Jim Saddler 6

by Gene Curry

  I got up as best I could. I was none too steady, though the liquor had started to die in me. Nothing like the threat of death to sober a man up. Tracy smiled again and moved his thumb around on the hammer of his gun. All he had to do was to slip his thumb off the hammer and I’d be dead. I had been sweating from heat and whiskey, but suddenly my sweat turned cold. Curry and Carver didn’t do anything but wait.

  Watching my eyes, Tracy wiggled his thumb on the hammer, maybe hoping I’d piss in my pants. Tracy’s rasping voice had a trace of love in it as he looked at me. The man was in love with death, and suddenly I got it. Harry Tracy was as queer as a three dollar bill and maybe he killed other men because they had something that was lacking in him. Sure as hell, he wanted to kill me.

  “Where do you want it?” he said, smiling, his eyes as flat as an animal’s. “Lift your right hand, sneak. Your piano-playing days are over.”

  I didn’t raise my hand. I knew I had no chance at all, but I wasn’t going to let him kill me by inches. My gun was holstered and I was drunk. Still, I had to try. At least I’d die quickly.

  Then Butch spoke from the top of the stairs. “Put the gun away, Harry. Drop that hammer or I’ll blast you out of your boots.”

  Tracy’s eyes flickered but he held the gun steady. “The son of a bitch is working for the Pinks. Go back to the whore and let me take care of it.”

  “I’ll kill you, Harry,” Butch warned, starting down the stairs.

  “We’ll both kill you,” the Sundance Kid said behind him.

  Tracy had the nerve of a genuine maniac. The killing mood was on him and he didn’t want to let go, even with two guns pointing at him. For an instant I thought he was going to slip the hammer and take his chances. His thin mouth tightened and quivered and sweat beaded on his forehead, so great was his effort to gain control over his lust to kill. I looked at the muzzle of the revolver. It looked big enough to jump into. I thought I heard a clock ticking loudly though there was no clock in the room. Cold sweat slid down my ribs and a muscle fluttered under my right eye. Then, smiling like the mad dog he was, Tracy pointed the revolver toward the ceiling and let down the hammer.

  “You’ll be sorry you didn’t let me kill the spy,” he said. “For that and other things, you’ll be sorry.”

  I wondered why Butch didn’t kill him then and there, for the threat was unmistakable, and I figured the tension between the two men had been building for a long time. I sure as hell would have killed him.

  But Cassidy had his own way of doing things, as I was to learn the hard way. Now that the moment had passed, Butch was all good humor again, as if nothing much had happened. He spilled whiskey into a glass and folded my hand around it. I drank it down and Butch filled it again. “Don’t mind Harry,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a party if he didn’t try to do somebody in. But Harry always sees my side of it. It takes some explaining, but he always agrees with me in the end. That’s right, ain’t it, Harry?”

  This time Tracy made no attempt to conceal his hatred of Cassidy. “That’s right, Butch,” he said.

  I wondered why Tracy had backed down, because clearly he was afraid of no man. True, Butch was fast with a gun, but I couldn’t see that he was any faster than Tracy. It had to be something else, something more complicated than that.

  “Let’s get some life back into this party!” Butch yelled.

  Ben Kilpatrick came downstairs buttoning his fly. None too steady on his feet, he made for the table where the bottles stood half-empty. Under Butch’s pushing and prodding, I made my way through some tune, but my heart wasn’t in it. Harry Tracy had spoiled the party and we all knew it, especially me. Even so, I had a wad of Cassidy’s money in my pocket, so I played on as best I could. Butch had sobered up along the way, but now he proceeded to get drunk all over again. Feeling the way I did, so did I.

  Soon I felt I was playing the piano with two pairs of mittens on my hands. Butch didn’t mind a bit. In fact, he said he’d never heard better music in his life. Tears trickled down his face, so good was my playing, and he said he’d give up everything he had, if only he could play as well as me.

  I shouldn’t have said what I did then. “There’s nothing to learning the piano, Butch. All you do is start with a few easy tunes and go on from there.” I think I hiccupped. I drowned the hiccup with another drink. “Hell! Butch, I could have you playing inside of a week.” I looked at Butch and his face seemed to float by itself.

