Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (18 page)

It appeared that was the case here. Pure luck had led us to stop this train today, when it was carrying a decent payoff.

I had just jumped down from the express car with a pair of canvas money pouches slung over my shoulder when that luck seemed to run out, though. I heard a familiar popping and rattling and looked toward town to see an automobile racing alongside the tracks toward us. To me, one of those contraptions looked pretty much like another, but from the way this one weaved back and forth, I had a pretty good hunch that Sheriff Emil Lester was at the wheel.

The next second, somebody leaned out to the side from the passenger seat and powdersmoke spurted as the varmint started shooting at us.

CHAPTER 29

T
he sharp cracks told me the passenger was firing a rifle at us, probably a Winchester. That automobile wasn't a very stable place to shoot from, though, especially with Sheriff Lester at the wheel. Sand kicked in the air a good twenty yards from the railroad tracks as a bullet struck there.

I had planned to disable the engine or at least do enough damage to the controls that all they'd be able to do was limp on into the county seat. That was out of the question now. We had to git.

“Go!” I barked at Enoch, then I ran alongside the passenger cars firing my gun in the air to get the attention of Santiago and his cousins. “Come on!” I bellowed at them.

Gabe stuck his head out from the cab. I waved the hand with the gun in it to let him know to leave the engineer and fireman there and rattle his hocks.

The vaqueros appeared on the rear platforms of the cars and leaped to the ground. We all took off in a straggling line toward the wash. I hung back a little, waiting for Gabe to catch up. When he did, I grabbed hold of his arm to help him along.

We could only hope that nobody got hit and the sheriff wasn't able to cut us off from the wash. It would have been all right with me if that blasted car blew a tire or busted an axle as it careened along. I had no idea what had brought Lester out here, but right now it didn't matter. The important thing was reaching the horses first. Once we were mounted we could take off along the wash and I was pretty sure the sheriff would never be able to catch us.

Vince and Bert must have been keeping a pretty close eye on things from the wash. Without warning, they charged out of it on horseback, each of them leading three of the other horses. They galloped out to meet us.

Lester was close, though. That damn car of his was fast. And his deputy, because that's who the passenger had to be, was a pretty good shot. The rifle bullets were whistling too close for comfort around us now as Vince and Bert reached us with the horses and we started trying to climb into the saddles.

A more distant rifle shot sounded. The sheriff's automobile slewed even more violently to one side. With a yell, the deputy went flying out the open door on his side. He lost his Winchester as he hit the ground.

More shots cracked, and a loud hissing sounded as steam boiled out from the front of the car. Somebody up on the ridge was shooting at Lester's vehicle, I realized, and doing a damned fine job of it, too. The automobile shuddered to a halt.

By that time I was in the saddle, and a quick glance told me the others were, too. I waved a hand toward the wash, not wanting to yell because Lester had heard my voice too often and might recognize it. The others were watching me, though, and followed orders. We all galloped at an angle away from the railroad tracks.

I looked back and saw Lester hopping around beside the car. He was so furious he couldn't stand still, I thought. He pointed a handgun at us and squeezed off a few rounds, but we were already out of effective range. He probably knew it, too. He was just blowing off steam—like his automobile—by shooting at us.

I didn't know for sure who had been up on the ridge helping us out, but I had a pretty good idea. Sure enough, when we emerged from the wash a little later I spotted a rider on a familiar horse galloping on a course that would intersect ours. I pointed him out, and we veered toward him to meet him quicker.

By now we had all pulled our bandanna masks down. The hombre who had come to our aid wasn't wearing one. When we came up to him and reined in, Bert exclaimed, “Randy!”

That's who it was, all right: Randy McClellan. With anxious fear on his face, he looked at each of us in turn.

“Nobody's hurt?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said. “And you deserve some of the credit for that, son, stoppin' the sheriff in his tracks the way you did.”

“I thought you weren't going to be part of this,” Vince said.

Randy made a face and shrugged. He said, “That's what I thought, too, but the longer I sat there at the ranch the more it bothered me that I hadn't come with you. We're all supposed to be partners. That's what riding for the brand is all about, isn't it?”

“All for one and one for all,” Bert said. “Like in a book I read once.”

“Anyway,” Randy went on, “when I couldn't stand it anymore I decided to come after you and keep an eye on you, just in case you needed help.”

“I'm glad you did,” I said. “But how'd you know where to find us? We didn't let you in on the details of the plan.”

“Oh, I eavesdropped outside the window a couple of times when you were all talking,” he said. “It wasn't hard.”

