Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (26 page)

I would have asked her what she meant by that, but I didn't get a chance. We were passing a little canyon that cut through a ridge to our left, and as we did a rider spurred out of it and lunged toward us. He had a rifle in his hands. The ugly whip-crack of sound as he fired over our heads made the buggy horses shy and dance around skittishly. Daisy had to saw at the reins for a minute to bring them under control and keep them from running away.

It might have been better if they had stampeded, because as the buggy came to an abrupt halt, the rider stopped about twenty feet away and leveled his rifle at us. I knew him right away. The last time I'd seen him, he had been unconscious from being walloped by my rifle, out there on the salt flats.

Simon Barstow had the drop on us.

CHAPTER 43

“M
r. Jim Strickland, I believe,” he said as he smirked at us.

“What if I am?” I asked as I tried to control the anger that welled up inside me. I didn't like the fella because of the trick he'd tried to pull on us, and the arrogant look on his face rankled me even more. What really put a burr under my saddle, though, was the fact that he was pointing that rifle at Daisy, too, not just me. I went on, “Why don't you put that gun down? You don't need it.”

“I think I'd rather not take that chance,” Barstow said. “You have a habit of slipping away from justice, Strickland, almost like some of those old-time bandits.”

Daisy was furious, I could tell that by looking at her. She said, “Sir, you don't know who—”

“You don't know what you're talkin' about,” I broke in. Even as bad as the situation seemed at the moment, I didn't want to take a chance that she was about to tell Barstow I was really Butch Cassidy. There was no need for him to know about that. It might just make things go from bad to worse.

Daisy must have caught on, because she said, “Why have you stopped us, sir? Are you going to rob us?”

Barstow grunted in surprise at the question.

“Hardly,” he said. “I'm not an outlaw. My name is Simon Barstow. I work for the Pinkerton detective agency. Your companion there is the lawbreaker.”

“You're mistaken,” Daisy said coolly. “Mr. Strickland is a well-respected cattleman. You can ask anyone in the area about him. They'll tell you what a fine man he is.”

“People who didn't know any better said that Jesse James was a fine man, too,” Barstow snapped. He looked at me. “What are you doing here, Strickland? The men at your ranch—the rest of your gang—swore that you had gone to San Antonio to negotiate a deal to buy more cattle.”

That was a decent story. I figured Enoch had come up with it, but one of the others might have.

“How do you know I didn't?” I asked.

“You can't be in San Antonio and riding along with Miss Hatfield in a buggy at the same time, now can you? Not only that, you appear to have a wounded arm. Is that a bullet hole in it, perhaps?”

“My horse threw me,” I said. I didn't believe there was any way to talk myself out of this. Barstow was too dead set that he was right about me. But it wouldn't hurt to try. “My shoulder's wrenched from the fall, and I think I might've tore a muscle. That's why my arm's all wrapped up.”

“Of course it is,” Barstow said, smirking again. He didn't believe me. Well, I hadn't expected him to.

“I walked on into Largo, since my horse ran off,” I went on, “and Miss Hatfield was kind enough to offer to drive me back to the ranch.”

“From what I hear, that's not the only thing Miss Hatfield has been kind enough to do for you. The two of you have quite the romance going on.” Barstow got a disapproving look on his face. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Strickland. You're not only a train robber, you've robbed the cradle as well.”

“You keep a civil tongue in your head,” Daisy told him. “You clearly don't know what you're talking about—”

“That's enough,” I said. If I'd ever wanted to charge right at somebody holding a gun on me, that was the moment. I couldn't argue with him calling me an outlaw. That's what I was, after all. But when he laid that nasty tongue of his on Daisy's reputation, I could barely contain my fury. “Leave Miss Hatfield out of this. She never knew the truth about me until today. When I showed up wounded at her house, I forced her to take care of me, just like I'm forcin' her to drive me to the ranch.”

She looked at me and said, “You—”

“That's right,” I went on, overriding whatever she was going to say. “You got me, mister. I'll confess to all of it in court, includin' the way I kidnapped Miss Hatfield. Once she found out what I've really been doin', she didn't want anything more to do with me.”

