Sundance

by David Fuller

The saloonkeeper was gravely serious. “Story he told you was true, his daddy was humiliated after the Kid got away, and, well, it sounds funny but it was like he died of a broken heart.”

  “I’m paying for it,” said Longbaugh. After a moment he indicated that he meant the liquor for his empty glass. The saloonkeeper was solemn and troubled and still did not pour Longbaugh a second drink.

  Longbaugh stopped waiting and bent over to lift the gun belt off the saddle horn. He pulled the piece from the holster and inspected it for the first time. An old revolver, single action, someone’s cheap imitation of the Colt Peacemaker. He’d used one like it when he himself had been a very young man and could afford nothing better. It was a standard tool, just as it had been back then, a standard dull tool.

  Orley could not resist elbowing his thoughts into the room. “Heard about this incarcerated fella. Told ’em a fake name when they booked him so they didn’t know he was famous, and if they ever found out, they never got around to changin’ it. Too much bureaucracy or maybe just laziness. But everyone inside figured out who he was.

  “Then in ’08 someone killed that famous fella down in South America, or so the papers said. Happened so far away, it were tough to prove one way or t’other, but that’s what came out and folks believed it. Got me thinkin’ about what it was like bein’ that famous fella, stuck in the pen, hearin’ everybody say he were dead. You figure maybe he wanted to let folks know? Wave his arms and say, ‘Hey, I ain’t dead, I’m right here, look over this way.’ Or you think he decided it were better if he just stayed dead?”

  Longbaugh saw the saloonkeeper staring at him with a significant look of pain. Longbaugh pointed to his empty glass.

  “That young fellow’s out there,” said the saloonkeeper. “I don’t know in all good conscience if I can serve you. One whiskey calms the nerves, mister, but a second might slow you down.”

  “Just might,” said Longbaugh. “If there’s a God.”

  Orley wasn’t finished. “Couple years back, I heard somethin’ else. Heard that after he died in Bolivia, this famous fella hurt some other prisoner when the prisoner said somethin’ bad to him. Nobody seems to know what, though.”

  Longbaugh scowled. “Sounds like Tuesday morning in the pen.”

  “No, sir, our boy, he were a model inmate, nobody got his goat. Whatever that prisoner said was particular.” Orley then leaned forward as if he could affect intimacy from across the room. “Maybe you tell me what it was made you hurt him. I promise, cross my heart, to carry it to my grave.”

  Longbaugh let silence carry the moment. He looked directly at the saloonkeeper, who finally gave in and poured. Longbaugh let the full glass sit before him, reflected warmly in the bar’s shine. He leaned forward and plucked a rag from behind the counter, leaving the olive bandanna untouched under his shirt. He took apart the cheap revolver and laid it out. He took each piece in hand and cleaned it. No one spoke a word while he worked. He put it back together piece by piece. He tested the action. He scowled as he sighted down the barrel. He tested its weight in his hand. He stared into space for a moment. Then he loaded the gun and slid it back in the holster, finally bringing it out a fraction to test where it had to be so that the chamber could turn while still in the leather.

  He lifted the glass to his lips and drank as if he’d never get another.

  “There another way out?” said Longbaugh.

  “Never took you to be a coward,” said Orley.

  Longbaugh’s jaw clenched, but he waited on the saloonkeeper.

  The saloonkeeper angled his head to indicate a back door.

  Longbaugh stood, hoisted his saddle with the gun belt again hanging off the pommel, and went out that way.

  He stepped into a quiet alley. An old dog with a skin condition lifted his head and stared at him through cataracts. When Longbaugh didn’t move, the dog put his head back down. Longbaugh thought he had won this round, thought he was clear. He was relieved and his mind instantly moved back to Etta, as he began to recalculate how he would go about finding her. She had a special music inside that he longed to hear again.

  Then he heard the high voice from around the corner, and the young man stepped into his view.

  “My daddy said you was affable, but he also said you was slippery.”

