Sam Bass

I’m free to say I don’t regret riding with Sam Bass. And if some miracle happened and Sam tracked me into New Mexico and found this village, and if he could divine that the strange name on the shingle over my office door designates his old friend, Frank Jackson, and if he asked me to live it all again, I would do it.

Sam and I were brothers as surely as if we had been pulled from the same womb. Fate had made us orphans. Fate had decreed that we find one another. Only other orphans on equally harsh frontiers might understand the loneliness in which we lived before we met. The Widow Lacy and Dad Egan were kind to him. They even tried in various ways to make him a part of their own households. But that kind of kindness only salts the pain of an orphan’s loneliness, making it intolerable. An orphan knows that anything that’s given out of no obligation can also be withdrawn, and he’s afraid to accept the gift, for fear that he would love it and then have it taken from him. The wisdom of that wariness was proved for Sam when Dad Egan made him choose between keeping his mare or his job. Sam had never permitted himself to think that he was really a part of Dad’s family, so he could defy Dad with a clear conscience, knowing he had earned everything he received from his benefactor and had accepted nothing free.

My situation was a little different. Ben Key, in whose shop I worked, was married to my sister, so I was, at least in the formal sense, a member of his family. But my sister was a brood mare. It was a rare year that didn’t witness the arrival of another tiny Key in their tiny house. And when Dr. Ross, after his delivery of one of them, turned to me and said, “Pack your gear, son, and come live with me,” Ben and my sister exchanged a glance of such amazement and hope that I didn’t even hesitate. But the ease with which people parted with Sam and me inspired an anger in both of us, I think.

Dr. Ross was lonely, too, and old, and angry and a drunkard. He was a graduate of Transylvania University in Kentucky, and even in his drunkenness he possessed an aristocratic dignity that made people respect him, even as he staggered from saloon to saloon. He even staggered with a certain high-born deliberate-ness. He was a noble-looking man, tall and broad-shouldered, with long white hair and beard that contrasted vividly with his black, professional coat. His eyes were icy blue and gazed steadily, hardly ever seeming to blink. They had sadness in them, and anger. Behind them, constantly in his mind, must have been the memory of something terrible or tragic, the reason for his being in Texas and a drunkard. But he never told me what it was, and he wasn’t the kind of person you could ask. The most unusual thing about him was his feet and hands, which were tiny, like a woman’s. Those hands, slender, smooth and white, holding the whiskey glass delicately between thumb and forefinger, were what set him really apart in a country full of big, rough, knobby hands.

His house set him apart, too. It was a small white frame structure not far from the square, very ordinary looking from the outside. Inside, though, it was a clutter of books and journals and shiny medical instruments of brass and steel and bottles full of mysterious powders and liquids. In a corner of one room was his bed, always rumpled, and in the corner of another was my own, always rumpled, too. The rest of the house was given over to the clutter.

He never suggested that I read any of the books, and never objected when I did. When I asked questions about them, he would answer them, but he never elaborated. He wouldn’t lecture. It was the same with the instruments and bottles. I would pick up some tool or bottle and ask its medical use, and he would tell me. He even allowed me to be present when he treated patients. I assisted him any way I could, fetching things for him, holding patients still while he poked and probed at them, and he answered any questions I asked.

I was free to take or use anything he possessed, but he never offered anything. I was a colt wandering in a pasture of learning, free to nibble what I pleased. All Dr. Ross expected of me was to keep his horse groomed and fed, his hack in good repair and his liquor supply ample. In return I received food and shelter and access to the clutter.

I discovered a copy of Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad among Dr. Ross’s clutter and tried to read it. It was damn difficult until Dr. Ross showed me it was poetry, which I had never seen before, and read a passage aloud, showing me the cadence of Pope’s lines. Then I began to love it. I memorized snatches of it and recited them to Sam while he fed the animals at the Lacy House. The verses bored him. He liked Homer’s stories, though, and when I told them in my own words he would listen. The same with Shakespeare. He loved the blood and guts of Othello and Julius Caesar and Macbeth. Later he would see his mare, Jenny, as the fulfillment of a dream he had about a horse, and would become a believer in omens and portents. I think Macbeth and Caesar were responsible for that.

