“It has to be Tom Horn,” I said, keeping my head well down. “You told me the Pinkertons were trying to hire him back. There he is in the flesh. They must have rushed him to Mansfield by special train right after the robbery. Or maybe he was already on his way.”
Cassidy’s face took on a strange look. The thing he feared most—maybe the only thing—had finally happened. The most feared tracker in the West was after him. The man who never gave up was on his trail. I didn’t feel any better about it. Tom Horn was a merciless killer, but he was a lot more than that. He was about the best scout and hunter the army ever had. His reputation as a Pinkerton agent was known to every outlaw in the West. Far from being a regular Pinkerton operative, he worked by none of the rules set down by the agency. He broke all the rules and they let him break them because he was the best. Tom Horn was the best at everything—and now the Pinkertons had him back. So the bad feeling in my gut hadn’t been wrong.
We were in a standoff, but the standoff was all to Horn’s advantage. Over the years he had trained himself to endure hardships that would kill the toughest Apache. They said he could go for days without food or water. Well, of course the going for days without water was just dumb talk. Every man has to have water, if only a little. I guessed Horn needed very little. It was said that he didn’t drink or smoke, and that figured. We had done nothing lately but lie around in the Hole in the Wall soaking up whiskey and eating a lot of heavy, greasy food.
The Kid said quietly, “Horn must have been the one who figured we’d go across the mountains. That’s how the posse got on us so fast.”
I nodded. “He led the posse in, but he didn’t need them. All the time he was fixing to work alone.”
“The way he always does,” the Kid said. “He thinks we won’t get out of the desert. That’s why he left his horse behind with the others. You think we’re going to get out of this desert, Saddler?”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s time to move on.” I turned on my back on the safe side of the rock and pointed to the country ahead. The desert out that way wasn’t flat anymore. As it ran toward the mountains it was broken and rocky. There would be some cover there for us—and for Horn.
Butch said, “If he gets here before we make the next cover he can pick us off with the long-range rifle. If he has a scope on that rifle he can fix us like a pin. What do you want to do?”
“I’m for moving on,” I said. “If we go now maybe he’ll hang back just long enough. He’s got a lot of ground to cover between there and here. Three Winchesters could get him quick if he gets close enough. I’m betting he’ll wait awhile.”
“Let’s go then,” Cassidy said. “But if he moves out sooner he’ll have us cold.”
What was there to say? It was possible that Horn could head for the rocks at a dead run. If he got there fast enough, we’d be fish in a barrel.
We slid down from the rocks and got the others started away from there. Pearl quivered with excitement when she heard Horn’s name. Etta’s eyes got that death look again. Etta was beginning to spook me with that look. I got the feeling that she was ready to welcome death with open arms.
“Walk the horses fast as you can,” I said. “If he sees dust I’m still betting he’ll hang back. We could be leaving one or two behind to cover our back trail.”
We moved out with all the energy of people going to be hanged. We were tired people with tired horses, and with a relentless killer not more than a mile behind us. Not far from where we started, the old man fell and snapped his peg leg in two. He lay in the blistering sand and kicked at Cassidy with his good leg as Cassidy tried to lift him. He kicked with the stump, too.
“Leave me be,” the old man groaned. “I can’t go on now, no matter what you do.”
“Come on now!” Butch tried again and got a kick that sent him staggering.
The old man gave a cry that was more a sob than a shout. He closed his eyes and reached out his hands, the fingers trembling. “Kill me, Butch. Horn uses the knife on men when he takes them alive.”
I didn’t know about that. Maybe Horn used a knife when he needed to get information. Eyes still shut tight, the old man reached out again.
“A last good turn for an old friend, Butch. Kill me now!”
Cassidy’s face twitched. His hand reached for his belt gun, then dropped away. I got between Cassidy and the old man. Valuable time was being used up. I drew my gun and cocked it. Pearl looked away, but Etta didn’t. The old man’s body stiffened at the sound of the pistol being cocked.
“God bless you, Butch!” he moaned.
I shot him in the head. One bullet was all it took.
We moved on, expecting to get one of Horn’s bullets in the back at any moment, and when one finally came we were just about out of range. Horn fired just once. The bullet missed me by a foot. Horn didn’t fire again. He was testing the range.
