Bannerman the Enforcer 43 by Kirk Hamilton

Author:Kirk Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: action hero, gunfighters, piccadilly publishing, kirk hamilton westerns, wild west in fiction, outlaws of the old west, best western ebooks
Publisher: Piccadilly

Promptly at noon, Curtis Bannerman arrived at the First National Bank on Texas Street in Dallas. It was actually in the plaza, at least the front of the building was, but the big business district of Texas Street began at the bank’s corner and most folk always thought of it as being ‘in’ Texas Street rather than one of the buildings fronting the Plaza del Sol.

It was an imposing building, redbrick with the mortar joints outlined in white. There was a keystone arch supported by pillars, all of local granite for the main doors and the doors themselves were heavily-paneled oak with gleaming brass hinges and handles, and lock plates. Inside these was a second set of doors, heavy hardwood planks, sheathed in sheet-iron with four sets of massive padlocks and hasps. Thick bars covered all the windows and the safe, though of ancient design, was the heaviest in Texas.

The makers, the famous Century Foundry in Pittsburgh, guaranteed that nothing short of ten pounds of dynamite could blow those doors and even then, secondary lock tongues would spring out with the vibration of the explosion and effectively keep the door jammed in place.

So far, no one had ever tried to put the theory to the test.

There had been robbery attempts, certainly, but these had been attacks on the clerks’ counter by bands of masked men with shotguns and Colts, menacing staff and customers, taking whatever money they could lay their hands on. No one had tried to break in at night and blow the safe. The word amongst the professionals was that, while it could be done, it was just too much hard work and too risky, for nitroglycerine would have to be used. And only desperate or loco men boiled up the sticks of Dr Nobel’s dynamite to skim the oily unstable explosive liquid off the top that was known as nitro.

Curtis Bannerman had always been pleased with the construction of the Dallas branch of his banking chain. It was the only one he had built from scratch. Others he had bought as existing buildings, mostly as banks that were in financial trouble—sometimes deliberately engineered by C.B. and his minions, for there were many ways of winning in the financial world, and not all of them were clean and aboveboard.

But a dollar was a dollar, as C.B. was fond of saying. Earned honestly or otherwise, it still purchased a dollar’s worth of goods.

This attitude was one more reason why Yancey had quit the world of Bannerman Holdings ...

Lincoln Barnett came hurrying across the polished parquetry floor as Curtis Bannerman entered the bank proper and the clerks at their cages behind the heavy counter seemed to draw up to attention, staring a little awestruck at this legendary figure they had heard so much about over the years. He seldom left ’Frisco and only two staff members could recall C.B. having visited the Dallas bank previously.

Samuels, the head clerk, stood nervously smiling beside a gate in the counter at one end, beyond which was his work area.

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