I stared at him for a second, then burst out laughing.

“I didn't think you were that sneaky,” I told him. “Good thing for us you were, though. We might've gotten away from Sheriff Lester anyway, but when you pitched in like that, you made sure of it.”

Enoch said, “How'd that lawman know to come racin' out there from town?”

“I don't know. Maybe we can figure that out later. Right now let's just get back to the ranch before somebody happens to come along lookin' for us and wonders where we all are.”

We set off for the Fishhook again, not galloping now but keeping the horses moving at a ground-eating lope. I kept an eye on our back trail, watching for any signs of pursuit. I didn't think Lester would get that automobile going again without some major repair work on it, and I didn't think he'd be able to get his hands on horses for him and his deputy without going back to the county seat first, but in this business it never hurts to expect the unexpected. Big surprises can be fatal.

I didn't see anyone following us, and that was the way I liked it.

As we rode along, Enoch asked me, “You really didn't know about that payroll bein' in the express car, did you, Jim?”

“Payroll?” Gabe echoed before I could say anything. “What's this about a payroll?”

“Eight grand that was bound for a mine below the border,” Enoch said. “The conductor didn't even know it was on board. But I reckon you did, Jim.”

“You reckon wrong,” I told him. I could have let them think I was a lot smarter than I really was, or at least a lot more well-informed, but I wanted to play it straight with them. “You've got to have some luck in this business, and that's what this was.”

Enoch shrugged. I could tell he didn't really believe me, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had told the truth.

“Eight thousand dollars?” Bert said, sounding like that was such a vast sum he couldn't even comprehend it. “Really?”

“Well, I haven't counted it yet,” I said as I patted a hand against one of the money pouches I'd slung over the saddle. “But that's how much the express messenger claimed there was, and once he'd admitted it was there, I don't see why he'd have had any reason to lie about the amount.”

“Eight thousand,” Vince said. “That's . . .” He paused to do the ciphering in his head. “Almost nine hundred dollars for each of us!”

“No, amigo,” Santiago said. “My cousins and I, we plan to take only half of the share coming to us. The other half goes to your madre.”

“You can't do that,” Vince protested. “It's not fair to you, after all the risks you ran.”

“We all ran those risks, son,” Enoch said. “And we all plan on splittin' the money with you and your ma.”

I told Vince, “There's no point in arguin'. We all talked about it when you weren't around, and that's what we decided to do. We probably wouldn't have done this if the railroad hadn't cheated your ma.” I couldn't help but grin. “And it was so much fun it was sure enough worth it!”

“Getting shot at was fun?” Vince asked.

Enoch said, “There's nothin' like the sound of a bullet goin' past your head to make you feel alive.”

He was right about that. I nodded in agreement and said, “When we get back to the ranch we'll divvy up the money. You'll need to take the part that goes to you and your ma into town and give it to her. She can't put it in the bank, though, at least not right away and not all at once. That would make folks too curious about where she got it. Tell her to wait a little bit and then deposit some. She can say that relatives back east sent it to her, or some such.”

Vince nodded.

“I understand,” he said. “She's doing some work as a seamstress, too. She can use some of the money and claim she earned it that way.”

“There you go. Now you're thinkin', son.”

“I'll leave all of my part with her,” he went on. “I don't need it. With that much money, she might be all right from now on.”

I knew he was wrong about that. Money has a way of running out, no matter how much of it you have. I've heard people say that they have more than they could ever spend, but I don't believe it. You can always spend more money.

Bert said, “So we won't have to do this again, will we?” I thought he sounded a little disappointed.

“You mean nobody has to risk their lives again,” Vince said.

“We'll see,” I told them. “You can't ever tell what might come up.”

That drew some odd looks from the three youngsters. Enoch and Gabe just smiled a little, and the vaqueros remained impassive.

As for me, the wheels of my brain were spinning around so fast they were about to run away from me. In Enoch, Gabe, Santiago, and the Gallardo brothers I had the core of a tough, competent bunch. Randy, Vince, and Bert were raw as they could be, but they didn't lack for courage and they were smart enough to listen and remember the things I told them.

The possibilities were downright intriguing.

I knew I couldn't go any further with this, though, unless I told them the truth. They deserved that much. They deserved to know what they would be getting into.

I turned that over a few dozen times in my mind on the ride back to the ranch. By the time we got there I had reached a firm decision about what I was going to do. It could wait until after we handled a few other chores first, like dividing up the loot from the train robbery.