When Mrs. Egan gave up trying to teach Sam to read, I offered to tutor him. “What for?” he asked. “I got you, and you tell tales better than them old bastards in the books.” But I think the real reason he rejected even rudimentary book learning was the slowness of it. Sam would give himself completely to any enterprise that interested him, no matter what labor or danger it involved. But he was impatient. Progress toward the goal in his mind had to be quick, in giant strides. If he had ever seen an hour glass he would have considered it a hideously boring means of measuring life. Grains of sand, falling silently from one small chamber to another, over and over again. It’s a fitting symbol of most lives, I guess, but Sam’s should be measured by boulders thrown into a pond. Each would splash and make ripples, and when the pond was full of rocks, well, that would be that. No turning the glass over and over again.

Well, I’m no poet, but you get my drift. He was as angry at life as I, and wild, and I loved him. The day he rode off to Indian Territory with Henry Underwood and the nigger Dick, I wept. I thought I would never see him again, and I was angry at myself for loving him so, for thinking him different from the others. He, too, had parted from me without much regret. One morning he rode up to Dr. Ross’s house and hollered for me to come out. He was on his little buckskin, grinning. The nigger was mounted on a mule and leading another with a pack on it. Henry was on a big chestnut. The Denton Mare’s lead rope was tied to his saddle horn. “Leaving?” I asked.

“Up to Montague County to find somebody that ain’t heard of Jenny yet. Then up to Injun Territory. I hear them Injuns up there is mighty proud of their horseflesh.”

“That’s dangerous,” I said. “Indians don’t like to lose. And when they lose they don’t like to pay.”

Sam smiled. “We’ll find a way.” He leaned down and shook my hand, then wheeled the buckskin and headed northwest at a fast trot. After all we had been to each other, that was it.

Stories soon began drifting back to Denton. Jenny had won in Montague County and in Indian Territory as well. As I had predicted, the Indians hadn’t taken kindly to her victories, and Sam and his bunch had fled back south of the Red River. The following spring I heard he was in San Antonio, that Dick had been killed in a knife fight, that Underwood had split with Sam and joined a cattle drive to Kansas.

Then I heard that Sam had gone into partnership with a saloonkeeper named Joel Collins. They were pretending that Collins owned The Denton Mare, and she was racing at South Texas tracks under his name. Meanwhile Sam was pretending to be a trainer and judge of racing stock and was roaming the southern part of the state checking other people’s horses. Whenever he found one that he knew Jenny could beat, he advised the owner to match it against the Collins mare and bet heavily. Of course, Jenny always won. If rumor can be trusted, Sam and Collins played that trick from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, and even in Mexico. Then I heard that Sam and Collins had bought a herd and headed north.

But in the fall of ‘77 the horrible story came down the trails. A gang headed by Joel Collins had robbed a Union Pacific train in Nebraska. Collins was dead, the cowboys said, and Sam Bass was on the run.

One night not long after that, I was in Ben’s shop, mending a coffee pot for a traveling preacher, and Sam stepped in and closed the door. I glanced up, but his side of the room was dark, and he had grown a mustache. I didn’t recognize him. “I’m closed,” I said. “Soon as I finish this job, I’ll be going home.”

“Sam!” I fairly sprang to him and embraced him, and he laughed. We made the nonsense noises that friends or brothers make when they meet after a long time and slapped backs and patted arms. I poked him in the belly with my thumb and touched something hard. He unbuttoned his shirt and whipped out a money belt and held it out like a fat, heavy snake.

“Me and Joel got lucky,” he said. He laid his hat on my work bench beside the lamp. He opened the belt and tilted it into the hat, as if pouring grain into a trough. Coins glittered in the lamp light, clinked into the hat until it was full. “That’s what’s in them Black Hills.”

“I heard.” His black eyes flickered in the dim light. “What the hell, Frank. We all go sometime.”

Sam scooped up a handful of the coins and dropped them into the hat one by one. “I’ve got five hundred of these,” he said. “Ten thousand dollars.”

