MORNING WAS MUD and rain and more of both. The gap in the telegraph line had been found, new wire brought out, spliced. The keys were working again. Repair crews worked to heal the right-of-way with temporary tracks. Traffic was not yet moving, east or west.
That was someone else’s job. Sidney Blood’s job whirled around gold and outlaws. It had taken the whole miserable night to round up horses enough, to locate enough of his army, move it where the wrecked freight stood, forlorn, abandoned except for the cramped, unhappy, hogtied people in the dung fouled car.
Sidney Blood’s temper strained on a weakening leash. The ground around the train was a morass churned by Cassidy’s horses and the cattle herd that had been loosed. The steers were scattered to hell and gone. Some of them could be seen on the hillsides where a ravine cleft through. Of course the gold was gone. Finding the direction it had taken made more delay. Patrols thrown out in a wide circle to cut the outlaw’s trail. Locating it brought further chagrin. Up the ravine. So bold and deep that they had assumed that the cattle had dug it in their escape.
When he turned up it, Blood left behind a good deal done, and under difficulties. With the telegraph opened he had fired off a barrage of messages. To the army. The state governors. The sheriffs for miles around. All of the help he could call on was not enough to satisfy Sidney Blood for the upcoming manhunt. He was soaked, starved, tired. But mostly he was mad.
Contact with San Francisco had brought an offer of a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for return of the gold. For information leading to its return. Rewards doubled for Cassidy, Lassiter, any one of the Wild Bunch. Bait that Blood hoped would not have to be paid out. He wanted to find them and take them himself. Most especially Lassiter.
News of the increased rewards would have pleased Cassidy beyond his already pleased anticipation. Cassidy had gone along with Lassiter. Apparently. But from the first he had had his own idea of who would see the end of this trail. The party that would reach Mexico would be considerably smaller than the present fifty. The spoils divided would be less fragmented. Lassiter was not alone in his jeopardy.
He set a fast pace north, let his tracks reel out behind him. He knew Lassiter’s suspicion, enjoyed it. Knew Lassiter rode with a gun hidden in his hand. Come daylight, Lassiter would wish he had eyes all around his head. That was fine with Cassidy. Let Lassiter expect. And keep expecting. The tighter Lassiter’s nerves drew, the better repaid Cassidy would be for the humiliation at the Hole.
By noon the rain had stopped. The sun was out, hot. Fog evaporated from the canyons. The slippery mountain trail dried, then cracked. No move was made against Lassiter.
They rode steadily, with confidence. Sure of themselves here. This was their country, dominated by them for years. Outside justice never got near them in this territory. At sunset they rode into Colby. Openly. Bold. Lassiter was the only one surprised.
The town existed because of a crossroads, east-west, north-south. Its business was meager to serve a meager traffic. Corral, barn, blacksmith shop, a two-story hotel and connected barroom made one block. Facing it were a general store, sheriff’s office, jail, a fire house. The buildings one against the other, crowded as if space was at a premium in this wide plain.
On the cross street ran a gap-toothed row of shanty houses. In the ell on which these buildings turned their backs was a considerable depression, its steep sides used as a dump. Refuse, discard of all shapes, sizes, textures, degrees of disintegration sloughed down the slope. Ultramarine blue bottles still gummy with castor oil, whiskey bottles dyed purple by the sun, fragments of glass deepening toward dull orange, glittered through brittle leather, rusting cans, broken furniture.
Below the waste-fall, where the swale leveled, a handful of cribs huddled, shelter for the girls who worked the bar. All of the buildings were one color, pewter gray, weathered, warped, unpainted board.
The night’s wetting had steamed off through the day. The road surface hard, dried mud crazing, curling in a drab mosaic, not yet broken into dust. Not that many horses had used it.
Cassidy’s fifty wheeled in, milled around the livery door. There was not room in the corral for all the mounts. The first twenty filled it. The pack horses were driven into the runway, tied there. The overflow animals were dropped along the hitch rail, down the block.
