The Man Who Fell from the Sky (4 page)

“How did your grandfather know him?” Father John leaned against the edge of the door, reluctant to shut it and send her on her way.

“Cassidy owned the ranch next to ours. About 1890, I believe, during a time when he tried to leave the outlaw life behind. When my grandfather fell off a horse and broke his leg, Cassidy jumped in and worked both ranches, Grandfather's and his own. Kept Grandfather from losing everything to the no-good banks, vultures waiting for ranchers to fail so they could snap up the land. Well, Cassidy made sure that didn't happen. Strange things did happen though, if the stories in my family are to be believed. Cassidy was a genius with horses. He could talk to them and they talked back to him, told him all kinds of things about the approaching storms, the condition of the trails in the county, the best pastures. My father said that his father told him how Cassidy's ranch always had a fresh supply of fine, healthy horses. Naturally Grandfather assumed he bought them or traded for them.” She gave a little gurgling noise that erupted in her throat in imitation of laughter. “He
found out later Cassidy also had a genius for rustling horses. He could lasso a horse and lead it away right past the owner. Next thing Grandfather knew, his neighbor wasn't around anymore. The ranch house and all the buildings were vacant. He heard Cassidy had been convicted of stealing a horse and was on his way to prison in Laramie.” She turned and blinked up at him. “I guess in the end he couldn't stop going down the outlaw path. Doesn't mean he was a bad man. He shared his loot with the less fortunate.”

Maris glanced at the door, and Father John shut it. He leaned into the open window. “Did you ever hear that he buried treasure in the mountains?”

“Hah!” She gave a bark of laughter. “Stories of buried loot have been floating around for decades. More than one fool has lost his life clumping around the mountains, falling off ridges, sliding down steep, rocky slopes . . .” She stopped and turned sideways, still staring up at him, eyes wide in comprehension. “Don't tell me that's what happened to Robert Walking Bear. Is that why he was in the mountains alone and managed to wade into the lake and drown? Thought he'd find Cassidy's buried loot in the lake, did he?”

“I don't know.”

“Cassidy himself couldn't find the loot.” She shook her head and smiled to herself. “Oh, he came back to look for it, all right, despite all that poppycock about him getting killed in a shoot-out in Bolivia. In 1934, he was right here, visiting friends on the rez and ranchers hereabouts. Took a camping trip with friends into the mountains to search for the box of gold coins he had buried. My father was a young man. He went along as a guide. He never forgot Butch Cassidy.” She shrugged and let out a long sigh of
surrender. “I don't expect film people to get it right. They never do. I really must be going.” She jammed the key into the ignition and jiggled it back and forth until the engine sputtered into life. Then she backed into Circle Drive and gave a little wave. “Enjoy the opera,” she called as the Cadillac shot forward into the cottonwood tunnel, gravel and white fluff dancing behind the wheels.

June 2, 1899

JESSE HEARD THE
beat of horses' hooves before she did, but his hearing had always been keener than hers. He could hear a bird fall from its nest. They had just sat down to the stew she had prepared for dinner. Steam rose out of the pottery bowls; the smells of hot meat and broth filling the log cabin. Anthony, the hired hand Jesse had taken on a month ago, eyed the bowls with anticipation after helping Jesse mend fences all day.

“We have visitors.” Jesse rose out of his chair in a quick, fluid motion, as if he were sliding off the back of a bronco. He went over to the rack of guns by the front door, pulled out the Springfield, and handed it to Mary. Then he took the Winchester for himself. Glancing over one shoulder, he told Anthony to watch the back door. A holstered revolver bumped against the man's hip as he headed to the kitchen. They had been through this before. Out on a ranch in the middle of the Wyoming prairie with nothing but the infernal wind, blizzards that whitened the earth in winter, sun
that seared and dried the hay and left the cattle and horses desperate for water in the summer, and the nearest neighbors a good ten miles away. Strangers were sometimes welcome. Different faces, good stories, news from the outside world. It depended on the strangers who happened to find the dirt road to the cabin.

Jesse stepped outside and crossed the porch, his boots quiet as moccasins. He moved into the shadows away from the dim beam of light from the front window. Mary stepped into the shadows on the other side. The horses' hooves were beating hard, coming closer. A million stars overhead made her feel small and insignificant, as if what was happening now were nothing. In the light of the stars and the moon that hung in the east, she could make out two figures riding toward them. Big men in hats, hunched over the saddle as if they had ridden a long distance. Spurs jangled over the sounds of the hooves.

“Stop where you are!” Jesse's voice was firm, a man not to be trifled with. “Any closer and you will be dead men. My woman here can plug a rabbit between the eyes.”

“Jesse? That you?” The riders pulled up. The horses snorted, pawed at the ground, and swung their heads.

