by Lou Cameron
“I sometimes suspect all the rules and regulations about duds were made up by older folk,” he said, “after they noticed they didn’t look so fine bareass. Most gents don’t get religion until they get to feeling older and mayhaps calmer, and anyone can see how an old potbellied prophet might feel more dignified wearing a toga or whatever.”
Then they didn’t talk about it any more for a spell, because they were too busy coming together. Opal collapsed weakly down on him, sobbing. “Oh, I just can’t move no more, and I’ve never been any happier. Does it vex you to just lay still like this?”
“Nope,” he said. “I feel happy too. Let me get my second wind and I’ll be proud to get on top and show you how happy I am.”
But she said, “Hold on. I have to see if I was imagining things just now. To tell the truth, it didn’t seem to matter whilst I was coming.”
She sat up straight. He found the view inspiring. But she wasn’t looking down at him. She’d raised a hand to shield her eyes against the afternoon sun as she stared off at something off to the southwest. When he asked what she was looking at, she told him, “Riders. Along a ridge a good ten miles or more from here, thank God. They don’t seem to be headed this way after all. You want to get on top now?”
He told her to hold the thought, and gently rolled her off his lap so he could sit up and see what she was talking about. He didn’t see anything at first. The sun in his eyes made the ridges over that way a confusion of jagged cardboard cutouts, darker closer in and sort of misty purple farther out. Then he spotted what looked like bitty sugar ants crawling along a cardboard edge against the cloudless sky. “Yep,” he muttered, “that’s a posse, sure as hell. Wrong time of the year for roundup, and I can’t think of anything else that would have so many gents riding in a bunch that big.”
“Well, whoever they may be,” she said, “they’re riding the wrong way entire. I told you I know this range pretty good. There’s an old Injun trail along that ridge. I wonder why they’re on it.”
He asked where the mysterious trail might lead.
“Utah,” she replied. “Do you follow it far enough.”
“There you go. If your Grat Winslow is on his way to the north-south outlaw trails that follow the trend of the Green south, it could be his sign that posse’s following. Didn’t you say your lover knows the way to your real hideout?”
It didn’t work. “Don’t worry about that,” Opal said. “If it’s Grat they’re trailing, and I hope it is, he’s got too good a lead on them for them to ever catch him now.” She added, “I wish you’d quit calling him my lover, or my anything. I just told you that you’re my only true love now.”
Not knowing just how to answer that, he didn’t. He was glad he might not have to coldcock her and murder Slim after all. If he couldn’t talk her into hiving off from the Wild Bunch with him to somewhere more sensible, and likely feeling mighty sore at him later, he could still hope for rescue once that posse caught up with old Grat and made him talk.
Stringer didn’t share her optimistic views on Grat’s lead. It seemed to him that the deserter had showed more cowardly panic than common sense when he’d left them riding upstream, to the east. If he was now headed west, along a well-known route, it read that Grat had circled wide in the dark, hoping not to leave sign, and then the posse had read his sign anyway. That meant the fugitive must have hit the old Indian trail after that last heavy rain, and it hadn’t stopped raining until almost dawn. Say Grat had been riding west no more than a few hours longer than Opal had been leading them north, that put him six or eight hours ahead of the posse down yonder, on a horse he’d ridden longer than most horses liked to be ridden. One couldn’t tell from this distance, but if that posse wasn’t traveling that fast with spare mounts, they were even dumber than old Grat. Since that hardly seemed possible, Stringer figured they’d catch up with him sometime after dark, even if Grat wasn’t dumb enough to light a fire. As the distant dotted line dropped below the skyline once more, Opal said, “I hope we’ve seen the last of ‘em. We’d still better push on and tell Kid Curry and the others. They might still be worried.”
As they started to get dressed again, Stringer was feeling even better than the average man who’d just made love to a beautiful woman. He was a newspaper man, after all, and he could no doubt keep Kid Curry bragging and in a good mood for the next twelve hours or so. Old Sam Barca, at the features desk, would never forgive him if he missed a chance to cover the capture of the one and original Wild Bunch.