  Longbaugh stood on packed soil in the back alley between buildings where the morning sun had been and was now gone. He kept the saddle resting on his hip. He had not had a chance to have his boots shined, to enjoy a shave, or soak in a hot bath. He had had two whiskeys. He had eaten nothing since breakfast. He grieved in that moment for the other things he would not get to do. Then he turned to face the very young man.

  “My daddy said you was fast.”

  “One last time. I did not know your daddy.”

  “You still fast? Don’t matter. My daddy taught me afore he died. What’d your friend say in there? He died a punch line. Well, no, sir. Nobody’s gonna laugh when I make him a somebody, ’cause I got his name, and once they know mine, they’ll know his.”

  “Heard a man say that the first one to draw always seems to lose,” said Longbaugh philosophically.

  Young Billy Lorigan was confused by the man’s extraordinary calm. It made him uneasy.

  “Got me to thinking,” said Longbaugh. “Does he draw first because he needs an edge? Or is it the second man’s reaction? One man draws, he acts. You draw second and you’re quicker.”

  “How fast are you?”

  Longbaugh stared at him. That was an unfortunate question, and he felt the old itch to show him. It appeared, however, that the young man was not going to give Longbaugh a chance to cinch on his gun belt. He shifted the saddle off his hip closer to his belt buckle so the holster was angled just so and in sudden reach.

  “Maybe you’ll show me if I draw first,” said the young man.

  “Haven’t fired a gun in years.” That was so, but he had stayed quick. A small voice reminded him that he was older now, and this wasn’t his gun.

  “Not my problem, exactly. Unless you think I should let you warm up?”

  “I’d rather be on my way.”

  “My daddy told me what to expect.”

  “If I were who you say, you’d have already drawn your last breath, and I still hear you talking.”

  “You’re him.”

  “No one here to help you.”

  Insulted. “Don’t need no goddamn help.”

  The way the gun hung there, the leather sides of the holster would not hinder the revolution of the chamber, not for one shot.

  He watched young Billy Lorigan’s twitchy fingers.

  The cheap gun was in easy reach. He didn’t trust it, but this was the hand dealt, and if he had to he’d play it. He looked at the dried milk on the young man’s upper lip.

  “I’m going to try once more. Walk away. Remember your daddy for the good man he was, and forget what anyone else says. Let your mama watch you grow up. No shame in not drawing down on a man you don’t know.”

  The young man remained still, and Longbaugh saw the words had not moved him. He wondered if Billy Lorigan truly intended to draw on an unarmed man.

  Longbaugh knew what it was like to run, and he told him. “Your life will change. They’ll come after you, you’ll have to hide in the hills, you’ll be hungry and cold. Your daddy ever teach you to find water? He teach you to hunt the badlands? It’s lonely, you can’t come back to visit your mama, and they’ll come after you hard, so you better be smart and you better be cagey.”

  Confusion dimmed the young man’s eyes. But his confusion changed to a surprising resolve, and Longbaugh realized the boy had taken the wrong lesson from his words. The boy had heard a concession, that Longbaugh was trying to dissuade him because Longbaugh believed he couldn’t win. Longbaugh opened his mouth to warn him, then shut it because it was a waste of breath.

&nb
sp; The young man smiled just before he moved. Longbaugh watched, and as quick as the young man was, and he was very quick, through Longbaugh’s eyes he moved at a measured pace that stretched the seconds, fingers digging through dry air to grab the handle, thumb webbing hitting the back of the hammer, hand direction changing to bring the piece up, lifting metal against gravity, clearing the leather, other hand sailing across to get above it, barrel swinging up, but the barrel never came level.

  Longbaugh reacted, hand to gun, wrist-angle, trigger squeeze, midair smoke-splash, ear-slap bang, and the boy dropped, clothes off a clothesline, scarecrow off his cross, exhaling into a silent ground.

  Longbaugh set the saddle down, dull pistol smoking in the holster still hanging off the pommel. He moved to stand over the boy’s body, feeling as if a frozen corkscrew had speared the top of his head and twisted down through his skull into his neck, back, and legs. Your daddy was slow, too, Longbaugh thought from within his cold, pitiless heart. Taught you all he knew. And now look. Longbaugh was disgusted, furious at the boy for putting him in an alley full of the smoke of death. Furious at his thin-skinned daddy who fumed at the mockery and trained his boy to be his avenger.

