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Their life as fugitives had begun.

Arlette whispered more about that life than I wished to know, and I dont have the heart to put more than the bare details down here. If you want to know more, write to the Omaha Public Library. For a fee, they will send you hectograph copies of stories having to do with the Sweetheart Bandits, as they became known (and as they called themselves). You may even be able to find stories from your own paper, if you do not live in Omaha; the conclusion of the tale was deemed heartrending enough to warrant national coverage.

Handsome Hank and Sweet Shannon, the World-Herald called them. In the photographs, they looked impossibly young. (And of course they were.) I didnt want to look at those photographs, but I did. Theres more than one way to be bitten by rats, isnt there?

The stolen car blew a tire in Nebraskas sandhill country. Two men came walking up just as Henry was mounting the spare. One drew a shotgun from a sling setup he had under his coat-what was called a bandit hammerclaw back in the Wild West days-and pointed it at the runaway lovers. Henry had no chance at all to get his own gun; it was in his coat pocket, and if hed tried for it, he almost certainly would have been killed. So the robber was robbed. Henry and Shannon walked hand-in-hand to a nearby farmers house under a cold autumn sky, and when the farmer came to the door to ask how he could help, Henry pointed his gun at the mans chest and said he wanted his car and all his cash.

The girl with him, the farmer told a reporter, stood on the porch looking away. The farmer said he thought she was crying. He said he felt sorry for her, because she was no bigger than a minute, just as pregnant as the old woman who lived in a shoe, and traveling with a young desperado bound for a bad end.

Did she try to stop him? the reporter asked. Try to talk him out of it?

No, the farmer said. Just stood with her back turned, like she thought that if she didnt see it, it wasnt happening. The farmers old rattletrap Reo was found abandoned near the McCook train depot, with a note on the seat: Here is your car back, we will send the money we stole when we can. We only took from you because we were in a scrape. Very truly yours, The Sweetheart Bandits. Whose idea was that name? Shannons, probably; the note was in her handwriting. They only used it because they didnt want to give their names, but of such things legends are made.

A day or two later, there was a hold-up in the tiny Frontier Bank of Arapahoe, Colorado. The thief-wearing a flat cap yanked low and a bandanna yanked high-was alone. He got less than $100 and drove off in a Hupmobile that had been reported stolen in McCook. The next day, in The First Bank of Cheyenne Wells (which was the only bank of Cheyenne Wells), the young man was joined by a young woman. She disguised her face with a bandanna of her own, but it was impossible to disguise her pregnant state. They made off with $400 and drove out of town at high speed, headed west. A roadblock was set up on the road to Denver, but Henry played it smart and stayed lucky. They turned south not long after leaving Cheyenne Wells, picking their way along dirt roads and cattle tracks.

A week later, a young couple calling themselves Harry and Susan Freeman boarded the train for San Francisco in Colorado Springs. Why they suddenly got off in Grand Junction I dont know and Arlette didnt say-saw something that put their wind up, I suppose. All I know is that they robbed a bank there, and another in Ogden, Utah. Their version of saving up money for their new life, maybe. And in Ogden, when a man tried to stop Henry outside the bank, Henry shot him in the chest. The man grappled with Henry anyway, and Shannon pushed him down the granite steps. They got away. The man Henry shot died in the hospital two days later. The Sweetheart Bandits had become murderers. In Utah, convicted murderers got the rope.

By then it was near Thanksgiving, although which side of it I dont know. The police west of the Rockies had their descriptions and were on the lookout. I had been bitten by the rat hiding in the closet-I think-or was about to be. Arlette told me they were dead, but they werent; not when she and her royal court came to visit me, that was. She either lied or prophesied. To me they are both the same.

Their next-to-last stop was Deeth, Nevada. It was a bitterly cold day in late November or early December, the sky white and beginning to spit snow. They only wanted eggs and coffee at the towns only diner, but their luck was almost all gone. The counterman was from Elkhorn, Nebraska, and although he hadnt been home in years, his mother still faithfully sent him issues of the World-Herald in large bundles. He had received just such a bundle a few days before, and he recognized the Omaha Sweetheart Bandits sitting in one of the booths.

