Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (9 page)

CHAPTER 13

A
s it turned out, Randy, Santiago, and the Gallardo boys weren't the only newcomers to the Fishhook. That night, Randy and I were in the house when we heard a commotion out in the barn. I had just checked the wound in his side and was pleased to see that it was still healing just fine, as far as I could tell. One of the windows I had replaced after the shootout with Tate and the other outlaws was open to let in some night breezes, and it let in the racket all the horses were kicking up, too.

“Something's sure spooking those critters,” I said as I stood up from the table. Randy started to get up, too, but I motioned him back into his chair. “No, sit down, I'll check it out. No need for you to come along.”

“Damn it, Mr. Strickland,” he said. “You don't let me do a thing around here.”

“That's not true. You worked on mendin' that harness today.”

He gave me a disgusted look that made it clear how he felt about that job. It's true, that was a chore usually reserved for the old, stove-up cowboys. That and cooking.

“All right, come on,” I told him. “But if there's any shootin' to be done, let me handle it. When that popgun of yours goes off, the only safe place to be is behind you, and I ain't altogether certain of that.”

“You plan on paying me wages?” he asked as I took the Winchester down from its pegs.

“What? Of course I do.”

“Well, when I've got my first month's wages I'm going to Largo and buying a decent revolver.”

“All right, fine. Until then, leave that gun you've got in your pocket.”

I had replaced the boards in the gallery, too. I was a pretty fair carpenter, if I do say so myself. We walked over them and headed for the barn, where the horses were still carrying on. I heard horseshoes thudding against the sides of several stalls as they tried to kick their way out.

“Better be careful,” Randy said. “There must be some sort of varmint in there.”

“A wolf, maybe. Or a bear.”

“I'm not sure there are any bears in this part of the country. More likely a coyote. Maybe a panther.”

“You make fun of me sayin' there might be a bear, and then you start talkin' about panthers?” I said.

“There are panthers around here,” he insisted. “At least I think so.”

“Let's just go take a look—”

A deep, throaty growl from the open doors of the barn made us both stop right where we were. The shape that stalked out of the shadows in a slow, menacing glide was big and shaggy.

“Good Lord,” Randy said quietly in an awed voice. “Maybe it is a bear after all.”

“It don't move like a bear,” I told him without taking my eyes off the critter. It had stopped, but I sensed that if it wanted to, it could move again in one hell of a hurry. “And it's too shaggy to be a panther,” I went on. “Randy, I think . . . I think that's a dog.”

“A wolf, maybe.”

I studied the animal for a moment and shook my head.

“No, I don't think so. The ears ain't right. Look how they sort of flop over. That's a big dog.”

“Maybe.” He still didn't sound convinced.

“I'll prove it to you.” I took a step toward the critter. “Here, boy,” I said. “Come on, fella.”

The damn thing charged me.

It was fast, all right, and I hesitated for just a second because I didn't want to shoot a dog. That gave it enough time to launch into a leap that sent it crashing into my chest. I went over backward and lost my grip on the Winchester when I hit the ground. The thing's hot, slobbery breath gusted against my face as its bared teeth poised just above my throat, ready to rip it out. After everything that had happened to me in my life, it would be a hell of a note if I died because I tried to call a dog.

It didn't tear into me, though, just kept me pinned there with a hundred pounds of furry beast on my chest while it snarled and drooled on me. Randy was yelling, and I worried that he might try to shoot the dog and hit me instead, so I shouted, “Hold your fire! By God, don't you shoot that gun, Randy!”

“But . . . but, Mr. Strickland, the dog—”

I stayed as still as I could as I told him, “The dog ain't done nothin' so far but knock me down. Fetch the lamp.”

“But—”

“Fetch the damn lamp!”

Randy hurried back into the house and returned a moment later with the lamp. He held it high so the light from it washed over us.

I saw that I'd been right. The varmint wasn't a bear, a panther, or even a wolf. It was a dog. The shaggy brown hair that covered it couldn't hide how skinny he was, either. He looked half-starved, and I was surprised he hadn't tried to eat me for that reason alone. His muzzle had scars on it, as if he'd been in plenty of fights with other animals, and his big, floppy ears were sort of ragged in places like his opponents had gnawed on them.

“Take it easy, old son,” I said as quietly and calmly as I could manage. “Nobody wants to hurt you.”

“It's gonna kill you, Mr. Strickland—,” Randy began.

“No, he's not,” I said. “If that's what he wanted to do, he would have done it already. He's just scared . . . scared and hungry, from the looks of him. Set that lamp on the ground and go get a biscuit.”

“What?”

“A biscuit!” I repeated, trying to keep the impatience I felt under control. “There were some left over at supper, remember? Go get one of 'em.”

Randy must have figured out I wanted to distract the dog, because he did like I said and hurried into the house. When he came back, he had one of the biscuits in his hand.

