Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (16 page)

CHAPTER 26

I
f anything, Vince took the news of the dirty trick Kennedy and Milton were pulling even worse than he had when Sheriff Lester told him his father had been killed. He ranted and cussed and raged around the room, nothing at all like the soft-spoken kid he usually was.

I had called everybody into the house before I told Vince what it was about. Like Hamilton had said, Vince didn't have any secrets from Bert, and Bert didn't have any secrets from anybody. Besides, with what I had in mind, they all had to know about it sooner or later.

After a while, Vince stopped carrying on. He just looked at me and said, “Why?”

“You mean, why would Kennedy and Milton do such a rotten thing?”

“Yeah. It's not even their money. It's the railroad's money! And the railroad would never miss it.”

“Some fellas are like that,” I said with a shrug. “They're just naturally greedy, and it slops over into their jobs. You can bet that Kennedy and Milton are rakin' off plenty for themselves. They want to make as much money as they can for the railroad so they'll stay in position to do that.”

“Well, it's not right.”

“No, son, it sure ain't. That's why—”

Scar started barking again, interrupting me. I was a mite annoyed, but I figured I'd better see what had him so worked up. When I went to the door and looked out, I saw three riders coming toward the ranch house. The easy way they sat their saddles and the wide-brimmed, high-crowned sombreros they wore told me who they were.

“Santiago and his cousins are here,” I said. I wasn't sure why they had shown up today. We hadn't seen them since the roundup and the drive into town.

They were all as solemn as usual when they came in. Santiago nodded a greeting to us, then said, “Vince, we have heard what happened. We are very sorry, amigo.”

“You mean you know about my dad getting killed?” Vince asked.

Santiago nodded.

“Sí, and about the evil thing being done by the men he worked for.”

“How'd you know about that?” I asked. “John Hamilton just came up from the county seat and told us about it today.”

“Yes, but Señor Hamilton spent last night in Largo, and he was so angry by what the railroad is doing that he spoke to people about it. We rode to Largo this morning, and while we were there we heard the talk. Many people are angry at the railroad.”

“It's not really the railroad,” Bert said. “It's Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Milton.”

“Same thing as far as most folks are concerned,” Enoch said. The debate about that could go 'round and 'round, and it didn't interest me. Making things right for Vince and his ma was all I cared about just then. I said, “I'm glad you and your cousins are here, Santiago. Saves me the trouble of havin' to ride over to your rancho and talk to you. I planned to ask you to be part of this, too.”

“Part of what, Señor Strickland?” he asked, but I could tell from the way his eyes narrowed that he might have a suspicion already about what I was thinking.

“We've got to do something about this,” I said. “Too many times, folks see something wrong, and they just shake their heads and cluck their tongues and say ain't that a shame, but there's nothin' they can do. Well, I'm not put together that way. When the Good Lord made me, he didn't put in the part that stands aside and does nothin'.”

“Are we gettin' to an answer to Santiago's question pretty soon?” Enoch drawled.

That made me laugh, despite the seriousness of the situation. I said, “Yeah, we are. Vince and his ma have money comin' from the railroad, and if the railroad won't give it to 'em, that just leaves us with one thing to do.” I looked around at all eight of them. “We take it.”

As they looked at me the seconds ticked by and stretched out into a minute. Finally, as if the others had been waiting for him to speak up, Vince said, “What do you mean, ‘take it,' Mr. Strickland?”

Enoch said, “When a fella talks about takin' something away from the railroad, it usually means a holdup.”

“That's right,” I said. “If Kennedy and Milton don't want to do the right thing, we'll just do it for 'em.”

“But we're not outlaws!” Bert said. “We wouldn't have any idea how to go about robbing a train.”

Enoch looked at me, and I saw the amusement twinkling in his eyes. Maybe he knew who I really was right then and maybe he didn't, but he had an idea this wasn't the first time I'd been involved in something on the wrong side of the law.

“We'll figure it out,” I said. “But nobody has to be mixed up in this if they don't want to. If any of you want to steer clear of it, nobody will think any less of you.”

“I'm glad you said that, Mr. Strickland,” Randy spoke up, “because I don't want any part of it.”

That didn't surprise me. Randy had actually held up a train before, and he'd gotten shot for his trouble, by his own partner, to boot. So I'd halfway expected him to feel that way.

“That's fine,” I told him. “Anybody else?”

“Gabe and me are in,” Enoch said. “No offense, Jim, but ranch work ain't near as excitin' as robbin' trains.”

Gabe said, “Speak for yourself, you ol' stringbean. Maybe I don't want to do somethin' that'll get the law after me.”

“Didn't mean to speak out of turn,” Enoch said. “Are you in, Gabe?”

“Durned tootin',” Gabe said. “Just wanted to make up my own mind, that's all.”

