by Will Hobbs
“Yes, ma’am. Sitting left to right, that’s Sundance, Ben Kilpatrick, and Butch. Standing behind, that’s Will Carver on the left and Harvey Logan on the right.”
“Three have mustaches, but they’re all clean-shaven. Derby hats and suits, what dandies they are! Who would’ve thought?”
“Logan growed out his beard since the picture was took,” John said. “Today was the first I ferried any of ’em across this year.”
“They keep on the move, usually split up,” the marshal said. “For eleven years now—ever since Telluride—Butch spent most of the year in the saddle between Wyoming and the Gila Mountains way down in New Mexico. Works for a spell at different ranches, uses three or four different names.”
“How’d you know about that?”
“From Charlie Siringo, in my office a couple years back. When the gang travels by train, they’re on a spree, duded up and off to spend their loot. They’ve been traced to San Antonio and New Orleans, and Sundance goes back east, where he’s from. Siringo has even tracked Butch and Sundance to New York City. Right now I expect they’re at the Roost—maybe only Butch is. Back in Monticello we heard he’s waiting on Peaches.”
“Foolishness!” exclaimed Ma Hite. “What a petty man, what ornery toads they all are! You can’t tell me they don’t have blood on their hands.”
Old Cass raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “What I’m wonderin’, marshal, is whether you intend to keep up the pursuit.”
“I’ll track Logan all the way to the Roost if need be.”
“Marshal,” said John, “I don’t like your chances of locating the Roost. It’s not the one Butch had to abandon some years back, when the word got out. Seems two sisters with a ranch were keeping him supplied with beef and horses.”
Cass nodded thoughtfully. “The hideout he’s been using since then must be even more remote.”
John took up where Cass left off. “It’s got to be somewhere in that maze of badlands in the San Rafael Desert, but that’s an enormous country. Logan is likely to stop at Charlie Gibbons’s store in Hanksville, like they often do, but from there on nobody including the Pinkerton has ever been able to follow. Siringo thinks they tie buckskin bags or suchlike around the feet of their horses.”
“Interesting,” said the marshal, “but I’ve put a lot of thought into this. Robbers Roost, whatever it is, must have considerable water and sufficient graze for their horses. Can’t be but a few such places in that desert. Maybe there’s only one.”
“And I know where it is,” announced Cass Hite.
The old man’s relatives were all ears and so were we. “Leastwise I’m pretty dern sure,” Cass added. “Some people never forget a face. I never forget a place.”
“You got my attention,” the marshal said. “You been there?”
“That’s what I’m sayin’.”
“How long ago?”
“Early ’80s. I was prospecting the San Rafael country. Stumbled across such a place as I was about to die of thirst. That’s so powerful a spring, it’s got a pool maybe thirty feet long. The creek that began there flowed a good half mile toward the Muddy River before it went underground.”
Till’s brow was furrowed. “The Roost ain’t high up?”
“No, son, if that be Robbers Roost, it’s in a shallow canyon.”
“I always pitchered you had to climb up to it. A roost is something you perch on. Pass the dumplin’s, please. Thanks for the vittles, ma’am—your gravy is boldacious.”
“Why, thank you, Till. Say, Marshal Clark, I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t brought along a posse.”
“I have,” the marshal said. “Ma’am, you’re lookin’ at ’em.” He pointed his fork at Till. “This one said, ‘We’ll be your posse.’ I took him at his word.”
“And now you propose to lead these boys all the way to Robbers Roost? What’s that gonna look like? A hail of bullets?”
“Not necessarily,” replied the marshal. “Like we’ve been saying, Butch is no killer.”
“But Logan is.”
“Which is why Butch Cassidy would agree to a swap. I get Logan and eight thousand dollars’ bounty, and Butch gets to go free. I might even ride in there under a bonnet, wearin’ a skirt and singin’ ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike.’ What’s Butch gonna do?”
Old Cass stroked his goatee gleefully. “Might work, might work.”
Ma Hite harrumphed. “More foolishness!”
“Why are you so sure,” put in John, “that Butch will hand Harvey Logan over?”
