Butch Cassidy the Lost Years

by William W. Johnstone

  “Daisy . . . ,” I said. She must have already gone to bed, because her hair was tousled around her head. It looked dark in the moonlight. I went on, “You’re so . . . so beautiful . . .”

  “Jim, are you drunk?” she asked sharply.

  “Drunk on . . . love,” I said.

  I didn’t get any more words out because the last of my strength deserted me then. I reeled away from the window, half-twisting as I struggled to maintain my balance. Daisy let out a soft cry of alarm when she saw my bloody sleeve.

  I felt myself falling, but that was the last thing I knew. Utter blackness had swallowed me by the time I hit the ground.

  CHAPTER 41

  An unknowable amount of time later, I woke up. Pain flooded through me, followed almost immediately by relief. There’s no getting around the fact that if you hurt, you’re still alive. I thought about that instead of the misery in my arm and the pounding in my head.

  Something soft and cool touched my face. I let out a moan. It might have been smarter to hide the fact that I’d regained consciousness—at that point I didn’t know what sort of situation or how much danger I was in—but I couldn’t help it. That sensation just felt so blasted good.

  “You’re awake,” Daisy said. “Aren’t you? Jim?”

  Opening my eyes seemed to take as much strength as lifting a fifty-pound sack of grain would have, but somehow I managed. When the light struck them, I blinked, and my eyelids rising and falling felt and sounded like thunder booming in my head.

  It really wasn’t that bright in the room. It just seemed that way to me at that moment. Actually, the lamp on the table beside the bed was turned down low enough that it left the corners of the room dim and shadowy.

  Once my eyes adjusted, though, I had no trouble focusing on Daisy as she leaned over me with a concerned expression on her face.

  “I was afraid you were going to die,” she said. “You’d lost so much blood.”

  My voice sounded hollow and far away to me as I whispered, “Reckon I must’ve . . . been hurt worse than . . . I thought.”

  “You were shot in the arm. You’re fortunate the bullet didn’t break the bone, but I don’t think it did.”

  “I thought I’d just been . . . grazed a mite.”

  I’ve seen it happen before. The bullets start flying, and a fella gets desperate and is moving so fast he doesn’t really know how bad he’s hurt. Sooner or later it catches up to him, though. I was just lucky I’d been able to hold it off until I reached Daisy’s house.

  Lucky . . . or so damned mule-headed I wouldn’t allow any other outcome.

  Daisy continued wiping my face with the damp cloth she held. It felt about as good as anything I’ve ever experienced. She said, “You have a fever, Jim. I cleaned and bandaged the wound, but you really need a doctor.”

  “No . . . doctor,” I said. I shook my head slightly, or at least I think I did. “Where’s your . . . father?”

  “He’s not here. One of the members of the congregation is gravely ill. Father drove out to his house to sit up with him.” She paused. “When I first heard the tapping on the window, I thought you knew somehow that Father was gone and had come to see me with something else in mind. I wasn’t expecting to find you injured. What happened?”

  I could have spun some yarn about dropping my gun and shooting myself by accident, I suppose. But I was half out of my head, remember, and while I’m not particularly proud of it, there’s no point in covering up the truth.

  I said, “I got shot while . . . the boys and I . . . were tryin’ to hold up the train. You see . . . Daisy . . . I’m Butch Cassidy.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that she thought I was just raving. But slowly, in fits and starts because I was so weak, I spilled the whole story to her, starting with the night I’d run into Abner Tillotson. It never occurred to me that she might go to the law and turn me in. I guess I just trusted her because I loved her so much.

  By the time I was finished, she might not have believed me one hundred percent, but at least she didn’t think I was completely loco anymore. She was willing to grant the possibility that I was telling the truth.

  “None of that really matters right now,” she said when I was finished. “What’s important is that you rest. You’ll feel a lot better once you’ve had some sleep, I hope.”

  “Maybe. But I got to get . . . back to the ranch. The sheriff’s liable to . . . show up there lookin’ for me. If I ain’t there . . . he’ll want to know what became of me. He’s always been . . . a mite suspicious of me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Daisy said with a faint smile. “If it comes down to it, I’ll simply tell Sheriff Lester that you spent the night here . . . with me.”

  I stared at her for several seconds before I was able to say, “Good Lord, girl! You can’t . . . you can’t do that. It’d ruin your reputation . . . forever.”

  “Do you honestly think I care about something that unimportant, Jim? My reputation means nothing in comparison to keeping you safe.”

  I didn’t agree with that at all, but I was too weak to argue with her. She went on, “In the morning, if you’re stronger, I’ll put you in the buggy and we’ll go out to your ranch. The sheriff won’t be able to prove you haven’t been there all along.”

  “That’s what I’m . . . hopin’,” I said. I felt myself slipping away again. “Daisy . . . thank you . . . I can’t tell you how much I . . .”

  I couldn’t finish what I was trying to say. It didn’t matter, because she clasped my left hand in both of hers and whispered, “I know. I love you, too, Jim.”

  I had been about to say I couldn’t tell her how much I appreciated her help, but I reckon “I love you” worked just as well. I was able to squeeze one of her hands to let her know I felt the same way.