Instead of ringing the police (or pit security at the nearby copper mine, which would have been quicker and more efficient), he decided to make a citizens arrest. He took a rusty old cowboy pistol from under the counter, pointed it at them, and told them-in the finest Western tradition-to throw up their hands. Henry did no such thing. He slid out of the booth and walked toward the fellow, saying: Dont do that, my friend, we mean you no harm, well just pay up and go.

The counterman pulled the trigger and the old pistol misfired. Henry took it out of his hand, broke it, looked at the cylinder, and laughed. Good news! he told Shannon. These bullets have been in there so long theyre green.

He put 2 dollars on the counter-for their food-and then made a terrible mistake. To this day I believe things would have ended badly for them no matter what, yet still I wish I could call to him across the years: Dont put that gun down still loaded. Dont do that, son! Green or not, put those bullets in your pocket! But only the dead can call across time; I know that now, and from personal experience.

As they were leaving (hand-in-hand, Arlette whispered in my burning ear), the counterman snatched that old horse-pistol off the counter, held it in both hands, and pulled the trigger again. This time it fired, and although he probably thought he was aiming at Henry, the bullet struck Shannon Cotterie in the lower back. She screamed and stumbled forward out the door into the blowing snow. Henry caught her before she could fall and helped her into their last stolen car, another Ford. The counterman tried to shoot him through the window, and that time the old gun blew up in his hands. A piece of metal took out his left eye. I have never been sorry. I am not as forgiving as Charles Griner.

Seriously wounded-perhaps dying already-Shannon went into labor as Henry drove through thickening snow toward Elko, thirty miles to the southwest, perhaps thinking he might find a doctor there. I dont know if there was a doctor or not, but there was certainly a police station, and the counterman rang it with the remains of his eye-ball still drying on his cheek. Two local cops and four members of the Nevada State Patrol were waiting for Henry and Shannon at the edge of town, but Henry and Shannon never saw them. Its 30 miles between Deeth and Elko, and Henry made only 28 of them.

Just inside the town limits (but still well beyond the edge of the village), the last of Henrys luck let go. With Shannon screaming and holding her belly as she bled all over the seat, he must have been driving fast-too fast. Or maybe he just hit a pothole in the road. However it was, the Ford skidded into the ditch and stalled. There they sat in that high-desert emptiness while a strengthening wind blew snow all around them, and what was Henry thinking? That what he and I had done in Nebraska had led him and the girl he loved to that place in Nevada. Arlette didnt tell me that, but she didnt have to. I knew.

He spied the ghost of a building through the thickening snow, and got Shannon out of the car. She managed a few steps into the wind, then could manage no more. The girl who could do triggeronomy and might have been the first female graduate of the normal school in Omaha laid her head on her young mans shoulder and said, I cant go any farther, honey, put me on the ground.

What about the baby? he asked her.

The baby is dead, and I want to die, too, she said. I cant stand the pain. Its terrible. I love you, honey, but put me on the ground.

He carried her to that ghost of a building instead, which turned out to be a line shack not much different from the shanty near Boys Town, the one with the faded bottle of Royal Crown Cola painted on the side. There was a stove, but no wood. He went out and scrounged a few pieces of scrap lumber before the snow could cover them, and when he went back inside, Shannon was unconscious. Henry lit the stove, then put her head on his lap. Shannon Cotterie was dead before the little fire hed made burned down to embers, and then there was only Henry, sitting on a mean line shack cot where a dozen dirty cowboys had lain themselves down before him, drunk more often than sober. He sat there and stroked Shannons hair while the wind shrieked outside and the shacks tin roof shivered.

All these things Arlette told me on a day when those two doomed children were still alive. All these things she told me while the rats crawled around me and her stink filled my nose and my infected, swollen hand ached like fire.

I begged her to kill me, to open my throat as I had opened hers, and she wouldnt.

That was her revenge.

It might have been two days later when my visitor arrived at the farm, or even three, but I dont think so. I think it was only one. I dont believe I could have lasted two or three more days without help. I had stopped eating and almost stopped drinking. Still, I managed to get out of bed and stagger to the door when the hammering on it commenced. Part of me thought it might be Henry, because part of me still dared hope that Arlettes visit had been a delusion hatched in delirium and even if it had been real, that she had lied.