Santiago said, “My cousins and I, we wish to be part of this effort as well, Señor Strickland.”

“Is that right?” I asked Javier and Fernando.

They both nodded solemnly.

I looked at Santiago and said, “They
can
talk, can't they?”

“Get a bottle of mescal in them and you cannot shut them up,” he replied with a little twitch at one corner of his mouth. I knew that was what passed for a grin with him.

I turned to Vince and Bert.

“That leaves you two fellas.”

“No, it doesn't,” Vince said. “Nobody's going out and holding up a train on my account. You'll all just get yourselves killed, and I won't have it. I went to my dad's funeral. That's enough for a while.”

“Nobody's gonna get killed,” I said. “As long as we're careful and figure out everything beforehand, we'll be fine. And you and your ma will get what's comin' to you, Vince.”

He gave a stubborn shake of his head and insisted, “It's too dangerous.”

“Why don't you let us work out a plan first, and then you can see if you still feel that way?” I suggested. “It won't hurt anything for some of us to take a ride down to Cougar Pass and have a look around.”

“That's where you plan on hittin' the train?” Enoch asked.

“I don't know yet. It's a startin' point, though. We'll have to look around and see if we can find a better place.”

Vince said, “Aren't any of you listening? I said no. I won't let you do this.”

I smiled at him and said, “No offense, son, but I don't reckon it's up to you. If we want to hold up a train, we will, and if we want to hand over the loot to you and your ma, we'll do that, too.”

“I won't take it! And when I tell her where you got it, neither will she!” Vince threw his hands in the air in frustration. “You're all crazy!”

He turned and paced over to the window. As he stood there with his back to us, staring through the glass, I saw his shoulders trembling just a little. I knew the emotions that had to be raging inside him. Sure, he wanted vengeance on the men who'd cheated him and his mother, and this was one way to get it. A successful robbery would reflect badly on Kennedy and Milton, over and above the money. But at the same time, Vince didn't want to see any of his friends get hurt or killed. He had a point when he said that he'd already grieved enough.

Bert spoke up for the first time since I'd revealed what I wanted to do. He said, “I think we should do what Mr. Strickland says.”

Vince turned to frown at him.

“You want to be a train robber?” he said. “An outlaw? You?”

“Well, why not? The railroad's done wrong by you and your mother, Vince. You should've gotten that pension money and more besides.” Bert paused, then went on, “Besides, there's something you don't know.”

That brought Vince away from the window. He said, “What? What is there I don't know about this whole thing, Bert?”

“You don't know what Mr. Rutledge has been saying about your pa.”

Vince looked like he'd been slapped. He couldn't get any words out for a few seconds. Then his face hardened and he asked in an equally hard voice, “What's Rutledge been saying?”

Now Bert looked like he wished he hadn't even brought it up, but he swallowed and said, “It was when he talked to me in town. He said I could come back to work as a baggage handler, too. He thought maybe if I took the job, so would you, and he wanted to do something to help you out, even though . . . even though it was really your dad's own fault, what happened to him.”

Vince's eyes widened in anger and surprise.

“How in the hell does he figure that? Pete Abercrombie hit the throttle when he shouldn't have.”

I kept my mouth shut. Vince had heard the story the railroad was spreading about Abercrombie and evidently accepted the idea that the initial talk about the brakes failing was just a mistake made in the confusion of the moment. John Hamilton was right: if the deception fooled somebody as close to the situation as Vince, it would fool everybody else.

The truth was my hole card, if I needed it.

Bert looked mighty uncomfortable as he said, “Mr. Rutledge told me that wasn't really what happened. He claims your dad had time to get out of the way of that freight car, but he'd been drinking and didn't see it because of that.”

Vince's freckled face turned almost as red as his hair.

“Rutledge said my dad was drunk?” he demanded.

Bert swallowed again and nodded.

Kennedy and Milton must have ordered Rutledge to start spreading that rumor, I thought. It wasn't enough they had covered up the railroad's responsibility for those brakes failing. Now they were going to blacken Bob Porter's name by having Rutledge whisper about him being drunk when he was killed. It was as dirty a business as I'd ever heard of, and for a moment it made me want to forget all about robbing one of the railroad's trains.

What I wanted to do instead was to walk into the offices of Kennedy and Milton in San Antonio and gun down those black-hearted sons of bitches.

The problem with that idea was that while I'd killed in the past when I had to, I wasn't a murderer. Never had been, and I knew I wasn't going to turn into one now.

No, if I was going to help Vince strike back against Kennedy and Milton, it would have to be in a different way, a way I knew as well as my own name.

Vince was so mad he wasn't able to talk for a minute or so. When he could, he choked out, “It's a damned lie. I saw my dad drink a beer every now and then, but he wasn't a drunk. He never would have gone to work drunk. He was too dedicated to his job.” His voice took on a bitter edge. “Too dedicated to the railroad. And now the men who run it are turning their backs on him.”