“How many coffeepots would you have to fix to get ten thousand dollars, Frank?”

“Me and Underwood. He’s with me. I need you, too, Frank.” “Not me, Sam.”

He gazed into my eyes for several seconds, and I gazed right back, refusing to look away, thinking of Joel Collins, determined to convince Sam I was staying put. Then without a word he picked up the money belt and began scooping the coins back into it. The last fistful he held out to me. “Take this, pard,” he said. “I’m giving it to you.”

He held his hand there, extended, the gold so shiny it seemed alive. If the eagles had flapped their wings and ascended from his palm, I wouldn’t have been amazed.

He shook his head and slowly dropped the money into the belt, then held out his hand again, holding only one coin. “Here. At least drink to my luck.”

He smiled. “It was easy. Blow out the lamp.” He opened the door and slipped into the darkness.

I went home. Dr. Ross was standing in front of the fireplace, still wearing his black coat, his hands clasped behind his back. He had built a fire. His glass of whiskey was on the mantel. “It’ll be an early winter,” he said.

Every time I would doze I saw Sam’s hand full of gold. Until that night I had never thought much about money. I knew little about it, having had so little. The wages Ben paid me were small. Dr. Ross paid me none. But lying in my bed with the vision of Sam’s gold in my head, I began to make connections between money and things I wanted. The house in which I was lying. Hadn’t it cost money? How much? I had no idea. And the things that mattered more, Dr. Ross’s books, his instruments and bottles. It had never occurred to me that he hadn’t been born with them. He had acquired them with money. How much money? I had no idea. Not to mention his education. How much did it cost to go to Transylvania University and become a doctor and learn about poetry? I had no idea.

I reached to the small table beside my bed and picked up a book I had found among the clutter almost five years before, not long after I moved to the doctor’s house. It was written by an English doctor named John Aiken and was called Essays on Song-Writing. I mentioned to Dr. Ross when I found it that song-writing was a strange subject for a doctor, and he looked surprised and took the volume from my hand. “My God,” he said, “I haven’t seen this in years.” He leafed through it, smiling now and then. “An old professor of mine gave it to me, to teach me that physicians needn’t think constantly of disease and death.” He handed it back to me. “Keep it,” he said. “I learned its lesson long ago, and then forgot it.”

I loved the book. Not only because it was the only one I owned, but because Dr. Aiken had included with his essays a “Collection of Such English Songs as are Most Eminent for Poetical Merit.” They were short and most of them merry and easy to remember, and just the thing for reading at bedtime. The book was over a hundred years old, and I’ve never heard any of the songs sung, but I still keep them beside my bed. Reading them keeps the memory of Dr. Ross fresh in my mind.

But Dr. Aiken’s songs couldn’t compete with Sam’s gold that night. So I finally closed the book, blew out the lamp and stared at the dark ceiling, thinking about money and what it could do for me, if I had any.

I got up before Dr. Ross did, which was rare, and fried the bacon and made the biscuits and gravy and coffee. I was eating, reading Dr. John Eberle’s Notes of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine, when Dr. Ross came in half dressed, his suspenders flapping about his legs, and poured his coffee. He grabbed four biscuits and opened them and poured the hot gravy over them and sat down across the table from me. He craned his neck to see my book “Eberle,” he said. “My God, you’re a serious young man.”

“Ah, yes. I was. It’s a curse that afflicts some people. There’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Of course you are. Intelligence has little to do with it, anyway. It’s the being serious that’s important. You’ll know nothing about most things that ail people, but if you’re serious, they feel better, and Mother Nature takes care of the rest, one way or the other. You must grow a beard, though, so you can tug on it at the right moments.”

He laughed. “You’ll find out. Your reputation will depend on the fullness of your beard and your use of it.” He sucked at his coffee, making a noise like a horse at water. “What did young Bass want?”

Didn’t I cure your croup? Doctors are sacred, like priests. We don’t have to testify to anything.”

“Bass is a bandit, isn’t he? He helped that Collins fellow rob a train, didn’t he? Amazing! He probably has some similar adventure in mind.”