Lassiter, at the end of the line with Cassidy, came up to find the men on the ground stretching, laughing, shoving, wrestling in horseplay. There was no sign of hurry, of urgency.
His mind went to Sidney Blood. Rain or no, Blood would be well on his way. Probably by now would have picked up the trail. That deep, arrogant trail of Cassidy’s. And a web of law would be springing up, surrounding them. Within twenty-four hours every road open to them would be blocked. The Outlaw Trail would be out beyond their reach.
What the hell was Cassidy doing? Where was he going? Soon there would be no escape route unless he went down in the ground, pulled the hole in after him. A hidden mine might do for that. A cave. But this was not mining country, cave country. It was flat as a griddle. Lassiter waited, said nothing.
Cassidy was in fine humor. He detailed ten men to stay with the pack horses, led the rest in echoing tramp down the hollow sidewalk to the hotel. To the dining room. None of them had eaten in a day and a night. They were ravenous as wolves. Strangely there had been no protest from those left behind. They took Cassidy’s arrangement as if they already expected it.
They ate in relays, sixteen at the tables, the rest taking advantage of the bar next door. Lassiter and Cassidy waited outside, listened to the din come over the batwing door, then joined the last group. The oilcloth on the long table was spotted, dirty. Flies swarmed hysterically over the food. No different from a thousand like places across the west. Every little isolated cluster that called itself a town had a duplicate. Except that there was food enough to fill the bellies of forty famished riders at least. The kitchen should not expect to feed forty in a month. Lassiter ate without appetite, automatically, of necessity. He did not know when he would eat again.
Afterward this group joined the others, again in the bar. There was no mention of a relief at the livery to let the men there come for food.
The saloon was bigger than the dining room, unadorned, functional. A long, plain counter ran from front to back on the side away from the arch. Poker tables filled the space between. Some looked to be permanent fixtures. More were makeshift, temporary. The chairs were mismatched, of many kinds, as if borrowed from different sources.
The girls were in shorter supply. There were only seven sprinkled through the crowd. None of them young, none good to look at. The painted smiles too heavy, bare shoulders oily, unwashed, the short dresses stiff with grime rather than starch. They made Hope seem queenly.
Two tables were occupied by strangers, not Cassidy’s men. Four at one, five around its neighbor. A heavyset man with a sheriff’s star on his shirt got up, made his way to the arch, shook hands heartily with Butch Cassidy, grinning. The other strangers watched, welcome in their faces.
So, Colby knew the Wild Bunch well. An outlaw town with an accommodating sheriff. And Cassidy must have sent word ahead that they were coming in. Lassiter wondered if this sheriff, these helpful people knew what trouble their friend was bringing in this time. It was beyond doubt that within a day, two at the most, Sidney Blood would thunder in here at the head of a Wells Fargo troop, asking questions, demanding answers, making things hotter than comfortable for those who sheltered the Wild Bunch.
Cassidy climbed to a chair, yelled to be heard, his arms sweeping the room.
“Set ’em up, boys. The night’s on me. Give any man here whatever he wants, all he wants. This is our night to howl.”
It made no reasonable sense. Relax now? Celebrate? Get drunk? Even without considering Blood, one loose mouthed boast would tip this town off that half a million dollars in gold lay piled in the straw of their livery. A crowd full of whiskey was in no shape to protect that gold. No shape, if Blood showed up, to fight, even to escape.
Lassiter couldn’t stop any of it. All day he had watched Cassidy, watched the line of riders, watched the side hills and the wide flat land. There had been no ambush, no try for him. He knew that it would come. Cassidy would never submit to his riding out with a single bar of that gold. It was too far out of the man’s character.
Cassidy wanted to sweat him. That was plain enough. Lassiter’s wariness was fine honed now. Cassidy moved away with the sheriff, joined the table, accepted a hand as cards were dealt. The game was desultory. The players’ interest was somewhere else. On something they waited for.