“I didn't want to tell you, Vince,” Bert said. “But that's why I've got to go along with Mr. Strickland on this. If there's some way we can make them pay, we've got to do it.”

Vince nodded slowly. He said, “I think you're right.” He looked at me. “If you've got a plan, sir, I won't try to stop you. And I'm in, all the way.”

I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Glad to hear it, son. I don't have a plan yet, but I will. I can promise you that.”

Randy said, “I'm sorry, Vince. I still can't go along with it.”

“That's all right, Randy,” Vince said. The rage had faded from his face, but a cold determination had replaced it. “I don't blame you a bit. Anyway, Mr. Strickland's going to need somebody to stay here and keep an eye on the ranch. Isn't that right, sir?”

“It sure is,” I agreed. “To tell you the truth, Randy, I'll feel better about things knowin' that somebody's here.”

“All right, then. I guess I can wish you luck in good conscience. You're all my friends, after all.”

“And I expect we'll need all the luck we can get,” I told him.

CHAPTER 27

W
hen I got a firsthand look at Cougar Pass, I realized just how dumb Steve Tate had been. It was a terrible place for a holdup. Derailing the train had really been the only way to stop it in that location. Tate was just lucky—if you could consider a fella who had long since been turned into coyote and buzzard droppings lucky—that the resulting death and destruction hadn't been even worse.

It was a good thing for Randy that he hadn't stayed mixed up with Tate. Even if that holdup had been successful, the damn fool would have gotten them all killed sooner or later, including Randy.

I looked at the flats stretching off to the west, toward the county seat, and asked Vince and Bert, “Is the country like this all the way on into town?”

“Pretty much,” Vince replied.

I turned my horse and said, “We've got to go back the other way, then. There's nothing in this direction that'll work.”

I'd brought the two youngsters and Enoch with me to scout out the lay of the land. Randy and Gabe were holding down the fort back at the ranch. Santiago and his cousins had gone back to their little spread but would rejoin us later.

We followed the tracks through the pass, such as it was, and headed east. In the distance I could see a series of shallow ridges, and even they looked a lot more promising than the area where Tate's gang had hit the train.

After a while I heard a rumble in the distance and pulled my horse to the left, away from the tracks. The other three followed suit. Bert asked, “Where are we going?”

“Train's comin',” Enoch said. “We don't want any of the passengers to remember seein' us nosin' around out here.”

“Those trains go by pretty fast,” Vince said. “They wouldn't be able to recognize us, would they?”

“Probably not,” I said, “but there's no point in takin' chances. If you're about to tackle a chore that's risky to start with, you don't want to do anything that might increase the odds against you even more.”

Bert said, “You two, uh, sound like you might've done something like this before.” He seemed a little nervous as he glanced back and forth between me and Enoch.

I gave him a disarming grin and said, “Naw, it's just common sense, that's all.”

“Yeah,” Enoch said dryly. “Common sense.”

We were a couple of hundred yards north of the tracks when the westbound train rumbled past with smoke and cinders spewing from the diamond-shaped stack on the big Baldwin locomotive. If any of the passengers spotted us through the windows, they would think we were just some punchers who had stopped to idly watch the train go by.

When the caboose was dwindling down the tracks to the west, I hitched my horse into motion again. We returned to the railroad and continued scouting.

A couple of miles further on we came to a place where the track had been laid in a narrow cut through one of those ridges, leaving banks of rock and red clay on both sides. Those banks were about fifteen feet tall, which made them a couple of feet taller than the top of a freight car.

The cut was maybe fifty yards long. I cocked my head to the side as I studied it. Enoch smiled and said, “I reckon I know what you're thinkin', Jim.”

“Well, I don't,” Vince said.

I pointed to the banks and said, “A man could jump from up there onto the top of a boxcar as it passed by.”

“Sure he could,” Bert said. “If he was loco!”

“No, you'd have to be careful, but you could do it.”

Bert shook his head.

“Not me,” he said. “I'd fall and break my neck, as sure as anything.”

“He would,” Vince agreed. “But I might be able to do it.”

“Neither one of you is gonna do it,” I said. “That'll be my job. Once I'm on the train, I can go over the cars and the coal tender up to the engine. Then I'll make the engineer stop where the rest of you boys are waitin' for us. After that it's just a matter of getting the fella in the express car to open up.”

“What if the engineer won't stop?” Bert asked.

“Most of the time when a man's lookin' down the barrel of a gun, he don't think about anything except keepin' the fella on the other end of that gun happy.”

“I don't want any railroaders killed,” Vince said. “My dad was a railroad man, and he had a lot of friends on this line. He wouldn't want any of them to be hurt.”

