The Chase

The July heat in the Mojave Desert was unbearable under the direct rays of the sun. The driver of the wagon sat beneath a tattered umbrella attached to the seat. Black hair fell past his neck but just short of the shoulders. His head was protected by a stained Mexican sombrero. His unseen eyes peered through the stained-blue glass of spectacles, and a handkerchief wrapped the lower half of his face, to keep out the dust raised by the mules’ hooves. The ma

As he rode by, he stared with interest at a house a miner had built using thousands of cast-off saloon beer bottles embedded in adobe mud. The bottoms of the bottles faced outward with the mouths facing in, the green glass casting the interior in an eerie sort of light.

He came to the railroad tracks and drove the mules along the road next to them. The tops of the rails gleamed like narrow twin mirrors in the blinding sun. These were the tracks of the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad, which wound through the middle of the residential district of the town.

The wagon rolled slowly past more than eighty railcars on a siding. They had been unloaded of their incoming freight. The empty cars were now being filled with outgoing ore for the mills. The driver took a brief glance at a boxcar being coupled to a thirty-car train. The lettering on the side said O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER. He glanced at the dial of his cheap pocket watch—he carried nothing that might help identify him—and noted that the train was not scheduled to leave for Las Vegas for another forty-four minutes.

A quarter of a mile later, he came to the Rhyolite train station. The substantial building was a mixture of Gothic and early Spanish styles. The ornate depot had been built of stone, cut and hauled from Las Vegas. A passenger train that had steamed in from San Francisco sat alongside the station platform. The passengers had disembarked, and the seats cleaned by porters, and the train was now filling with people heading back toward the coast.

The driver reached the center of town, where the streets were bustling with activity. He turned to stare at a large mercantile establishment, the HD & LD PORTER store. Beneath the sign was a slogan painted on a board that hung above the front entrance. It read We handle all things but Whiskey.

The 1904 gold rush had resulted in a substantial small city of solidly constructed buildings built to last a long time. By 1906, Rhyolite was a thriving community of over six thousand people. It had quickly graduated from a busy tent town to an important city meant to stand far into the distant future.

The main buildings were constructed of stone and concrete, making the small metropolis of Rhyolite the major city of southern Nevada. A four-story bank came into sight, a fine-looking structure that gave it a look of substance and wealth. Half a block away, a three-story stone office building was going up.

There was a post office, an opera house, a twenty-bed hospital, comfortable hotels, two churches, three banks, and a large school. Up-to-date, Rhyolite boasted an efficient telephone system and its own electrical-generating plant. It also had a booming red-light district and forty saloons and eight dance halls.

The man driving the wagon was not interested in anything the town had to offer except some of the assets of the John S. Cook Bank. He knew that the safe inside could hold over a million dollars in silver coins. But it was far easier to carry cash from the payrolls of the mines, and he had yet to take a single silver, or gold, piece. He figured that with eighty-five companies engaged in mining the surrounding hills, the payroll take should be quite considerable.

As usual, he had pla

As he drove the wagon and mules into town toward the Cook Bank, however, his image had been changed from that of a mining engineer to that of a small-time freight hauler to the mines. He looked like any one of the town’s haulers, struggling to make a living in the broiling heat of the desert during summer. He reined in the mules at the rear of a stable. When he was certain no one was observing him, he lifted a dummy dressed exactly the same as himself and tied it to the seat of the wagon. Then he led the mules back toward Broadway, the main street ru

He checked for customers approaching the bank. None of the people milling around the town seemed headed in that direction. He looked up at the four-story building, glancing at the gold paint on the windows of the upper floor advertising a dentist and a doctor. Another sign, with a hand pointing downward, indicated that the town post office was in the basement.

He strolled into the bank and looked around the lobby. It was empty except for a man making a withdrawal. The customer took his money from the teller, turned, and walked from the bank without glancing at the stranger.

There goes a lucky man, the robber thought.

If the customer had bothered to notice him, he would have been shot dead. The robber never left anyone behind to identify the least detail about him. Then there was always the possibility, although slim, that someone might see through his disguise.

He had learned from conversations in the neighboring saloons that the bank was run by a manager for a company of men who were owners of the region’s most productive mines, especially the Montgomery-Shoshone Mine whose original claim had grossed nearly two million dollars.

So far, so good, thought the robber as he leaped over the counter, landing on his feet next to the startled teller. He pulled the automatic from his boot and pressed the muzzle against the teller’s head.

“Do not move, and do not think of stepping on the alarm button under the counter or I’ll splatter your brains on the wall.”

The teller could not believe what was happening. “Is this really a holdup?” he stammered.

“It is that,” replied the robber. “Now, walk into the manager’s office very slowly and act as if nothing is happening.”

The frightened teller moved toward an office with a closed door whose etched glass made it difficult to see in or out. He knocked.

“Yes, come on in,” came a voice from the other side.