Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (24 page)

CHAPTER 40

T
hat horse gave it everything. I knew I was going to wind up killing it, and I hated to do that. It wasn't even my horse.

But I loved it anyway. It must have sensed how desperate I was, and with the huge heart that some animals possess, it set out to save my life, even at the cost of its own. Amazingly, over the next half hour, we actually widened the gap between us and the posse.

Then a thinner column of dust separated itself from the big cloud raised by the posse and started drawing closer and closer. I cussed bitterly every time I looked over my shoulder and saw what was happening. At first I thought the dust was coming from two or three riders who had pulled ahead of the others, but then I realized it wasn't horses' hooves kicking up that dust.

It was the tires of an automobile.

Muscle and bone, even teamed with a gallant heart, couldn't outrun machinery. Not indefinitely, anyway. I could only hope that one of the tires would blow or the engine would overheat.

It didn't appear that was going to happen. I could see the automobile now. Two men were inside it. I figured one of them had to be Sheriff Lester. Chances were the other man was the one who'd planned the trap.

A flash of white up ahead made me groan. We had come to a salt flat. It stretched for a mile or more north and south on both sides of the tracks, and there was no telling how wide it was. If I turned north, the two men in the car could angle that same way and cut me off. If I tried to go straight across, there would be nothing to slow them down and they would stand a good chance of catching up to me.

Well, it had been a good run, I told myself as I galloped out onto the blindingly white flat. It was a damned shame things hadn't worked out. I hoped the rest of the fellas would have the good sense to take the loot they had and light a shuck. Once the law identified my body, they would come looking for the men who'd worked for me.

I rode hard for another mile. The salt flat still stretched ahead of me as far as I could see. I looked back. The automobile was on the salt, too, roaring after me.

I reined in and turned the horse around so I was facing my pursuers. The horse stood there, trembling slightly under me as I took a box of cartridges from Randy's saddlebags and filled the Winchester's magazine.

“You did good, old son,” I said. “I couldn't have asked for any more. I hope you come out of this all right, but I've got to ask you for one more thing.” I levered a round into the rifle's chamber. “Let's go!”

I drove my heels into the horse's flanks and sent it leaping ahead. As we charged toward the automobile I brought the rifle to my shoulder and began to fire as fast as I could work the lever.

It was a crazy thing to do, of course. I remembered Etta talking about an old Spanish fella named Don Quixote who had a habit of charging at windmills with a lance, thinking they were monsters. He was a character in a book, and since she'd been a schoolteacher at one time in her life, Etta knew about such things.

What I was doing at that moment reminded me of old Don Quixote. I figured I had a little better chance than he did, though. I had a Winchester with a full magazine.

With both of us moving fast like that, we closed the gap between us in a hurry. The fella in the passenger seat leaned out and returned my fire, but I guess the front seat of a bouncing, weaving automobile wasn't any better for accurate shooting than the hurricane deck of a galloping horse. We burned quite a bit of powder before one of us scored a hit, and that was me.

The windshield shattered as one of my bullets struck it. Glass sprayed back in the faces of the two men. The car skidded hard to its left, sending a shower of salt into the air from the tires. I thought it was going to flip over, but it didn't. It spun around a couple of times, though.

The passenger jumped out. He must have been jolted around enough during that crazy skid to make him drop his rifle. He clawed a pistol from under his coat, though, and tried to draw a bead on me.

I didn't give him time to do that. I was almost on top of him. I swung the rifle and smacked him in the side of the head with the barrel. He went down.

I could have trampled right over him, but instead I pulled the horse aside just in time. Circling back, I covered both men with the rifle. Neither of them moved. The fella I had just walloped was a stranger to me, although I found out later he was a Pinkerton agent named Simon Barstow. The other man, who was slumped forward over the steering wheel, was Sheriff Emil Lester, just as I had figured.

I dismounted and hurried over to check on Lester, keeping one eye on the dust cloud from the posse while I was doing it. Despite the fact that the sheriff was determined to bring me to what he thought of as justice, I sort of liked the stubborn ol' cuss. He seemed to be out cold, and when I pushed him away from the steering wheel, I saw why. He had a big lump on his forehead, along with a few cuts on his face from flying glass. I knew he must have hit his head on the wheel while the car was careening around and he'd knocked himself out.

An idea occurred to me. I leaned the Winchester against the side of the automobile, reached in, and got hold of Lester under his arms. I dragged him out and stretched him on the salt. His breathing was all right, and I figured he would be fine when he came to, except for a headache.

The other fella was unconscious, too. I had just clipped his skull with the rifle barrel, I decided when I probed the bloody lump above his ear. The bone wasn't crushed, so he ought to be all right, too, I told myself.

Once I'd checked on him, I went back to Randy's horse. The posse wasn't far off now. I took the saddle off and threw it in the back of the car. A swat on the rump with my hat sent the horse galloping away.

The automobile's engine was still running, which was a lucky break for me because I didn't know if I could have gotten it started by myself. I climbed in and put the rifle on the seat beside me. I had been in these contraptions before. I had even tried to drive one of them a time or two. So I sort of knew what all the pedals and levers did. I took a deep breath and started trying to make it go.

I knew the car was my only hope of outrunning the posse, as long as I could keep it moving. It lurched forward and the engine threatened to stall. I held my breath, and it started running smoother again. The car rolled forward as I pressed my foot down on one of the pedals.