  Butch wrapped his arm around my shoulder and blew his whiskey breath in my face. I didn’t mind the smell ’cause my own breath was just as bad. “You really mean that, Saddler? You’re not just bullshitting me? All my goddamned fucking life I have wanted to play the piano. That’s crazy, ain’t it?”

  I had another drink. “You’re just musical, that’s all,” I said. “Only you never got a chance to learn. Here! Let me take hold of your hand. Loosen up your fingers, for Christ’s sake! Don’t keep your wrist so stiff. Lay your hand down on the keys like I tell you!”

  I wasn’t able to see too well, but I managed to get Butch to thump his way through part of “The Cowboy’s Lament.” Listening to it, Butch’s face broke out in a wide grin.

  “I’m playing the piano,” he roared. “I’m playing the fucking piano!”

  “Nothing to it, Butch.” I drank another drink. “All you got to do is find some lady to teach you, maybe a schoolteacher. She’ll have you playing in no time.”

  My head nodded forward and I fell asleep.

  Three

  Morning found me roped over the back of a horse and heading deep into the badlands. The sun was full up and Jackson Hole was far behind. I opened my blood-shot eyes and felt sick. I felt sicker when I realized where I was and what had happened to me. I closed my eyes and kept them closed for a while. That didn’t do any good, so I opened them again. There were pines on both sides of the trail and the morning air smelled damp. Even if I hadn’t known where I was, I could have figured it out from the loud whistling just a few yards away.

  The tune was “The Cowboy’s Lament" and Butch Cassidy was whistling it, or trying to. He couldn’t whistle any better than he could sing, but that didn’t stop him. Nothing stopped Cassidy when he made up his mind to do something. He must have been waiting for me to wake up. He rode his horse up close and twisted his head to look down at me.

  “Shame to lie abed on a fine morning like this,” he said. “For a while there I thought you was dead. That’d be a pity ’cause we been toting you a long ways. You ready for some hair of the dog?”

  As soon as Butch righted me in the saddle I threw a punch at him, but he dodged it easily. “That’s no way to treat an angel of mercy,” he said, taking a pint bottle from the side pocket of his wool-lined coat. “Go on now, Saddler, have yourself a big drink and you’ll feel better. Then you can have some good spring water to kill the taste.”

  Grinning at me, Butch didn’t look any worse for the wear, his blue eyes didn’t have a trace of red in them. Curry and Tom O’Day were roped across their saddles sleeping, but Ben Kilpatrick was more or less awake, and so were the Sundance Kid, Carver, and Harry Tracy. Ahead of us, Tracy turned in his saddle and gave me an angry look. The Sundance Kid, whiskey-sick and bleary-eyed, drank from his own pocket bottle and put it away. He gave me a tired grin and closed his eyes, letting the horse do the work. Ben Kilpatrick looked as hungover as the Kid, maybe more so, and he knitted his brow in pain as Butch let go with more of that goddamned whistling.

  “Jesus Christ, Butch!” he complained.

  Butch grinned and held out the bottle to me. “Drink hearty,” he said. “Plenty more where that came from. Come on now, Saddler, let’s see a smile on that face of yours. It’s a nice day, the sun is shining, and there’s banks and trains waiting to be robbed.”

  I had to get some of that whiskey down, or I wouldn’t have been any good. Usually hair of the dog is a mistake, but I didn’t know what else I could do. The Tetons were a lot closer than they had been the day before
. I thought of Texas and wondered if I would ever get back there. I tilted the bottle and shuddered as the whiskey burned its way down to my belly. First it was awful, and then it didn’t taste too bad. I took another big drink and the world came into focus. The air was so clear that I felt like I was looking at the Tetons through one of those stereo gadgets. A chattering squirrel ran up a tree and looked at us as we rode by. Butch passed me a full canteen after unstoppering it. After the whiskey, the fresh, cold water tasted good. I drank a lot of water and handed the canteen back to him.

