Butch Cassidy the Lost Years (22 page)

CHAPTER 36

T
he next few months were the happiest I'd been since the early days in Argentina with Harry and Etta. We hit five more trains, traveling as far as New Mexico to hold up one of them. The take was never less than two grand, and one glorious day it was almost $28,000.

We had to fire a few warning shots here and there, but the conductor Santiago had been forced to wound on the second job remained the only casualty, which pleased me considerably. Some people would probably say that I didn't have a conscience, but I knew that I did, and it stayed fairly clean as long as we didn't kill anybody.

The fact that we gave away so much of the money probably helped with that, too. The First Methodist Church of Largo, Texas, was finished now, with its white-painted walls, its towering steeple, and its bells that sounded the call to worship every Sunday. I usually attended the services, sitting in one of the front pews with Daisy and sharing a hymn book with her as we sang along with the rest of the congregation.

Her father had bought a small house in Largo to use as a parsonage, and of course the money from the holdups paid for that, too, although the reverend would have been horrified if he'd known.

Franklin Hatfield wasn't the only one we helped, of course. Clyde Farnum hit a rough patch when one of the companies that had been supplying the groceries he carried was sold and the new owner called in all the debts. Farnum needed a loan to tide him over, and I supplied it, telling him to just pay me back when he could and not worry about it. I didn't know if I'd ever see any of that money again, and I didn't care.

Santiago knew several Mexican farmers who were about to go bust, and we slipped them enough money to keep going. I did likewise with several small ranchers in the area who'd had financial reverses. When Tom Mulrooney needed a new forge for his blacksmith shop, I made sure that he got it.

Every time I helped somebody, I told them to keep to themselves where the assistance came from, but I suppose word got around anyway, at least to a certain extent. I couldn't go anywhere without folks nodding to me and smiling, and I figured I knew the reason why.

That was skirting on the thin edge of danger, and I knew it. The Fishhook was a good spread, but it wasn't any better than a lot of others and there was no reason it ought to be more prosperous. I knew Sheriff Emil Lester was a relatively smart man. If he heard that I was handing out money right and left, he might start to wonder where it was coming from.

The thing of it was, running that risk made the whole thing even sweeter for me. What's the use of living if you don't take a chance now and then?

I took chances with Daisy Hatfield, too, and that did sort of trouble me. She would rent a horse from Mulrooney and we would meet out on the range to ride together, or I would come to her father's house in Largo when he was off in the far corners of the county doing his visitations. We were careful about those meetings. Daisy claimed she didn't care all that much about her reputation, but I did. I wanted to protect her as much as I could, and that included not letting ugly rumors spread about her.

But I couldn't stay away from her. I argued with myself up one way and down the other that I was too old for her. I said that very thing to her on a number of occasions, and every time I did she got almost spittin' mad at me.

“I've told you that I'm older than my years, Jim Strickland,” she'd say to me, “and you're younger than yours. That way we sort of meet in the middle. Anyway, there are plenty of couples in my father's congregation where the husband is in his thirties or forties, and the wife is barely out of her teens!”

She was right about that. Such matches weren't unusual in those days, especially when the husband had been married before and his first wife had passed away.

“I'm twenty-four years old,” Daisy went on. “I'm practically an old maid!”

She had a point there, too. Most women didn't reach that age without being married. A lot of them had several kids by then. But as she admitted, she had spent her life taking care of her father and helping him with his calling. Now she wanted to do something for herself, and I couldn't really blame her.

It was a struggle, but we kept some boundaries in place. She was a decent woman . . . but she kissed like an indecent one. A man would've had to be made out of mighty stern stuff not to be tempted once he had that warm, sweet bundle of womankind in his arms, and I'd never been what you'd call good about resisting temptation. Somehow we managed, but it wasn't easy for either of us.