Just before we made it to the next cover I looked back and Horn was standing up high in plain sight on top of the rocks we had left. He was a real showman, that feller. I guess he was crazy, but like I said, he wasn’t foolish. Among the lot of us we didn’t have a gun that could reach him. '
Throughout the long day we moved like that, always finding cover just in time. My guess was that Horn wasn’t trying all that hard. I guess for him there was no special hurry. We were like a boxer in a losing fight. Still game but still losing. Every time we showed fight he knocked us off balance one more time. Maybe he was even enjoying himself. For the natural-born hunter the chase can be more important than the kill. Of course it was that goddamned big rifle that gave him the edge. That long range made all the difference. It could reach out and kill at five hundred yards in the hands of a man who knew how to use it. I couldn’t tell what kind of rifle he was using. It could be the biggest caliber Sharps they made, or a Remington hunter. Or even one of the new Schuyztens. It didn’t matter much, so long as he had it.
I looked up at the sky. It was beginning to darken and the wind was rising. The sand blew harder in our faces. All the signs were there—we were in for a sandstorm, a big blow. It started before we reached the next cover, but it would be a while before it gusted up to full force.
Staggering against the force of the wind, I yelled at Cassidy. “Head for cover and dig in best you can.” I grabbed my saddle blanket and shook it out. It flapped in the rising wind.
Ducking his head, Cassidy yelled back at me. “What the hell are you going to do?”
I fought to get the blanket under control. “Dig in here. Go on now.”
“But you’re only halfway to cover,” Butch yelled through the bandanna that covered his mouth.
“Halfway to Horn’s rifle,” I yelled back. “If he doesn’t spot me, this will get me close enough. Get out of here, Butch. Get the hell out of here.”
“You’re crazy,” Cassidy yelled, but he did what he was told. The wind blew him about as he followed the others. Soon he was lost in the blowing sand.
The sun darkened over as the fury of the sandstorm increased. It glowed dull red through the sand-filled sky. Then there was no longer any light. Bracing myself against the gale, I wrapped myself and my rifle in the blanket and lay down in the sand. The wind blew harder, howling like a demon, and I could feel the sand piling on top of me. I sucked in sand and air until black spots danced in front of my closed eyes. The storm howled on for I don’t know how long. In a sandstorm all sense of time is lost. At times you think you’re dead.
Maybe the storm lasted for an hour. All I knew was that I was encased in sand. The wind began to lose its force, and it was time to get set before the storm blew away completely. I was taking one hell of a chance, but I didn’t know what else to do. If I didn’t stop Horn, he was going to stop us.
I had to be careful not to disturb too much of the sand that covered me. I moved the blanket carefully so I could get at my rifle. It was loaded, the muzzle plugged with a rag. I wasn’t sure it would shoot. I guessed that I’d know pretty soon.
Keeping the muzzle plugged, I scooped sand from the pile in front of me. I hoped I looked like just another hump of wind-shifted sand. As the storm blew itself out, I was able to see the last cover we had left, a bunch of cactus and rock. In a few minutes the wind died and the sun came out in all its rage.
Nothing happened for a while, and I felt like a man in an oven. If Horn didn’t kill me, the heat would finish me before another hour had passed. I don’t think I was sweating anymore, and that’s the worst thing that can happen in the desert. My strength was going fast and if I didn’t get water soon I wouldn’t have the energy to pull the trigger. I had to force myself to keep watching our last cover.
Tom Horn came out in the open. I was close enough to make out a fairly slight man, not even tall, holding a big rifle. I was close enough to see him pretty well. He was, close enough to kill me at will if he spotted me. For a moment I thought he was looking my way. Maybe his wary eyes were just moving about. Then I realized he was looking past me, staring at the place where he knew the others had to be holed up.
I unplugged the muzzle of my rifle as Horn began to do the same thing. My fingers quivered as I cleared the muzzle. A shell was in the chamber ready to be fired if the mechanism wasn’t fouled. The sun glare burned my eyes and I was lightheaded. I sighted along the barrel, but Horn seemed to dance up and down. I just couldn’t hold my aim steady. I tried again and then I fired.
Tom Horn dropped under the impact of the bullet. I think I hit him in the thigh. I raised my head, but couldn’t see him. I jacked a shell and waited. Five minutes passed and I crawled out from under the weight of sand. If he wasn’t finished, now was the time to do it.
I was raising up with the rifle when a bullet touched the lobe of my left ear. I fired back at nothing and dropped to the sand. Another bullet sang at me, spattering sand in my eyes. I waited, but there was no firing after that. I thought I’d hit him, but maybe I hadn’t. A man like Horn would throw himself flat at the sound of a bullet. It could be he had done that, yet there was something in the way he had dropped—the suddenness of it—that convinced me that he’d been hit.