Across the beam of light, Mary could see that Jesse held the rifle ready. She heard the click as he pushed the lever up and down. “State your name,” he called. But she had recognized the voice and so had Jesse, she was certain. A voice from the past. She would never forget it. Still she gripped the rifle until Jesse had made certain that the man was who they thought he was and not an impostor.

“George Cassidy.” The rider shouted his name. “This here is Harry Longabaugh, my partner. Folks call him Sundance.”

Jesse stood in place, the rifle pointing to the ground now. “Dismount and let me see you.”

The riders slid off the horses. “Been a long time, Jesse.” The rider came forward, holding out his hand. The other man took the reins.

In the starlight, Mary could make out the familiar face, older-looking, a little tired, with a red scar on his cheek, but the same merry eyes, the mouth ready to break into a loud, bellowing laugh. He wore dark-colored corduroy trousers and jacket. The black, soft-brimmed hat that he always liked sat on his head. He walked the same, shoulders back, head high, as if he owned the world. Eight years ago he had owned her world. A man she had never expected to see again, and here he was, as if he had fallen out of the sky.

“Good heavens, man.” Jesse stepped off the porch and started pumping Cassidy's hand. “We gave up on you. Decided you'd ridden off into the sunset.”

“I'm still around.” Cassidy was smiling, those big teeth gleaming in the light. “I was hoping you'd remember an old friend.”

“How would we ever forget. Isn't that right, Mary?” Jesse glanced at the end of the porch where Mary stood rooted to the ground, as if she had been planted there.

“Mary?” Cassidy jumped onto the porch. “Well, I'll be doggoned. Mary Boyd! How you been getting on, Mary?” He looked around, eyes bright with surprise and comprehension. “Don't tell me you married this old scoundrel. I'll be doggoned,” he said again. “Never would have figured it.”

Jesse let out a bark of laughter. “Almost five years now,” he said. “We got ourselves a good ranch here and a hired hand to keep everything humming. We take care of what's ours.”

“Glad to hear it.” Cassidy kept his gaze on Mary, then swung around and walked down the steps to Jesse. “It's good to see old friends getting on.”

“What brought you here, George? You been up to your old ways?”

George was shaking his head. “No more rustling for me. Sundance and I”—he motioned toward the man holding the reins—“moved on to bigger payoffs.”

“I thought you wanted to live an honest life.” Mary heard her own voice, sharp and doubtful, piercing the quiet.

“I tried, Mary.” Cassidy looked back at her. “God knows I tried. But it seems like once you start down a road of crime, nobody lets you get off. I'm not going to give up trying, but meanwhile a man's got to eat. And Sundance here and the rest of our outfit . . .”

“I hear they call you the Wild Bunch.”

Cassidy laughed at that. “We're not as wild as those posses they send after us. But we're pretty good at what we do. We'd like to stay here a little while, Jesse, if that fits into your plans.”

“We don't have plans.” Jesse bunched a fist and hit at Cassidy's arm. “The blizzards and dust storms, they have plans. The bank, it has plans. We just try to keep on.”

“What do you have here?”

“Hundred head of cattle to herd into the high pasture, two dozen horses, three of them wild and needing to be broken.”

“We're good with horses, and Sundance here can herd cattle to the moon, if you like.”

“Can't pay you.”

“All we need is a place to bunk, some grub, and we'll help you out.”

“Deal.” Jesse pumped George's hand again, then stepped back to the porch. “Get out here, Anthony.”

The man stepped past the screened door, and Mary realized he had been standing just inside. He was skinny and tall with the humped nose and black hair of the Arapaho.

“This here is George, an old friend,” Jesse said. “You can learn a lot from him. Isn't anything he doesn't know about horses.”

“Some folks call me Butch.” George made a big point of shaking the man's hand. “Name I picked up working in a butcher shop. Over there is the Sundance Kid. Picked up his name in the Sundance jail.”

“Jail!” Mary heard the anxiety in her voice. Who was this man George Cassidy had brought to their ranch?

“Didn't do anything wrong. Went to jail for what some other cowboy did. Never mind. He's a real fine fellow.”

“You can bunk in the barn,” Jesse said. “There's a water pump and good hay for your horses. Anthony will show you around. When you're ready, come to the house for some of Mary's fine stew.”

“Thanks, friend.” George gave a salute off the rim of his cowboy hat. “It won't be forgotten.”

“We're in your debt,” said the Sundance Kid, the first words he had spoken. He seemed closed up and dark, Mary thought, sunk inside his own thoughts, not like George—she could never call him Butch—who moved with the starlight. He liked people. That was the difference between these two men leading the horses around the cabin toward the barn in back. George liked people.

