Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (27 page)

She laughed and clung to me. After a moment she pulled back and asked, “What about you? Are you hurt?”

“Reckon my arm's bleedin' again,” I told her. “But I'll live.”

Damn right I would, I thought as she hugged me some more.

CHAPTER 44

“I
t was terrible,” Daisy told Sheriff Emil Lester. “That awful man was hiding in that tumbledown shack. He came out and started shooting at us with no warning as soon as we drove up. Mr. Strickland was wounded right away. The man probably would have killed us if Mr. Barstow hadn't returned his fire and driven him off.” She paused and sighed. “Unfortunately, poor Mr. Barstow was mortally wounded in the exchange of shots.”

The sheriff just looked at Barstow's bullet-riddled body and grunted.

“Yeah. Mortally wounded and then some, I'd say.” He stared at Daisy and me with narrowed eyes. “He was shot by some fella who was hiding in the shack?”

“That's right, Sheriff,” I said. I was sitting on the ground, leaning against the overturned buggy. Daisy sat next to me, re-bandaging my bloody, apparently freshly wounded arm. “I figure he must've been that train robber Barstow told us he was lookin' for. When I mentioned this old shack to him, he said this was just the sort of place where an owlhoot on the run might hole up. So I offered to show him where it was.”

“What happened to this . . . outlaw?” Lester asked through clenched teeth.

“I believe he was wounded,” Daisy said. “With everything that was going on, I didn't really see what happened to him. He must have run off.”

“Maybe he had a horse hidden in the brush,” I suggested. “If you take a look around, Sheriff, you might be able to pick up his trail.”

For a long time, Lester didn't say anything. He stood there looking at us, and after a while he lifted a hand and rubbed his chin as he frowned in thought.

Finally, he said, “I reckon that would be a waste of time. Whoever the fella was, he's long gone by now.”

Lester had ridden up about fifteen minutes after the shootout with Barstow. That had given Daisy and me time to get ready for him. We had trampled all over the place, making sure that the tracks didn't tell any comprehensible story.

“Too bad about Barstow,” the sheriff went on. “I got to know him a little the past few days. Never saw anybody who hated outlaws more than he did. It struck me that when he was after somebody he considered a lawbreaker, he might gun down anybody who got in his way, male or female, no matter who they were.”

I shook my head and said, “I only just met him today, so I couldn't really say, Sheriff. But from what I saw of him, I think that's exactly what he might've done.”

Lester took off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and slapped the hat back on his head. I could tell he was furious, but at the same time I had a feeling that his dislike of Barstow was genuine. But was that dislike strong enough to make him fail to carry out what he saw as his duty?

“You were on your way back to the Fishhook from a business trip in San Antonio?” he asked.

“That's right.” I looked over at Daisy. “Miss Hatfield was givin' me a ride. That's where we were goin' when we ran into that Barstow fella.”

“What happened to your horse?”

“Well, you see, he threw me and ran off when I was almost back to Largo. Got spooked by a rattlesnake coiled up under a mesquite. But I was able to hoof it into town and prevail upon Miss Hatfield here to help me out.”

“Uh-huh.” Lester turned his head, peered off into the distance, and chewed his mustache. I could tell his thoughts were eating him up inside. He didn't believe our story for a second, but he couldn't prove we were lying, not convincingly enough to take it to court, anyway. However, Simon Barstow had been a fellow lawman, whether Lester liked him or not, and every instinct in Lester's body was probably telling him that he couldn't let the person responsible for Barstow's death escape.

At the same time, he was a man, and he had just about openly admitted that Barstow was a sorry bastard who would shoot a woman if she got in his way. Given that, you might say that Barstow had gotten what was coming to him.

I could read the decision on Lester's face as he made up his mind. He said, “You're wounded, Strickland. We'd better get you back to town.”

“We're a lot closer to the Fishhook, Sheriff,” I said. “The fellas there can take care of me. If you'll just dab a rope on this buggy and use your horse to set it upright again . . . ”

Lester sighed.

“Fine. I'll see to it that you get home, then I'll come back here for Barstow's body. His bosses won't be happy that he's dead. They're liable to send even more men after those train robbers, especially after the owners of the railroad get through yelling.”