I lay there expecting to get a bullet. Staying still was my only chance of survival. Minutes dragged by and he fired again, but the shot was way off. I knew then that he had to be wounded, to shoot like that. But wounded or not, he had cover and I had none. There was no way I could crawl up on him. If I crawled close enough, he could brace the rifle and blow me apart.
Staring at the place where Horn was, I thought my eyes were dimming out when I realized that it was getting dark. The sand in front of me was turning a red color. I waited for more bullets. None came as dark descended on the desert. When it got dark enough I started to crawl the other way.
I don’t know how I made it to where Cassidy and the others were. I was fairly close when a loading lever clacked. Other gun noises came after the first one. I raised my head from the sand and told them not to kill me. What I said came out as a croak.
“Jesus Christ, it’s Saddler,” Cassidy said, only a burly shape in the darkness to me. Just as I lost consciousness, I felt myself being dragged and I think I heard Pearl’s girlish voice.
A wet bandanna on my face woke me up. Water trickled into my mouth and I coughed. First light was showing in the eastern sky and the desert was peaceful and cold. It was so cold I shivered though I was covered by blankets. Butch and the others were huddled around me, silent in their misery. The Kid was up on the rock with his hat pulled low over his eyes. He didn’t take his eyes away from where he was watching.
Pearl trickled more water in my mouth, then Butch lifted my head and Pearl let me drink my fill. “We thought you were going to die,” she said.
“What in hell happened?” Butch asked. “We was going to go back and get you.”
I was able to talk better then. I must have sounded like a rusty hinge, but the words came out all right. “I’m sure I hit him in the thigh. I don’t think he’s faking. Any sign of him?” Butch shook his head. “Harry’s been up on the rock since it got light. No sign.”
Butch helped me to sit up. Pearl gave me more water until I told her to stopper the canteen. There couldn’t have been much water left.
“Then maybe he thinks we’re gone,” I said. “Wounded he may be. Just don’t count on him being dead. I didn’t shoot so good.”
Butch dusted sand off me until I told him to stop it. “We’ve got to get to the next waterhole,” I said. Butch and Pearl got me to my feet. “If he’s wounded there’s a chance he’ll die there.”
“Amen to that,” Cassidy said. He squeezed my arm. “Goddamn it’s good to see you, Saddler. Holy Christ! I’m looking at the man that shot Tom Horn!”
“Maybe the man that shot at Tom Horn. A lot of men have shot at Tom Horn. Let’s be off.”
The Kid said he’d stay behind and give us cover in case Horn hadn’t been hit. Nobody argued because Horn had more tricks than a carnival magician. Besides, I wasn’t able to travel very fast and Butch had to support me a good part of the way. We were resting in the shade of a barrel cactus when the Kid caught up to us. We all waited for the bad news.
Instead, the Kid grinned. “Not a sign of him,” he said, unstoppering his canteen and allowing himself a small drink. “Whatever else he’s doing, Tom Horn isn’t walking around today. I watched good and he didn’t show an inch of himself. I’m beginning to cheer up, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Don’t get too cheerful,” I said.
Butch glared at me. “There you go again, Saddler. Always looking on the dark side of things. What the hell, what am I saying! You did it, you Texas son of a bitch. You stopped Tom Horn dead in his tracks. Anyway—wounded him if he’s not dead.”
Butch dragged himself to his feet. Some of his old cockiness had returned. “On to California,” he said, yanking me to my feet. “We still got the money and we still got our health.”
It was only about five miles to the next waterhole. The old man had described it as “a good un.” It was only five miles away, but in the condition I was in it might have been fifty. More than rest I needed water, an awful lot of water, because the hours under the blanket in the sun had just about drained the life out of me.
It took us half the day to travel those five miles. By early afternoon we could see the rocks that sheltered the waterhole from the ever-blowing sand. There was so much shade at the hole that the water was close to cool. The hole was deep and the water clear. Butch lay beside the hole and reached down with his hand.
“I can feel it coming in,” he yelled. “You know what that means?”
Pearl filled a canteen and brought it to where I sat with my back against a rock. I drank until I couldn’t drink any more. Then Pearl poured the rest of the water over my head. The horses drank until their bellies were swollen, then lay down in the shade. Now all the canteens were filled and stoppered and the hole was filling up again. Butch was standing guard and, without turning his head, he called out, “Not a sign of our friend, Mr. Horn.”