“Well, he’ll have an exciting life. It’s a good thing he didn’t ask me. I would go.”

Dr. Ross arched his eyebrows. “Oh, I wouldn’t have gone with him when I was young. I was much too serious. I thought an exciting life couldn’t be a responsible one, and I chose responsibility. Now look at it.” He waved toward the clutter. “That’s all there is.”

“Yes. It isn’t so bad for an ending, but the beginning was the same. That’s what I regret. A young man should gather memories that he’ll enjoy living with when he’s old. All my memories are of denying foolish impulses and being responsible.”

We had never talked like that. I didn’t know what to think of it. “I don’t want trouble,” I said.

“And I’m not saying you should go,” he replied. “You’re a good tinner.”

“As long as you stay here, you’ll be a tinner. That’s the nature of things, my boy.” He pushed his chair back and got up and pulled his suspenders over his shoulders and buttoned them.

Well, that conversation and the memory of Sam’s hand full of gold wove themselves in and out of my mind all day while I worked in Ben’s shop. I had never paid much attention to the shop before, never looked at it closely. But I did now, and the battered work benches, the worn tools, the bits of metal littering the floor seemed squalid and hopeless. I tried to imagine myself ten years older, Ben’s age, standing in the same spot, holding the same pair of shears. The ease with which I imagined it frightened me, angered me. All I had to do to make it happen was nothing more than what I was doing now. Just keep on living as I was living now, and it would happen. Wasn’t that what everyone was doing? A man could ride into Denton, write a list of all the people he saw and a description of what they were doing, then leave and come back ten years later and do the same, and the lists would be almost identical. Oh, some would have died or moved on, but their places would be filled by others, and nothing would have really changed. And it was the sameness that people valued. A man who did the same thing over and over again for years, and nothing else, was a good man, like Ben. A man who refused to submit to sameness or got tired of it and got drunk too often or tumbled the wrong woman or got money in other than the prescribed commercial ways was soon dead, or was driven farther westward to places that were still uncivilized.

I wasn’t really surprised to find Sam in Dr. Ross’s barn when I went to tend the horses that evening. He had already fed them, including Jenny, who was in the stall next to my bay, still saddled. “Look at that gal eat,” he said. “She ain’t had grain in a while.”

He was armed with two pistols and a Bowie knife, all tucked into a belt that bristled with bullets. The bulge above them told me he still wore the money belt under his shirt. Large spurs graced his heels. His gray hat was pushed back from his forehead. He looked nothing like a teamster now, sitting there on a grain sack, smoking and grinning.

“Yeah. Look, I come to make you an offer. I’ll guarantee you a hundred dollars a month. There’s little danger. I’ve never had no trouble yet…” He hesitated, studying my face, trying to determine what last card would play best. “I’ll even let you ride Jenny sometimes.”

He looked surprised, and answered so quietly I barely heard him. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

We walked to the house. Dr. Ross had built a roaring fire, and the room was stifling. He stood with his back to the fireplace, as usual, still wearing his coat, stroking his beard. He wasn’t drinking, though. “You’ve made your decision?” he asked.

“Well.” He frowned and rubbed the side of his nose with his forefinger. “Let an old man advise you. Don’t hurt the people. They’ll be your friends if you don’t hurt them. It’s the nature of this place. And Frank, when you get enough money, go to Lexington, Kentucky, and write to me. I’ll see that you have a chance to become a doctor. I swear.” He stooped and picked up a set of saddlebags. I hadn’t noticed them there at his feet. He handed them to me. “This is all you really need, anyway,” he said. “This and a beard.”

Sam, whose presence Dr. Ross hadn’t acknowledged, was shifting from foot to foot, impatient. “Pack your gear,” he said. “It’s dark. It’s time we went.”

I started to unbuckle one of the saddlebags, but Dr. Ross said, “He’s right. It’s time.”

I carried the saddlebags to my room and laid them on my chair while I stripped the two blankets from my bed, wadded my spare shirt and pantaloons and rolled them into the blankets. Then I saw Dr. Aiken’s book of songs on the table, unrolled the blankets and nestled the little volume among my clothes. I stuck my pistol in my belt, laid the saddlebags across my shoulder, picked up my old Spencer rifle and the bedroll and was ready. I looked around the small room that had been my home for five years and was grieved. But I blew out the lamp and closed the door.