Night was falling as we rode in. Gabe said, “If one of you boys will take care of my horse, I'll get some coffee boilin' and rustle us up some grub.”

“I'll tend to your horse, Gabe,” Randy volunteered.

Gabe headed for the cook shack while the rest of us unsaddled and rubbed down our mounts, then made sure they had plenty of water and grain. The horses had done gallant service today, and they deserved some rest and good treatment.

I carried the money pouches in and set them on the table. An air of eagerness hung over the room, and I knew the boys wanted to gaze on those greenbacks. It wouldn't be right to do it without Gabe, however, so we waited until he brought in the coffee.

“Stew'll be ready in a while,” he told us. “Let's go ahead and have a look at that dinero.”

I unfastened the strap on one of the pouches. Just before I upended it to dump the contents on the table, the thought crossed my mind that ol' Carl might have lied to me. I didn't think so, but what if something besides money poured out?

Luckily, that wasn't the case. Banded bundles of cash fell onto the table as I turned the pouch upside down. The other pouch held more of the same. The men standing around the table stared avidly for a moment at the scattered loot. I knew that for some of them, at least, it was more money than they had ever seen in one place in their whole lives.

Then Bert reached out and started stacking the bundles in neat piles. He liked things orderly and organized.

“I've been thinking about what you said a while back, Bert,” I told him. “About how this robbery was like something Jesse James or Butch Cassidy would pull.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking up at me in surprise. “I didn't mean any offense by that.”

“None taken, son,” I assured him. “In fact, I'm sort of honored by the comparison to Jesse James.”

“But not by the one to Butch Cassidy?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

“Well, I can't rightly be honored to be compared to Butch Cassidy,” I said.

Grins began to spread over the faces of Enoch and Gabe.

“You see,” I went on, “I can't be compared to him because I am him.”

Bert looked more confused than ever. He shook his head and said, “Who?”

“Butch,” I said as I let my gaze sweep around the table at all of them. “You see, boys, I
am
Butch Cassidy.”

CHAPTER 30

S
ee, I told you I'm fond of dramatic moments. That bold declaration sure as hell was one of those moments. It caused the three youngsters to stare at me in shock, and even the normally stolid vaqueros seemed surprised. Javier and Fernando's bushy eyebrows went up at exactly the same time like they'd practiced it. Only Enoch and Gabe didn't look at me like I'd totally lost my mind.

Nobody said anything for a long moment before Randy finally spoke up.

“That's not possible,” he said. “Butch Cassidy must be dead by now. He dropped out of sight a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” Bert chimed in. “I read about him in a magazine I found in the train station. I think it said he was hanged somewhere.”

I asked, “Would that have been an issue of the
Police Gazette
, Bert?” I chuckled. “Hate to tell you this, son, but everything they print in that rag ain't always the truth. Sometimes it's nowhere close.”

“I don't believe it, either,” Vince said. “No offense, Mr. Strickland, but I'm not sure Butch Cassidy was even real.”

I tried not to look forlorn as I said, “Now, you ought to know better than that, Vince. I'm as real as can be. I'm standin' right in front of you, ain't I?”

The three of them all started talking at once. Enoch listened to it for a few seconds, then raised his voice and said, “Hush!”

They all stared at him, sort of like they had stared at me a couple of minutes earlier when I told them the truth.

Enoch went on, “You sound like a bunch of chickens squabblin' in a farmyard. Of course Butch Cassidy's real. I seen him with my own eyes, years ago.”

“Is that true?” I asked him. “We've met?”

“Not exactly. But we were in the same livery stable one afternoon in Winnemucca, almost fifteen years ago. You rode in on a big white horse with a couple of other fellas.”

“I remember that horse,” I said. “Fast as greased lightning he was.”

Enoch nodded and went on, “Nobody around there knew who you were then. But when the bank was robbed a couple of days later, they all figured it out, sure enough. You were havin' a look around the town before you and the rest of the Wild Bunch hit the bank, weren't you?”

I shrugged.

“I always liked to know what we'd be gettin' into,” I said. “So you saw me one time in a livery stable and never forgot it?”

“I'd already done considerable hell-raisin' myself by that time. Fact of the matter is, I wouldn't have minded ridin' with you boys back then. But no, I didn't recognize you right away when you came up to us in the saloon in Largo. I just knew you looked a mite familiar. Didn't think nothin' of that, since I've been a heap of places and seen a heap of people. But when you started talkin' about robbin' a train, that day in Winnemucca came back to me.”

Gabe added, “And I knew you'd been an owlhoot, even if you were tryin' to go straight now. You'd get that faraway look in your eyes, like you could feel the wild, lonesome trails callin' to you.”

