Infamous

He’d been cabled at the Blackstone Hotel, where they domiciled the night before, direct from Hoover himself, that Urschel was to accompany the raiding party. Hoover said to keep him back from the action, if there were action, as a spectator, requested special by the governor of Oklahoma.

“This is go

Urschel said nothing, just watched the windshield like it was a moving picture, while the automobile wheeled past a crooked mailbox tacked to a cedar post, an open cattle gate, and zipped down a potholed road, kicking up big, thick balloons of dust and grit. The back window dulled with a brown haze so thick that Jones couldn’t see the men following.

“Get within a quarter mile of that front porch, Mr. Colvin,” Jones said. “Don’t even draw your weapon unless you hear a shot.”

The eastern skyline lit up hard and clear blue, and soft, rounded shadows fell from the columned, one-story house and lay down long across the rows of dead corn and live beans, trailing and crooking up strings tied to a dozen or so poles. Jones felt he’d stepped back a bit, with a cluttered heap of old wagons, a rusted mule plow, scythes and gears, and the spi

Colvin stopped, and killed the engine. Men piled out of cars, careful to close the doors with a light touch. With shotguns, pistols, and three machine guns, the detectives and federal agents started down Boss Sha

That’s when they heard the dog’s breath and feet, and saw the little brown shape bound-almost in midair-for the men.

HARVEY BAILEY COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP EARLIER THAT NIGHT. Ma Sha

But the stars were electric. Being in the city, he’d forgotten just how many there were, and on a hot summer night, not a cloud in the sky, it was just the kind of blackness up there that led a man to contemplate things, where he was headed, with a few rough directions and some half-formed ideas.

And so he took the cot off the porch and made his way behind the Sha

He found a spot of even ground and used both hands to hoist his bad leg up onto the cot. He lay there, staring skyward, in nothing but a pair of BVDs and black socks, and he lifted a cigarette from his pack of Chesterfields, thinking to himself that he’d once believed in the order of man and church and family and now the only order making any sense was chaos. He wondered if he could go back to the farm with his wife and boy and get back behind a mule, hang up the keys to the big cars and put the fancy suits back on the hangers, to collect dust on the shoulders. You just stand there before those teller’s cages and feel your heart up in your throat, hand on the pistol, and, by damn, you feel like God.

Could you get that from planting a turnip? Were you any less a man on the other side of a banker’s pen?

Harvey smoked two cigarettes. He wished for a drink, but he drifted off for a few hours without it. At first he thought it was the morning light that had woken him, but, as he turned on one elbow, he heard the automobiles from way off, knowing this was a one-way road to the Sha

Miller calmly got up and tucked his pant legs into his boots. He sat on the couch, checking the weapon’s load, and placed a fresh cigarette in the corner of his mouth. With those cool blue eyes trained on Harvey Bailey, he said: “Wake the old man and woman. Go fetch Wilbur and Jim and Potatoes. And let the dogs out. Give those G-men a nice welcome.”

THEY WEREN’T LIKE ANY BULLDOGS JONES HAD EVER SEEN, brown mongrels with jaw muscles as tight as walnuts, bounding-almost flying-in solid muscular leaps across the dusty ground and launching themselves at Bruce Colvin. He turned his back, careful not to fire and wake the house, but the dog caught a solid bit of his arm and chewed and tore, not letting go. Colvin spun wild and tried to knock the hound away.

Doc White leveled a bowie knife into the mongrel’s back, and it yipped and fell away, skittering far off, yelping and spi

The other dog followed and grabbed hold of Gus Jones’s boot, ripping and thrashing. But Jones didn’t feel a thing through the thick leather as he kicked the damn beast ten feet, the animal giving a good cry before darting after the other.

Colvin ripped the material of his suit coat and bound the bloody upper arm, pulling a loose tooth from his torn flesh and gritting his own teeth, trying like hell not to flinch in front of the older men.

“Thanks,” Colvin said.

White wiped the blade on his pant leg and slid it into the scabbard.

“Right outta hell,” Doc said.

CHARLIE FOLLOWED THE MEN, WHO WERE SPREADING OUT FROM the gravel road with weapons hanging from their hands, up and over a small hill, and approaching the farmhouse from the front. There were fourteen in all, including himself, and six of them took a wide loop around the house to cover the back of the property near the barn. Guineas scattered high up and into an old oak and stared down with their small eyes, calling out in a high yell that sounded like a woman’s screams. The old agent, Jones, hadn’t said any more to him, even as Charlie’d crawled out of the automobile with a Browning he’d only fired once and tagged along with the agents in the high, dead grass. The old man using hand signals to send men around to side windows as he mounted the steps at first light and knocked on the door with all the confidence of a Fuller Brush salesman.

He pulled back the screen door, Charlie glancing off at a sprinting rooster, before hearing the six rifle shots from a side window, sending the old man diving from the stairs and scrambling into a gully, where five of them had found lousy cover to return fire, until the whole house was pocked with bullet holes.

“I guess they’re awake,” Jones said. “Kinda hopin’ I could wake ’em gentle.”

The old man took refuge next to Charlie and aimed his machine gun at the door, sighting for any movement in the windows. Three more rifle reports-BLAM, BLAM, BLAM-from a window. The men ducked, and Jones returned with a long rat-a-tat-tat from the Thompson, elegantly raking the house siding. He reached into his coat pocket for another loaded round and snicked it into the frame. The windows had all been busted out, the doorframe hung loose and crooked from a single hinge.