by Gene Curry
“But he thinks he’s going?”
“Sort of,” Butch said. “What you heard today wasn’t the first talk about leaving the Hole. Only today there was more talk than before. It’s come up because Etta keeps bringing it up. She’s a one-note lady, that Etta. A week can go by and not a word about leaving, then out of the blue she gets back on that subject.”
I studied the bottle in his hand. “Then why the hell don’t you go? You know she’s right.”
Butch laughed at my ignorance of banditry. “Easy for you to talk that way, Saddler. You’re one man, one gun, one horse. A loner, that’s what you are. Come and go as you please. You hand yourself your hat and you’re off. Well, it’s different with me. I got responsibilities, son. I got ten or twelve other people in this place and without me they’d fall apart. Ben Kilpatrick has some ambition to be a leader, but I doubt he’s got the brains or the balls to hold a gang together. Except for Tracy there’s nobody else. And you know he’d get them all killed.”
“You don’t want the gang to fall apart?”
Butch found that funny. “Not till I’m long gone and they can’t make a deal with the Pinks.”
I was still mad at Cassidy. “You’re all friends in the Hole,” I said.
Butch wasn’t offended. “Today’s friends are tomorrow’s enemies. A drunk in a saloon in Cheyenne told me that. The bartender said no to putting anymore of his drinks on the slate. He didn’t have to tell me that. I knew it already.”
“Why are you telling me all this shit?”
“’Cause I like you, Jim-boy. Anyway, why shouldn’t I tell you things? What can you do with anything I tell you? Take sides with Tracy against me? No chance of that, I’d say. Trying to do that would be downright foolish. You hurt Tracy’s feelings, not to mention his nose and most of his teeth. Tracy hated you before you did that. Now it’s likely he hates you more.”
“All this talk,” I said. “What you’re really saying is that there’s going to be a showdown.”
Butch smiled at me like a teacher with a bright pupil. “Not if I can get out of it. I been thinking about it, then thinking some more, ’cause for all the bad name the Pinks give me I’m a good-natured man. What I’d like to do is tell the boys it’s been nice knowing you, but now it’s time to bid you a fond farewell. For a long time I been working on my good-bye speech, but it don’t seem to come out right. My point, sir, is I don’t want the boys to think I’m running out on them.”
“Bandits are touchy,” I said.
“Well they are, Saddler. You think you’re joking but you’re not. Bandits are not like ordinary folk. You hit it just right when you said they’re touchy. Proud people, they are. A ripe boil ain’t any touchier than a bandit’s pride.”
My pants were dry and I pulled them on. “Just duck out,” I said to Butch. “Forget the farewell address. You don’t owe them one goddamned thing. Without you they couldn’t button their flies.”
Cassidy liked that and he laughed.
“Listen,” I said. “You duck out fast and light and keep on going. You, Sundance, Etta and me. Cross over into Canada and take a boat from Vancouver. You can go anywhere from Vancouver.”
Butch said, “They’d think it funny, just the four of us going.”
I had a solution for that. “Take along a few of the boys and we’ll kill them on the way.”
Cassidy was shocked. “That’s a hell of a thing to say. Kill my own boys! Which boys do you have in mind?”
“Kill one, kill all,” I said. “I’ll do it if you feel bad about it. Makes no difference to me which ones I kill. You can say you’re going out to plan a new job. They’ll like that.”
“You’re nothing but a murderer, Saddler.”
“But only for a good cause. All right. You don’t have to kill the ones we take along. Just tie them to a tree and leave them. With food and water, naturally. Come on, Butch, why are you hanging back on this? You keep saying you’ve got more money than God. That kind of money should take you far.”
“How much money is much?” Butch looked embarrassed. “Tell you the truth, Saddler, I’m a bit low on funds.”
I must have gaped at him.
