Snarled and greasy hair straggled to his shoulders and merged with an uncut beard that hung halfway down his protruding stomach. He looked through eyes so dark brown they were nearly black. There was no expression in them; they seemed cold and almost evil. A pair of work gloves covered the hands that had never held a shovel or a pick.

Under one arm, he carried an old gunnysack that appeared empty. Almost whimsically, the dirty burlap had DOUGLAS FEED & GRAIN COMPANY, OMAHA, NEBRASKA stenciled on it.

The old man took a minute and parked on a bench at the corner of Moon Avenue and Tombstone Canyon Road. Behind him was a saloon, mostly empty because it was the middle of the day and its usual patrons were hard at work in the mines. The people walking and shopping in the little mining town paid him no more than a quick, disgusted glance. Whenever they passed, he pulled a whiskey bottle from a pant pocket and drank heavily before recapping it and putting it back. No one could have known it was not whiskey but tea.

It was warm for June; he guessed the temperature to be in the high nineties. He sat back and looked up and down the streets as a trolley car passed, pulled by an aging horse. Electric-motored trolleys had yet to come to Bisbee. Most of the vehicles on the streets were still horse-drawn wagons and buggies. The town had only a handful of automobiles and delivery trucks, and none were in evidence.

He knew enough about the town to know that it was founded in 1880 and named after Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the moneymen behind the Copper Queen Mine.

A good-sized community, its population of twenty thousand made it the largest city between San Francisco and St. Louis. Despite the many miners’ families that lived in modest little wooden buildings, the main economy was based around saloons and a small army of shady ladies.

The man’s head nodded to his chest; he looked like a drunk who had dozed off. But it was an act. He was conscious of every movement around him. Occasionally, he glanced across the street at the Bisbee National Bank. He watched with interest, through half-closed eyes, as a truck with chain drive and solid-tired wheels rattled up to the bank. There was only one guard, who got out of the truck and carried a large bag of newly printed bills inside. A few minutes later, he was helped by the bank’s teller to lug a heavy chest through the door and onto the truck.

The man knew that it was a shipment of gold, a piece of the three million ounces that had been produced at the local mines. But gold was not what piqued his interest. It was too heavy and too risky for one man to dispose of. It was the cash that brought him to Bisbee, not the prized yellow metal.