When he heard the knock at his front door, Levi Dobson closed his eyes and muttered to himself, unsure as he did so whether he was praying or cursing.
Before the attempted robbery there would have been no question; as a devout Latter-Day Saint, Levi allowed neither spirits nor obscenity to pass his lips, believing that such weakness opened the door to Satan. Then, less than a week ago, the two thieves turned up on his doorstep and it seemed that Satan needed no open door. Instead he brought hellfire with him and burned down the walls themselves, and with them all hope.
The depositors of the First Zion Farmer’s Bank praised Levi as a hero for resisting the gunmen, and self-righteously observed that the wicked had reaped their just reward for their villainous deeds. That first morning after the fire, they left Levi alone to recover from his ordeal and his injuries under the excellent care of Doctor John Ellstrom.
The next day was Sunday. Levi stayed home from temple, but understood that the testimony made comparisons between his trial and that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace of King Nebuchadnezzar.
The next day his depositors began to turn up on the front porch of his home, asking for their money back.
At first Teresa was able to appeal to their better nature, pointing out that Levi was still feverish and weak from the bullet wound that had broken his leg, and asking for a few days grace before forcing him from his sickbed. Abashed, the depositors withdrew, but talk began to spread. Levi heard it from Dr. Ellstrom, a decent enough fellow for a Gentile, who came to check on him each day and change the dressings on his leg and head.
“It’s not the farmers, you understand,” the doctor said. “Their homes weren’t burned. No, it’s the businessmen, calling in the money owed to them so they can rebuild. There’s a lot of talk about the ‘big-city banker’ sitting on his ‘pile of money’ instead of giving it to them it belongs to.”
Levi looked around his clean, tidy, but frugally decorated bedchamber. No ornate pictures hung from the moldings, no flocked paper decked the walls, and no thick Oriental rugs cushioned the floor. As for the “big city”, he had been to San Francisco once and Salt Lake City
“Would you be so good as to pass along a message for me, Doctor?” he said.
Over the objections of the doctor and his wife, Levi put the word about that he would hold a meeting for depositors of the First Zion Farmer’s Bank on the following evening at six. Dr. Ellstrom contended that he was still too weak to strain himself so; Teresa demanded to know how he intended to meet with hundreds of people in his bedchamber. Levi replied that he intended no such thing. Rather, he would meet them on his front porch.
The next day a crowd began to assemble in the street before the Dobson house at four. Despite the explicit nature of the invitation, some of the bolder fellows among them knocked on the door early, asking to see Levi privately. Teresa refused them all, angrily shooing them off the porch with admonitions that Levi would speak to them at six o’clock or not at all, and the choice was theirs.
“Do you know,” she said to her husband, arms akimbo, “Two of them were Saints? I expected better from the brethren.”
At five o’clock, the crowd was near a hundred. Toting a rifle, the marshal arrived, keeping an eye on the gathering from horseback. His presence did not completely reassure Levi, since at last count he had close to five hundred dollars in the First Zion Farmer’s Bank.
By six, with the sun just fading from the sky, there were close to three hundred people cramming the dusty street in front of Levi Dobson’s house. They filled the street all the way across, blocking what traffic tried to get by. People clambered onto porches across the street and hung from the railings so as to get a better view. Peering out from an upstairs window, Levi recognized most of his depositors, but he also spied many who were not—curiosity seekers, taking what entertainment they could, since the saloons were still forbidden from selling alcohol.
Teresa helped Levi down the stairs. With his splinted and bandaged left leg stuck out in front of him like a battering ram, he had to hop down each step on his right foot, leaning on his wife for support, and the jolting pained him terribly. By the time he reached the bottom, he was pale and sweating.
“Don’t go out there, Levi,” said Teresa. “Tell them to come back some other time, but not tonight.”
“Please hold the door for me, my dear.”