“Now break off a piece and toss it over here next to us,” I told him.

He fumbled with the biscuit. The dog kept his eyes on me, but I could tell he was interested in what Randy was doing. Maybe he could smell the biscuit. Maybe he was so hungry, he could just sense that food was close by.

Randy said, “Here you go, uh, doggy,” and threw the piece of biscuit so hard it bounced off the dog's head instead of landing on the ground beside him. The dog jerked a little and snarled even louder. More slobber dripped from his muzzle onto my face.

“Not that hard,” I told Randy through clenched teeth. I like to think I'm pretty cool-headed, but controlling the urge to panic and start flailing around was getting tough.

“Sorry, sorry,” Randy said. He tried again, and this time the chunk of biscuit landed on the ground a couple of feet away from me and the dog.

That finally made the dog take his eyes off of me. He looked at the biscuit for a few seconds, then abruptly lunged for it. The slavering jaws snapped up the morsel.

“Throw another!” I yelled at Randy. “Closer to you this time!”

He did, and the dog got off of me entirely to go after it. I rolled the other way as fast as I could and came up in a crouch. I was ready to run, but I knew that wouldn't do any good. The dog could chase me down in a heartbeat if he wanted to.

Right now, all the varmint wanted to do was gobble down the pieces of biscuit, including the first one Randy had thrown. I said, “Give him the whole thing!”

Randy threw the rest of the biscuit on the ground and started to back off.

“You gonna get the rifle and shoot it now?” he asked.

“Shoot him? Why the hell would I want to shoot him?”

“Why . . . Because it's a wild beast, that's why!”

“Naw,” I said. “He's just hungry, and he's had a hard life. That's all that's wrong with him.”

“How do you know it's a he?”

That was a good question. I'd just started thinking of the dog as male, maybe because he was so big and ugly. Sort of like some human galoots I've known.

The dog had swallowed all the pieces of biscuit. I told Randy, “Go get him something else to eat.”

“What should I get?”

“I don't care, just find something.”

Muttering, he retreated toward the house, afraid to turn his own back on the dog. I held out a hand and said, “Easy there, big fella. Nobody's gonna hurt you here. You got my word on that.”

He couldn't understand me, of course . . . but he gave me a long, wary, yet somehow hopeful look that almost made me think he did.

Randy came back with a ham from the butcher counter at Farnum's. As soon as the dog caught a whiff of it, he came at Randy like a runaway freight train. I yelled, “Throw it to him!”

Randy yelped and threw the ham up into the air. It never hit the ground. The dog went up and got it with a snap of those powerful jaws. He headed toward the barn with it, growling ferociously again.

“That's a waste of a good ham,” Randy said.

“Maybe not,” I told him. “Let's see what happens.”

The dog trotted into the barn carrying the ham. He must have laid down right inside the door, because I could still hear him without any trouble as he started tearing into it, snarling all the time to warn any other creatures nearby to steer clear of him and to not even think about trying to take his treasure.

“Go on back inside,” I said to Randy. “Take the lamp with you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Think I'll sit out on the gallery for a while,” I drawled.

He thought I was loco, but he did like I said, picking up the lamp and going inside the house with it. I sat down in one of the ladderback chairs on the gallery and tipped it back against the wall to wait.

After a while the dog came out of the barn again. He had the ham bone in his mouth. He'd torn all the meat off it. Once he was out in the open, he stopped and eyed me suspiciously. I stayed where I was and called to him, “That's your bone. I won't take it away from you.”

He padded toward the house, but he didn't come all the way up to the gallery. When he was still about ten feet away, he laid down and started gnawing on that bone, keeping an eye on me at the same time. He wasn't growling anymore. If I'd made a move toward him, he likely would have, but as long as I didn't threaten him, he was willing to tolerate me.

After half an hour, I let the chair ease back down on all four legs and stood up. The dog watched me but didn't growl or get up. I said, “I'm goin' on inside now. See you in the mornin' . . . Scar.”

I don't know where the name came from. Those scars on his muzzle, maybe. But I knew it seemed to fit him, just like I knew he was male.

I also knew—or at least I hoped—that he would be there in the morning, too.

“Where's the dog?” Randy asked when I went inside.

“Out there,” I said. “Keepin' an eye on the place for us.”

“Looking for a way to get in so he can kill us in our sleep, you mean.”

“We'll see,” I said.

CHAPTER 14

S
car was still there in the morning, sleeping on the gallery. He raised his head and looked at me when I came outside, but he didn't run off. I nodded to him and said, “Howdy.”

He laid his head back down on his paws but kept watching me.

Randy stuck his head out the door behind me.

“That beast really is still here,” he said. “I thought for sure he'd run off during the night.”

“Nope. And it's safe for you to come out. He won't bother you if you don't bother him.”

“He's going to chew my leg off.”

