Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

T
he two men in front of the house were already moving, but I was pretty sure I winged one of them. He let out a yelp, and I saw him twist sideways in the saddle.

About then bullets smashed the window and sent glass flying, and I had to duck. I hoped none of the slugs whipping around the room hit the kid where he lay on the sofa, but there was nothing I could do about that now except try to end the fight as quickly as possible.

I rolled across the floor to the window on the other side of the door and came up on my knees. Instead of taking the time to open the window, I broke out the glass with my rifle barrel. One of the men was right in front of me, trying to get his horse back under control. The shooting had caused the animal to spook, and it was crowhopping around so that the rider had his hands full just staying in the saddle.

I solved that problem for him by blowing him off the horse's back.

He threw his arms in the air and screamed as he fell. As I shifted my aim and searched for the other men, I heard something smash through the rear window. I twisted around so that my back was against the wall. The man at the window opened fire, spraying bullets across the adobe wall above me as he triggered wildly. I went flat on my belly, staying low, and aimed just above his muzzle flashes, firing three shots of my own as fast as I could work the Winchester's lever. The man stopped shooting and disappeared from the window.

The door crashed open then, but the third man had sense enough not to just charge in blindly. Instead he threw something in ahead of him.

My eyes widened as I saw a stick of dynamite go bouncing across the floor with sparks flying from its burning fuse.

There was no time to think about what to do. I moved, diving toward the dynamite as it started to roll under the sofa where the wounded youngster still sprawled. I couldn't reach it in time with my hand, but I stuck out the Winchester and used the barrel to bat the red cylinder away from the sofa.

I'd like to claim credit for what happened next and say that it was because of my quick thinking and hair-trigger reflexes, but to tell you the truth it was just pure dumb luck. The dynamite went spinning back through the open door onto the gallery just as the spark on the fuse reached the blasting cap. It went off with a boom, blew the hell out of the awning, knocked down one of the posts, cracked the adobe wall, and left a big hole in the boards of the gallery. The thunderclap of the explosion deafened me for a minute or so as well.

I stayed there on the floor, trying to catch my breath while my hearing came back to me. My head swiveled from side to side. I couldn't hear anything, so I had to rely on my eyes to warn me if more trouble came my way.

It didn't, and when my ears started working again I heard the ugly sound of somebody gasping and gurgling for air they just couldn't get.

I climbed to my feet and felt my way over to the table where the lamp sat. I kept some matches there, and I lit one of them and held it above my head in my left hand while I pointed the Winchester in front of me with my right. If I fired the thing one-handed it might break my wrist, but I had to be able to see.

When I stepped outside, the flickering light from the match barely reached a dark shape spread out on the ground about ten feet from the gallery. I moved around the hole the dynamite had left and approached the figure.

The man lay on his back, his feet kicking feebly as he pawed at his neck with his hands. He was trying to get hold of a large, jagged splinter of wood that had lodged in his throat. The explosion must have sent it flying right at him. As I watched, he managed to pull it loose.

That was a mistake, although leaving the splinter in his throat wouldn't have done anything except postpone the inevitable. Blood poured from the wound, his feet scrabbled a frantic little dance in the dirt for a few seconds, and then he went limp. I knew he was dead, but I lowered the match close to his face anyway and saw the glassiness that was spreading over his eyes.

The match burned out. I went inside and used another one to light the lamp, and then I took it back out to check on the other two. They were dead as well, one in front of the house with half his face blown away and the other at the back window with a couple of bullet holes in his chest.

That just left the kid, and when I went inside again I was relieved to see that he was still alive. All that lead whistling around the room, and none of it had found him. He had to be leading a charmed life.

In a way I felt sorry for him. I knew the feeling of being untouchable, of believing that no matter how bad things got, somehow they were going to work out. I remembered thinking that I would always be able to dodge the worst trouble, that something—call it God or fate or just plain luck—would intervene at the last moment and turn aside whatever disaster was barreling down on me.

And for a lot of years, that was exactly the way things happened.

Until they didn't. And after that, nothing in my life was ever the same.