It probably looked pretty funny, the way I had that thing bumping and jolting along, but eventually I got the hang of it and started going faster. I headed north, and as I twisted my neck around to look behind me, I saw the posse in the distance. They would stop to check on Sheriff Lester and his companion, and that would slow them down some. I had a chance to outrun them now, a real chance.

As I drove, the excitement started to wear off, and my arm hurt more. When I looked down at my sleeve I saw that it was bloody all the way down to my wrist. I had lost quite a bit of blood, and I could tell that from the woozy feeling that began to come over me. I told myself as sternly as possible that I couldn't afford to pass out. If I did, I would probably wreck the car. Even if I didn't, it would stop moving without me being able to push down on the pedals, and then the posse would catch up to me. It would spell doom either way for me.

As I drove I tried to force myself to think. Randy's horse was the one he'd ridden in on that night, so it didn't have a Fishhook brand on it. Even if the posse found it—and it was possible they wouldn't—they probably wouldn't be able to tell who it belonged to. That was the reason I'd taken the time to remove the saddle and toss it into the car. The horse that had been shot out from under me at the train was one of the mounts that had been ridden by the members of Randy's former gang and not the one I usually rode into Largo, so there was nothing tieing it to the Fishhook or to me, either.

I'd still had the bandanna over the lower half of my face and my hat was pulled down when I charged toward the automobile. Throw in the glare off the salt flat and it was doubtful that either man had gotten a real good look at me while the shooting was going on. Then Lester was out cold from bumping his head. He might have recognized me if he'd seen me close up, even with the bandanna over my face, but he hadn't.

That left the letter that had lured us into the trap. It was a pretty damning piece of evidence, but I didn't think it actually proved anything. Somebody could have tried to rob that train without knowing there was supposed to be a shipment of gold bullion on it. Given my growing reputation in the area as a philanthropist, I thought there were plenty of people who would testify that I couldn't possibly be an outlaw. If it came down to a trial, we would just maintain our innocence and trust in a jury to believe us.

All that went through my head as I kept driving. I came to the end of the salt flat and continued north. I didn't know how much gasoline the automobile had in it or how long it would run, but every time I looked back the dust cloud from the posse was smaller. I was pulling steadily away from them.

When I got closer to some hills that lay in my path, I turned west. That took me toward Largo. I was getting dizzier and dizzier, and if I hadn't had the setting sun to steer by, I might have driven around and around in circles. I couldn't feel my right arm anymore. That was pretty bad.

Somewhere along the way, an idea came to me. Dusk settled down, and as the stars came out in the bluish-purple sky above me, I also saw the lights of the settlement twinkling in the distance. Just like the now-vanished sun, they were a beacon to me and seemed to pull me on physically. Now that it was dark, the posse couldn't trail me, and I became convinced that if I could just make it to Daisy's house, everything would be all right.

Looking back on it, if I'd been thinking straighter I would have stayed as far away from Daisy Hatfield as I could. The last thing I should have wanted was for her to get mixed up in trouble with the law.

But I was hurting and half out of my head, and a vision of her beautiful face seemed to float in the air in front of me, drawing me on as surely as the lights of Largo. Maybe I thought I was going to die. Maybe I just wanted to see her one more time before I crossed the divide. I don't really remember.

But I know I felt a keen stab of disappointment when the automobile's engine sputtered, coughed, and died, and the damned thing shuddered to a stop. I leaned forward and rested my forehead on the steering wheel, probably about the same place Sheriff Lester had whopped his head and knocked himself out.

Finally I sat up again. I could sit there until morning came, I told myself, but if I did there was a good chance the posse would find me as it resumed the search. The cool night air was better for walking, and I could still see the lights ahead of me so I wouldn't get lost . . . as long as I didn't start imagining things that weren't there. Largo was only a few miles away, I estimated. I could walk that far.

I climbed out of the car, taking the rifle with me. I didn't like the idea of leaving the saddle behind, but I knew I couldn't carry it, too. Nor was there a good place nearby to hide it. I settled for slinging the saddlebags over my shoulders and hoped the saddle itself didn't have anything on it that would identify it as belonging to Randy McClellan.

Just like the night I had traveled through that bitter cold wind to track down Abner Tillotson's killers, I don't remember much about my journey to Largo. I kept my gaze fixed on the lights and put one foot in front of the other, again and again and again. A few times I stumbled and almost fell, but I fought to stay on my feet because I knew that if I went down there was a good chance I'd be too weak to get up again.

It felt like a million miles, but gradually the twinkling dots of light got bigger and turned into yellow glows from windows. A quarter-moon rose behind me, and in the silvery wash of its light I spotted the church, even though I was still a mile away. When I got closer I had to stop and think about where the Hatfield house was in relation to the church. It wouldn't do to show up bloody and half-conscious on somebody else's doorstep.

I didn't think about what Reverend Hatfield might do. I suppose my thoughts were just so full of longing to see Daisy again that I didn't even consider her father. Anyway, there was no real law in Largo, so there wasn't much the preacher could do without heading for the county seat, and if he did, I would worry about that later.

After what seemed like an eternity, I found myself at the back of Daisy's house. I knew which window went with her bedroom, so I stumbled over to it and started tapping on the glass. The shape I was in, just doing that much seemed like a monumental effort. I got so tired I rested my head against the glass as I continued tapping quietly on it.

The window going up almost made me fall down. I caught myself with my good arm against the sill. Daisy leaned out and gasped.

“Jim! My God! Is that you?”

I lifted my head. I could feel a silly grin stretching across my face but couldn't stop it. I was just blasted happy to see her again, even if it turned out to be for the last time.

“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.