The marshal hesitated. “My strategy and the outcome will depend on circumstances. At the least, I intend to recover the mule and have a talk with Butch. I might leave it at that.”
“And what would you tell Butch?” inquired Ma Hite.
“That his game is up.”
“If you manage to ride into the Roost,” the old man said, “that’ll speak for itself. Butch would leave and never come back, and that would suit me just fine. He’s put all of us in a bad light.”
“Us?” his brother asked him.
“Every Mormon in Utah! I’m sick and tired of it!”
Ma Hite got up and started clearing the dishes. Till was squirming in his seat. “Hon, hang on for the watermelon,” she told him.
Clark seemed agitated. He turned his gaze to the far end of the table. “In all that mess of canyons, Cass, we’d never locate the Roost without you. I’d be mighty obliged if you would guide us.”
The old-timer had to think about it. “Well, I shoulda seen that comin’. Now it’s a case of put up or shut up. Guide you? Reckon I will.”
23
The Moment of Decision
AS THE OLD man led us out of Hite, my conscience was feeling better. I’d sent Ma a letter out of Homer’s post office. It went like this:
October 11, 1900
Hello Ma,
I hope you can make out the postmark. Till and I are in Hite City, Utah, on the Colorado River in pursuit of Peaches with Telluride’s marshal, Jim Clark. Hite City is something less than a metropolis. I am enamored of the redrock country and so is Till. Both of us are hale and hearty. The extra funds you sent came in handy for supplies. Will send a telegram from Telluride when we get back. Then home!
Affectionately, with tales to tell, Owen
I was under the impression that Hanksville was just up the road, but it turned out to be something like sixty miles. As monotonous and dusty as those nine hours were, they felt like forever. Somewhere off to our right ran the Dirty Devil River but I never spied it. Hanksville wasn’t much to look at, dry and windy and so sand-blown that we rode into town with bandannas pulled over our noses like bandits. The storekeeper’s eyes went big as quarters when he saw the marshal’s badge.
Charlie Gibbons was a nervous little fellow. He puzzled over the marshal’s photo, or pretended to. “You don’t recognize these men?” Clark asked gruffly.
“Well, I do, but I’ve never seen them together, just one or two at a time, and never had an idea who they were. I’ve been told that Butch and his bunch do business here, but I always figured the less curious I was, the healthier.”
The marshal pointed out Logan. “Seen this one recently, like yesterday or today? We tracked him here.”
Gibbons shook his head. “Maybe passed through in the night?”
Outside of Hanksville the Fremont and the Muddy joined and became the Dirty Devil. We left the road, which was headed north to the town of Green River. “There’s no road where we’re going,” Cass announced. He steered us northwest up the Muddy River, which was sure enough muddy but more of a creek.
From where we camped on the chalky, wide-open plain, the cliffs of the San Rafael Reef loomed large. The big waterhole that might be Robbers Roost, to the best of Cass’s recollection, was in one of the Muddy River’s maze of side canyons between the San Rafael Reef and the San Rafael Swell.
The wind kicked up as we were collecting bits of driftwood and got worse as the marshal was heati
ng up a big can of stew from Homer’s store. In a second pot Cass was boiling water. The old man led us off a ways to find some Mormon tea. It grew in a clump, all stems and no leaves. We were breaking some off, when, with a glance toward camp, he said, “Twenty-eight thousand dollars is a small fortune.”
I was at a loss but Till wasn’t. “I added it up myself. That’s the bounty for Butch and Sundance and Harvey Logan.”
“You boys have been with the marshal a good while. You reckon there’s gonna be gunplay?”
I hesitated. Not so, Till. “We know Butch is waitin’ on Logan, but maybe Sundance and the other two ain’t there. Maybe they is and maybe they ain’t. The marshal’s gonna shoot it out with Logan for killin’ a sheriff. Takin’ him alive ain’t practical.”
“Hmm . . .” said the old prospector. “What do you think, Owen?”
“Clark’s more unpredictable than the weather around here.”
Back at camp, Cass took the boiling water off the fire and set it aside. We threw in a couple handfuls of the wild tea and let it steep.