“Enjoy it while you can, kid,” I told him, even though he couldn't hear me while he was unconscious. “It won't last. And in the meantime, you've left me a hell of a mess to clean up.”

CHAPTER 10

I
started by dragging the bodies into the barn and hoisting them onto the buckboard. The horses and mules didn't like the smell of all that freshly spilled blood, but there was nothing they could do about it except stomp around restlessly and whinny their complaints.

The horses the three men had ridden in on were gone, having run off after their owners were shot. I'd probably be able to find them in the morning, I thought. Once I had the bodies loaded on the buckboard, I threw a piece of canvas over them and tied it down good. That would keep varmints away from them.

That was really all I could do tonight. The damage to the house from the explosion would take several days to repair, maybe as much as a week. I went back inside, found the pistol the kid had pointed at me, unloaded it, and stowed it away in Abner's trunk where the kid couldn't find it if he woke up.

Then I took off my hat and boots, crawled back into bed, and went to sleep. Killing wore me out. I was glad I hadn't had to do it for all those years. But these three varmints hadn't given me any choice, and I was damned if I was going to lie awake tossing and turning over what I'd done.

When I woke up in the morning the kid was trying to stand up, but he was too weak from losing all that blood to make it. He couldn't even sit up. He slumped back on the sofa and let out a bitter curse before he knew I was awake. I'd been watching him with one hand on the Remington, which I'd slipped under my pillow the night before.

“Take it easy,” I told him. His head jerked toward me, and his eyes were open so wide I could see white all around them. “You're not hurt that bad, but you're gonna need some rest while you're recuperatin'.”

“Who . . . where . . .”

“Those are good questions,” I said as I sat up. “Why don't you answer the first one? What's your name?”

The night before, I'd heard one of the men say that Randy's horse was in the barn, so I was curious to see if the kid would tell me the truth.

After a moment of lying there looking like he wanted to jump up and bolt out the door, he said quietly, “Randall.”

“What'd you say?” I asked, even though I had heard him.

“Randall,” he repeated, and his voice was stronger this time. “Randall McClellan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Randy,” I said. “I'm Jim Strickland. I introduced myself last night, but the shape you were in at the time, I sort of doubt that you recall it. This is my place.”

“I know. I remember being here before. What I don't understand is how I got here now.”

“Your horse brought you. I reckon you passed out from bein' shot, but your horse kept goin'. Lucky for you that he did, too. I got the feeling that the hombres who were lookin' for you weren't real happy with you. Not much tellin' what they might have done if they'd caught up to you out on the prairie.”

“Tate!” he said. He started getting that wild-eyed look again. “Is Tate here?”

“I don't know,” I said. “There are three dead men out in the barn, but I didn't ask their names before I killed them.” I paused. “Seems like I remember that one of them was called Steve, though.”

Randy leaned his head back and closed his eyes as a sigh came from him.

“Steve Tate,” he said, opening his eyes again. “You say he's dead?”

“Dead as can be. So are the other two.”

“Williams and Perkins,” Randy said.

“Your partners in that train robbery?”

He jerked again. He was a jumpy cuss, even wounded like that.

“How did you—”

I held up a hand to stop him.

“You need some coffee and something to eat,” I told him. “The sooner we get some food in you, the sooner you'll start getting over bein' shot like that.”

I got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and began rustling some breakfast for us. I hadn't forgotten about those three corpses out in the barn, but I wanted to get things squared away with Randy first.

When I had the coffee brewed and the bacon and flapjacks were ready, I helped him sit up on the sofa and set a tray with a cup and plate on it in his lap. After we had eaten, I would check that bandage on his side.

He was still shaky, but he was strong enough to hold his own coffee cup and feed himself. I sat at the table to eat. The room wasn't so big we had to yell at each other to be heard.

“You fellas were the ones who tried to hold up that train, right?” I asked him.

“It wasn't my idea,” he said with a sullen look on his face. “Tate came up with the plan. He said we could make a fortune. I'd been drifting for a long time, ever since my folks died, and I thought if I could make some money, everything would finally be all right again.”