  After that I let myself drift off. I could tell that I was falling asleep this time, not passing out, so I didn’t fight it. Maybe she was right. Maybe a good night’s rest was what I needed most right now.

  I just hoped that when I woke up in the morning, it wouldn’t be to find that I had handcuffs on my wrists.

  CHAPTER 42

  With that thought in my head, the first thing I did the next morning was to try to move my arms. I was able to lift the left one, but the right refused to go anywhere. Thinking that arm might be shackled to something, I lifted my head from the pillow enough to take a look at it.

  That set the room to spinning crazily, but after a moment it settled down. I didn’t see any handcuffs. My right arm was heavily bandaged, though, and Daisy had rigged a sling for it and strapped it down to hold it still against my body. It hurt, but really not as much as I expected it to.

  I was thinking straighter now that I was awake again. I seemed to remember telling Daisy all about how I was Butch Cassidy and how the crew from the Fishhook and I had been robbing trains for the past few months. Surely I hadn’t been crazy enough to do that . . . had I?

  The memory was pretty clear in my head, but I wouldn’t be sure until she came in. I heard faint noises of somebody moving around the house and figured it was her, so I thought about calling her. Instead I spent a few minutes looking around the room. I had seen her bedroom before, but it seemed especially bright and cheery this morning with the sun shining through gauzy curtains over the window and setting off a warm glow from the yellow, flower-patterned wallpaper.

  I noticed a pitcher of water sitting on the dresser, and that made me realize how thirsty I was. My mouth was like cotton. Once I thought about being thirsty, I was hungry, too, hungry enough to eat a horse.

  I heard footsteps through the open door, and then Daisy appeared there, looking as fresh and pretty as her room. She smiled at me when she saw I was awake.

  “Your fever broke a little while ago,” she told me. “I was hoping you’d wake up soon. How do you feel this morning, Jim?”

  “Better,” I said in a rusty voice. “My arm don’t even hurt too bad. I sure am hungry and thirst
y, though.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she said as she came over and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. “I’ve hardly been able to get anything down you the past few days.”

  It took a second for what she had said to sink in. When it did, I asked, “What do you mean, the past few days? I came here last night.”

  Still smiling, she shook her head and said, “That was three nights ago, Jim.”

  I tried not to groan. The fellas at the ranch probably thought I was dead. That is, if they were worried about me at all, considering the likelihood that they were locked up.

  But maybe not, I told myself. Enoch and Gabe were cunning old lobos. They would know the sheriff didn’t have much hard evidence against them. They might have tried to brazen it out. They might have even been successful . . . so far.

  I was willing to bet that the sheriff was mighty interested in my whereabouts, though.

  “What about your dad?” I asked Daisy. “He’s bound to be back by now.”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s been here and gone. Mr. Abercrombie is still sick, but he’s hanging on. Father came in, slept for a night, cleaned up, and went back out to the Abercrombie ranch. He was so tired he never knew you were here.” She laughed softly. “It was quite a dilemma for me. I was worried because you weren’t waking up, but at the same time I didn’t want you to wake up and call out while he was here. As it turned out, that didn’t happen.”

  “We’ve got to make sure there’s no chance of it happenin’,” I told her. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Not until you’ve had something to eat and drink and I’ve changed the dressing on your wound. Then maybe we’ll see about getting you in the buggy and taking you out to your ranch. Are you sure someone there can take proper care of you?”

  I figured Enoch and Gabe had patched up a heap of bullet wounds in their time, but I didn’t say that. I just nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  She stood up.

  “Then I’ll go get you some breakfast.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time,” I told her.

  “If you were stronger, I might make you an even better offer,” she said. The blush that spread over her face before she turned away reminded me that I was in her bed. More than that, I was stripped down to the bottom half of my long johns, and she was the only one who could have done that, as well as tending to my other needs. I figured it was best not to dwell on that too much.

  She brought back a cup of coffee, a cup of broth, and a biscuit. I wanted to gulp down the drinks, but they were hot so I had to take it easy and sip them. That was probably better for me anyway. It gave them a chance to brace me up and send strength flowing back into my body. The biscuit was so light and fluffy it was like biting into a cloud in Heaven.

  While I was eating, neither of us brought up all the things I had told her the night I showed up at her window. But as she was changing the bandage on my arm, after announcing that the wound looked like it was healing well, she said, “Jim . . . or should I call you Butch?”

  “Jim’s fine,” I said. “I haven’t used that other name for a long time. I’d even started to feel like Butch Cassidy was dead and buried down there in Bolivia.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve barely even heard of Butch Cassidy. All I know is that he was some sort of old-time outlaw . . . ?”

  I grinned at her and said, “Now you understand how come I kept tellin’ you I’m too old for you, darlin’. That’s what I am: a relic of the Old West.”

  “You’re the most vital man I’ve ever known,” she said. “You’re hardly a relic.” She paused. “It’s true, then? About the train robberies?”

  “It is. I reckon I’ve broken that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ commandment more than any of the others.”

  “But you said you did it to help young Vince Porter, and then, after that, to help other people. That doesn’t make it . . . really . . . what you’d call . . .”

