by Lou Cameron
She nodded. “Oodles. Some had left long before I could get up this way from Denver. The great train robbery has created quite a stir, you know.”
He hadn’t known. “The nickelodeon version was even greater,” he said. “Those poor idiots down below didn’t get enough money out of the deal to hire decent lawyers, and they’re surely going to need some soon enough.” He laughed and added, “I’ll bet Sam Barca’s going crazy right now. For if it’s drawn national coverage, he’ll have been sending wires all over creation, ordering me to cover it. Won’t he be surprised when he gets my exclusive?”
She pouted and handed him the bottle. “I thought you said we were going to share the story, damn it.”
He took a sip, noticed he didn’t seem to need a chaser now, and after some study, decided, “I reckon there’s no, need to hold out on you. You had to be there to enjoy it. But I can give you the background material you need. You may as well get it right, seeing as how the infernal Examiner will surely run your feature on the front page no matter how you turn it in.”
He brought her more or less up to date on his adventures with the Wild Bunch, leaving out some gossip about other ladies that would hardly be fit to print in any case. By the time he’d more or less finished, the first stars were out.
“I wish it was light enough to take notes,” she said.
“Hell, it’s not that complicated a story, Kathy. Man robs train. Posse catches up with man. All that’s left is whether they give up or go down fighting. You’ll be able to turn in an eyewitness report on that. Let your rewrite desk worry about the dates and details of Kid Curry’s earlier trangressions if they need it for copy casting. It’ll be in your paper’s morgue.”
“Pooh,” she said, “you just said half such stuff is inaccurate, and you got to interview him in person about his wayward past.”
Stringer shrugged. “Not enough to matter. He just said he wanted me to be his official biographer because, like I told you, he really wanted me to escape, earlier, and lead the law the wrong way.”
“I can see why he’s sore at you now,” she said. “You’ll no doubt get to be a sort of western legend now yourself, as the man who brought Kid Curry and the Wild Bunch to justice at last.”
He sprayed both of them with Bushmills as she caught him with that as he was trying to drink some. “Not if I can help it, and please don’t mention me in your own version, honey,” he said. “I don’t want to retire from the newspaper game the way poor old John Wesley Hardin ended his career.”
She took the bottle back. “You sure drink sloppy. I’ve heard of that old gunslick. But I fear he was before my time with the Examiner.”
Stringer nodded. “I was just getting out of Stanford at the time. In his day, old John Wesley Hardin had made quite a rep. Then they salted him away for fifteen or sixteen years for blowing away a deputy sheriff. His rep outlasted his time in jail. So they’d barely let him out before as mean a cuss, who no doubt wanted to be as famous, shot old John in the back. The back of the ear, that is. Happened in El Paso in the summer of ‘95. Hardin was just minding his own business, shooting craps in the Acme Saloon. He never knew what hit him. That’s why I don’t want that kind of a rep. I’d sure hate to be shot from behind by some fool just out to get famous.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “But did the man who shot John Wesley Hardin wind up famous?”
Stringer shrugged. “For a mighty short time. His name was Selman, and less than a year later a Deputy Scarborough killed him to win the same fame, until he in turn got blown away by…I’ll be damned, Kid Curry! Small world, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to die of an ague with all this booze on my bodice,” she said. “But wait, if you got credit for the death or capture of Kid Curry, down there…”
He nodded. “That would make me the man who killed the man who killed the killer of John Wesley Hardin, the man who backed Wild Bill down. So, no thanks, I’d rather be remembered as a prissy newspaperman, if it’s all the same with you.”
She began to unbutton her bodice. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell, then,” she said.
“Are we talking about Kid Curry’s rep or your own?”
“We have to be practical,” she said, “and it’s already getting chilly up here. Turn your back and don’t peek as I slip under the covers.”
He turned away but rolled his eyes up at the stars. “Why me, Lord?” he asked, for he knew that while they’d both have at least their underthings on, this was shaping up to be a long night indeed. It was fair to make passes at reporters from rival papers, and so he had, more than once, back in Frisco. That’s how he knew what a tease she was.