  Once again the old dog set his head back down on the ground.

  They would come for him now. He had to run, and he wondered if he would bother. But a return to the Rawlins Pen was not an option. He was done with steel bars and seething men and entitled guards. Cold spread out from his spine to his fingers and toes. He was surprised to see the saloonkeeper standing at the head of the alley, then surprised again when Orley peered out from behind him.

  “I saw it. You gave him every chance,” said the saloonkeeper.

  “You saw it,” said Longbaugh skeptically.

  “Saw the whole thing.”

  “You saw it.”

  “All right, I didn’t exactly see it.”

  “No.”

  “But I know what happened.”

  “Did you see it happen?”

  “Well, no . . .”

  “No, you didn’t. And with my reputation, the truth will never hold its shape.”

  Heads were poking out of back doors after the sound of the gunshot.

  “Take the boy’s horse,” said the saloonkeeper. “He don’t need it now.”

  The saloonkeeper led him around to the front of the saloon, away from the peeking heads, to where the young man’s horse stood. Longbaugh tasted sour in the back of his throat, and tried to swallow it back down. His legs were shaking, not from fear but from the cold running under his skin.

  Longbaugh set his concentration on the horse. He might once have been a decent animal but he had been mistreated. Longbaugh made a slow, wide approach to the horse’s side, watching out of the edge of his eye as it shifted, shying, assessing, blowing. Its large eye followed him, liquid and afraid. Longbaugh set a gentle hand on the horse’s neck. He felt the creature shiver, then after a long moment with his hand flat along the neck, the horse eased and settled down.

  He removed the young man’s saddle from the horse’s back.

  “Get this to his mother.”

  The saloonkeeper took the saddle and held it awkwardly. Longbaugh scowled and rearranged it against the man’s hip.

  “You know his name?”

  “Billy Lorigan?”

  “The horse. Do you know his name?”

  “Heard him call it Felon one time . . .”

  “Figures.”

  “. . . but he could have just been insulting it, like calling it son of a bitch.”

  “Felon it is.”

  “Look, mister, now I look at him, he’s got a mean streak like his owner,” said the saloonkeeper. “Livery’s next door. We can trade this one, get you a new mount . . .”

  Longbaugh did not move from aside the horse. There wasn’t time to make a good connection, so he had to make do. He pressed his open left hand against the horse’s broad cheek, slipped a rope around his neck, then removed the bit, a “spade,” from the horse’s mouth. He looked at the “spade,” an ugly thing, engineered for cruelty. He looked at the horse’s inner cheek and tongue where the bit had ripped flesh. The young man had ridden the horse hard on its mouth, and Longbaugh knew he would have to find time to let it heal. He experienced a furious dislike for the young man for mistreating his animal, then, with astonishing regret, he remembered he had just killed the boy and the two emotions wove into a taut mental braid that sizzled and sparked where they entwined. The horse sensed his tension, and Longbaugh moved his trembling palm away to regain control of himself. He blinked and stared into the street, seeking that inner sleeve where he could sheathe his emotions and safely reconnect with the beast.

  Once calm, he walked the horse to the livery. The stable man pointed out a new bit, and Longbaugh threw away the spade. The horse came warily back to neutral, but he had expected no less. He had always been good with horses. The horse accepted the new bit. Longbaugh put his dusty saddle on the horse’s back and cinched the girth. He finally wiped down the saddle, revealing an old friend in good condition.

  The saloonkeeper took a position at the corner of the livery where he could see up the alley to the spot where Billy Lorigan had fallen. The saloonkeeper shifted from foot to nervous foot on his heels. He watched townspeople gather, speaking loudly as if to reassure the dead body that they were doing all they could to avenge him. The saloonkeeper looked at Longbaugh and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. The townspeople united in their outrage and raced to the lip of collective frenzy. Longbaugh saw the saloonkeeper lift his hands to urge him to move a little faster, an implicit please in his gesture.