Come time to eat, the wind was blowing a sandy gale. You had to lift your bandanna clear of your mouth for every bite. We sopped chunks of Ma Hite’s bread in the stew and drank the amber-colored tea. Till liked it so much, Cass warned him to ease up lest he be awake all night.
Clouds raced in and the temperature plummeted. After that, around dark, the wind quit but it stayed cold. Last thing before I fell asleep, Till was asking, “You reckon the marshal really brought along a bonnet and a skirt?”
We made an early start, everybody except Jim Clark wearing their coats. The marshal led out with his star showing and his gun belt bristling with cartridges. Till and I followed in our usual order and Cass Hite rode sweep. Before long we were riding four abreast across the plain of baked mud with cracks running every which way.
When we picked up the tracks of a horse and a mule, it was all but certain we were on Logan’s trail. Before long we came across some old horse apples, and doubts set in. Maybe the tracks, like the droppings, weren’t recent.
Over the eons, the Muddy River had carved a break in the San Rafael Reef. As we passed through the Reef we rode single file with old Cass in the lead. It took some maneuvering for Cass to lead his horse through a cluster of gigantic, sharp-edged blocks of sandstone fallen from the towering cliffs. There were no more prints to be seen of horses or mules. “Kid Curry put them foot bags on,” Till said, and the marshal agreed.
Maybe half an hour later, where the canyon widened for a spell, Cass sang out, “Thar she blows!”
I flinched, thinking he’d spied the Roost, but that wasn’t it. Cass was sitting easy in the saddle, signaling the rest of us to catch up. Fanning out beside him, we pondered some very fresh horse apples. “Practically steaming,” the old-timer said.
“You’d think he would of used them big-city catch bags,” the marshal said. “If they go to the trouble with the hoof bags, why not collect these telltale turds?”
Till had himself a good chortle. Cass said, “Logan’s overconfident. Or just plain lazy.”
The clouds were gone but the cold conditions remained. Jim Clark’s weathered face was wearing a faint smile. The glare of the sun had him squinting, which deepened his crow’s feet. What was he up to?
We soon came to a place where the creek had risen, then dropped, leaving patches of mud alongside. In the fresh mud were the deep and obvious imprints of the hoof bags. “Logan coulda walked ’em around here,” Till said. “Don’t have a lick of sense.”
“It hasn’t rained in days,” I wondered aloud. “Yet the water’s been up.”
“Evidently it’s been raining in the Wasatch Mountains,” Cass explained. “They’re a good long way upstream.”
We drank from our canteens and dispatched the pastries Ma Hite had sent along. Ten minutes later we were back in the saddle.
The country was changing as we encountered an extremely hard layer of sandstone. The canyon of the Muddy narrowed, with reddish-tan cliffs on both sides. In addition there were frequent canyons coming in from our left and right. Those dry side canyons looked confusingly similar, all of them barren halls of stone. With our old prospector giving each of them a long look, it went without saying we were getting close.
Nobody was saying a word. Eventually Cass came to a side canyon he studied harder and longer than the others. It came in from our right. The old man was eyeballing a formation up above the canyon rim, a stranded remnant of a layer of stone all but eroded away. It was shaped like a turban, buff-colored with a band of red through the middle. Hite motioned us closer. “This be it,” he whispered. “Don’t say a word. Sound will carry in there like anything.” I noticed the marshal take his badge off and put it in his pocket.
The side canyon we entered was bone dry. It narrowed between walls of a hundred feet or more. All of a sudden, from a ledge barely above our heads came an explosion of motion and sound. Till flinched, his eyes wide. I’d never been so spooked. Turns out we’d startled a great-horned owl. We watched it fly off down the canyon.
Maybe fifteen minutes later, those sheer walls shrank to fifty or so feet and stepped back on both sides. Up ahead on the dry creek bottom grew a lone cottonwood tree of considerable size, old and gnarled. Where we reached the tree, the streambed sand and gravels were conspicuously damp. No more than thirty yards on, we followed fresh tracks to the place the old man had remembered. Upstream, the creek was running on the surface. Right here, it went underground. Cass reined his horse around and signaled us to do the same. The four of us rode back to that big old cottonwood.