If she thought he was going to make a total fool of himself wrestling with her like that again, she had another think coming. She had the damned bottle in bed with her. So he sat cross-legged atop the blankets and proceeded to roll a smoke.
“My,” she murmured, sleepily, “it must have been a longer day on the trail than I thought. These starched sheets sure feel heavenly. Aren’t you coming to bed, Stringer?”
“Later, mayhaps,” he growled. “It’s early.” Then he finished building his Bull Durham, lit it, and moved over to see what might be taking place down in the canyon.
Nothing was. Neither side had even built fires. He knew the men on both sides were crouched down there in the dark, tense as hell and no doubt bored at the same time. But bored or not, at least they all had enough worries to keep them awake and off the subject of women.
He finished his smoke and crawled back to the bedroll, hoping the pretty little thing had drunk herself to sleep, and that if so, she’d left some for him.
But when he rejoined her, Kathy said, “My paper’s going to want some round numbers, at least. I’m sort of confused about that, Stringer. You said there was a really big gang down there, before, and now you say there’s only a handful?”
He sat down on the blankets beside her again. “I could sure use some of that Bushmills now. I thought I explained that the Wild Bunch is really more like a wild bunch, lowercase, and that we, not they, consider it a formal organization with enlistment papers, rules, regulations, and so on. They’re really no more than a mess of like-minded criminals, some petty and others as mean as hell. There must be over a hundred known outlaws the law has enrolled in what it calls the Wild Bunch, uppercase, at one time or another. But like their so-called Hole in the Wall, we’re really talking about tumbleweeds. They come and they go, hiding out here there and everywhere, and the only mystery to that Hole in the Wall is why anyone would think owlhoots on the dodge would have a permanent address to begin with.”
“They must have some way of getting together for big jobs, right?” she said.
“Sure they do. In real life it’s called the Grapevine. They have no recognized leader. When one of ‘em gets a grand notion to stick somebody up, he just lets all the shady landladies and barkeeps know about it, and as soon as enough of ‘em look him up, they just’ go and do it. By this time more notorious Wild Bunchers like Butch Cassidy will have read about that train robbery in the papers. Whether they knew Kid Curry was planning it and didn’t cotton to his plans, or whether they now feel left out and wistful, is anybody’s guess. So-called members of the Wild Bunch have pulled jobs on their own from the Mex to Canadian border and from as far west as Oregon to as far east as Tennessee. I have it on good authority that Kid Curry and Sundance were raiding a Texas house of ill repute for love toys while the law had them up in their so-called Hole in the Wall in the Green River headwaters. The reason Curry’s boxed right now is that this time the law isn’t searching for any outlaw kingdom. They’ve tracked a miserable handful of them to a poorly chosen hideout close to the scene of their last crime.”
Kathy yawned. “Thanks to you, you mean. We were just riding around in circles until we ran into you, and Lord knows where all those other posses got lost. Come to bed, damn it. I’d really like to catch some sleep after all that riding.”
He
told her to go on and fall asleep if she wanted to. But she kept on insisting, and so he shucked his jacket, shirt, and boots to roll in with her, wearing just his jeans.
Then, as she welcomed him under the covers with open arms, he wondered why on earth he wanted his jeans on, for Kathy was stark naked as they met in a mutual warm embrace.
He thought it better to kiss her some more instead of commenting on her pleasant cure for insomnia. By the time she let him breathe some more, he was atop her, cradled by her responsive thighs and even sweeter flesh between them. So he thought it safe to say, “I thought you said you wanted to sleep sort of chaste, like that time on the coast train, honey.”
“A whole damned night, without so much as a magazine to put myself to sleep with?” she said. “That time on the train down to Los Angeles was different. What kind of a girl checks into a Pullman berth with the whole world staring at her knowingly? Besides, as I told you at the time, I was being met at the station by another woman, and another woman always knows. Are you going to spend the whole night asking why I didn’t want you to lay me that time, or would you like to lay me right, tonight, damn it?”