Barstow regarded me intently as a frown creased his forehead. He said, “I don't believe you. But if you're willing to confess to your crimes . . .
and
to implicate your accomplices in the process . . . I suppose we can leave out any mention of your illicit relationship with Miss Hatfield.”

Daisy was looking at me like she was about to explode. I stared back at her coolly and hoped she understood and would accept that this was the way I wanted it.

I turned back to Barstow and said, “You've got a deal.”

I was lying, of course. There was no way I would ever go into court and testify against the rest of the bunch. But I planned to make a break for it before we got to the county seat and force Barstow to kill me. With me dead he'd never be able to prove anything against Daisy or the boys from the Fishhook. To me, that was worth dying for. I'd outlived my time, anyway. No man's meant to cheat death as often as I had.

Daisy opened her mouth to say something, probably to argue, but I drowned her out again by saying, “Go ahead, take me back to the county seat.” I reached for the reins. “Turn this damned buggy around, woman.”

“Hold it!” Barstow said. He had allowed the Winchester's barrel to droop a little, but it came up again quickly and menaced us. “We're not going back to the county seat yet. Drive on, Miss Hatfield. There's the remains of an old shack up ahead a ways. That's where we're going.”

The Daughtry place, I thought. Why in blazes were we going there?

Barstow answered that question after jerking the rifle barrel at Daisy and forcing her to get the buggy moving again. He rode alongside us and drew a pistol with his right hand while using his left to slide the rifle back into its scabbard. He could cover us easier with the handgun from that position.

“We're going to rendezvous with Sheriff Lester,” Barstow said. “He's out here searching for you, too, Strickland. We knew you'd try to make it back to your ranch sooner or later from wherever you were holed up. I was convinced that Miss Hatfield was hiding you and wanted to break in there and search the place, but the sheriff refused. He seemed to feel that since Miss Hatfield is the daughter of a minister, she deserved the benefit of the doubt.”

I knew there was a good reason I felt a little liking for Sheriff Lester. He was a decent hombre, in spite of being a lawman.

“We've been ranging back and forth between Largo and the Fishhook,” Barstow went on. “You really should have continued to lay low. I might have gotten tired of searching and given it up eventually.” An ugly laugh came from him. “Along about the same time that hell freezes over.”

It was still a couple of miles to the Daughtry place, so I had a little time to satisfy my curiosity. I said, “What made you come after us in the first place?”

“Sheriff Lester put me on your trail,” he said, confirming my earlier guess. “All he had were vague, unfounded suspicions, though. I launched a thorough investigation and discovered that the first holdup took place after the accidental death of a railroad employee whose son works for you. That might have given you a grudge against the railroad. I interviewed everyone I could find who witnessed the robberies, and although everyone told the story slightly differently, I determined that the average number of participants in the crimes seemed to be nine. That was the exact number of you and your crew, including the three Mexicans who work for you part-time.”

“You couldn't find any other spreads that have nine hands?” I asked.

“None that had a connection to the railroad. With all that to go on, it didn't take long to find out that in the past few months you've been handing out quite a bit of money to what could be considered worthy causes and individuals. Did you have some idea that such charity made it all right to steal from the railroad, Strickland?”

I could see why he was considered a good detective, all right. He had put together a strong case against me and the fellas. But it was purely guesswork, without any proof.

When I didn't answer his question, he went on, “I knew you were the ones I was after, but I thought if I could catch you in the act, that would tie everything up neatly. So I set that trap and baited it with a letter supposedly from John Hamilton.”

“What'd you do, browbeat a dyin' man into helpin' you? I wouldn't put it past you.”

“Neither would I, but that wasn't necessary.” Barstow sounded mighty pleased with himself as he went on, “You see, early in my career I handled several forgery cases, and I learned all the tricks of the trade employed by such criminals. I'm a pretty good forger, if I do say so myself. All I needed was a sample of Hamilton's handwriting, and it wasn't difficult to get that. Any inconsistencies would be put down to the fact that everyone would think he wrote the letter on his deathbed.”

That tied it all up as far as I could see. Nice and neat, just like he'd said. And we were in sight of what was left of the Daughtry shack by now. It had decayed and fallen in even more. In another year or two, nobody would be able to tell that folks had ever lived here.