As the front door opened, a murmur went through the assembled and died away as Levi hobbled out. He had intended to address them standing in the center of the porch stairs, but he realized now what a mistake that would be. Instead, he lurched over to the railing and seized it, leaning on it to keep himself upright. The crowd fell utterly silent; no cheering now for the hero of the fiery furnace, he said to himself, then rebuked himself for his prideful thoughts.
“Brothers and sisters,” he began, then cleared his throat. It surprised him how dry his mouth felt, looking at all those unsmiling faces. “This morning I sent a messenger, Josiah Byrne, to Ogden
Quiet held for a moment as the gathering digested this speech, some turning to their neighbors and asking what the longer words meant. Then someone Levi did not see called out, “When?” and everyone turned back to Levi.
“I cannot be sure,” he said. Murmuring began again and grew louder. He raised his voice to add, “It will take Josiah a few days to reach Ogden
“Bushwah!” someone shouted. Levi faltered, looking for sympathy or at least comprehension in the faces of his neighbors and finding none. A man pushed through the crowd toward him: George DeLacey, who owned the dry goods store next to the bank. After temple services, Levi and Teresa and the children sometimes took Sunday dinner with the DeLaceys, but tonight George’s face was twisted with anger and frustration. “I don’t have time to wait for some swell from Salt Lake City
A shot tore the air, close at hand, and the crowd flinched. A few screamed. Then one voice rose above the din, shouting for quiet. His rifle still smoking from the round he had fired in the air, Marshal Samuel Driggs jockeyed his horse between the people and the Dobson house, his voice rough as he cried, “All right, enough now!”
The shouting died away as the people made room for the Marshal. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” he said. “I know we’re all in a tough spot, but that includes Brother Dobson, here. You think he keeps his money in his mattress, and he can just go inside and grab wads of it to hand out on his porch?
“You know better than that. What money he had was in his bank, same as yours, George. Same as mine. He’s promised to pay it as soon as it comes, and I’d think his word should be good enough for all of you. Now go on home and let the man rest! Go on!” Driggs glared at them all, and especially the ringleaders like George DeLacey, daring them to take the issue further, but the back of the mob had already begun to break up. Without that support the groups near the front also separated and drifted away, but with many a resentful backward glance. Levi understood that he was not forgiven—only deferred.
Teresa said, “Thank you, Brother Driggs.”
“Corinne can’t take a riot right now,” the Marshal said. “But there’s only so long they’ll wait, Levi.”
He legged his horse around, pointing it back toward the center of town. As his parting shot, he said, “Come to that, there’s only so long I’ll wait.”
In the days that followed the Dobsons kept to the house with the curtains drawn and loaded weapons close to hand. Teresa answered knocks at the door and when they saw her expression, it took men with more guts than George DeLacey owned to ask for money. Only Dr. Ellstrom came and went freely, pronouncing that Levi’s leg was healing nicely, but that it would take time. In the gloom of the closed-up house, Levi prayed for deliverance, but as days passed without word from Salt Lake City
Then, three days after the meeting on his porch, the knock came at the door. From where he lay in his upstairs bedchamber, Levi heard Teresa shush the children, then walk briskly to the front hallway. He heard her call, “Who is it?” and the murmured answer, but he was surprised to hear the door open and Teresa step outside. Through the door he could hear her in conversation; with whom, he did not know, but the voice sounded male. He sat up painfully in bed, trying to peer down the stairs. Then the door opened again and he heard someone step in with Teresa, saying, “Thank you, ma’am.” Dr. Ellstrom had been by already and was not expected back, and for the last three days Teresa had chased away everyone else. Her footsteps sounded on the staircase, and she stepped into the room, Levi’s shotgun in her arms and a peculiar expression on her face.
“What is it, my dear?” said Levi.
As they rode back to Corinne, Tom envisioned pulling a wagon up to the burned out bank, slinging the door in the bed and riding away, but he decided to hold that thought to himself awhile, until they had a chance to look at it again. Dove Ed refused to wait outside of town all alone, so the three of them came down the main street near midday and stopped in front of the ashy ruins.