That was how it went, that summer of 1915. Was there trouble elsewhere in the world? Sure there was. Over in Europe folks were fighting a big war. We heard about that even in West Texas. But it didn't seem to have anything to do with us, and I never gave it much thought. My world was Largo, and the Fishhook, and the range around it, and as long as Daisy and my pards were there, that was plenty big enough for me.

One day when we were out riding, we stopped on top of a rise that looked down a long valley stretching for miles between low, rolling hills. Fishhook was at the far end of that valley. I couldn't see the ranch buildings from here, but I knew they were there and that put a good feeling inside me.

Daisy had brought along a blanket and a picnic basket. She spread the blanket on the grass and we sat down to eat while our horses grazed. The sun was pretty warm, so I was grateful for the shade of a cottonwood tree. Dappled patterns of light and shadow played over us as we ate. Daisy was lovely in a white blouse and dark green riding skirt. She had worn that dang straw boater of hers while we were riding, but when we sat down to enjoy the picnic she took it off and set it aside. The changing light made different shades of red shine from her hair.

I had never seen anything so pretty in my life.

After a while she blushed and said, “You're staring at me, Jim.”

“Am I? I was just wonderin' how a beautiful young girl like you wound up with a worn-out old varmint like me.”

“Stop that,” she said. “You say things like that nearly every time we're together, and I don't like it. You know that's not the way I feel about you.”

“There's no gettin' around the facts,” I told her. “When I was born, George Custer was still nine years away from meetin' up with the Sioux at the Little Big Horn. By the time you were born, the West as I first knew it was almost gone. The little bit that's left is fadin' away with every day that passes.”

She looked at me and shook her head.

“How can you be so melancholy on such a beautiful day?” she asked.

“I'm not tryin' to be. It's just that sometimes I think maybe I'm fightin' a losin' battle, tryin' to hold back time.”

“Isn't that what we're all doing, though? Looking for happiness even though we know by its very nature that it's fleeting and doomed to end?”

I laughed and said, “Shoot, now I've made you gloomy.”

She scooted closer to me and said, “I know a good antidote for doom and gloom that will work on both of us. Kiss me.”

“That sounds like good medicine, all right.” I put a hand under her chin, cupping it as I lifted her face. “Let me have a sample.” When I took my mouth away from hers a couple of minutes later, I said, “I don't know if it works or not, but it tastes a whole heap better than castor oil.”

“I think you need to increase the dosage,” she murmured.

“Better too much than not enough . . .”

Well, we carried on like that for a while, and that riding skirt of Daisy's worked its way up her legs until they were bare to the knees. If she had been like some of the other women I'd known in my life, I would have put that blanket to even better use, but there came a point when Daisy started trying to straighten herself up and I didn't object, even though I wanted to. The last thing in the world I wanted was for that gal to do something she would regret later on.

We finished what was left of the picnic, put everything away, and folded the blanket. As we were about to mount up, Daisy paused and gazed off down the valley for a long moment. Without looking at me, she sighed and said, “Do you sometimes wish that the world could stay just the way it is at a particular moment, Jim? That the good things could just go on and on the way they are just then?”

“That's a mighty pretty thing to think about, all right,” I told her.

But it was impossible. Nothing stayed the same for long, especially the good things. There was always a snake slithering into the garden somewhere.

In this case, that snake was named Simon Barstow.

CHAPTER 37

T
he railroad was not happy with me.

To be specific, Lewis Kennedy and Albert Milton weren't happy with me. Every time I went to Farnum's store, I picked up the newspaper from the county seat, as well as the papers from San Antonio, and every time after we pulled a job, Kennedy and Milton would be quoted spouting off to reporters about how outraged they were by the robberies and how this wave of crime and degradation would soon come to a halt. They took turns promising that the thieves would soon be apprehended, and they stopped just short of saying that when we were caught, we'd be strung up . . . after having a bullwhip taken to our backs. Hell, if it had been up to them, they would have dipped us in boiling oil.

