登陆注册
15462900000020

第20章 CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURE COMES SMILING(1)

Luck, in the course of his enthusiastic picture making, reached the point where he must find a bank that was willing to be robbed--in broad daylight and for screen purposes only. If you know anything at all about our financial storehouses, you know that they are sensitive about being robbed, or even having it appear that they are being subjected to so humiliating a procedure.

What Luck needed was a bank that was not only willing, but one that faced the sun as well. He was lucky, as usual. The Bernalillo County Bank stands on a corner facing east and south. It is an unpretentious little bank of the older style of architecture, and might well be located in the centre of any small range town and hold the shipping receipts of a cattleman who was growing rich as he grew old.

Luck stopped across the street and looked the bank over, and saw how the sun would shine in at the door and through the wide windows during the greater part of the afternoon, and hoped that the cashier was a human being and would not object to a fake robbery. Not liking suspense, he stepped off the pavement and dodged a jitney, and hurried over to interview the cashier.

You never know what secret ambitions hide behind the impassive courtesy of the average business man. This cashier, for instance, wore a green eyeshade whenever his hat was not on his, head. His hair was thin and his complexion pasty and his shoulders were too stooped for a man of his age. You never would have suspected, just to look at him through the fancy grating of his window, how he thirsted for that kind of adventure which fiction writers call red-blooded. He had never had an adventure in his life; but at night, after he had gone to bed and adjusted the electric light at his head, and his green eyeshade, and had put two pillows under the back of his neck, he read--you will scarcely believe it, but it is true--he read about the James boys and Kit. Carson and Pawnee Bill, and he could tell you--only he wouldn't mention it, of course--just how many Texans were killed in the Alamo. He loved gun catalogues, and he frequently went out of his way to pass a store that displayed real, business- looking stock-saddles and quirts and spurs and things. He longed to be down in Mexico in the thick of the scrap there, and he knew every prominent Federal leader and every revolutionist that got into the papers; knew them by spelling at least, even if he couldn't pronounce the names correctly.

He had come to Albuquerque for his lungs' sake a few years ago, and he still thrilled at the sight of bright-shawled Pueblo Indians padding along the pavements in their moccasins and queer leggings that looked like joints of whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobile out to Isleta, which is a terribly realistic Indian village of adobe huts, made the blood beat in his temples and his fingers tremble upon his knees. Even Martinez Town with its squatty houses and narrow streets held for him a peculiar fascination.

You can imagine, maybe, how his weak eyes snapped with excitement under that misleading green shade when Luck Lindsay walked in and smiled at him through the wicket, and explained who he was and what was the favor he had come to ask of the bank. You can, perhaps, imagine how he stood and made little marks on a blotter with his pencil while Luck explained just what he would want; and how he clung to the noncommittal manner which is a cashier's professional shield, while Luck smiled his smile to cover his own feeling of doubt and stated that he merely wanted two Mexicans to enter, presumably overpower the cashier, and depart with a bag or two of gold.

The cashier made a few more pencil marks and said that it might be arranged, if Luck could find it convenient to make the picture just after the bank's closing time. Obviously the cashier could not permit the bank's patrons to be disturbed in any way--but what he really wanted was to have the thrill of the adventure all to himself.

With the two of them anxious to have the pictured robbery take place, of course they arranged it after a polite sparring on the part of the cashier, whose craving for adventure was carefully guarded as a guilty secret.

At three o'clock the next day, then--although Luck would have greatly preferred an earlier hour--the cashier had the bank cleared of patrons and superfluous clerks, and was watching, with his nerves all atingle and the sun shining in upon him through a side window, while Pete Lowry and Bill Holmes fussed outside with the camera, getting ready for the arrival of those realistic bandits, Ramon Chavez and Luis Rojas. On the street corner opposite, the Happy Family foregathered clannishly, waiting until they were called into the street-fight scene which Luck meant to make later.

The cashier's cheeks were quite pink with excitement when finally Ramon and the Rojas villain walked past the window and looked in at him before going on to the door. He was disappointed because they were not masked, and because they did not wear bright sashes with fringe and striped serapes draped across their shoulders, and the hilts of wicked knives showing somewhere. They did not look like bandits at all--thanks to Luck's sure knowledge and fine sense of realism. Still, they answered the purpose, and when they opened the door and came in the cashier got quite a start from the greedy look in their eyes when they saw the gold he had stacked in profusion on the counter before him.

They made the scene twice--the walking past the window and coming in at the door; and the second time Luck swore at them because they stopped too abruptly at the window and lingered too long there, looking in at the cashier and his gold, and exchanging meaning glances before they went to the door.

同类推荐
  • 沙门日用

    沙门日用

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 台湾府赋役册

    台湾府赋役册

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 春答

    春答

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 燕礼

    燕礼

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 雕虫诗话

    雕虫诗话

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 做事要有分寸

    做事要有分寸

    本书取材于现实,以“做人要有分寸”为出发点,千诫读者做事应注意的方方面面。如果你仔细从头到尾阅读此书,就能从中得到大量有益的启示,大大改进你做事的能力。本书就是对生活中做事应该讲分寸的各个方面进行了最细致的归纳,用浅显易懂的语言说出深刻的大哲理,让读者有种耳目一新的感觉!
  • 那年我们,刚,好

    那年我们,刚,好

    青春时代迷茫的我们总会遇到一些人,但有些人,注定就像数学课上的两条相交线一样,在初中相交过一次后便再无交集。你的青春是否无怨无悔?
  • 拳霸诸天

    拳霸诸天

    天帝大陆,六大玄门,天才无数。玄门世界,强者生存,以力为尊。少年杨真初入玄门,被人欺压,是忍辱偷生,还是绝不低头?“我的拳头,就是要把每一个天才,都打的低头认输。”
  • 我的赌博人生

    我的赌博人生

    赌……是一条不归路!本书讲述的是一个赌徒泥潭深陷的……自我救赎之路!
  • 异界重生之废材要逆天

    异界重生之废材要逆天

    一代宗师受人暗杀,醒来发现自己穿越到了一个陌生的世界,并且发现自己前世的修为消失变成了一个小孩,
  • 绝天圣尊

    绝天圣尊

    离罹之意,殇莽之势——离殇之剑。离殇之剑重现世间,从此风云为之动荡。天灵乱世,万族争霸!他将手握离殇,君临天下,灵逆乾坤,武动天下,绝天圣尊!
  • 禅灯世谱

    禅灯世谱

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 傲绝

    傲绝

    魔死神灭,留下这残破世界,盘龙印的出现,能否使其重铸昔日辉煌?五灵宗首席弟子萧南,涅槃重生,修神诀,得神器,凝炼枯骨王座,踏入那没有尽头的——傲绝之路!盘龙一重,血染江山天下称主,倾他朝服灭他路,那王座映枯骨。盘龙二重,华殿空堂金戈侵入,一代腐朽换碎璐,不尽红雨屠苏。盘龙三重,捊记事事空欢喜暮,重更历史再是初,钳诸侯令诸部。盘龙四重,……
  • 主宰天下

    主宰天下

    绝世高手陆枫被人陷害,机缘巧合之下,依靠着七彩玲珑塔,重生到一名少年的身上。从此,开启了复仇和征战天下的征程。
  • 时光淡忘旧人心

    时光淡忘旧人心

    时光倔强的从我们指缝中溜去,一点一滴,划过我们平静下来的心,把一切都变得不平凡,我们没办法抵抗,我们总是到最后才明白,时间是最好的解药。