“Why, Gabe,” I said with a grin, “that was almost poetical.”

Randy said, “So the two of you believe him? You think he's really Butch Cassidy?”

“Why shouldn't we believe him?” Enoch said.

“Because Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are dead!”

I sighed.

“Bring back bad memories, Jim?” Gabe asked. “Sorry, that's what I'm used to callin' you.”

“Jim's fine,” I assured him. “I've been usin' it for a while. Ever since last December, when I came on a poor fella who'd been gut-shot—.” I stopped and shook my head. “I'll tell you boys the whole story, but Gabe, you've got stew simmerin' and need to tend to it. How about we wait until after supper for me to explain everything?”

“That's not fair!” Bert said. “You can't just tell us that you're Butch Cassidy, then expect us to sit around and wait for the story!”

“I'll talk better on a full stomach.”

“We can wait,” Enoch said. “Butch Cassidy's been dead for a long time. He can stay dead for a little while longer.”

The three youngsters didn't like it, but they didn't argue. Gabe went to check on the stew, saying, “You can count the money while I'm gone. I trust you to divvy it up right.”

So that's what we did. Those pouches had $8,260 in them. That was $920 apiece, minus a couple of dollars on each share. For simplicity's sake the eight of us, not counting Vince, each kicked in $450, making a kitty of $3,600. With Vince's share put in, that made a little more than $4,500 to give to his ma.

He warned us, “She's liable to guess where it came from and refuse to take it. She's always prided herself on being an honest woman.”

“After what the railroad did to your pa and then to her, she's liable to decide she's got it coming, even if she does figure out where you got it,” I said. “It's only fair.”

“We'll have to wait and see.”

“She won't turn us in, will she?” Randy asked worriedly.

Vince glared and said, “Damn it, Randy, if we weren't friends, I might have to take a poke at you for that. My ma would never do such a thing.”

I hoped he was right about that. But it was a chance we had to take.

After supper, the nine of us found places to sit. I was in one of the armchairs, with Scar curled up on the floor next to my feet. I reached down from time to time and scratched one of his ragged ears as I commenced telling them what they wanted to know.

“I'll start off by sayin' that I'm not gonna give you a lot of details about some parts of this. They're still too painful for me to dwell on, even after all this time. But I'll tell you that there came a time when Harry and me—that's Harry Longabaugh, my best friend, him who folks called the Sundance Kid—there came a time when the two of us went to South America along with a female acquaintance of ours who was Harry's particular ladyfriend.”

Back in those days, when I was telling the story to the boys on the Fishhook, the general public didn't know about the whole South America business, about how Harry and Etta and I went to Argentina and tried to make a go of it as honest ranchers. It was a number of years later, when somebody wrote a story about it in another magazine, not the
Police Gazette
, that that part of our lives came to light for most folks, although friends and family knew where we'd gone at the time, of course. I had written letters to some of them to tell them about it.

Sitting there in the ranch house, I told my new friends about how the ranching hadn't worked out and how Harry and I had fallen back into our old, larcenous habits, especially after Etta fell ill and had to return to the States. With just the two of us knocking around down there on the loose, the temptation was too much to resist.

So we drifted over into Bolivia, robbed a few banks, and stuck up a mine payroll. When I got to that part I looked at the neat stacks of bills still sitting on the table and thought about how there are cycles in all our lives, patterns that repeat themselves again and again, sometimes right out in the open and sometimes so subtle you can't even see them unless you know to look for them.

“Hitting that payroll turned out to be a mistake,” I said. “The army was lookin' for us, and when we stopped in a little village called San Vicente to rest our horses and fix something to eat, the soldiers caught up to us. Somebody in the village pointed to the abandoned hut where we were stayin' and told the capitan we were in there. He and his sergeant marched up and tried to arrest us, and Harry and me . . . well, we didn't want to be arrested.”

Even though it was nighttime and we were indoors as I was telling the story, I seemed to feel the hot sun on my face again. I heard the shots booming, smelled the sharp tang of powdersmoke in my nose, relived the shock of a bullet hitting me.

I could see as well the bright splash of blood on Harry's shirt. He was wounded a lot worse than I was, even before he made an unsuccessful dash for the rifles we'd left outside and was hit several more times.

The afternoon we spent holed up in that hut had seemed like a year instead. It's a hard thing to watch your best friend dying by inches. For years afterward, I sometimes woke up at night in a cold sweat, having dreamed that I was back there sitting on that dirt floor with my back propped against an adobe wall, while across from me the light slowly dimmed in his eyes.