I slept and when I woke up Etta was watching for Horn. I called up to her and she shook her head without turning it. Full of life-giving water, Pearl was beginning to swagger again, to regain her bad-kid jauntiness. There was so much water that she had washed her face and poured water over her short-cropped hair. I lay there wondering if this would be the last place I’d see on earth. Butch and I had talked about Horn, and we decided that it was best to take a chance and stay at the waterhole until people and horses were strong enough to travel again. There was some dried beef, so there was no danger of starvation.
We stayed at the waterhole for two days and Horn didn’t show up. On the second morning Butch was in a cheerful, bloodthirsty mood and was all for going back to see if he could cut off Tom Horn’s head. Pearl giggled but Etta looked disgusted.
“It’s only five miles,” Butch yelled in great good humor. “Nobody else has to go. I’ll go myself. I want to express that head to the Pinks, from the first town we come to. I have a yearning to express that bastard’s head—salt it first, of course—all the way to Chicago. ‘Dear Mr. Pinkerton: I think you lost something so I’m sending it back. I know we can’t never be friends, but here’s hoping you will think more kindly of me in the future. Yours truly, Butch Cassidy.’ What do you think of that, ladies and gents?”
Etta glared at him. “I think you’re losing your mind. What mind you have left. You’re turning into a savage, Cassidy. That’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard of in my life.”
Pearl just giggled.
It was pretty disgusting, but I wasn’t as high-toned as Etta, the ex-schoolmarm. So I grinned. Damn! It was good to be alive.
“That’s a dumb idea,” I said, grinning. “Besides, it wouldn’t look like Horn by the time the head reached Chicago. Maybe we got lucky with Horn. That remains to be seen. But I don’t think he’ll be coming after us.” The Sundance Kid called down from the guard position. “I vote no on that head business too.”
I had finished filling my canteens and was ready to go. “You’re out-voted, Butch. Now everybody drink till you leak and we’ll be on our way.” I pointed toward the mountains in the distance. “California starts on the other side.”
Butch looked disappointed at not being able to express Tom Horn’s head to Chicago, but he accepted the majority decision. “Horn may be just wounded. But if he’s wounded he’ll die. Out here he will.”
“There’s a good chance of it,” I said. “But we can’t get careless and we can’t slow down too much.”
We moved out toward the mountains. All the next day we led the horses to save their strength. In time the desert gave way to arid country, still hard and dry but nothing like the blistering hell we had come through. In the clear, dry air you could see the mountains from a long way off. On the far side of those mountains lay northern California, good, green country full of lakes and well-watered valleys. The plan at present was for Cassidy, Sundance and Etta to make their way to San Francisco, and from there to go by ship to Central or South America.
Pearl decided she was coming with me. That part had been agreed on long since, though it hadn’t been put into words. I knew taking her with me might be a mistake. What the hell! I’d made mistakes before. Anyway, she had no place with Butch and the others. Etta was a two-man woman and Pearl wouldn’t fit in.
In slow stages, Pearl and I drifted down to Texas, and from there to Mexico, to lay low for a bit. I wasn’t too worried about the Pinkertons. I never did see any wanted posters on us, not that far south. We lived high for as long as the money lasted, which wasn’t all that long. After a few months we found ourselves back in Texas, and with the money gone it was back to gambling for me. Pearl kept at me to teach her how to play poker, and I did my best to show her how. I tried hard, but it didn’t pan out. Poker is like no other card game, and it takes a certain temperament to be good at it. Pearl didn’t have it. She giggled when she was winning and pouted when she wasn’t. And as we all know, that is no way for a gambler to be. It got so that the other players could read her like a book, and she lost more than I won. I always made enough for us to get by on, no matter how much she lost. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Pearl. The wildness in her could never be quenched.
Toward the end—we were in El Paso—she got restless and spoke of going back into the bandit business. Pearl had a lot of ideas. One of them was to go east and rob banks that hadn’t been robbed before. She urged me to go along, but I had to say no. I had robbed one bank and gotten away with it. I wasn’t about to press my luck. Besides, I prefer poker.
I knew she wanted to take off for parts unknown, and I didn’t try to stop her. One night I came back to the hotel after a two-day poker game and she was gone. She didn’t even leave a note. Maybe by this time she’s married, with kids, and lives in a rose-covered cottage. But I wouldn’t bet a dime on it.
Tom Horn, limping badly, got hanged up north for murdering a twelve-year-old boy. Some kind of bushwhacking job for a few dollars. Old Tom said he thought he was back-shooting the boy’s father. He kept saying that until he dangled.
All this happened to me a long time ago in Wyoming and other places. And don’t ever ask me how I like piano music or you’re likely to get shot.