Through the cloud of cigar smoke, the smell of heated bodies and whiskey Lassiter found another smell. The stink of death in the room.
The arch behind him was too crowded to move through. The bar was mobbed. The tables were filled, men standing behind the chairs, kibitzing. Lassiter went through to the back of the room. A table there had an empty chair, crowded against the wall. He wedged into it. The men there quit talking, looked at each other, shutting him out. They got up and moved away. He shoved the table forward, gave himself more room. From there he could keep track of the action.
A girl squirmed through the press, dodged the hands that grabbed for her, came against the table. Her smile gashed her face.
“Want a drink with me, honey?”
He didn’t look at her, watched the room. “Bring a bottle.”
She went away, brought a bottle and two glasses, poured them full.
“You new in the Bunch? You ain’t been here before.”
“They come in often?”
“Pretty regular.” She flopped to a chair. She did not touch her glass.
“Drink up.”
She hesitated, covered, held the glass against her lips, waited for him. He raised his, cupped behind his hand. It smelled like a mickey. He tipped it against his lips, kept them tight. When she threw her head back, tossed her liquor down, he dumped his in his boot top.
He poured a second round, caught the sheriff’s glance just leaving him, reached across the table to fondle the girl. She leaned toward him, fumbled, found her glass, found her mouth with it. Her eyes looked out of focus. While they were off him as she drank he made the second pretense of swallowing, palmed his glass, poured it after the first.
Her head went over, the temple hit the table. She didn’t move again. Lassiter straightened back, looked astonished. The sheriff glanced that way again, Cassidy turned. While they stared at Lassiter a man at the bar crumpled to the floor. Another bent to look down and kept going. Lassiter did not appear to see them. He slopped more whiskey into his glass, spilled some, got the glass halfway to his lips. His elbow on the table gave way, dumped him face down. He slid, rolled, landed on the filthy floor.
He lay doubled up, his eyes closed, breathed with laboring lungs. Throughout the noisy room quiet spread, pocked with querulous oaths, with jarring thumps against the floor. Chairs scraped. A heavy voice laughed.
“There you are Butch, just the way you ordered it. That’s quite a sight.”
“It’ll make you rich.” That was Cassidy. “The one under that back table is worth five thousand, Wells Fargo money. The rest will scale from one to three. A nice haul.”
“Would be, if I didn’t have to split it up all over town.”
“Your business. Just you make sure none of them lives to talk, or you’ll split a noose.”
The heavy laughter. “I got that all set up. Let them come to, make a break. We’ll be waiting up on the roofs. Like shooting carp in a barrel.”
Boots crossed the room. Lassiter cracked his eyelids, saw Cassidy’s boots, saw one swing back, had the second of warning. The toe slammed in his side. He lay inert, made no sound except the thick breathing. Cassidy’s tone gloated.
“Bastard. You’ve got a sweet time coming to you.”
Other boots came up. Lassiter’s wrists and ankles were caught up. He was carried, swung like a hammock, out to the street, along it, in through a door, dropped on a wood floor. He lay quiet, on his face. Hands went over him, took his guns, stripped his pockets. More boots approached. The floor jarred with a second limp figure thrown down. A third. They kept coming, apparently ran out of room, began a second layer. Lassiter could not tell how many layers forty men made, but the weight crushed him flat, all but smothered him.
The sheriff was rattling papers, dodger sheets, Lassiter thought, and keeping a running count of profits aloud.
Lassiter admired the plan, the scope and simplicity of it. Cassidy was living up to his reputation. Ten men chosen to survive, help him get Blood’s golden horde into Mexico … Lassiter made his bet that Mexico, South America, would still be the goal … get it aboard a ship. How many of the ten would live after that, he would not bet on. With forty of his old crew drugged, set up for mass slaughter, Cassidy’s potential fortune leaped. With Lassiter among those sold to the sheriff of Colby, Cassidy was revenged on the man who had faced him down. It was a solid, efficient maneuver.