“People tend to think that, all right,” I said. “Most of the time, it don't work out that way, though.”

“Yeah, I'm starting to realize that. I didn't know at first he planned to derail the train. When I found out I told him we shouldn't do it. I said we might kill a bunch of innocent people. You know what he did?”

I shook my head.

“He just laughed at me and said there aren't any innocent people, just them that have and them that don't. I was brand-new to the gang. I couldn't stop them.”

“You could've ridden away,” I pointed out.

“They would have killed me rather than risk me putting the law on their trail.”

I thought about it for a moment and nodded.

“More than likely,” I agreed.

He took another drink of the coffee to brace himself up some more, then went on, “When things didn't work out just like Tate hoped, he said we'd have to charge in and kill the express messengers. But it wasn't just clerks in the express car. There were armed guards in there, too, and they opened fire on us before we could even start shooting at them. I . . . I squeezed off a few rounds, then I couldn't take it anymore. I turned around and tried to get out of there. But Tate saw me, and he . . . he shot me himself. He was like a wild man, raving and cussing and shooting. I didn't think I'd get out of there alive, Mr. Strickland.”

“You probably didn't miss being dead by much,” I said. “Why were they trying to track you down? I would've thought they'd be puttin' as many miles between them and Cougar Pass as they could.”

“I guess Tate didn't want me telling the law who they were. We wore bandannas over our faces, and everything was so mixed up because of the wreck and all the shooting I don't think anybody could have identified us later.”

He was probably right about that, too, I thought.

“And I think Tate was loco,” Randy added in a hushed voice. “I think he might've wanted to kill me just because I tried to run out on them. Williams and Perkins would have gone along with him on that. They were sort of scared of him.”

“What you're tellin' me all makes sense,” I said. “But I've got another question for you . . . do you still have your heart set on being a train robber?”

“I
never
set out to be a train robber,” he said. “I told you, I just sort of fell in with those men, Mr. Strickland. I've done some things I'm not proud of. I've stolen to eat, stole money and food both. But I didn't want to kill anybody.”

That was what I'd thought he would say, but I was glad to hear it anyway. I drank the last of my coffee and said, “All right, Randy, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna change that bandage on your side, and then I'm taking those three dead outlaws to Largo and sending word to Sheriff Emil Lester about them. I'm gonna tell the sheriff that they showed up here last night and tried to kill me and my new hired man so they could loot the place and steal some fresh horses.”

“New hired man? You mean me?”

“That's right.” I stood up. “You signed up to work for the Fishhook spread yesterday morning, you understand? So there's no way you could've been anywhere near Cougar Pass when that locomotive went off the rails.” He started to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. “Not only that, but you were wounded valiantly in the fight when we downed those owlhoots. As far as I'm concerned, you're a hero, and as soon as you can ride again, you've got a job here on the Fishhook for as long as you want it.”

He stared at me, unable to speak. When he finally found his tongue again, he asked, “Why would you do that for me? You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.”

“Well, hell, son,” I told him with a grin, “I've been in some pretty desperate straits myself from time to time. I know what it feels like to not have any hope, and then somebody holds out a sliver of it. You grab on to it because there's nothin' else you can do, not if you're human. We're all weak now and again. That don't mean we don't deserve a second chance.”

“I . . . I can't believe it.”

“You'd better believe it, because it's the truth. There's only one thing you've got to do right now for me.”

He got a wary look on his face again, and I didn't blame him a bit. It was probably going to be a long time before he trusted anybody completely again, if he ever did.

“What's that?” he asked.

“You've got to give me your word you won't do anything stupid while I'm gone, like trying to get on a horse and ride away from here. You've got to promise that you'll be here when I get back from town.”

He didn't answer right away, even though we both knew he had plumb run out of options. I guess he still had enough pride he wanted to make it look like he was thinking about it.

Finally he nodded and said, “All right. I give you my word. I'll be here, Mr. Strickland.”

I grinned at him again and told him, “Good. Finish your breakfast. You need to get your strength back as soon as you can. If you're gonna ride for the Fishhook brand, you're gonna earn your keep, son!”