“I heard what you said, but what does it mean?” Butch asked, full of whiskey but alert. “Don’t talk in riddles, Saddler.”
“You’re the one who’s beating about the bush. What I meant is, if they’re planning to trap you, maybe we can turn it back on them. This job you keep hinting at, how good is your information?”
“My man has always been reliable in the past, but this time I get a bad feeling from him. I think they may be on to him, maybe threatening to send him up for twenty years if he doesn’t play along. It’s like he’s too eager to set this job up. He keeps pushing for it, saying there’s talk of the Pinks sending for Tom Horn. Tom used to be with the Pinks. Now they tell me he has a ranch somewhere. Saddler, I don’t want to tangle with the likes of Tom Horn.”
I knew something about Tom Horn. Everybody did. No two men could agree about Tom Horn. To some he was a cold-blooded killer and a thief to boot. Others saw him as the scourge of all the badmen in the West. I knew he had killed plenty of them. All that people could agree on was that he was the best tracker and man catcher in the country.
“Why haven’t they sent for him before now?” I asked. The Pinkertons always had the best of everything—men, weapons, horses.
“Tom and the Pinks didn’t part as friends,” Butch said. “There was talk that some of the stolen money he recovered stuck to his fingers. But nothing could be proved, then or now. Still, it was funny that the bandits who stole the most money Tom always brought back dead. And they all died broke, according to him. On the other hand, he often brought in smalltime outlaws who didn’t mean shit. Now the Pinks don’t mind if you bring them all in dead, but they do like to see a little stolen money along with the corpses. So they argued with Tom about that, and he quit. Tom’s a greedy man. If he goes back to work for the Pinks, he won’t do it cheap. I’d like to be long gone before he starts working again.”
“What’s this dread of Horn? You don’t fret much about the rest of them.”
“Tom’s different,” Butch said. “It’s like having a ghost after you. He works alone and never gives up—never! He’ll go for days without food, sleep out in the wet and cold, all so he can ambush a man. Ambushing is his stock in trade, and he’ll be back.”
I got back to the robbery Cassidy hadn’t told me about. “Come on, Butch, why are you so sure it’s a trap?”
“There’s too much money. Of course, there may be no bait in the trap at all.”
“No money at all isn’t too likely,” I said. “You haven’t been pulling any jobs lately, so they know you’re getting wary in your old age.” Butch smiled at the idea that he would have an old age. “If I was setting a trap for you I’d set out a whole bale of money . If they don’t expect you to get the money, why not use it to kill you?”
“You could be right,” Butch agreed. “You want to know more about it so I’ll tell you. The town of Mansfield’s booming and they want to start a new money store. A lot of big English ranchers down that way. Cattle companies paying wages to hundreds of men. Got three or four packing plants so they can pack and ship their own beef without sending it to Chicago. West of the town they got some new copper mines. So this new bank wants to get in where all that money is and will be. My man on the railroad tells me they’re going to bring in enough money to open their doors with a bang. Brass bands and speeches, a real celebration. Only the money will come in quiet, not guarded by a platoon of deputies like it usually is. That only attracts bandits, is their idea.”
“Sure sounds like a trap,” I said. “The express car may not be bulging with guards, but you can bet all the passengers on the train will be Pinkertons, posse-men, and railroad detectives, all dressed up to look like something else. And maybe a special nonstop train a few miles behind.”
Butch shrugged. “Maybe anything.”
“Of course your man knows just the place to rob this money train?”
Butch grinned. “A real steep grade about fifty miles from Mansfield. There’s a curve where the river bends, then the long grade begins. The engineer has to slow for the curve, then has to climb the grade. My man’s thought is for us to tear up the inside rail and dig a hole where the rail ain’t going to be. The locomotive, traveling slow, runs off the rail on the safe side so it won’t lurch the other way and pull the whole train down into the river. The locomotive is stuck, can’t go forward and can’t back up. If the guards in the express won’t give up, then we threaten to burn the train.”
“No dynamite?”
“No dynamite. Back when I was starting out I had an unfortunate experience with dynamite and blew eighteen thousand dollars into confetti.”
I said, “Your railroad man sounds like a real planner.”
“Well, he’s a smart man and has a pretty big job,” Butch said. “Superintendent for the whole division. That’s how he gets to know things other men don’t. What you have to think about is this. He never steered me wrong before. I made money and so did he. It could be on the up and up. I’d like to believe it is.”
“Do you?”
“No. It’s too easy. The minute we got close to that train they’d cut loose from every window in every coach. They’d fill us with so much lead they wouldn’t be able to lift us after we was dead. Just the same, if the money is there I’d hate to pass it up.”
“How much money did he say?”
“About a hundred thousand.”
“No need to pass it up,” I said. “We’ll skip the grade and do the job in town.”
“In town!” Butch was startled. “Didn’t I just tell you that’s a busy town? It’s got a marshal and I don’t know how many deputies. You can bet they’ll all be waiting at the depot when the train pulls in. If you can’t add, that’s a small army we’d have to take on.”