Butch said, “A few thousand is all I have left. We never got as much money as the papers said. Well, sure, we got enough, but it sort of slipped through my fingers. I gave it away. I lost it. Poker and dice took a lot of it. I got trainmen and bank people on my payroll who have to be paid for information. Then there’s the law. Greediest men in the world those crooked lawmen. Damn! I don’t know where the money went, but most of it has flown from the nest.”
“You can have the five hundred you gave me.”
“Shit! That’s just ham-and-bean money, Saddler. When I go I want to go in style.”
That was just like him, the big-mouth showoff. “That’ll get you caught, Butch. Go on a mule if you have to—but go!”
Butch said, “Etta wouldn’t be caught dead on a mule. Etta’s a lady. Would you believe it, she used to be a schoolteacher! A schoolteacher like that is what every growing boy needs. I captured Etta one time when I was drunk. Fought like a wildcat she did. First she did, and then she got used to it.”
I had been thinking about Etta. “Etta got her share of the robberies and, not having your loose fingers, she must have a lot left.”
Once again, Butch was embarrassed. “She thinks she has plenty left. Etta is smart and always took her share in gold coin, USA and Mexican. She had it hid under a floorboard in back of the stove. I found it and borrowed it. I was in need, Saddler.”
“What did you put in its place?”
“Washers. They make the same sound if you don’t look inside the bag. I live in dread of the day she discovers the truth. But it’s not like I stole it—I borrowed it.”
The rain was starting to let up and I had a drink in honor of the occasion. “You stole it,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “What about Sundance? How much money does he have?”
“Not a lot,” Butch said. “A lot of Harry’s money went to fix up Doxy Milligan’s whorehouse in Jackson Hole. Harry’s got a big interest in two other fuck-shops. Most of Harry’s money is tied up, as they say.”
“Looks like you are, too.”
Butch said, “Now you see why I got to hold the gang together. I need those boys to pull one last job.”
Well, sure, that was it. I couldn’t be sure that anything Cassidy told me was true. I don’t know how much he lied, or if he meant to lie, and maybe he didn’t either. What I did know was that he had taken the powder out of my bullets. And he had lied about the week of piano lessons. He had a big, open, friendly face and a lot of back-country guile. He was an open book and a puzzle at the same time.
I looked up from my empty glass. “It should be a very big job, this last one,” I said, thinking of myself. “Big as you can find. If it isn’t, then you’ll have to go on to the next one.”
Butch grunted. “You trying to tell me my business, Saddler?”
I said, “No matter how big it is, there won’t be enough after you divvy up with the boys. So you have to double-cross the boys, then get the hell out of this country.”
Butch grinned at the way the conversation was going. “Double-cross men I been friends with all this time?”
“Terrible to have to do that,” I said. “But you’ve got your balls in the wringer and have to get them out. You got a special job in mind?” I asked.
Butch eyed me. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” he said. “Don’t tell me you have something lined up in this part of the country? You’re not from around here, so you say.”
“West Texas,” I said. “That’s where I’d like to be right now, but I’m not. A minute ago you said there was nothing I could do with anything you told me. What’s happened to change that?”
Cassidy said, “Not a thing. I got a few jobs on the stove, but I can’t be sure of my information. There’s some money, only I don’t know how much. I been hitting them so hard, everything’s a big secret
these days. They may be on to the people that have been giving me information. Etta’s right. It’s starting to get tight.”
I said, “That’s why this job has to be your last.”
Butch sighed windily. “It has to be the last in this country. But I don’t think I’ll ever get the fever out of my blood.”
I didn’t give a damn what he did after he left the Hole. If he left, then so would I. “You mind telling me about these jobs?”
“Some I wouldn’t bother with,” Butch said. “There’s a copper-mine payroll about three-day’s ride from here. A few years ago that wouldn’t have been so bad. These days they got payrolls guarded like the Denver Mint. Besides, this mine is in a tricky place, hard to get at, even harder to get away from.
“I do favor trains, but you never know what to expect. They got special trains out looking for me, fast locomotives with just a few cars. And where the baggage car used to be they got men and horses. The horses are kept saddled most of the time. These posses eat and sleep and live on the goddamned trains. There is one job that looks good, but maybe it’s too good. I think my information-man is trying to set me up. There’s just too much money involved, is all.”