Barstow glanced up at the sun.

“Sheriff Lester is supposed to meet me here at midday. We'll wait for him and go back to the county seat together.”

“You want to show off how smart you are, right?”

“Smart enough to catch you,” Barstow said.

But not smart enough to keep me, I thought. I gathered my muscles, getting ready to make a leap from the buggy at him. I knew that as tightly wound up as he was, as soon as I made my move he would pull the trigger. I just had to make sure my body was between his gun and Daisy, so there wouldn't be any chance of her being hit. I knew that pistol of his wasn't big enough to shoot all the way through me.

It was big enough to kill me, though. That was exactly what I was after.

Butch Cassidy could finally go to his grave.

That was when Daisy surprised both of us. She came up halfway off the seat and said loudly, “Oh, my! My head . . . it's spinning! I'm going to—”

She fell forward, but as she landed on the floorboard she slapped the reins hard against the rumps of both horses and cried out to them. They lunged ahead, throwing Daisy and me both backward.

Pretending to faint like that had drawn Barstow's eyes to her, just like she thought it would, and that pulled his gun out of line. When he tried to jerk it back toward me and fired, the bullet tore through the back of the buggy's canopy instead.

I twisted on the seat and reached behind it with my left hand, searching for the coiled shell belt and holstered Remington that Daisy had put back there before we left Largo. Barstow kicked his horse into a gallop and came after us, firing his pistol.

“Stay down!” I yelled at Daisy as I continued fumbling for the gun. She was lying on the floorboard, bumping against my legs as she slashed at the team and kept them running.

I'd been ready to die to protect her. I figure she must have known that, and she sensed somehow that I was about to put my plan into action. So she had moved first, trying to give me a fighting chance, anyway.

More of Barstow's bullets tore through the canopy and whistled around my head. My hand closed around the Remington's ivory grips as the ridge against which the Daughtry shack was built loomed up in front of us. Daisy had to swing the buggy to the side to keep from crashing into it.

We were going too fast to make that turn. As I yanked the revolver from its holster, I felt the buggy tip. We were suspended like that for a sickeningly dizzy second before it went over and crashed to the ground in front of the shack.

I was thrown out when the buggy turned over. I didn't know what had happened to Daisy. When I slammed into the ground I landed on my bad arm, and it sent an explosion of agony through me. Momentum rolled me over a couple of times before I stopped. Somehow I managed to hang on to the gun in my left hand.

Dust roiled around me as I lifted my head and cried, “Daisy!” I couldn't see her, and I was desperate to know what had happened to her.

“You son of a bitch!” Barstow roared somewhere close by. “You won't get away from me again!”

“Jim!” Daisy screamed as Barstow loomed out of the dust, on his feet now instead of in the saddle, gun in his outthrust hand. A light-colored shape darted in between us from the side. “Mr. Barstow! Don't—”

I saw Barstow's face as he pulled the trigger. It was twisted in lines of insane hatred. He didn't care that Daisy was in the way. He just wanted to kill me no matter who else got hurt. Flame lanced from the pistol's muzzle. Daisy cried out and went down.

“Daisy!”

The Remington's roar all but drowned out my scream. It bucked in my hand as I fired again and again until the hammer fell on an empty chamber. All five rounds tore through Simon Barstow's body. One of them broke the wrist of his gun hand. Two more went into his belly, one smashed his heart, and the last one caught him in the middle of his forehead and blew a fist-size hole in the back of his skull as it burst out. He flopped to the ground, dead as a man could be.

By the time he landed I had forgotten all about him. I had already dropped my empty gun and started crawling toward Daisy, who lay sprawled a few feet away. I yelled her name at the top of my lungs.

She rolled over and looked at me. Her eyes were open. I didn't see any blood on her dress. She came up on her knees at the same time I did and threw her arms around me. My good arm went around her and held her tightly to me.

“I . . . I'm all right, Jim,” she said in my ear. “I just tripped and fell while I was trying to shield you. I'm not hurt.”

I was breathing hard as I said, “Don't you . . . don't you ever scare me . . . like that again, Daisy Hatfield.”