Opal rose to put her guns and hat back on. “I’d forgotten how nice it feels with no rubber,” she told him. “But just the same, from now on we’d best not take chances. Here.” She handed him a sealed box of Pasha condoms. “You’d best carry these for us. I fear I’m too weak-willed to stop and consider the odds when I get hot.”
He put the contraceptives away without comment, somewhat assured by the fact she hadn’t seen fit to open the packet since she’d no doubt asked Grat Winslow to buy them. Of course, since she’d just said she was weak-willed, it worked two ways.
They climbed back down to find Slim on his feet again. The lunger’s cheeks looked as if they’d been rouged. But he seemed chipper enough. “Them pills and a little dry sweating was just what I needed,” he said. “Where have you two been all this time? I was about to come looking for you.”
Stringer didn’t answer. He was surprised when Opal told Slim in a surprisingly casual tone, “We was screwing. MacKail, here, is my new man. Spread the word when we rejoin the others. I don’t want any of the boys getting notions about me just because they don’t see Grat around no more.”
Slim looked more concerned than shocked. He nodded, but told her, “I’m a train robber, not a pimp. You two can tell ‘em anything you want. But I hope you know you’re putting an unarmed outsider in a mighty tight spot if you go bragging about him being more to your fancy than anyone else. I thought you understood that the Wild Bunch takes a sort of communal interest in gals, seeing there ain’t all that many riding with us at once.”
She frowned. “Pooh, I ain’t a pass-about like poor old Laura Bullion was afore the Tall Texan made her his private stock. Does Kid Curry share his Annie? Does Sundance share my cousin Etta?”
“No,” Slim said. “But both of them pack guns, and they’ve both had to defend their women with ‘em on occasion.”
CHAPTER FIVE
As he finally figured out where they were going, an hour or more later, Stringer could see how the term “Hole in the Wall” might have gotten started. Pecos, as she insisted on being called again in mixed company, seemed to be leading them smack into a blank wall of sky-high rocks. Then, as they topped a rise and he could see the base of the escarpment better, he spotted the narrow entrance of a canyon, only a few feet wider than the other vertical clefts in the weather-rounded cliffs. They were approaching over slick rock. To anyone who’d picked up the little sign they’d left crossing that last stretch of soil, then lost it on the slick rock, it might well look as if they’d ridden into nowhere at all.
But as they waved and passed the sentry posted behind a boulder at the canyon mouth, and rode up the narrow cleft to where it began to open out into an amphitheater walled by sheer cliffs, it seemed harder to believe that anyone could pass within five miles and not hear all that racket.
It was easier to count horseflesh by the head than all the men and half as many women milling about Kid Curry’s camp. Stringer judged their remuda as roughly a hundred-odd ponies and some mules. They’d been penned to graze at the far end of the box canyon by ropes strung on some saplings nobody had yet seen fit to cut for firewood. There were a lot more stumps than trees of any sort left standing now. The canyon could have been called well watered by the little stream that ran here and there across the rocky bottom. But the water was running thick and brown as bean soup, thanks to all the mud, wood ash, and horse shit—he hoped—the gang had been careless about. Slim had been drinking their canteen water as much as their moun
ts had, getting here. Both the canteens on Stringer’s casually acquired saddle were now empty. He was thirsty too. But he wasn’t about to refill any canteens from that stream of liquid crud.
So when Kid Curry hailed them over to where he was holding court on an ammo box near the main fire, Stringer was glad to see the kid and some of his inner circle seemed to be sharing what looked like mason jars of mineral water. As Stringer, Slim and Pecos joined them, Kid Curry - handed Stringer a jar.
“I see you made it after all,” he said. “What happened to Banger and Will?”
Stringer didn’t feel it was his place to say. So he just took the jar and sipped from it, or started to. He’d just found out it was pure corn squeezings when Pecos said, “I had to gun ‘em. They acted like they didn’t have to pay no mind to a gal.” Kid Curry shrugged. “Well, I told ‘em you was in charge so don’t you fret your pretty little head about it. I’ll look after you, now that Grat’s lit out.”
“Won’t your Annie Rogers have something to say about that?” Pecos asked.
