5
The sound jolted Bruckner awake: something dropped on his desk. Somebody standing there.
Maurice said, “The printer over at the paper asked me to give these to you.”
“What?” Bruckner said. “The hell you want?”
Maurice stepped back from the man's stale whiskey odor. “You're supposed to post them around right away. Printer said it was ordered from the county.”
Bruckner rubbed a hand over his face, opened his eyes and the squirt reporter was gone. He looked at his watch: twenty past twelve; heard horses outside and turned to his window.
Three horses out there…the squirt news reporter mounting and another fella already up, leading a packhorse with gear and a wood crate lashed to the cross-buck. Bruckner watched them head down LaSalle Street into darkness.
When he turned to his desk again he frowned and said out loud, “What in the hell-” Bren Early's photo was looking at him from a stack of “wanted” dodgers that said:
$5,000
REWARD
(Dead or Alive)
for information leading to
the arrest or seizure of
CAPT. BRENDAN EARLY
wanted for the killing of
P. Sundeen (and probably others)
Approach with utmost caution!!!