And each time, they sounded more embarrassed, more desperate, and more scared for their own jobs than they had the time before.

That was fine with me. I intended to keep it up long enough to get those two no-account buzzards fired. Even that was a better fate than they deserved.

Desperate men are dangerous, though, and Kennedy and Milton, despite all their blustering, really did intend to put up a fight. They couldn't do it on their own, though. They had to have help.

That's why they sent for Simon Barstow.

Understand, I didn't know all this at the time. I'd never even heard of Barstow. He had risen to prominence in the Pinkertons while I was in South America and then in Europe. He'd made a name for himself catching bank robbers back east, and it stood to reason that eventually the Pinks would send him west. He'd busted up a gang in Iowa and another in Missouri. It was while he was in St. Louis that he'd gotten his first crack at train robbers. He chased them all the way to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and caught up to them there. With half a dozen other Pinkerton detectives, he'd raided the gang's hideout and wiped them out in a fierce gun battle, recovering most of the loot they had stolen. I read all about it later on. According to the newspapers, Simon Barstow was Nick Carter, Old Sleuth, and Wyatt Earp all rolled into one.

You can look him up if you want. His picture is in newspapers and magazines from those days. He was a handsome man, with dark hair, piercing eyes, a strong nose, and a thick black mustache waxed to sharp points on the tips. Kennedy and Milton must have been as impressed as all get-out when Barstow strode into Kennedy's office in San Antonio, gave them a firm handshake, and promised to bring to justice the scoundrel who was causing them so much trouble—namely, me—and if I resisted, Barstow intended to send the villain straight to hell by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, blissfully ignorant, I started planning our next holdup. Reverend Hatfield's church had a piano to play along with the hymn singing, but I thought it would be nice if there was an organ, too. Some of those church songs just sounded better when they were played on the organ. I figured God could hear 'em better, all the way up yonder in Heaven.

I hadn't settled on a time and place to pull the next job when we got word that John Hamilton had died down in the county seat. He had battled that gut rot, as he called it, longer than anybody expected him to. Vince's mother called Farnum's store, since that was where the only telephone in Largo was located, Farnum told Reverend Hatfield, and the reverend drove out to the Fishhook to break the news to Vince, since Hamilton and Vince's dad had been best friends. I thought that was mighty nice of the reverend, who had gotten the hang of driving that automobile, sort of. It still jerked and lurched quite a bit when he was behind the wheel.

“I ought to go to the funeral,” Vince said. “Mr. Hamilton was like an uncle to me.”

“I'll ride down with you,” I told him. “Hamilton seemed like a good fella, and he stuck by your dad's memory when there was all that trouble, that's for sure.”

Bert wanted to go, too. Since the funeral was going to be held the next morning, the three of us started for the county seat that afternoon, intending to ride well into the night to get there.

Vince told us his ma likely would be offended if we didn't spend the night there, so that's where we headed. Mrs. Porter was glad to see Vince, and she made me and Bert feel welcome, too.

“I was hoping you'd come,” she said to Vince as we sat in her parlor. “Your father would have wanted you here to help say good-bye to his old friend.”

“That's what I thought,” Vince said.

Mrs. Porter got up and went over to a little table with a drawer underneath it. She opened the drawer, took out an envelope, and handed it to Vince.

“He left this for you,” she said.

“Who?” Vince asked with a puzzled frown. “Mr. Hamilton?”

“That's right. It was in his room with his other things. The sheriff brought it over this morning.”

I saw that the envelope was sealed and had Vince's name written on it. He tore it open, unfolded the piece of paper inside, and started to read. I could tell by the way his eyes widened and the muscles of his face got tight that the words written on the paper shocked him.

He did a good job of covering it up, though. When his mother asked him if something was wrong, he shook his head and put the letter back in the envelope. As he slipped it into his pocket, he said, “No, Mr. Hamilton just wanted to tell me again not to believe any of the things that were said about Dad.”