“I know that. Nobody's gonna get hurt. Not bad, anyway. I might have to clout a fella over the head or something like that to make him see reason.”

“As long as nobody's killed,” Vince insisted.

I nodded and said, “You've got my word on that.”

I would do my best to keep that promise, too. I took pride in the fact that nobody had ever been killed in the robberies I'd pulled as a younger man.

We spent the rest of the day looking around the area, familiarizing ourselves with all the details of the terrain. There was a wash nearby where the rest of the bunch could wait out of sight with the horses while I stopped the train. I also explored both banks of the cut until I found just the right spot to make my jump.

While I was doing that, Enoch asked me, “Are you sure you're still spry enough to do this, Jim?”

“Of course I am,” I answered without hesitation. “You're not volunteerin' to do it, are you? Hell, I'm at least ten years younger than you are. You've never told me how old you really are.”

“No, I ain't volunteerin'. And my age is my own business. But I was thinkin' maybe Santiago ought to handle this part of the chore. I'll bet he'd be willin'.”

“It don't matter if he's willin' or not,” I said. “This is my job. I've got experience at it.”

“What if you miss?”

“Then the train won't stop, and the rest of you boys can turn around and go home. We'll have tried to settle the score with the railroad, and that'll have to be good enough.”

“Well, I know how stubborn you are,” Enoch said with a shrug. “I don't reckon it'll do any good to argue with you.”

“Nary a bit,” I told him.

Santiago and the Gallardo brothers met us at the ranch that evening when we got back from our little expedition. All of us sat around the table to go over the plan, except for Randy. He was out in the bunkhouse. I trusted him, but if things went wrong and the sheriff ever questioned him, I wanted him to be able to say that he didn't know what the rest of us were doing. That would be stretching the truth a little, but at least he wouldn't know any of the details.

“Vince, you and Bert are gonna stay in the wash with the horses,” I started off by saying.

“We're only doing this because of what happened to my father. I ought to run the same risks as the rest of you.”

“Somebody's got to be responsible for those horses,” I told him. “If they got loose and ran off, we'd be in a mighty bad fix. Not only that, but the two of you worked at the station in town, which means there's a better chance the members of that train crew might recognize you, even with your hats pulled down and bandannas over your faces. If we get in a tight spot and need help, you'll be close by. Otherwise, you stay out of sight.”

“He's right that they might be able to tell who we are, Vince,” Bert said.

“All right, all right,” Vince said. “I guess we can do it that way.”

I went on, “Once I've got the train stopped, Gabe, you'll come to the engine and climb into the cab. It'll be your job to keep an eye on the engineer and fireman and make sure they don't cause any trouble.”

Gabe nodded and said, “I can do that.”

“Santiago, you and your cousins will be responsible for the passenger cars. Just keep everybody quiet and settled down while Enoch and I deal with the express car.”

“Do we take their valuables?” Santiago asked.

I looked at Vince, who shook his head. I was willing to let him make that decision. I said, “No, we're not going to rob the passengers. We're only taking what we find in the express car, because the railroad will have to make those losses good, and it's the railroad we're trying to hurt. Now, let's talk about the schedule. You two worked for the railroad. You ought to know when the trains run.”

“There are two westbound and two eastbound every day,” Vince said. “Does it matter?”

“The terrain's better if we hit a westbound.”

Vince nodded.

“In that case, there's one that comes through about two o'clock in the afternoon and another about midnight.”

I shook my head and said, “I'm not makin' that jump in the dark. I've got to see what I'm jumpin' on.”

“So we're going to hold up the train in broad daylight?” Bert asked.

I chuckled.

“Wouldn't be the first holdup that's ever been pulled in broad daylight,” I said, remembering a few eventful occasions in the past.

“Well, it'll be the first one one for me and Vince. But you seem to know what you're doing, Mr. Strickland. You're the boss.”

“That's right, I am. And that brings up an important point.” I looked around the table at them to reinforce what I was about to say. “Once things start poppin', I'm in charge out there. I give an order, you do what I tell you, without any hesitation, without any questions. Got that?”

They all nodded, and Santiago said, “Sí, señor.”

“All right. We'll wait a couple of days, just to let the plan percolate in our minds. If any of you think of anything else we need to talk about, anything that might go wrong we need to figure out ahead of time, you come to me right away and tell me about it. You'll all be riskin' your lives, or at least your freedom, so don't hesitate to speak up.”

Once again they all nodded in understanding, and then Bert said, “You know, this sounds like one of those old-time train robberies people used to read about in dime novels or the
Police Gazette
. You know, like something that Jesse James would do. Or Butch Cassidy.”

“Jesse James is dead,” I said without thinking. It wasn't until later, as I recalled the speculative look Enoch gave me when I said that, that I thought about how somebody might take it.

But it was too late to worry about such things. In two more days, we would be ready to make our move.