Curry looked hurt as he looked off into space. He muttered, “Annie’s lit out on us, too, I reckon. She was supposed to join us here, with the others. But I dunno, old Annie’s been sort of brooding since I shot them last two lawmen.”
In hopes of changing the subject, Stringer asked, “Where on earth did all this white lightning come from, Kid?”
That inspired Kid Curry to take the jar back and inhale an awesome gulp of the awful stuff. “Old Tom, here, brung it in with the rest of the supplies. You can never have too much liquor in snake country, you know.”
A morose-looking individual seated nearby under a floppy -brimmed black hat complained, “I sure wish we could talk about the likker I packed in as much as you keep drinking it, Mr. Curry. Our deal was for cash on the barrel head, as I recall.”
Kid Curry scowled at the older man. “I wish you’d listen better too,” he growled. “How many times do I have to tell you we didn’t get the money we expected from that last damn train?”
“I’m sorry as hell things didn’t pan out better, Mr. Curry. But when you sent word about this new camp, you never said nothing about opening a line of credit. No offense, but a trader who deals with customers such as you can’t afford to sell goods on time. Time has a habit of running out in your line of work.”
Curry shrugged. “It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t water this stuff. I’m too drunk right now to stomp you right, yet not drunk enough to gun a liquor drummer, even if he is saying mean things about my spoken promises.”
Arkansas, who’d been lurking in the background, moved in to put a heavy hand on the trader’s shoulder. “You’d best go take a leak or something, Tom. I don’t like you calling the boss a liar, neither, and I ain’t drunk enough to worry about missing your fool face with my boot, hear?”
The hand on his shoulder must have weighed on old Tom’s mind. He got to his feet and walked away, bitching quietly to himself. Kid Curry laughed. “Aw, Arkansas, I fear you might have hurt his feelings. Don’t kill him if he wants to ride out. It’s one thing to stiff an outlaw trader. It’s another thing to kill him entire.”
He turned to Stringer. “See how smart I am, Bathwash? Old Jesse James never would have wound up dead if he’d been smart enough to be considerate to his friends. But he went and beat the shit outten the Ford boys’ uncle, and then he was dumb enough to invite ‘em for supper and turn his back on the both of them.”
“So I’ve heard,” Stringer said. “You’re right. It’s always a good idea to be nice to folk when they let you.”
Curry got sort of misty-eyed. “That’s what I’ve always said. I wouldn’t hurt a fly if it was nice to me. But for some reason folk just keep being mean to me. Why do you reckon they act that way, Bathwash?”
Stringer shrugged, gazed around at the fairly crowded camp, and offered, “You seem to have plenty of friends here.”
Curry stared up at him owlishly. “Bullshit. I reckon I know who my friends are and who’s just sucking around for a share of the loot. Half the men and all the women here right now, but pretty little Pecos, are just whores. They won’t be staying long, now that they know how little us real men made on that last job.”
He took another heroic swig from the jar, wiped his walrus moustache with his free hand, and went on, half to himself, “Good men keep getting harder to find. Sometimes I feels I’m the only one left. It seems like all the good old boys we started out with are all dead or run off somewheres. You may find this hard to buy, Bathwash, but at one time we had us over a hundred riders in the Wild Bunch, and now look what’s left. Moochers and whores. Whores and moochers. They come and they go, and half the time I don’t know who in the hell they are. How’s a man supposed to trust folk he don’t even know when half the folk he do know have been mean to him?”
“We’re still with you, Kid,” Pecos soothed. “MacKail, here, is a man anyone can trust.”
If she’d been trying to help Stringer, she’d gone about it wrong. Kid Curry blinked up at them and growled, “Bullshit. He ain’t one of us. He’s a damned old newspaper boy who’d turn us in to the law if he could.”
Pecos didn’t know much about drunks for a woman who said she’d once been married to one. “No, he wouldn’t,” she said. “If he wasn’t a man of honor, he’d be long gone by now. For it just so happens he’s been packing a gun all this time.”
Stringer could have kicked her. Even Slim looked a mite put out by her surprising declaration. Kid Curry started to rise, decided that might not work, and still managed to sound more sober as he asked, “Is that right, MacKail? Did you somehow manage to hang onto a gun despite our skillful friskings?”
