska.

      Purdy guessed he'd done as well as he'd hoped. All he needed now was a good supper and time to look over the papers he had taken. He wanted to know the kinds of businesses Weitnaur and the other sidewinders were into. Then he would sleep, and in the morning he'd get up early and buy a horse, pick up the saddle he'd admired, and get some nice duds.

      Overall, he thought, it had been a grand evening.

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