“You could be right, Sheriff,” I said as Daisy helped me to my feet. “I think they're gonna have a long chase for nothin', though. My hunch is that those varmints have lit a shuck out of this part of the country. You might not ever see 'em again.”

“Normally I wouldn't say this about a bunch of no-good outlaws . . . but there's a part of me hopes you're right about that, Strickland.”

A little while later, as we were rolling along in the buggy while Lester rode ahead of us, Daisy said, “Were you telling the truth back there, Jim, when you said that to the sheriff about the train robbers never coming back?”

“If they've got any sense, that'd be the smartest thing for them to do,” I told her.

“In a way, that would be a shame,” she said. When I looked over at her, she was smiling as she flicked the reins. “I was thinking that the real problem is the gang needs ten members instead of nine.”

“And just where would that tenth desperado come from?” I asked slowly.

She looked over at me and her smile widened.

I was going to tell her she was loco, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. Daisy Hatfield had a mind of her own, she did, and the only way to get that foolish notion out of her head would be to make sure she didn't have any chance to carry it out.

I could see the ranch up ahead now. Somebody must have noticed us coming, because several of the fellas were riding out to meet us. Enoch lifted a hand and waved. Scar bounded alongside the old gun-wolf's horse, barking his greeting.

“Just think about it, Jim,” Daisy said. “That's all I ask right now.”

“I will,” I promised, but I already knew what my decision would be.

My train robbing days were over.

And Butch Cassidy was finally dead.

Zephyr, Texas, 1950

 

“B
ut that's not true, is it?” Nathan Tuttle said as he sat on the bench beside Hank Parker. “You weren't through robbing trains, were you, or banks, either?”

Parker looked at his empty soda pop bottle and said, “This ran dry a long time ago.”

Nathan started to get to his feet, saying, “I'll get you another one—”

“Hold on, son. No need to do that. I'm dry, too. I'm done talked out.”

Nathan sank back down onto the bench and stared at the old cowboy.

“You can't stop there!” he said urgently. “You've admitted that you're Butch Cassidy—”

“Now wait just a doggone minute,” Parker broke in. “I never did no such thing.”

“But . . . but Jim told his friends that he was Butch Cassidy. He even told Miss Hatfield.”

“Maybe he did,” Parker drawled. “That don't make it true. He could've just been makin' up a whopper of a lie to get folks to go along with what he wanted 'em to do.”

“This is ridiculous!” Nathan said. “First you admit that you used to go by the name Jim Strickland, and then you say that Strickland was really Butch Cassidy, but now you're denying the whole thing.”

Parker shook his head.

“I never said such, and I can't be held to account for anything ol' Jim might've said to anybody else, now can I? It's a story, son. Maybe some of it's true. Maybe all of it's true.” Parker set the empty bottle aside, leaned back on the bench, and crossed his arms. “After all this time, what does it really matter?”

“Because I want to find out what happened!” Nathan said.

“There were other things in my grandfather's papers . . . notes about Pancho Villa and a bank in Mexico . . . and something about Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson . . . I want to know about that and all the other things he hinted about.” The young man paused and drew a deep breath. “And what about Daisy? I don't recall seeing anything about her. If she was so important in Jim Strickland's life, why is there no mention of her in my grandfather's papers?”

“That's a good question,” Parker said, his eyes narrowing as if he were looking at something far, far away. “Thing of it is, I don't have an answer for you. Not today, anyway.”

Nathan seized on that, leaning toward Parker as he said, “Does that mean you might be willing to talk to me again?”

Parker uncrossed his arms, put his hands on his knees, and pushed himself to his feet. He grimaced and said, “Hear those old bones poppin' and creakin' when I get up? That's what livin' too long will do for you. Time you get to be my age, all you got left is memories and achin' joints.”

He started toward the door into the grocery store.

“You didn't answer my question,” Nathan said. “Will you talk to me again and tell me the rest of it?”

Parker paused with the door open and looked at him.

“I guess you'll just have to come back and find out.” Amusement sparkled in the old man's blue eyes as he smiled and added, “I do like a dramatic moment.”

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ISBN: 978-0-7582-9034-2