The cartage of live carcasses was finished. There was a period while they rested, laughed over the rewards Sidney Blood would pay them for this prime collection of wanted men. Cassidy was apparently gone. Lassiter smelled the smoke of fresh lit cigars. The sheriff said.
“Well, let’s go watch the show.” And the heavy boots of the men of Colby tramped out. A door closed. Left silence behind.
Lassiter moved, tried to move. The weight on him was heavy, shifting. Loosen it from one place and it sunk down in another. He was buried in bodies. It was like being buried in dry sand.
He got an arm crooked under him, tugged the other free of a wide belly that pinned it down, slid it beneath him. He shoved up, felt the weight against his shoulders give but not lessen. His spine arched backward. Dead weight filled the saddle, kept him down. His movement drew air around him from between the bodies, foul, sour, smothering.
He shifted his arms, got his elbows into his stomach, rocked forward, twisting. Head down, he forced his back up, dragged one leg in, got the knee doubled beneath him. He rocked again, brought up the other knee, rested, gathered all of his muscle, heaved his rump up. For a moment six hundred pounds hung on him, then sections of it slithered, rolled. His rump erupted through the corded bodies.
On his knees, he drew his torso, his head, out of the tunnel, looked about. There was no light in the immediate cell but a little came through the iron bars from the lamp in the office beyond. The wick was turned very low. He saw no one there, heard no sound.
The cell was small. The men were big, piled three and four deep in a sprawled tangle. On their feet they would have been jammed tighter than sardines in a can. Lassiter stood up, walked across the yielding bodies to the window at the rear. He tested the bars, found them too solid, looked out. The night was clear. It showed him nothing except the dump, the dark hollow.
He walked over the men again, went to the wall of bars. The door caught his attention. When he put his hand on it, it gave, swung outward. That would be the sheriff’s blind. A route left open to let the men try to escape when they waked. It would be considered within his rights to shoot down prisoners attempting a jail break.
Lassiter went to his hands and knees, crawled out of the cell, across to the office desk, stretched an arm up, turned the wick down. The light flamed for a second, went out. He crawled on, to the window fronting on the street. Close to the corner of the glass he raised his head enough to see through it.
There were men on the street. The sheriff, a dozen others. They ranged along the sidewalk, all looking one way. Up toward the livery. He could not see the building, but a path of light lay across the road, too wide to be anything except the open runway. Sudden laughter from the men came as something moving broke the light pattern.
Lassiter heard harness noises. Between the fence of figures on the sidewalk he saw the animals come down the street. Two Spanish mules, two more behind them as a team. The vehicle they pulled appeared. An army ambulance, trim, painted, red wheels unsoiled. Two uniformed figures rode the high seat.
It approached at a processional pace. Behind it rode an escort, spruce in regulation blue and campaign hats.
Butch Cassidy headed the escort. He wore the coat of a cavalry lieutenant. Cap set at a jaunty angle, shoulders squared, he made a fine figure of a soldier.
In front of the sheriff the train stopped. Cassidy got down, spoke to the man, waggled a warning finger in an army gauntlet, turned his back and rearranged his column. By twos, four men formed ahead of the ambulance, four remained behind. With the two on the seat all ten of Cassidy’s elite were accounted for.
The outlaw swung up, raised a hand in salute, wheeled his horse to the head of the column, shouted his order. The little brigade swept out of Colby at a gallop, heading westward.
Lassiter did not know what the ambulance was supposed to be carrying. Whatever it was, he felt sure that Cassidy held written orders, forged, orders that would not be questioned if they were stopped in passing through Sidney Blood’s lines.
The real load would be heavy, packed in a space beneath the floor. Yes, Cassidy had a flair, and scope.
Lassiter wondered if they had missed the two bars of gold now sunk in the mud under the cottonwood. They would not be linked to him; the pack horses had been too mixed up to tell who had handled which. But if the shortage had been noticed there would be a little less trust among this departing company.