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Rosie
on to the flat-bed of the wagon and closed the tail-gate. Malverez
secured it and then nodded to the other bandits.
    ‘You know what to do, amigos.’ The bandit leader
ran to the front wheel of the wagon, climbed up to the driver’s
seat and released the brake-pole. Malverez whipped the heavy reins
down hard on to the backs of the team of horses.
    Having untied their three mounts from the
rear of the flat-bed wagon, leaving only Malverez’s mount, the
bandits quickly threw themselves on to their saddles and rode back
to the main street of Cripple Creek.
    Their job was not finished.
    If anyone in the adjoining houses had seen
the men they would never have known what lay hidden inside the
velvet drapes that they had thrown into the back of the wagon. Who
would have even guessed that the innocent daughter of Jed Smith
could have been hidden inside the luxurious fabric?
    But there were no eyewitnesses fast enough
to catch even a glimpse of the men.
    The bandits had gone and left only a cloud
of dust in their wake in the quiet side street.
    The entire operation had taken less than one
hundred seconds from beginning to end.
    Now the bandits had disappeared.
    Malverez whipped the team of
horses up to
speed and knew that the first part of his ruthless plan had gone
smoothly. Looking at his pocket-watch as he drove the horses out of
Cripple Creek, Malverez knew that his men were about to put the
next carefully timed part of his plan into action.
    The speeding four-horse wagon thundered out
on to the dusty trail with the skilled hands of the bandit leader
gripping the heavy reins firmly. Malverez glanced over his shoulder
quickly before returning his attention to the twisting dirt road
ahead of him.
    Cripple Creek had disappeared in the plume
of dust behind him.

Chapter
Twelve
    It was five after four.
Malverez and his men had already executed their plan and brutally
abducted the beautiful Rosie Smith. The two remaining bandits had
been waiting for the banker to lock up the Cripple Creek bank
before delivering the note that their leader had painstakingly
written by hand. The two bandits waited at either end of the street
watching the large window to see if it had been accepted and
understood. They watched their three comrades riding past them. The
riders each took a different route out of the town, but would meet
up again across the border. Jed Smith had only just escorted the
last of their customers off the premises and locked the solid doors
of his bank when he heard something tapping against them. The sound
stopped the man in his tracks. The banker turned and stared at the
piece of paper that had been slipped beneath the doors.
    ‘ What on earth is that?’
Smith asked aloud, thinking that one of the customers had
accidentally dropped a receipt.
    His two cashiers had walked across the
marble flooring towards Smith as he bent down, picked up the paper
and unfolded it. His eyes darted back and forth as he silently read
the message.
    ‘ Anything important, Mr.
Smith?’ head cashier Clayton Nash asked his boss as Bobby Cooper
the junior clerk looked on curiously.
    Smith’s face went pale.
    ‘ What is it, sir?’ Cooper
asked.
    Smith did not reply to either man. He just
stared at the words which had been written in capital letters upon
the paper. His blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he tried
desperately to fathom whether his tired eyes had actually read the
brief message correctly. Smith hurriedly walked away from his two
employees towards his office without answering.
    His footsteps resounded around the bank.
    The sound of the office door being closed
behind him echoed within the large foyer of the bank as Jed Smith
entered his private sanctuary. Sweat was now tracing down his face
as panic gripped him by the throat.
    ‘ This cannot be happening,’
Smith muttered in a vain attempt to convince himself that he was
imagining this whole thing, which had brought him face to face with
his worst nightmare.
    He was still