“At the depot, sure it is, but not at the bank. You say this new bank isn’t open yet?”
“My man says not. Just got it finished but can’t open without money. They won’t open till the day after they get the shipment of money.”
“Then we’ll wait inside the bank. Not the whole gang, just a select few of us. The bank is empty so they won’t be thinking about that. If they plan to open the day after the money arrives they’ll have tellers setting things up. We’ll get in there long before the train gets to Mansfield, hold guns on the manager and the others. The Pinkertons, or the marshal, or both, will bring the money from the train, see that it’s locked away safe, and then leave.” Butch gulped. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “What if they don’t leave? We’d be trapped in there like rats.”
Which was true, and I could expect to be killed or go to jail for the rest of my life. My kidnap story wouldn’t earn me a day off when it came to sentencing, and knowing the Pinkertons, it might not get that far.
“Come up with a better plan if you don’t like mine,” I said. “My plan could work because it isn’t your style to work quiet. Your style is to ride in like a dime-novel desperado and shoot up the place.”
Butch didn’t like his past exploits described in such a manner. “It worked well enough, Saddler.”
“Not this time, it won’t. You ever been in this town?” f I know where it is, no more than that.”
“So you can’t be sure there is a new bank.”
“Pretty sure.”
“We have to make sure. Somebody’s going to have to go in there, or it’s all for nothing. You can’t go because everybody knows what you look like. Same goes for the Kid and most of the others.”
Butch eyed me suspiciously. “That sort of leaves you, Saddler. What’s to stop you from selling me out?”
“I won’t sell you out. Blood money isn’t my style.”
“Then you could just run out on me. I’d take that the same as selling me out. I’d be depending on you and you wouldn’t be there.”
“You’re going to have to take a chance on me, Butch. You want to get out of the country, I want to get back to Texas.”
Butch couldn’t make up his mind about me. “I’d find you if you sold me out. I’d find you if it took ten years. I could spare ten years to find you. I like a joke and a laugh, but I can be mean. Texas ain’t that far and big that I couldn’t find you.”
I had little doubt that Cassidy could find me if he set his mind to it. He was no worse than other men I’ve met and killed, but he was more single-minded about things like loyalty and friendship. Of course it was all warped in his fugitive’s mind. I don’t know why he thought I owed him a thing. He had kidnapped me while I was drunk, taken the powder from my bullets, and nearly got me killed. Yet he would take it as a personal affront if I went about my business, which was what I had been doing in the first place. Maybe the smartest thing I could do was to turn him over to the Pinkertons. The main problem with that was that they might not catch or kill him. He had dodged them before and was likely to do it again. Anyway, I didn’t want to betray the son-of-a-bitch.
“I guess you could find me,” I said. “But maybe you wouldn’t like it when you found me. By that time you wouldn’t have a gang to back you up.”
Butch said, “I wouldn’t need any gang. Maybe I do have to take a chance on you. You may be the gambler here, but I like to cover my bets. You’ve got to take somebody along when you go into that town.”
That didn’t suit me, but I thought about it. “Will Carver isn’t known.”
“Will Carver is too dumb, too slow with a gun,” Butch smiled. “You’re going to have to take Pearl. She’s young, but she’s smart as a whip and not known this far north. She’s a regular Annie Oakley with a six-gun. Try anything sneaky and she’ll shoot you sure. Don’t say no, Saddler. It’s Pearl, or nothing.”
Well, I didn’t want to take Pearl or anybody else, but I knew Cassidy was set on it. Pearl was easy on the eye, even better in bed, and if I had to take a watchdog to watch me, then it might as well be her. Fact is, it wasn’t such a bad idea. We could pose as man and wife without arousing any suspicion. Of course, she’d have to doff her cowhand clothes and dress more like a woman.
“I don’t mind Pearl,” I said. “Just don’t saddle me with Tom O’Day.”
“Here’s how we’ll do it,” Cassidy said. “We split up after we leave here. So many people riding together is bound to get noticed. You and Pearl go first, go ahead of the rest of us. Two days before you go into town we’ll join up at a safe place I know. Then we’ll talk some more. Then you and Pearl go on in a full day ahead of us. If there is no bank, or if it doesn’t look right if there is, you come back and tell us. You’d better come back, Saddler.”
“We’ve been over that,” I said. “Now what about getting away after it’s done. If it works it’ll be the biggest robbery in years. They’ll tear the country apart trying to find us. Shoot to kill, right down the line. And then there’s Harry Tracy.”
“And then there’s Harry Tracy,” Butch repeated.
“Why not kill him before we leave. Draw him into a showdown and we’ll all kill him.”
“Don’t keep harping on that, for fuck’s sake. If it comes to a running fight with the Pinks, Tracy is worth three men, maybe four. We’re going to need that bastard.”
The whole thing with Tracy was beyond me. “You’re going to have to do it sooner or later.”
Butch slammed his open hand on the table in brief anger. “You let me worry about Tracy. With all this planning of yours you seem to be forgetting this is my outfit.”