I didn't say much about that to Enoch and the others, just told them that we traded shots with some soldiers and then took cover inside the hut.

“That evening Harry died,” I said simply. “If he had been able to hang on until they charged us, I would have stayed there with him and died beside him. That was the kind of pards we were. But with him gone there was no point in it. I managed to slip out in the dark, which is what I knew he would've wanted me to do.” I sighed. “I heard talk later, while I was still in South America, about how they found us both dead in there and buried us in a cemetery close by. My hunch is that they didn't want to admit I'd gotten away, so they buried one of the soldiers who'd been killed in my place. But I don't know if that's right, and I don't reckon anybody ever will know for sure. The only thing that's certain is that Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, died there, and I didn't.”

I paused for a long moment, overcome by the memories. When I didn't go on, Bert leaned forward on the sofa, where he was sitting with Vince and Randy, and asked eagerly, “What happened then? How did you get from there to here?”

“Oh, a lot of things went on that weren't very interestin',” I said. “I was hurt and laid up for a while. Some of the Indians who lived down there took me in and cared for me until I got well enough to travel. There was nothin' left for me in South America, so I went to Europe. Knocked around there for a while. I finally came back to the States because I wanted to see some of my kinfolks again, and because I knew I needed to talk to Harry's ladyfriend and let her know the truth about how things ended up down there. I didn't want her hearin' any rumors and not knowin' the straight of things.

“I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that part of it, either. Etta and I had been good friends—might have been more than that if she hadn't been with Harry—but she was hurt by the news I brought her and told me she didn't ever want to see me again. I had honored that request, even though it pained me at times.

“Since then I've just traveled around the country, visited family now and then, done a little gambling, worked at jobs when I had to. Honest jobs, mind you. I thought my outlaw days were over. I even got a laugh now and then when I heard that some fella somewhere was claiming to be me. That happened several times. I always thought, well, if that so-and-so is really Butch Cassidy, then the law should arrest him and send him to prison for all the things Butch did.”

“Bet he would've changed his story in a pretty big hurry if that happened,” Enoch drawled.

That made me laugh. I nodded and said, “I expect you're right.”

“So if all this is true,” Randy said, “how did you wind up here on the Fishhook?”

“That's a whole other story,” I said, and I gave it to them, starting with finding Abner Tillotson in that gully and then settling his score with the Daughtry brothers for him.

When I was finished, Randy frowned and said, “I suppose it could have happened that way. The part about Butch Cassidy, I mean.”

Vince said, “I believe you about the Daughtrys. They were a bad bunch. Probably everybody in this part of the country had heard of them. And most were glad when it looked like they pulled up stakes and moved on.”

“Then this ranch is legally yours?” Bert asked.

“I've got the deed and a bill of sale signed by Abner,” I assured him. “It's legally mine, all right.”

“And yet you risked it to help me and my mother,” Vince said.

“Ride for the brand,” I said. “That goes both ways.”

They let that sit there for a few seconds, then Bert turned to Enoch and asked, “Do you believe Mr. Strickland is really Butch Cassidy?”

Without hesitation, Enoch nodded.

“I do,” he said. “I'd bet this old hat of mine on it.”

“So do I,” Gabe added. “His story rings true as far as I'm concerned.”

“Sí,” Santiago said. His cousins nodded in solemn agreement.

“Well, I'm not convinced,” Randy said, “but it doesn't really matter, does it? The train robbery is over and done with. Nobody got hurt, and Vince's mother ought to be all right now. It's over. Finished.”

“Well . . . ,” I said. “I'm not so sure about that.”

They all looked at me, and Enoch asked slowly, “Just what did you have in mind, Jim?”

“That money's gonna come in mighty handy for Vince's ma, no doubt about that. But that wasn't the only reason we decided to do this. What those fellas Kennedy and Milton did, cheating Mrs. Porter and havin' Rutledge spread those ugly rumors about Vince's pa bein' drunk, those things are just flat-out wrong, and they deserve to pay for 'em.”

“The holdup's got to be embarrassing for them,” Vince said.

“One holdup's not all that embarrassing.”

That was true enough, but there was more to it than that. Today I had felt more alive than I had in years. It hadn't been a bad life since coming back to the States, I suppose, but all of it sort of blended together. Today—that moment when I'd leaped from the bank onto the boxcar, the feeling of a gun in my hand, even the whine of a bullet past my ear—those things would never be a blur. They would always stand out sharp and clear in my mind.