  Gradually the pain behind my eyes began to ease and I was able to stop squinting. I looked at Butch and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. “You’re wrong if you think I’m a Pinkerton spy. I got nothing to do with the Pinks. I got nothing to do with nothing.” The trail began to climb up through the trees, and from the looks of it, it wasn’t used very much. Unless Butch had planned a job for that day, there was only one place we could be going: the Hole in the Wall, headquarters and hideout for Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. Like everybody else, I had read about it in the papers. The Hole was where Butch always ran when the rest of the world got too hot for him. More or less the law knew where it was, but knowing wasn’t enough. The badlands stretched clear into Idaho, thousands of square miles of the wildest country on earth. Over the few short years of Butch’s career, the law had mounted many well-equipped expeditions, all to no effect. The law brought in Indian trackers, but no one had been able to find Cassidy.

  Butch took a drink and wiped his mouth. “Who said anything about the Pinkertons? If I thought sure you was a Pink I’d have let Harry kill you last night.”

  “Then give me back my gun,” I said. “Give me my goddamned pistol and let me ride out. You wanted a piano player and that’s what you got. A deal is a deal.”

  “You still got the money,” Butch said. “Look in your pocket if you don’t believe me. The deal is still good, so what are you complaining about?”

  The money was in my pocket, but that didn’t mean much, because he could take it back anytime he wanted to. Guessing that he wouldn’t do that was no consolation to me. “I was going to Texas,” I said.

  “Texas can wait,” Butch decided. “You know what you’re going to do, Saddler? You’re going to teach me the piano.’

  “Then let’s go back to the whorehouse. You’re not likely to find a piano in these mountains.”

  But of course I was wrong. And the minute I said it I knew it. Butch’s grin showed me how wrong I was. “Got me a nice new piano, one of them half-size jobs,” he said. “Found it in a baggage car two train robberies ago. Never been played, it looked like. All crated and so forth. Bound for Pocatello, Idaho, the shipping label said. You could have knocked me over when I saw that dandy little piano. Course it wasn’t easy lugging it up and down and over the mountains. But I did it. By Christ, Saddler, I did it. And now you’re going to teach me how to make music good as you do.

  “Now before you start bitching, think on this. I got a lot more folding money than that first five hundred. Teach me to play good, you gloomy bastard, and you can name your own ticket. Truth is I got more money than I know what to do with. What’s the point of having money if you can’t spend it on something you like? Can’t go too many places with the law chasing me all the time. Now and then I whoop it up at Doxy’s. That’s only because I grease the palm of the county sheriff.”

  Butch gave me the bottle without being asked, and I killed what was left in it and the world got a little brighter. What else could I do but level with the man? “Butch,” I said wearily, “I’m not a Pinkerton spy and I’m not a music teacher. If you weren’t so drunk you’d know what a lousy player I am. What’s say I just turn my horse and forget I ever saw you?”

  Butch knitted his brow in deep thought. “Well, you could be a spy for the Pinks. Admit it, Saddler, you could be.”

  “I could be, but I’m not.”

  “I have to be sure about that.”

  “You’re not usually so careful with spies. Usually you just shoot first and worry later. Why haven’t you shot me?”

  “Most spies can’t play the piano as good as you do.”

  “For Christ’s sake! You don’t really think I’m an agency detective do you?”

  Butch looked me over as if he hadn’t seen me before. “Probably not,” he said. “But I have to be sure, and while I’m doing that you can teach me to play.”

  “Jesus Christ!” I said, smashing the empty bottle on a rock beside the trail. And then I grew silent.

  At some time in the past the trail must have been used by miners prospecting in the Tetons. Now it was grown over with grass and weeds and getting fainter as we put distance behind us. Tom O’Day was coming to life and Ben Kilpatrick rode up close to untie the ropes that bound him to the horse. The Irishman slid off and fell to the ground with a crash. Everybody laughed and O’Day laughed, too, when he struggled to his feet and climbed back on the horse.

  “That was some party all right,” O’Day said, grinning like a fool. He felt in his pocket for a pint bottle and smiled happily when he discovered it wasn’t broken. He drank the whole pint, which would have been enough to make another man drunk all over again. But O’Day just wiped his walrus mustache and said he hadn’t had a better time in a coon’s age.

