You see, we's really frien's."
Eight days later, they came out of the swamp.
They stretched out on the hard, dry ground, gasping for breath.
Max raised his head.
Far in the distance, he could see smoke rising on the horizon.
"There's a town there," he said excitedly, scrambling to his feet. "We'll be able to git some decent grub."
"Not so fast," Reeves said, pulling him down.
Reeves was still yellow from the fever but it had passed. "If it's a town, there's a general store.
We'll hit it tonight. No use takin' any chances. They might be expectin' us."
Max looked over at Mike. The big Negro nodded.
They hit the store at two in the morning.
When they came out, they all wore fresh clothing, had guns tucked in their belt and almost eighteen dollars they had found in the till.
Max wanted to steal three horses from the livery stable and ride out.
"Ain't that just like an Injun?" Reeves said sarcastically. "They'll trace horses faster'n us.
We'll keep off the road two or three days, then we'll worry about horses."
Two days later, they had their horses. Four days later, they knocked off a bank in a small town and came out with eighteen hundred dollars.
Ten minutes later, they were on their way to Texas.
13.
MAX CAME INTO FORT WORTH TO MEET THE TRAIN that was to bring Jim Reeves's daughter from New Orleans.
He sat in the barber chair and stared at himself in the mirror.
The face that looked back was no longer the face of a boy. The trim black beard served to disguise the high cheekbones. He no longer looked like an Indian.
Max got out of the chair.
"How much do I owe you?"
"Fifty cents for the haircut, two bits for the beard trim."
Max threw him a silver dollar.
Mike came off the side of the building against which he had been leaning and fell into step.
"It's about time fer the train to be comin' in," Max said. "I reckon we might as well walk down to the station."
Three and a half years before, they had come into Fort Worth one night with seven thousand dollars in their saddlebags.
Behind them they had left two empty banks and two dead men.
But they had been lucky. Not one of them had been identified as other than an unknown person.
"This looks like a good town," Max had said enthusiastically. "I counted two banks comin' in."
Reeves had looked up at him from a chair in the cheap hotel room.
"We're through with that," he said.
Max stared at him.
"Why?
They look like setups."
Reeves shook his head.
"That's where I made my mistake last time. I didn't know when to quit." He stuck a cigarette in his mouth.
"What we goin’ to do, then?" Max asked.
Reeves lit the cigarette. "Look aroun' for a good legitimate business. There's lots of opportunity out here. Land is cheap and Texas is growin'."
Reeves found the business he was looking for in a little town sixty-five miles south of Fort Worth.
A saloon and gambling hall.
In less than two years, he had become the most important man in town.
Then he started a bank in a corner of the gambling house and, a little time later, began to acquire land.
There was even talk of electing him mayor.
He bought a small ranch outside of town, fixed up the house and moved out of the rooms over the saloon.
A little while after that, he moved the bank out of the saloon, which Max then operated, and ensconced it in a small building on the main street.
In less than a year, people began to forget that he had ever owned the saloon and began to think of him as the town banker.
He began to grow quietly rich.
He needed but one thing more to complete his guise of respectability. A family.