All around, the work of cleanup and rebuilding went on as other destroyed buildings were knocked down and hauled away, and the sound of carpentry came from places that had only been damaged. No one had time for three riders idling by a pile of ashes with an iron cage in the middle.
Looking at the cage with the safe inside, Tom Mulvehill knew he’d been right to keep his schemes to himself. The door was a three-foot by five-foot slab of black metal as thick as boiler plate from off a locomotive, with three stout bands of iron running across it to hinges the size of a man’s fist. The frame supporting the hinges consisted of thick iron bars welded together, attached with rivets to the vault cage. Short of cutting through the rivet heads, Tom saw no way to separate the frame from the cage, or the door from the frame; there could be no thought of lifting it from the hinges and making off with it. His mind raced, examining the possibilities.
“If I was interested in heavy lifting,” said Cash Joyner, “I’d have stayed in Lemhi and moved my rocks back off the road. Look at that thing! Must weigh five hundred, maybe six hundred pounds with the frame.”
Tom glanced at Cash, leaning on the pommel of his saddle with an innocent expression on his face. That hayseed demeanor fooled you, made you think of Cash as an ignorant hick, when in fact he was no such thing. Since he had no good reply, Tom turned instead to Dove Ed Williams, who kept looking over his shoulder. “What’s the matter, boy? You’re as nervous as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” he said.
“Just looking out for Putney,” Dove Ed said, and all three of them looked around.
They saw no sign of Jacob Putney, but they did catch the eye of a carpenter working on the structure next door. He waved and called, “Hope you’re not here to make a withdrawal!”
Dove Ed looked startled and Cash gave a wry grin at the feeble joke, but Tom laughed out loud and said, “No, by God, and a good thing, too! I was hoping to have a word with the banker, though.” He paused a moment, then cocked a thumb at the ruins of the bank and said, “I trust he wasn’t, uh…?”
“No, sir, he’s at home.” The carpenter, his expression now guarded, pointed with his hammer. “Five up, one left,” he said. “Levi Dobson, you ask for, and much joy I wish you of it.” He turned back to his work.
“Thanks, friend.” Tom urged his mount in the direction the carpenter had indicated.
“Now what was that about?’ Cash said. Tom shook his head, a little unsettled by the exchange himself.
They found the house without difficulty, a trim two-story clapboard with a broad porch and a waist-high whitewashed fence in front. All the shades were drawn, and the place had a somber, brooding air about it, as though the occupants were in mourning. From the main street came the sounds of industry, but around the little house the street stood quiet. The men hitched their horses to the fence rail and followed Tom as he mounted the steps to the front door, where he rapped briskly.
No one responded at first, and Tom began to wonder if the house were deserted, but as he raised his hand to knock once more, a voice came from behind it.
“Who is it?” A woman, suspicious.
Tom glanced at his companions in turn, then said, “Tom Mulvehill, ma’am, and my friends Cash Joyner and Dove Ed Williams.”
The door opened and Tom took an involuntary step back, raising his hands to shoulder level. In the doorway stood a petite woman with pale brown hair piled in a demure bun atop her head and an apron over her skirts. In her hands she clutched a double-barreled shotgun, and Tom saw that both hammers were back. The woman scowled at the three men, biting her lower lip in determination, and advanced onto the porch, pulling the door to behind her. Tom heard Dove Ed flee the porch to stand with the horses; Cash stood his ground with Tom. The tiny woman looked them over and said, “I don’t know you. Are you depositors?”
Tom could only shake his head for a moment. He had been under the gun before, more times than he could remember. He had faced men who would shoot him if he showed the slightest hesitation; men who would shoot him because it was their job; men who would shoot him because they would enjoy it. Hell, they had shot at him, sometimes, and not once had he felt afraid. But the sight of those twin bores in the hands of this elfin creature quite robbed him of his voice. Tom knew she would shoot, but he didn’t know why, or what might cause her to pull the trigger. What had he done to her? He felt a surge of relief when he heard Cash answer in that quiet, self-assured way of his, “No, ma’am, we ain’t.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Well, first thing, we’d appreciate it if you could point that somewheres else.”