“Last night he might have,” I said. “I don't think he's quite that hungry anymore.”

Now that it was daylight and I could get a better look at him, I was able to confirm my impression that he was a boy dog, if you know what I mean. I could also tell how rough life had treated him. He had patches of bare hide where something had ripped out his hair and it hadn't grown back. His grizzled appearance made him look like an old dog, but I wasn't sure if it was the years or the hardships he'd endured that were responsible for that.

As I started toward the barn, I told Randy, “I'm riding to Largo this mornin' to see about hirin' a cook and some more hands, the way Santiago said. You and Scar can stay here and keep an eye on the place.”

“You're leaving me here with that . . . that beast?”

“The two of you will get along just fine,” I told him.

Randy looked sort of doubtful about that, and to tell the truth, so did Scar. But I had work to do, and the two of them would just have to learn to tolerate each other.

I saddled up one of the horses and headed for town. I hadn't been to Largo since taking in the bodies of the dead outlaws, so I hoped Sheriff Lester had brought my buckboard back by now. I didn't think of the buckboard as Abner's anymore, nor did I think of the Fishhook that way. The ranch was mine now. Hard as it was for me to believe, I was starting to put down roots.

It was still early enough when I got to town that I didn't figure I'd want to hire anybody I found in the saloon at that hour. I wouldn't be able to depend on somebody who had a thirst for rotgut at ten o'clock in the morning. So I went into the store instead. A big, fancy car was parked in front of the place, and when I went in I found Clyde Farnum talking to a fella in a city suit and hat.

“Howdy, Jim,” Farnum said as he gave me a nod. “Can you believe it? I'm thinkin' about puttin' in one of those new-fangled gasoline pumps.”

“The stuff that makes the automobiles go?” I asked with a frown.

“That's right. If I do, then folks hereabouts won't have to go all the way to the county seat to buy it.”

The city man held out his hand to me and said, “I'm Morris Dobbs, sir. I represent Continental Oil.”

I shook his hand because I was raised to be polite that way, but I didn't see where I had any business with this fella. I told him my name anyway and gave him a friendly nod.

“Oh, yeah, Jim, your buckboard's parked out back,” Farnum said. “Couple of deputies brought it back a few days ago. I told 'em they ought to just take it on out to your ranch, but they said the sheriff told 'em to deliver it here. Said this is where they got it, and this is where they were bringin' it back.”

“That's fine, Clyde,” I assured him. “I'm obliged to you for lookin' after it.”

“If you had a car, Mr. Strickland, you wouldn't need a buckboard,” Morris Dobbs said.

I grinned and said, “I'm not sure a car would go everywhere I need to go. And if I had one I'd be a sure enough menace to society, because I've never been very good at piloting one of the blasted things.”

“It just takes practice, that's all.” He waved a hand toward the front of the building. “Did you see my Hupmobile out there?”

“Is that what you call it?”

“It's the latest model. I'll take you for a spin in it if you like. Even let you try your hand at driving it.”

“No thanks,” I told him. “A horse is plenty good enough for me.”

He shook his head and said, “It's no use trying to fight the future, Mr. Strickland. Why, in a few more years, as the roads improve, you're going to see automobiles everywhere, even in ranching country like this. Trucks can carry goods where the railroads don't go, and do it much more cheaply and efficiently than horse-drawn wagons. Wouldn't you like to be able to stock your store that way, Mr. Farnum?”

Farnum scratched at his stubble and said, “Well, it does sound like it'd be a whole heap easier . . .”

I couldn't imagine anything taking the place of railroads when it came to carrying freight. If that day ever came, I'd be sad to see it. Railroads had played a big part in my life.

“You sound so proud of the things, Mr. Dobbs,” I said, “if I didn't know better I'd say you made 'em.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“No, but I sell the stuff they run on. The whole world is going to run on oil and gas one of these days, Mr. Strickland, you mark my words.”

It's been my experience that when somebody tells you to mark their words, they're not really predicting. They're hoping. They hope that what they're saying will turn out to be right because they've got a lot riding on it.

Me, I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about the future anymore. In the past I'd made plans and had hopes and dreams, and I had seen how all that panned out. Now I just sort of took things day to day and tried to find things to enjoy about each one of them.

“I'll leave you fellas to your business,” I said. At different times in my life I'd tried to become a city slicker, and it never took. Being around one of them now sort of irritated me. I added, “I'll be back by later to pick up that wagon, Clyde. I suppose the team's down at Mulrooney's?” The blacksmith also had the only stable in town.

“Yep. See you, Jim.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Strickland,” Dobbs said. “Don't forget what I told you.”

“Oh, I'm not likely to,” I said. I wouldn't forget it, but I wouldn't put much stock in it, either.