  “They’re talking posse,” said the saloonkeeper, balling up his apron in his hands.

  “Talking about bringing rope.” The saloonkeeper released his apron, then balled it up again.

  “Men going for their sidearms,” said the saloonkeeper, watching one of the men coming this way down the alley.

  “Count twelve, no, fifteen of them.” The saloonkeeper backed up a step and the man ran past.

  “You got to go now, Kid!”

  Longbaugh glanced up as the nickname hovered in air.

  “Ride out the south side of town, stay left through the stand of piñon, they won’t see you going into the dry creek.”

  Finally Longbaugh placed his boot in the stirrup and came up without swinging his leg over. He stayed there, standing on the single stirrup and patting the horse’s side until he felt the horse accept him. He swung his leg over and sat. He was quiet for a moment, years since he rode, and knew he would have blisters as the calluses of the past were but a memory. He heard the familiar creak of leather under his buttocks and thighs, and continued to measure the state of mind of the horse. He was curious as to why the saloonkeeper and Orley had taken his side. The horse took a step and Longbaugh brought him back, steadied him, and when he felt the horse fully alert to him, directed him with a nudge of his knee.

  He looked at Orley.

  “You going to tell them?”

  “You know I wouldn’t.”

  Longbaugh knew that he would. The old man would not be able to stop himself, he had finally made a connection and it had brought him to life. They might not believe the old man, but they would come hard after him on the off chance that Orley was telling the truth about Longbaugh’s identity.

  He nodded to the saloonkeeper and Orley, and he and the horse named Felon rode out of town.

  2

  Longbaugh rode the horse along a red rock ridge fronting an area of low rolling hills that he knew well, then to a high point that afforded him a view of the ground he had just covered. He found a crevice of shade and sat the horse and watched patiently for any sign of the law. After a time of seeing only calamitous jackrabbits, prairie dogs, a coyote stalking three foxes, and a congregation of wheeling red-tailed hawks, he turned to cons
ider the valley ahead. He could wait and cross after safe nightfall, but he preferred to know if someone was coming up behind him. The horse paused at a creek and he allowed him a short drink, then started along the bank and down, through greasewood shrubs that funneled through a wash and emptied into a low stand of boxelder trees. The trees gathered on the edge of the flat and acted as a gate opening out onto a meadow. Longbaugh started across without hesitation.

  He thought about the old days when he and Parker would stash food and horses along an escape route, leaving hungry, discouraged posses behind on their exhausted mounts. They had been through this meadow after one of the robberies, but he no longer remembered which one. He rode for some time, calibrating the sun in the sky, came up a rise, and turned the horse so he could once again survey the meadow.

  The valley stretched out wide, an easy roll of land with purple larkspur pointing to the sky, and after a few minutes of silence Longbaugh was surprised to see two heavy dark objects burst insanely out of the boxelder trees, leaving a trail of straight lines made of flattened grass. His ear picked out the distant grinding and roaring, and he wondered how he had not heard them before. Both vehicles revved their engines to make up time and began to eat up the valley floor with disturbing speed. He counted three men between the two vehicles, but saw a strange humped shape on the front of the lead automobile that he did not understand.

  He watched for too long, each passing moment bringing them alarmingly closer, and he was keenly aware that if they saw him, there was a way to box him in. But he stayed yet another minute and then a minute more. The front vehicle did not slow to negotiate a dry gully between steep banks and struck something that was either tree trunk or boulder, and its front end soared, tires spinning vainly, a back wheel hitting the same obstruction and hurling the motorcar sideways. The unusual hump was thrown clear and he saw cartwheeling legs and arms as the unlucky fellow hit the side of the bank upside down and slid headfirst to the bottom. The vehicle landed upright on the opposite slope and paused there in a steep lean, then slowly, slowly tilted a little farther, then just a little farther, until it gave in to gravity and landed on the driver’s side. The second vehicle stopped short, and the two occupants rushed over, one to the driver, the other to the former hump. The upside-down fellow came up limping, and Longbaugh nodded to know he was all right. Longbaugh stayed where he was to see what they would do next.