  “It’s still stealin’,” I said when her voice trailed off. “And I can understand if you want to turn me over to the law.”

  She leaned back and her eyes got big.

  “I could never do that!” she said. “Just because something’s against the law doesn’t mean that it’s, well, wrong.”

  “To most folks that’s exactly what it means.”

  She gave a defiant little toss of her head and said, “I’m not like most folks. I never have been, and I never will be.”

  She was right about that. She had her own way of doing things, her own path to follow. I had already figured out that she didn’t want anybody to pigeonhole her. It made her mad when people tried to.

  “All right,” I told her. “I’m not one to argue morality with anybody. If you’re willin’ to keep quiet about what you know, I appreciate that. For the sake of the other fellas, as much as for my own sake.”

  “I can do more than keep quiet,” she said.

  I frowned a little and asked, “What do you mean by that?”

  She had finished tending to my arm. She smiled but didn’t answer my question. Instead she said, “I think you’re strong enough to travel. Let me go see if I can find some of my father’s clothes for you to wear.”

  I felt like telling her that nothing belonging to scrawny little Franklin Hatfield was going to fit me, but I didn’t say anything. She got up and left the room.

  When she came back she held up a shirt that looked way too big for her pa and said, “This is the oldest thing Father has.”

  “That shirt’s big enough for two of him,” I said.

  “He used to be a much more . . . substantial . . . man than he is now. He went through a bout of illness and nearly died. Since then he can’t seem to regain any weight. He says he’s glad it happened, though. He claims it brought him closer to the Lord.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “Nearly dyin’ has a habit of doin’ that.”

  “I hope this is big enough that you can put your left arm in the sleeve and then we can just drape the rest of it around you. First, though, we need to get your trousers back on you. There wasn’t too much blood on them, and I was able to wash most of it out. I had to burn your shirt, though.”

  “I understand. Just bring me the britches and I can put ’em on by myself.”

  She shook her head and said, “I don’t think so. Not as weak as you are and with only one arm that you can use. I don’t mind helping, Jim. I’m not a little girl.” She added, “Besides, I’m the one who took them off of you.”

  “Yeah, I figured as much,” I said. “You don’t scandalize very easy, do you?”

  She laughed and said, “Not at all.”

  We managed to get clothes on me. It took a while, the shape I was in. And while it was awkward physically, it wasn’t too embarrassing, I suppose. Daisy deserved the credit for that, because she had such a practical, easygoing manner about her. There was a lot to like about that girl.

  Hell, there was a lot to love about that girl.

  I didn’t care for the idea of her putting me in the buggy and starting out for the Fishhook in broad daylight, but there was no telling when her father might show up, and we couldn’t count on him remaining blissfully ignorant of my presence in the house a second time. Daisy said she could pull the buggy right up to the back door and take me out that way. If she circled away from the settlement right from the start, we might be able to slip out of Largo without anybody seeing us. We had to take that chance.

  When I stood up and tried to walk for the first time in several days, I would have fallen flat on my face if she hadn’t been there to hold me up. We struggled to the kitchen, where she had placed a chair beside the back door. Grateful for the chance to rest, I sat down in it while Daisy went to fetch the buggy.

  When she came back in, she said, “The other night I hid your rifle and handgun in the shed. They’re in the back of the buggy now.”

  “We won’t need
’em,” I said, “but thanks for takin’ care of them.”

  “We can hope we won’t need them. But you never know.”

  That was true enough, I supposed. I couldn’t handle the rifle with only one arm, but I was a pretty fair shot with a revolver using my left hand.

  And I wouldn’t have put it past Daisy that she could shoot a rifle like Annie Oakley.

  By the time I was in the vehicle, that old shirt of her father’s was drenched with sweat. We made it, though. I leaned back against the seat, breathing hard, and nodded to her that I was ready because I couldn’t speak. She picked up the reins and got the horses moving.

  It came as no surprise to me that Daisy was good at handling the team. She seemed to be good at whatever she turned her hand to. She had done a fine job taking care of me, and if it bothered her that she was nursing a train robber back to health, she never showed a sign of it. She was as cool-headed as any man I’d ever ridden with, including Harry Longabaugh.

  She had gotten to know the area pretty well from the times she had gone riding with me, so I didn’t have to tell her the way to the ranch. She didn’t take the easiest, most obvious trail but rather swung far to the east to make anybody who noticed the buggy leaving Largo think that she wasn’t headed for the Fishhook.

  Actually, we were headed toward the old Daughtry place, I realized. Before we got there she could circle back to the west and go at the Fishhook from that direction.

  “You know, people all over the county are talking about the train being held up,” she said as she kept the two horses moving along at a steady clip. She didn’t let them go too fast because that would jounce me around and maybe hurt my arm. “That Pinkerton detective Barstow has pledged to round up each and every one of you.”

  “Who?” I asked. That was the first time I’d ever heard Simon Barstow’s name.

  Daisy told me all she had heard about him from the gossip in Farnum’s store, as well as the information she’d gleaned from the newspapers. From the sound of it, the story had spread all over the state of Texas in the past few days.