It was Sheriff Jones. My knees loosened when I saw him, and I pitched forward. If he hadnt caught me, I would have gone tumbling out onto the porch. I tried to tell him about Henry and Shannon-that Shannon was going to be shot, that they were going to end up in a line shack on the outskirts of Elko, that he, Sheriff Jones, had to call somebody and stop it before it happened. All that came out was a garble, but he caught the names.

Hes run off with her, all right, Jones said. But if Harl came down and told you that, whyd he leave you like this? What bit you?

Rat, I managed.

He got an arm around me and half-carried me down the porch steps and toward his car. George the rooster was lying frozen to the ground beside the woodpile, and the cows were lowing. When had I last fed them? I couldnt remember.

Sheriff, you have to-

But he cut me off. He thought I was raving, and why not? He could feel the fever baking off me and see it glowing in my face. It must have been like carrying an oven. You need to save your strength. And you need to be grateful to Arlette, because I never would have come out here if not for her.

Dead, I managed.

Yes. Shes dead, all right.

So then I told him Id killed her, and oh, the relief. A plugged pipe inside my head had magically opened, and the infected ghost which had been trapped in there was finally gone.

He slung me into his car like a bag of meal. Well talk about Arlette, but right now Im taking you to Angels of Mercy, and Ill thank you not to upchuck in my car.

As he drove out of the dooryard, leaving the dead rooster and lowing cows behind (and the rats! dont forget them! Ha!), I tried to tell him again that it might not be too late for Henry and Shannon, that it still might be possible to save them. I heard myself saying these are things that may be, as if I were the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come in the Dickens story. Then I passed out. When I woke up, it was the second of December, and the Western newspapers were reporting SWEETHEART BANDITS ELUDE ELKO POLICE, ESCAPE AGAIN. They hadnt, but no one knew that yet. Except Arlette, of course. And me.

The doctor thought the gangrene hadnt advanced up my forearm, and gambled my life by amputating only my left hand. That was a gamble he won. Five days after being carried into Hemingford Citys Angels of Mercy Hospital by Sheriff Jones, I lay wan and ghostly in a hospital bed, twenty-five pounds lighter and minus my left hand, but alive.

Jones came to see me, his face grave. I waited for him to tell me he was arresting me for the murder of my wife, and then handcuff my remaining hand to the hospital bedpost. But that never happened. Instead, he told me how sorry he was for my loss. My loss! What did that idiot know about loss?

Why am I sitting in this mean hotel room (but not alone!) instead of lying in a murderers grave? Ill tell you in two words: my mother.

Like Sheriff Jones, she had a habit of peppering her conversation with rhetorical questions. With him it was a conversational device hed picked up during a lifetime in law enforcement-he asked his silly little questions, then observed the person he was talking to for any guilty reaction: a wince, a frown, a small shift of the eyes. With my mother, it was only a habit of speech she had picked up from her own mother, who was English, and passed on to me. Ive lost any faint British accent I might once have had, but never lost my mothers way of turning statements into questions. Youd better come in now, hadnt you? shed say. Or Your father forgot his lunch again; youll have to take it to him, wont you? Even observations about the weather came couched as questions: Another rainy day, isnt it?

Although I was feverish and very ill when Sheriff Jones came to the door on that late November day, I wasnt delirious. I remember our conversation clearly, the way a man or woman may remember images from a particularly vivid nightmare.

You need to be grateful to Arlette, because I never would have come out here if not for her, he said.

Dead, I replied.

Sheriff Jones: Shes dead, all right.

And then, speaking as I had learned to speak at my mothers knee: I killed her, didnt I?

Sheriff Jones took my mothers rhetorical device (and his own, dont forget) as a real question. Years later-it was in the factory where I found work after I lost the farm-I heard a foreman berating a clerk for sending an order to Des Moines instead of Davenport before the clerk had gotten the shipping form from the front office. But we always send the Wednesday orders to Des Moines, the soon-to-be-fired clerk protested. I simply assumed Assume makes an ass out of you and me, the foreman replied. An old saying, I suppose, but that was the first time I heard it. And is it any wonder that I thought of Sheriff Frank Jones when I did? My mothers habit of turning statements into questions saved me from the electric chair. I was never tried by a jury for the murder of my wife.