The shotgun lowered a fraction, though not all the way, and Tom began to get a grip on himself. He swallowed to get his heart back where it belonged and said, “Are you Mrs. Dobson?”
“I am, and my husband’s laid up in bed and not to be disturbed.”
“Ma’am, normally I wouldn’t think of it, but it’s very important we have a word with him. Not about a withdrawal,” he added hastily, as the shotgun came up again.
“What, then?”
Mentally he ran through the lies and subterfuges that sprang up at the question. He rejected them out of hand. This woman could smell a falsehood and just might take a shot at one. Tom said, “Ma’am, we’d like to buy your husband’s iron door.”
She bid them stand in the hall while she consulted with her husband. “And you might as well remove your gunbelts, for I’ll not have them in my house.” She stood watching as Tom and Cash unbuckled the belts and handed them to Dove Ed. The boy edged close enough to take them, but seemed happy to remain outside while they followed the madwoman inside.
In the hall, hats in hand, they fidgeted, ill at ease without their revolvers even though the house was neat and cozy. From the top of the stairs in front of them, they could hear the woman talking in a low voice with someone, presumably her husband. To the left, a doorway led into a formal parlor of gracious but not extravagant appointment. The hallway ran alongside the staircase to the back of the house. Through a door at the end of hall, a tow-headed young boy and girl peeped at Tom and Cash, ducking back out of sight when the men noticed them.
“If I’d known I was going calling,” said Cash under his voice, “I’d of worn my Sunday best pistol.”
Tom ignored him. Mrs. Dobson was coming down the stairs, still toting the shotgun, though she showed less inclination to aim it in their direction, for which he was grateful. “Mr. Dobson will see you,” she said. “But I’d be obliged if you would please keep your visit brief, and try not to strain him.”
“No, ma’am.” They followed her upstairs.
Levi Dobson awaited them in his bed. Evidently, his wife had helped him prepare for their meeting, for he rested upright on a stack of pillows, his game leg stretched before him swathed in bandages. The other leg he kept under the bedclothes. To preserve his dignity, he had folded a blanket over his lap and donned his shirt and suit coat. His rumpled hair, and his wife standing attentively at his bedside, rather spoiled the illusion that he did business this way as a matter of course, but he gave them his best banker’s smile and said, “Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?”
In the corner of his eye Tom could see Cash, his mouth hanging open at this outlandish apparition before them. He forced himself to look only at the banker’s face, lest he laugh outright, and came right to the point. “Sir, we’d like to buy the iron door from your bank.”
Levi Dobson shook his head. “Impossible. That door was built to my specifications expressly for my bank. It performed admirably during the recent robbery, and I intend to incorporate it into the new bank building. I could not think of parting with it.”
“Are you certain? My partners and I are prepared to pay well…say, three hundred dollars?”
Dobson again shook his head, but Tom cut his eyes at Mrs. Dobson. She had propped the shotgun against the wall and stood now with arms folded and brow furrowed, staring at her husband.
“Well, I suppose we could go as high as five hundred,” Tom said.
“No, sir, I’m sorry. Not if you were to offer full replacement price.”
“Which is?”
“It cost me over two thousand dollars to have it made in Salt Lake City
Tom sighed, and settled his hat on his head. “That’s all right. We don’t have anything like two thousand dollars,” he said. “Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Dobson.”
“Not at all.”
They turned away, but before they could depart they were halted by a voice behind them. Mrs. Dobson said, “How much do you have?”
Tom looked at her and recognized the level, determined expression on her face as that of a woman who has reached a decision. From the bed the banker gaped at his wife, but she paid him no mind, still standing with her arms folded, waiting for Tom’s reply. The shotgun stood forgotten by the bed, but under Teresa Dobson’s gaze Tom nonetheless felt as though she were aiming a weapon at him. For the first time he knew some sympathy for the men he had held under his own gun.