Thirty minutes later George and Sundance were seated at the table over bowls of stew, steam rising like feathers. Draped over the back of George's chair was a brown saddlebag worn almost yellow and packed solid, the flaps straining against the metal buckles. Anthony took his place on the other side of the table, head down, spooning chunks of stew into his mouth. Mary sat at one end, Jesse at the other. She passed the plate of warm bread she had taken from the oven to George. Nothing ever planned here, she was thinking. Everything falling from the sky.

They made polite small talk. She smiled, thinking back on how George had learned the polite preliminaries from her people. How hard it had been! George, seated on a log stump in front of Grandfather's tipi, which Grandfather had always preferred to the wooden boxes the government had built when the Shoshones and Arapahos went to the rez. George would squirm and clamp his lips together until finally he couldn't hold the words back any longer and they had burst forth with a stream of laughter. Grandfather had taken to George Cassidy like a son.

After the men had wiped their bowls clean with pieces of bread, Mary went over to the sideboard and carried a tray to the table with a bottle of whiskey and four glasses. George wasn't much of a drinker, she remembered, and neither was Jesse. She didn't know about Sundance. A small toast, she was thinking, to the success of whatever caper her visitors had just pulled off.

Jesse poured a finger of whiskey into each glass and passed them around the table to the men. “May you live long and free,” he said, holding his own glass toward George and Sundance.

Mary took her seat again as the men downed the whiskey. She hated the taste of whiskey, hated the smell, hated the ways it had changed her friends, drove them off their lands, turned them into whores and bums that hung around the agency on the reservation, looking for handouts. She considered making herself a cup of tea, but she didn't want to leave the table and miss the conversation.

“What was it this time?” Jesse set his glass down. Most of the brown whiskey remained, shimmering in the candlelight. “Horses? Bank?”

“Nah.” George shook his head. “Never was much for rustling horses. Not enough money in it.”

“You used to like it well enough.” Mary felt all four pairs of
eyes turn to her. “You went to prison in Laramie for stealing a horse.”

George threw his head back and laughed. “Stole a few horses in my time, but I never stole
that
horse.”

“Strikes me banks are more dangerous,” Jesse said.

Sundance had turned toward George, staring at his profile. “Better leave it at that.”

“Tomorrow morning everybody in these parts will hear the news. Moccasin telegraph is better than the real thing. What difference if our friends hear it first?” George dropped his chin and chuckled. “Let's just say the Union Pacific Overland Flyer Limited had to make a sudden stop down around Wilcox.”

“Train?” Jesse was partway to his feet. “You saying you robbed a train? Nobody can get away with that.”

Mary could feel the muscles in her stomach tightening. Robbed the Union Pacific! George had stepped into another world, gone to a place from which he could never return. The railroad company would never forget. They would run him and Sundance and the rest of the gang into the ground.

“Somebody flagged the train down. Naturally the engineer stopped, thinking the bridge ahead was out. Well, it was about to be out, but not until the gang ordered the conductor to cut off the passenger cars behind the baggage car. After that the engineer obligingly pulled the baggage, express, and mail cars across the bridge before the whole thing blew to smithereens. Two miles up track, the engineer stopped again. It's a wonder the baggage car didn't blow sky-high when that fool express messenger refused to open the door. The gang had to set off another blast of dynamite. Blew off the roof and flattened that fool against the back wall. They blew the safe when he refused to open it. The man is crazy! The gang filled up the bags with him limping around, crying, saying the railroad
was gonna fire him and how was he supposed to feed his kids? I ask you, how was his kids supposed to eat if he'd been blown to pieces?”

“They're going to come for you with a posse the size of an army,” Jesse said.

“They'll have to find us first.”

“You used the old method?” Mary said. George had told her once that he planned the robberies and the rustling. Everything thought out ahead of time, every possibility taken into account. The gang would stash horses, water, and food along the getaway route, so they could cover a hundred miles, two hundred miles, on fresh horses, while the posse's horses would run out of strength.

George was grinning. “We rode all day before we stopped to split up the takings. Then we took different directions. Me and Sundance kept going north until we reached friends.”

“How many days you got before they're onto you?” Jesse had finished his whiskey and was refilling the glasses.

“We got forever. Don't we, Sundance?” He glanced at the man next to him.

“I figure we work here for a while,” Sundance said. “Keep our noses clean and stay away from the bars in Lander until things quiet down. Then we'll be on our way.”

George took another sip of whiskey and pushed the glass away. He started to his feet. “Let's face it, Jesse. Posses don't want us, anyway.”

“Except to kill us,” Sundance said.

“Well, maybe they want that. But they'll be chasing their shadows across Wyoming looking for this.” George patted the saddlebag. “You can do what you want with your share,” he said to Sundance, who gulped the rest of his whiskey and stood up next to him. “I'm putting my share where they're never going to find it.”