“If it’s there, it can be stolen,” I said.
Seven
“I heard what you said, but what does it mean?” Butch asked, full of whiskey but alert. “Don’t talk in riddles, Saddler.”
“You’re the one who’s beating about the bush. What I meant is, if they’re planning to trap you, maybe we can turn it back on them. This job you keep hinting at, how good is your information?”
“My man has always been reliable in the past, but this time I get a bad feeling from him. I think they may be on to him, maybe threatening to send him up for twenty years if he doesn’t play along. It’s like he’s too eager to set this job up. He keeps pushing for it, saying there’s talk of the Pinks sending for Tom Horn. Tom used to be with the Pinks. Now they tell me he has a ranch somewhere. Saddler, I don’t want to tangle with the likes of Tom Horn.”
I knew something about Tom Horn. Everybody did. No two men could agree about Tom Horn. To some he was a cold-blooded killer and a thief to boot. Others saw him as the scourge of all the badmen in the West. I knew he had killed plenty of them. All that people could agree on was that he was the best tracker and man catcher in the country.
“Why haven’t they sent for him before now?” I asked. The Pinkertons always had the best of everything—men, weapons, horses.
“Tom and the Pinks didn’t part as friends,” Butch said. “There was talk that some of the stolen money he recovered stuck to his fingers. But nothing could be proved, then or now. Still, it was funny that the bandits who stole the most money Tom always brought back dead. And they all died broke, according to him. On the other hand, he often brought in smalltime outlaws who didn’t mean shit. Now the Pinks don’t mind if you bring them all in dead, but they do like to see a little stolen money along with the corpses. So they argued with Tom about that, and he quit. Tom’s a greedy man. If he goes back to work for the Pinks, he won’t do it cheap. I’d like to be long gone before he starts working again.”
“What’s this dread of Horn? You don’t fret much about the rest of them.”
“Tom’s different,” Butch said. “It’s like having a ghost after you. He works alone and never gives up—never! He’ll go for days without food, sleep out in the wet and cold, all so he can ambush a man. Ambushing is his stock in trade, and he’ll be back.”
I got back to the robbery Cassidy hadn’t told me about. “Come on, Butch, why are you so sure it’s a trap?”
“There’s too much money. Of course, there may be no bait in the trap at all.”
“No money at all isn’t too likely,” I said. “You haven’t been pulling any jobs lately, so they know you’re getting wary in your old age.” Butch smiled at the idea that he would have an old age. “If I was setting a trap for you I’d set out a whole bale of money . If they don’t expect you to get the money, why not use it to kill you?”
“You could be right,” Butch agreed. “You want to know more about it so I’ll tell you. The town of Mansfield’s booming and they want to start a new money store. A lot of big English ranchers down that way. Cattle companies paying wages to hundreds of men. Got three or four packing plants so they can pack and ship their own beef without sending it to Chicago. West of the town they got some new copper mines. So this new bank wants to get in where all that money is and will be. My man on the railroad tells me they’re going to bring in enough money to open their doors with a bang. Brass bands and speeches, a real celebration. Only the money will come in quiet, not guarded by a platoon of deputies like it usually is. That only attracts bandits, is their idea.”
“Sure sounds like a trap,” I said. “The express car may not be bulging with guards, but you can bet all the passengers on the train will be Pinkertons, posse-men, and railroad detectives, all dressed up to look like something else. And maybe a special nonstop train a few miles behind.”
Butch shrugged. “Maybe anything.”
“Of course your man knows just the place to rob this money train?”
Butch grinned. “A real steep grade about fifty miles from Mansfield. There’s a curve where the river bends, then the long grade begins. The engineer has to slow for the curve, then has to climb the grade. My man’s thought is for us to tear up the inside rail and dig a hole where the rail ain’t going to be. The locomotive, traveling slow, runs off the rail on the safe side so it won’t lurch the other way and pull the whole train down into the river. The locomotive is stuck, can’t go forward and can’t back up. If the guards in the express won’t give up, then we threaten to burn the train.”