He did. He couldn’t have laid still in such a grand position had he wanted to. By the time they were going at it nice and spunky, she was rolling her head from side to side, moaning and sobbing with real tears running down her cheeks. So he stopped what he was doing to her, kissed away some tears, and said, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m trying not to treat you rough, but there’s not much padding, and I’ve wanted you this way so long and often—”
“Just do it, then!” she cut in, digging her nails into his back and wrapping her legs around his waist. “I’ve had this in mind since first we met,” she sobbed, “and oh, honey, I’m so sorry about the times we’ve missed out on this that I can’t help crying about it. I expected it to be marvelous, but the real thing feels so much better that I’m mad as hell at myself right now!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was no great surprise when guns started going off again by the cold gray light of dawn, even though it woke Stringer up with a start.
Then he noticed Kathy’s head still lay nestled against his shoulder, and that although she was still half asleep, she seemed to be toying with his privates under the blankets. So that hadn’t been the nicest wet dream he’d ever had, after all.
As he began to play with her in return, she yawned, murmured, “Faster, darling,” then opened her eyes and said, “Oh, it’s you. Let me wake up first and— Oh, what’s that noise?”
“The boys down below must be early risers,” he said. “Speaking of which, we ought to start thinking about getting dressed ourselves. For if that deputy sends a runner up here with any dumb messages—”
“We’ll tell him all writers are bohemians,” she cut in, adding, “If you think I’m going to settle for just those two sweet fingers, now that you’ve gotten so fresh with them you’re just too prim and proper for the literary field.”
He laughed, allowed he didn’t want to be taken for a gent with no creative imagination, and they made love some more. He found it easy to bring her to climax ahead of him. He’d noticed earlier that she didn’t try to hold back. But being a woman, and ergo more practical about sex than any man, once she’d had her wicked way with him, she murmured, “That was lovely. But I guess we have to get up before somebody comes, dear.”
“I am up and I’m trying to come,” he grunted. “Don’t go ice water on me now, honey!”
She didn’t. She began to move her hips skillfully as she told him, “Hurry. If you take much longer, I’ll get hot again, and then where will we be?”
They decided it had to be heaven once he’d come and been told she’d murder him if he stopped now, for God’s sake.
But all good things had to end, damn every one of them, and so they finally got dressed, polished off the last of the Bushmills and some canned pork and beans old Tom the trader had thought to travel with, and as the sun was just peeking over the higher ridges to the east, they crawled over to the canyon rim to see what all the noise might mean.
What it seemed, at first glance, was total confusion. Kid Curry and his pals were sending up the most gun smoke from their somewhat higher position against the back wall of the canyon. The posse riders were a lot easier to make out, since they lay or crouched among the rocks farther down, with their backs to Stringer and Kathy. From time to time a lawman would lob a round up at the train robber’s smoke, then duck like hell before Kid Curry or one of his followers could return the compliment.
Kathy asked why they didn’t help, and hoisted her skirts to get at her bitty .22. But Stringer told her not to be silly, explaining, “Those .22 shots would barely carry that far, and if they did, they wouldn’t hurt a grown man.”
“What about your rifle, then?” she asked.
“You sure are a bloodthirsty little gal,” he said. “Those lawmen down there are wasting enough ammunition. Nobody would be forted behind a big rock in the first place if he didn’t figure it would stop even a .44-40 slug. Like I said, it’s a standoff. The owlhoots are acting the most unreasonable. So they must know they only have two ways to end it. They can die slow of thirst or lucky shooting, or they can surrender and die later, rope dancing.”
She repressed a shudder. “I see a third way. If I was in a spot like that, I’d consider killing myself.”
He shrugged. “Kid Curry told me, personal, that he considers that unmanly. He called a mad-dog killer called Tracy a sissy for shooting himself when there was just no other way out.”