In the shade of the tree Cass dismounted and tethered his horse. The rest of us followed suit. “Let’s parley,” Hite whispered.
Keeping our eyes upstream, we drank from our canteens. More than a little agitated, Cass pulled on his goatish beard. “Now that we’re here,” he said, “I’m thinkin’ I’m too old for the excitement. My ticker’s tellin’ me to go home.”
The marshal was taken aback, but said, “Well, we thank you kindly. You sure this is the place you remembered?”
“Dead sure. I expect you’ll find them roosting half a mile ahead.”
Cass Hite mounted up and rode off. We watched the old-timer disappear around the bend. “Well, boys,” Clark said, “we’ve reached the moment of decision.”
“We can wait here, “ I proposed, “while you—”
The marshal shook his head. “I can’t shoot my way in there. My strategy depends on you two. If you’re not up to it, we skedaddle right now.”
As close to Clark as Till was standing, he had to look skyward to bring Clark’s face into view. “Spill it, marshal.”
“I’m gonna leave my weapons right here, even my knife. You’ll go first, Till, with this on the end of a stick.” Clark pulled a white handkerchief out of his vest pocket. “We’re going in under a white flag.”
Expecting something else, Till had a wrinkle of a smile. “Walkin’ or ridin’?”
“Riding, in case we need to run for it, but we won’t have to if you boys don’t lose your nerve. We leave the packhorse here. We go in slow and peaceful and harmless. They ain’t gonna start shooting.”
“What about Harvey Logan?” I countered. “He’s a killer.”
“Not with three of us to kill and not in front of his boss. Five minutes, you decide.”
We took a short walk. Till said, “You want to get Peaches, don’t you?”
“I’m good for it. I like the marshal’s plan.”
“Glad to hear it. If we turn around now, we’re plumb yellow.”
There was nothing left to do but smile. “Like Pa always said, it takes courage to be a Quaker.”
24
That’s Really Low
HOLDING UP THAT little white flag on a stick, Till led the way. Then me, holding my breath, then the marshal at the back of his so-called posse. Despite the chill, Clark still wasn’t wearing his coat. It was rolled up behind his saddle so the outlaws co
uld plainly see he had no gun belt.
Within minutes the stream was running strong and crystal clear, about three inches deep and twenty feet across. Till was keeping the colt’s hooves in the water like Clark said. The canyon rims were diving and the view widening. Ahead, a cluster of leafy cottonwoods. Time was crawling but my heart was racing. I was looking to spot that big pool Cass Hite talked about. If I saw one, we were about to ride into a hornet’s nest.
I was losing my nerve, but it was too late to turn back. All I could do was play my part and hope the marshal wasn’t out of his mind.
There it was, the desert pool Cass remembered. Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Till rode up a beaten path around the pool. I heard angry voices on the wind. Moments later we were on a rise and looking down into the Roost. A raven was croaking. The breeze was stirring the yellowing leaves of the big cottonwoods. In the shade of the trees, three men seated on logs were playing cards and having an argument. Past them stood a crude cabin like the ones at Hite. Where was Peaches?
Till followed the trail through the water to their side of the creek. My heart was pounding its way out of my chest.
Till reined the colt in. We were out in the open, fifty, sixty feet away from the three men. One of them heard something and looked our way. His cards went flying as he drew his gun and leapt to his feet. A heartbeat later we were looking into the barrels of three revolvers. Till gave his white flag a little wave and croaked, “Howdy, fellers!”
They fanned out, crouching, getting a better look at us. “What the Sam Hill?” said the one on the left.
Just then, with the danger seemingly past, one of their .45s went off like a cannon. Till’s horse reared and mine crow-hopped to the side. Till’s white flag was on the ground—was he hit? The rogue who’d fired was the one on the right, with a beard. Harvey Logan, damn his hide. The one in the middle yelled, “Birdbrain, what’d you do that for?”
“Shot over their heads!”
”It’s just us,” the marshal called soothingly. He rode a bit closer, with Till and me on either side. What a relief to know all three of us were unscathed.