Since it was still too early to go to the saloon, I stopped at the café instead and lingered for a couple of hours over several cups of coffee and a second breakfast. Anybody who's damned near starved to death in the past, like I have, knows that it's a good idea to take advantage of every opportunity to eat.

By the time I went into the saloon, it was almost noon. Late enough that the fellas along the bar wouldn't be necessarily hopeless drunks. Maybe.

I'd seen half a dozen horses tied up outside, and that was how many men were leaning on the hardwood bar that ran along the right-hand wall. They weren't all together, though. Four men stood at the nearer end of the bar, while the other two were down at the far end. In addition, two more men sat at one of the tables scattered to the left of the entrance. One of them had dealt himself a hand of solitaire, while the other was reading a newspaper and nursing a beer.

That was everybody in the room except for a sleepy-looking bartender with a soup-strainer mustache, an unruly thatch of brown hair, and big enough bags under his eyes to stuff a cat into.

The four men closest to me were sharing a bottle of rotgut, passing it back and forth to fill their glasses and then tossing back the drinks. From the loud, slurred sound of their voices, they had been at it for a while. I was pretty sure that wasn't their first bottle of the day.

They were young and dressed like cowboys and might have been good at the job for all I know. But they looked and sounded like troublemakers, too. That was something I knew pretty well. Hell, I'd been one for most of my life. If I was really going to try to become a respectable rancher, I didn't need a bunch of hell-raisers around me.

So I walked on past them toward the two men at the end of the bar.

They were young, too, but a lot quieter and more subdued than the other bunch. One was big, but round and soft-looking at the same time. He had a moon face under a tipped-back hat with a high, round crown. His partner was a short redhead with an innocent, freckled face. Neither of them looked like they had much experience with cows, but if they were willing to work, that shouldn't matter. Santiago knew what he was doing, and they could learn from him.

They glanced at me when I stepped up to the bar. I gave them a nod and a smile and said, “Howdy, fellas.”

“How're you doin', mister?” the fat one asked. He reminded me of a big, friendly puppy.

“Why, just fine, son,” I told him. “How about you?”

“All right, I guess,” he answered with a shrug.

“Something wrong?” I asked. I could see worry lurking in his pale blue eyes.

“No, not really,” he said. “It's just that, you see, me and my friend here, we're sort of low on funds.”

“Well, shoot, I'd be glad to buy you a drink,” I offered.

Without a second's hesitation, he shook his head.

“No, sir,” he said. “We ain't beggars. We don't look for charity, and we don't take it.”

“Buyin' a man a drink ain't what I call charity. It's just bein' friendly.”

“Well, in that case . . .”

I signaled to the bartender, and when he ambled down to us I told him, “Bring these boys another round.”

He filled up beer mugs and slid them across the hardwood. The two youngsters drank thirstily, but not like they were desperate for it.

“We're obliged to you, mister,” the redhead said.

“We sure are,” the fat one added. “My name's Bert, by the way. My pard's Vince.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” I told them. “I'm Jim Strickland.” I waited a couple of seconds, then asked, “You fellas wouldn't happen to be lookin' for work, would you?”

I could tell by the way their eyes lit up that they were. I liked the way they looked even more eager for a job than they were for a drink, too.

Before either of them could answer me, though, one of the men at the other end of the bar called out, “If you're lookin' for men to ride for you, mister, you shouldn't be askin' those two. They're nothin' but wet-behind-the-ears calves! You should hire yourself some real men, like us.”

I ignored him and said to Bert and Vince, “I need a couple of hombres who ain't afraid of a little hard work—”

“Didn't you hear me, mister?” the man at the end of the bar said. “I told you, those two are worthless. Nothin' but a couple of dime-novel cowboys!”

That brought raucous laughs from the hombre's companions. I kept my back toward them and held my temper, although it wasn't easy. I don't like being interrupted and interfered with.

Bert said, “It's true we could sure use jobs, Mr. Strickland, but I reckon that fella's right. We don't know much about cowboying. Fact of the matter is, we've, uh, never really been ranch hands.”

“What have you done?”

“We worked at the train station in the county seat. Vince's pa got us the job. He works for the railroad.”

“Well, what did you do there?”

With a note of bitterness in his voice, Vince said, “You're lookin' at a couple of broom-pushers, Mr. Strickland.”

“Honest work's nothin' to be ashamed of,” I said, hardly believing that I was hearing such words come out of my mouth. Lord, how times had changed! I went on, “But how come you're up here in Largo?”

Bert said, “We thought it was time to move on. We wanted to do somethin' different, somethin' exciting—”

A hand fell on my shoulder, and a harsh voice said, “I was talkin' to you, mister, and I don't like bein' ignored.”

Old habits are hard to break, and a man who says he can control his instincts all the time is a liar. So when that liquored-up young hellion grabbed me, I didn't really think about it. I just did what came natural to me.

I turned around and busted him in the snoot.