“Nobody’s forgetting a thing, Cassidy. I’m not even forgetting that I don’t have real bullets in my gun. If Tracy comes at me again I’m not going to roll around in the mud.”
Butch reached into his coat pocket and handed me a fistful of .44 caliber bullets. I kicked the duds out of my gun and reloaded. Butch watched me. I spun the chamber and fired a bullet into the wall.
In the small cabin the noise was deafening. Butch was offended though no longer mad. “Why in hell did you do that?”
I spun the chamber and fired again, putting the second hole right beside the other one. I didn’t even take aim because I wanted Butch to see how good I could shoot. “You won’t take my word, why should I take it on trust that these bullets are good?” I said. I kicked out the spent shells and reloaded two live ones in their place. “Now I know for sure.”
The two shots brought them running from all over. Sundance came first with a gun in his hand. He got up on the porch with his back flat against the wall beside the door. “Who got shot in there?” The others hung back.
“Come on in, Harry,” Butch called. “Nobody got shot. Saddler was just proving a point. Saddler talks loud.”
“How’s Tracy?” Butch asked when the Kid came in holstering his hair-trigger Colt .44.
The Kid helped himself to the last drink in the bottle. Then he sat down. “You can’t kill Tracy by beating on him. You have to shoot him a few times in the right places. His nose has stopped leaking, but he’s still spitting out broken teeth. I don’t know what’s happening to our happy family.”
Butch told the Kid to send the others away. “Saddler and me’s been talking. It’s time you sat in on it.”
The Kid came back inside. “You tell Saddler about the money train?”
“I told him,” Butch said. “You know how we been beating our brains how to do it and have come up with nothing?”
The Kid stared at me. “And Saddler has? If he has, I’d like to hear it.”
Butch told some of it, and I told the rest. The Kid pulled at his yellow mustache. “Not bad. Better than that. If it has to be done, I don’t see a better way to do it. Getting away will be harder than the job itself.”
“That’s what Saddler thinks.”
“Saddler thinks like a bandit. You sure you never been a bandit, Saddler?”
I said no, never a real bandit. “As far as I know, I’m not wanted for anything.”
“You’ll be wanted when this is over,” the Kid said. “Not if I grow a beard and stoop a bit and wear fanner’s clothes.” I hadn’t shaved for days and my beard comes up fast. I knew I could raise a bumper crop by the time I went into Mansfield. “Mostly they’ll be looking for you and Butch. I plan to go back to Texas and mind my business. I’m not too worried about being wanted.” Butch said it plain then. “You think we can trust him, Harry?”
Now that it was out in the open, the Kid studied me hard. Finally he nodded. “Saddler knows what’ll happen if he leads us into a trap. We may die, but so will he. I guess we can trust him. It’s a way out, Butch, and I say we take it. How much you figure for your share, Saddler?”
“What’s fair,” I said, knowing it would sound fishy if I said I didn’t want to be cut in. A week before I would have laughed at the idea of taking part in a bank robbery. But now my thinking had changed. I was putting my head in a noose, so why not make some money out of it? But getting clear of the Wild Bunch was more important to me than money. They were as doomed as men waiting to get hanged, and I didn’t want to be part of a group photograph, with all of us standing upright in our coffins, which was the usual display they put on when a bunch of famous bandits got killed.
“How soon do we tell the others?” the Kid asked Cassidy. “You’re right about them being restless, and I don’t mean about being cooped up in here.”
“That’s Tracy’s doing,” Butch said. “We won’t tell them till the minute we leave. That’ll keep them from getting too organized. Then when we split up they’ll have no way to talk.”
Cassidy figured everything, and I’ve encountered that in other wild and crazy men. But it can have its drawbacks. Sometimes the straight way is the best way, though maybe not in his line of work. The Kid looked more straightforward than his partner, but looks can be deceiving. If Cassidy meant to double-cross his boys, the Kid had to know about it—that is, unless Cassidy meant to double-cross the Kid into the bargain. Butch’s argument was that he had to double shuffle his men because they were plotting to do the same to him, by siding with Harry Tracy. He said they were, and probably they were, but old Butch was as crooked as a ram’s horn, so there was no way to tell lies from truth,
“You sure Etta hasn’t told any of the women?” I asked. To take the sting out of that, I added, “Women do talk.” Butch shook his head. “Not Etta. Etta is close to nobody but me”—Butch grinned—“and Harry.” Butch stood up and so did the Kid. “It’s settled then. Two days from now we’ll be on our way. Make sure your door is fixed right, Saddler. Rain is fixing to come down again.”
“We still haven’t figured the getaway.”
“Harry and me are going home to talk about that.”
I asked if they wanted me to come along, then out of the corner of my eye I spotted the Kid shaking his head. Butch poked me in the ribs, and some of that was friendly and some of it was threat. He said, “We trust you like a brother, Saddler, but it ain’t right to burden you with too many secrets at one time. You’ll hear all about it when there’s a need for it.”