The banker spoke. “My dear, what…”
She looked down at him and his voice died in his throat. Tom couldn’t blame him. He cleared his throat and said, “Ma’am, it might help if you give us an idea of the amount you’re looking for.”
“You’re mistaken, Mr. Mulvehill,” she said. “We are not horse-trading here, because I’m not a horse trader. I want to know your top dollar offer right now. If it’s enough, you can have the door.”
“Teresa!” Dobson protested. “You can’t…”
She swung to face him, arms akimbo. “Oh, can’t I?” she said. “You heard what Brother Driggs and Brother DeLacey said, didn’t you?” She loaded the honorific “Brother” with derision.
Dobson winced at her scorn, but he earned Tom’s respect by arguing with his wife. “Yes, but even five hundred dollars won’t nearly pay back all the depositors,” he said.
“Of course not. But if you pay some now to DeLacey and Driggs, and a few other blowhards, they’ll change their tune. Without them stirring the pot, the others will be content to wait until the rest comes in from Salt Lake
Dobson chewed this over, while Tom and Cash looked at each other in frank admiration, not to mention concern. They knew this would cost them more than they had planned. The banker said, “Five hundred won’t go far between Driggs and DeLacey and the others.”
“You’re right,” said his wife. To Tom she said, “A thousand would go much farther.”
“Come on, Tom,” said Cash. “We’ll have to think of something else.” He started for the door, but Tom put a hand on his chest.
“My friend is right, Miz Dobson,” Tom said. “Let me be straight with you. We ain’t got but twelve hundred. It’s our whole stake. Now after we buy the door, we still have to buy a wagon and team to haul it. Then we’ll need lumber and tools to install it, and food to eat while we’re doing that. Way I see it, that’s a good four hundred dollars, so you’re welcome to eight hundred for the door.”
“A thousand,” she shot back, “And we’ll throw in the wagon and team. When you get where you’re going, you can sell them if you like, and you’ll be ahead on the deal.”
“But Teresa, we don’t have a wagon and team!” her husband burst out.
“Sloan does, and I’m sure he’d give them up if you offered to forgive his delinquent payments on his mortgage.” While Levi Dobson’s mouth flapped open and shut, producing no coherent sounds, she said to Tom and Cash, “Levi will write up documents to that effect. You just take them out to Luke Sloan’s ranch and he’ll get you fixed up. Is it a deal?”
Fifteen minutes later Tom and Cash emerged into the sunlight outside the Dobson home and looked around for Dove Ed. The boy stood between the horses at the fence, and when he caught sight of them his entire body sagged in relief.
“I have never in my born days seen the like,” Cash said as they descended the steps to the street. Tom could only shake his head.
“They wouldn’t sell?” said Dove Ed. “You’re lucky to get out of there alive, you ask me.”
“Oh, they sold,” said Tom. He pulled a small bundle of papers from inside his mackinaw. “All nice and legal.”
The men swung aboard their mounts and Tom set out down the street, Cash following. Only Dove Ed hesitated. “Bank’s the other way,” he called. He legged his horse after them when they did not stop.
“First we need to get us a wagon from Sloan’s ranch,” Tom said. “Did you expect us to put the door in our saddlebags?” Cash chuckled, but there was no response from the boy. Tom pulled up short and looked behind him.
Dove Ed stood his horse in the middle of the street a few yards back, a look of sheer horror on his face. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Tom said.
“Did you say Sloan’s ranch?” Dove Ed said.
“Yeah. We’ve got a letter from the banker, says that Sloan is to set us up with a rig and a team. Why?”
“Let’s go to the livery stable instead, see what they’ve got.”
“We can’t. Ain’t got the money for it,” Cash said.
“It’s all part of the deal,” Tom said. “Now what’s eating you, Dove Ed?”
The boy looked from one to the other of them, misery and fear in his face. He said, “The foreman at Sloan’s ranch is Jacob Putney.”
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