Stringer smiled modestly. “No. I just found a bitty .32 someone must have dropped, back at that mine.”
He really wanted to kick her when Pecos chimed in, “It’s a six-shooting .32, though—Harrington and Richardson double action—and even though he had the edge on me and Slim, here, he never went back on his parole, see?”
Kid Curry smiled up at Stringer. “Well, I never. I reckon you ain’t no sneaky backshooter after all. Why don’t you find some paper, and mayhaps after supper we can get down to work on that story you mean to write about me.”
Slyly, Arkansas asked, “Might we all be talking about a nickel-plated Harrison and Richardson old Will might have lost, or throwed away?”
Stringer said he had no idea who the previous owner might have been.
“I’m mighty sure it was the .32 old Will showed me,” Arkansas said. “He won it in a card game a spell back.”
Stringer ignored the hairs rising on the back of his neck, since right now he couldn’t do anything about them unless he came up with an interesting story, fast, to account for the fact that the broken firearm in his inside pocket wouldn’t fire single or double action no matter where he’d gotten it. He knew that Arkansas knew, and from the sly grin on the bully’s face, he suspected Arkansas knew he knew and so forth. So why was the ugly son of a bitch holding his fire?
Arkansas didn’t say. He didn’t say anything as Kid Curry told Stringer, Slim, and Pecos to spread their rolls anywhere they wanted and that the grub would soon be ready if that whore he’d told to cook it knew what was good for her. Then he blinked and added, “Oh, that’s right. Stringer, here, don’t have no roll.”
Before he could stop her, Pecos said, “That’s all right. I know where he can bed down.”
Stringer quickly explained, “I have two to choose from. We brought along the ponies neither Banger nor Will have any further use for.”
Stringer then took the considerable risk of grabbing the girl by the arm to get her the hell away from there before she could really get him in trouble. Slim followed a short way, but said he’d see to all their ponies and left them to do so, coughing.
Since all the bedrolls anyone wanted to argue about were aboard said ponies, Stringer led Pecos to a grassy bank near the base of the cliffs. “Stay here and try to look li
ke a boy as much as you’re able,” he said. “I’ll rustle us up the bedrolls as soon as things settle down.”
“Who are you to start giving orders around here all of a sudden?” she asked. “I don’t cotton to being bossed by even a good looking man and—”
“Simmer down,” he warned. “I’m not giving orders just to show I usually get on top. You talk too much, no offense, but there’s still a chance Kid Curry will forget he just said dibs on you, if only you’ll stay clear of him until he’s too drunk to worry any woman.”
She blanched and protested, “Oh, no, I don’t want to screw him, honey!”
Stringer smiled thinly. “Neither do I. But I fear that he feels he has the right to screw both of us, should it cross his mind. So let’s both stay the hell away from him for now.”
He could see he’d scared her enough. So he went up the canyon to see about those bedrolls. When he got to the remuda, he saw Slim had given the job to an eager young wrangler whose mother would have no doubt had a fit if she’d known whom her boy was keeping company with when he could be safer in some opium den or ammunition plant. Stringer could only tell this because the kid had lined the familiar saddles up on the rocks outside the rope line. He told Stringer that Slim had wandered off somewhere chewing on a pocket kerchief that seemed to be covered with red polka dots.
Stringer thanked the kid for the information, and after he’d unlashed the girl’s roll from her saddle, he picked the roll Banger had started out with. He didn’t know for sure what might be in it. He knew he needed more than he had, so far, to work with.
He waited until he’d rejoined Pecos to explore the roll. There was nothing inside the tarp but blankets, spare socks, a bar of naptha soap, and a book of dirty pictures.
Naturally Pecos wanted to look at the dirty pictures. So he let her, leaning his back against the cliff as he fiddled with the damned fool .32. There wasn’t a thing wrong with the action, save for the broken mainspring. But without said spring, the hammer just went back and stayed there when you pulled the damned trigger. It didn’t lock, of course. He found he could wiggle it back and forth like the jaw of a dead parrot. He supposed that if you placed the firing pin against a round in the firing chamber, and hit the hammer hard with say a rock…But there had to be a better way.