“That was thoughtful of him, to do something like that while he was on his deathbed.”

“Yeah,” Vince said. I could see how distracted he was, even if his mother couldn't.

Vince was staying in his old room, of course. The house was small and didn't have a guest room, but there was a sleeping porch at the back with a cot. Bert would stay there, and Mrs. Porter made up the sofa for me. I was about ready to turn in when Vince came into the room, quiet-like, carrying the envelope with the letter from John Hamilton.

“Boss, you'd better look at this,” he said as he held it out to me.

The only lamp in the room still burning had been turned down low. I turned it up again, brightening the glow until I could make out the words scrawled on the paper in the shaky writing of a man on his deathbed.

I looked up at Vince and asked, “Do you believe this about the gold bullion?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “Before he had to retire because he got sick, Mr. Hamilton was in charge of freight operations for this whole section of the line. He knew everybody, and they all trusted him, with good reason. He was as honest as they come.”

“But he's tellin' us to hold up that train.”

“Keep reading,” Vince said.

Something else occurred to me as I read the words with narrowed eyes. I pointed at the letter and asked, “Are you sure this is Hamilton's handwriting?”

“Yes, sir. I saw it on the chalkboard in the station often enough.”

“And you trust him? This couldn't be some sort of trick?”

“I can't imagine him doing that. Not after he and my dad were friends for so long. You've got to understand, Mr. Strickland, my father was a brakeman. Mr. Hamilton didn't work with him. They didn't have to be friends. But they were, because they genuinely liked and respected each other.”

I looked back down at the letter and read,
If I've guessed wrong about you and your friends being responsible for those train robberies, I hope you'll forgive me. Consider it just a figment of a sick old man's imagination. But if it's the truth, then take what I've told you and do with it what you will. I know I can count on you to do the right thing, son.

“Well,” I said slowly as I lowered the paper. “That's mighty interestin'.”

“What I can't figure out is how he knew what we've been doing.”

“A good guess, I'd say. I just hope the sheriff doesn't make the same guess one of these days.”

“A job like this,” Vince said with a nod toward the letter still in my hand, “if we pulled that off, we could afford to stop. We'd have enough money to help anybody who needed helping, and the Fishhook could just be a ranch again.”

“I don't know . . . ,” I said.

“It's been really exciting and we've done a lot of good, but it had to come to an end sooner or later, Mr. Strickland. I'm just a kid and I know that.”

I frowned, not liking it very much that somebody his age was lecturing me. I was the one who was supposed to be all grown up, not him.

But I'd had that trouble all my life, I suppose. Growing up, settling down, living a respectable life, it all sounded fine when you were just talking about it, but when the time came to do it, I'd always balked. Back home in Utah, down in Argentina, now here in Texas, I'd had my chances, and every time I'd grabbed the first excuse I could find to go back to hell-raisin'.

Maybe it was different now. Maybe with Daisy in the picture, I really could settle down, and as that thought crossed my mind the idea of getting married followed it. Yeah, I was older than her, but we could still have a long life together, and when I was gone, I could leave her a fine ranch, maybe even some kids, as my legacy.

I handed the letter back to Vince and said, “I'm not makin' any promises . . . but we'll look into it. And if it works out, you're right, son, we can go back to bein' honest citizens.”

Not everybody on the ranch would like that. I could see Enoch and Gabe deciding to pull up stakes and drift on, rather than staying to spend the rest of their lives as mere cowhands. With Randy, Bert, and Vince, though, I'd have the makings of a good, permanent crew. Santiago and his cousins could still work for me at roundup time. They had pitched in enthusiastically enough when it came to the robberies, but I didn't think they would mind if we called that part of it quits.

The one who would really have trouble accepting it, I thought, was me. And I would have Daisy to help me get over missing the old days.

Time to look ahead instead of back, I told myself. Time to think about the future and stop trying to relive the glory days, the days of blood and thunder.

There was just one more thing we had to do first . . .