  Butch turned to me. “There, you see! Even Tommy agrees with me. You were the hit of the party, Saddler, and that’s just one of the good times we’re going to have. Listen to me. You’re going to like it in the Hole. You think it’s just another hideout? Wrong, my dear friend. All the comforts of home is what we have in there. And women! Why we got plenty of women, if that’s what you’re worried about. I figure a horny man like you would want to know that right away.”

  “Then why the party at Doxy’s?”

  “Now and then I like a change of pussy. A man gets tired of the same old holes. Besides, it’s good to get out and see what the rest of the world is doing.”

  “No offense, Butch,” I said, “but I’d just as soon not get tied up with a gang of outlaws. I’ve bent the law a few times, but I’ve never robbed any banks or trains. I don’t have a hankering to be hunted for the rest of my life.”

  I was surprised when Butch saw my side of it—at least he said he did. He pushed the derby hat onto the back of his head and knitted his brow. Butch always did that when there was an important decision to be made. “Nothing much to tie you in to us,” he said. “We took you from Doxy’s drunk to the world and roped you to a horse. So if anybody asks you can say you were kidnapped. What do you think of that?”

  “I’d just as soon they didn’t ask.”

  “Nobody’s going to ask you a thing, least of all the law. The thing is, Saddler, you’re going where we’re taking you, and that’s the Hole. How long you stay there depends on how fast you teach me the piano. Last night you said a week? Was that a fact or just the whiskey talking? I don’t want to play fancy. I just want to play a little. No bullshit now, how long do you figure?”

  “For the easy songs a week. First you learn how to do it, and after that you practice. I can’t practice for you.” Without a doubt this was the most ridiculous conversation I had ever taken part in. There I was in the middle of nowhere, talking about piano lessons with the most notorious outlaw in the West. And not just the West, the whole country. He had looted the banks and railroads, yes, and he had killed plenty of men, though most of them were detective agency operatives and railroad thugs, so I couldn’t get too worked up about that. Even so, he was a thief and a murderer, maybe the most hunted outlaw in the world, and I was talking to him about piano lessons! Maybe it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

  “I ride out in a week, is that a deal?” I said.

  “You teach me in a week, you can ride out in a week. Of course you got to give your word you won’t lead the law back in. Thus far they haven’t been able to find the Hole. We’d like to keep it that way.”

  But even as he spoke those reasonable words I r
ealized that Butch Cassidy’s word was not quite as good as gold. The way into the Hole was the sore spot in the whole plan. It was the needle in the haystack, the pain in the ass. Just knowing how to get in and out of the Hole could get me killed.

  From a practical standpoint Harry Tracy was right: there was no proof that I wasn’t a Pinkerton operative. The Pinks carried no badges, no identification papers, nothing to link them to the agency headquarters back in Chicago. The Pinks were ruthless and clever and often brought in men from hundreds, even thousands of miles away, men who spoke several languages and could pose as just about anything.

  The famous Pink operative, James McParland, could have made his fortune on the stage, so skilled was he in mimicry and disguises. One day he was a traveling photographer complete with darkroom wagon, the next he was a Bible-thumping preacher with a Scottish accent. Everybody was afraid of the Pinks, and with good reason. More powerful than the law, the Pinkertons hired men of absolutely iron integrity, meaning that they were cold-blooded, fanatical bastards. So Harry Tracy was right, though I wasn’t about to tell him so.

  When the talk turned toward the way to the Hole, I thought Butch was going to blindfold me for the rest of the journey. He didn’t but that didn’t make me feel any better. It could mean that he trusted me—which he had no real reason to do—or it could mean that he didn’t intend to let me go. The trouble with Cassidy was that you never knew how to figure him. Mostly he was good-humored. Even so, I was learning to see shifts of mood under the grinning surface, and I guess he grinned harder when he got mad.

  In the end I decided to make the best of it. There was no way I could go up against the whole gang. I could maybe take out one or two of them before the others shot me to bits. It was likely that Butch was thinking about such a possibility. To this day I still think he hadn’t thought past learning to play the damned piano, though. That was the way he lived, doing everything on the spur of the moment.