“No dynamite?”
“No dynamite. Back when I was starting out I had an unfortunate experience with dynamite and blew eighteen thousand dollars into confetti.”
I said, “Your railroad man sounds like a real planner.”
“Well, he’s a smart man and has a pretty big job,” Butch said. “Superintendent for the whole division. That’s how he gets to know things other men don’t. What you have to think about is this. He never steered me wrong before. I made money and so did he. It could be on the up and up. I’d like to believe it is.”
“Do you?”
“No. It’s too easy. The minute we got close to that train they’d cut loose from every window in every coach. They’d fill us with so much lead they wouldn’t be able to lift us after we was dead. Just the same, if the money is there I’d hate to pass it up.”
“How much money did he say?”
“About a hundred thousand.”
“No need to pass it up,” I said. “We’ll skip the grade and do the job in town.”
“In town!” Butch was startled. “Didn’t I just tell you that’s a busy town? It’s got a marshal and I don’t know how many deputies. You can bet they’ll all be waiting at the depot when the train pulls in. If you can’t add, that’s a small army we’d have to take on.”
“At the depot, sure it is, but not at the bank. You say this new bank isn’t open yet?”
“My man says not. Just got it finished but can’t open without money. They won’t open till the day after they get the shipment of money.”
“Then we’ll wait inside the bank. Not the whole gang, just a select few of us. The bank is empty so they won’t be thinking about that. If they plan to open the day after the money arrives they’ll have tellers setting things up. We’ll get in there long before the train gets to Mansfield, hold guns on the manager and the others. The Pinkertons, or the marshal, or both, will bring the money from the train, see that it’s locked away safe, and then leave.” Butch gulped. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “What if they don’t leave? We’d be trapped in there like rats.”
Which was true, and I could expect to be killed or go to jail for the rest of my life. My kidnap story wouldn’t earn me a day off when it came to sentencing, and knowing the Pinkertons, it might no
t get that far.
“Come up with a better plan if you don’t like mine,” I said. “My plan could work because it isn’t your style to work quiet. Your style is to ride in like a dime-novel desperado and shoot up the place.”
Butch didn’t like his past exploits described in such a manner. “It worked well enough, Saddler.”
“Not this time, it won’t. You ever been in this town?” f I know where it is, no more than that.”
“So you can’t be sure there is a new bank.”
“Pretty sure.”
“We have to make sure. Somebody’s going to have to go in there, or it’s all for nothing. You can’t go because everybody knows what you look like. Same goes for the Kid and most of the others.”
Butch eyed me suspiciously. “That sort of leaves you, Saddler. What’s to stop you from selling me out?”
“I won’t sell you out. Blood money isn’t my style.”
“Then you could just run out on me. I’d take that the same as selling me out. I’d be depending on you and you wouldn’t be there.”
“You’re going to have to take a chance on me, Butch. You want to get out of the country, I want to get back to Texas.”
Butch couldn’t make up his mind about me. “I’d find you if you sold me out. I’d find you if it took ten years. I could spare ten years to find you. I like a joke and a laugh, but I can be mean. Texas ain’t that far and big that I couldn’t find you.”
I had little doubt that Cassidy could find me if he set his mind to it. He was no worse than other men I’ve met and killed, but he was more single-minded about things like loyalty and friendship. Of course it was all warped in his fugitive’s mind. I don’t know why he thought I owed him a thing. He had kidnapped me while I was drunk, taken the powder from my bullets, and nearly got me killed. Yet he would take it as a personal affront if I went about my business, which was what I had been doing in the first place. Maybe the smartest thing I could do was to turn him over to the Pinkertons. The main problem with that was that they might not catch or kill him. He had dodged them before and was likely to do it again. Anyway, I didn’t want to betray the son-of-a-bitch.