“In that case, how long do you expect this to last?” she asked.
“It’s not for me to say. If that deputy in charge of the posse has any sense at all, he’ll have sent riders to fetch extra water and, if possible, more gun hands. It’s just a question of time. Neither side can get at the other without breaking cover, and that could be fatal at the range they’re all pinned down at. I covered a couple of situations like this down in Cuba. They can drag on for hours or even days. But you said you wanted a bird’s-eye view. I wonder if Waterloo looked this tedious, bird’s eye. I know it doesn’t in those paintings they’ve made of the battle since. But considering how long it went on, they couldn’t have all been shooting and charging like that all the time.”
She pointed. “Look, there’s that one with the white hàt again, blasting away from that rock that sort of looks like a dead elephant.”
Stringer nodded soberly. “I figured I missed him last night. If he keeps popping up like that, he’s surely going to get hit, though.”
Then the white hat fluttered up and away like a misshapen seagull, and he added, “See what I mean? They missed his scalp, however, and I see he’s changed his position as well as his manners now.”
She asked, “What if we were to sort of work our way along this rim until we were looking straight down at those killers, dear?”
He grimaced. “They might kill us. I know I’d shoot straight up at anyone looking straight down at me, and we’re discussing no more than two hundred feet or so. That’s point-blank with rifles. But lest you take me for a sissy who’s afraid to pee on Kid Curry’s hat, I’ve got two more, better reasons. As I said, it’s a long way to fall, but nothing much to a bullet, and with the posse shooting so wild upslope, I’m not about to move into their line of fire.”
She asked what his other reason might be.
“I explained about not wanting to get famous,” he told her. “How could I hope to avoid that if I stood up here like a big-ass bird against the sky, shooting the one and original Kid Curry in the back?”
“That wouldn’t be the same,” she protested. “This is war.”
But he shook his head. “That’s not the way it would read in many a penny dreadful. I’ve always thought Pat Garrett took old Billy the Kid professional too. The Kid had, for God’s sake, just shot two of Garrett’s deputies in the back, and Garrett wasn’t after him to kiss him. They met face to face in old Pete Maxwell’s bedroom
, both with their guns out, and the only crime anyone can lay on Garrett is that he fired first. He nailed the Kid through the heart, from the front, yet one fool writer after another keeps coming out with yarns about that no-doubt tensed-up lawman taking the Kid unfair. The poor old cuss even wrote his own book, declaring he’d done no such thing. But the myth of an invincible Robin Hood being slain by his best friend, dirty, still persists to haunt poor old Garrett. I expect to hear, any day now, about some otherwise forgettable cuss blowing Garrett away just so he can say he killed the man who killed Billy the Kid, Kid Antrim, Henry McCarthy, or whoever he was.”
Kathy sighed. “Well, far be it for me to sully your reputation, you sweet old stud, but we’ll soon be frying like eggs on this flat shadeless rock. We’ve got the story. Why don’t we go on back down?”
He shot her a surprised look. “The story isn’t over yet. Like I said, it could go on all day and even into the night. It all depends on how long their water and ammo holds out.”
“Let me know when it’s over, then,” she said. “I’m going down to hunt for some shade. Are you sure you don’t want to come too?”
He grinned at her. “Later.”
She told him he was fresh and headed back across the mesa with her own lighter load. He watched her to make sure she didn’t step in any serious cracks. Then she turned into a cute little dot, waved at him, and dropped from sight down that other canyon.
Stringer turned his attention back to the tedious gunfight in the canyon below. As the sun rose higher, he had to admit she had a point about fried eggs. It still surprised him she’d put comfort before being in at the actual kill, though. He knew she’d have little trouble writing it up as if she’d been there, once she was told about it. He was watching, and he was damned if he could come up with more than two possible endings. The most likely called for Curry and his pals to surrender. It was one thing to swear you’d never be taken alive, and another thing entire when you were tired, out of ammo, maybe hurt, and the law refused to shoot you anymore.