Dr. Ross and Sam were standing just within the back door, talking quietly. “Say your goodbyes,” Sam told me. “I’ll go saddle your horse.” He opened the door just wide enough to slide through, and Dr. Ross closed it and turned to me. I could barely see his face in the darkness.

I felt his beard against my face. He kissed me. He opened the door again, and I slipped through. I looked back and gave a small wave, and he closed the door.

Sam was cinching my saddle when I got to the barn. “Tie on your gear, and let’s ride,” he said.

The moon was high and almost bright enough to cast shadows. We avoided the square and stuck to the alleys and the streets where only a few lamps burned inside the houses until we were beyond Denton, riding at a trot toward the northwest. The horses were rested and moved effortlessly through the cool night. The moon flashed dimly off the withers and haunches of Sam’s mare and the silver conchos of his saddle. It was a fine night for a ride, and although there was an emptiness in my gut at leaving the home and life I had known, I felt good. I knew I was not only leaving something but moving toward something, too, toward the fulfillment of some dream, the keeping of some right, unclear promise, something unknown and inevitable but not at all bad. Destiny, I suppose you could call it. And I had no wish to avoid it. Sam and I didn’t speak until we were beyond the town and well into the prairie, which rolled before us in the moonlight like a sea. I asked where we were going.

“It’s on Henderson Murphy’s ranch, about forty miles from here. It’s perfect for the likes of us. Prairie to run in and woods to hide in.” He flashed a grin in the moonlight. “It’s good to have you, Frank. We can’t lose now.”

He spurred Jenny into an easy gallop, and I followed. We said nothing then for what seemed hours. We galloped until the horses began to tire, then we trotted, then walked awhile until they were rested, then galloped again. Both horses were strong, and I knew we were covering the ground fast. Just as I was beginning to tire, Sam reined to the left, toward a line of trees that grew along a watercourse. He pointed. “We’ll stop there. We’ll have an easy trip tomorrow.”

We entered the woods, ducking to avoid the branches of the scrubby, close-growing trees. Sam picked his way carefully through the brush, and I followed. Most of the leaves were gone, but the thickness of the branches above and around us almost shut out the moonlight, and I was suddenly blind, depending on my horse to follow Jenny’s lead. “Hickory Creek,” Sam said. “I know a good spot by the water.” And soon we were in a tiny, grassy clearing beside the creek. Sam dismounted and started unsaddling. “We can have a fire,” he said. “I’ll take care of your horse if you’ll gather the wood.”

The night was cool enough to make the fire’s warmth inviting, and when the blaze was well established we spread our saddle blankets on the ground and sat cross-legged on them. Sam pulled a bottle of whiskey from his saddlebags, uncorked it and passed it to me. “Warm yourself, pard. The first drink of a prosperous life together. One to remember when we’re rich.”

I drank and passed the bottle back. He raised it in salute. “Here’s to Joel,” he said. “May them that killed him fry in hell.” He drank, but didn’t pass the bottle back to me. He held it a moment, then drank again. I knew then that he was more troubled by Joel’s death than he admitted, and that if I wanted another drink I would have to ask for it. I did ask, and he stared at me without offering the bottle. “Let’s see what the doc give you,” he said. While I was unbuckling the saddlebags he took another drink.

In the first saddlebag were three books and a leather case with a green velvet lining containing forceps, three scalpels, several probes and a pair of scissors. The books were Eberle’s small volume of Notes, Dr. Henry H. Smith’s Minor Surgery and Dr. Thompson McGown’s A Practical Treatise on the Most Common Diseases of the South. The other bag was full of vials of various sizes, all filled and labeled with their contents: quinine, opium, sulphur, calomel, mercury, camphor, digitalis and just about every other medicine I had seen Dr. Ross dispense during my years with him. There was also a large packet of bandages, tied up in a piece of canvas. I passed the case of instruments to Sam, and he examined them with mild interest. I was returning the books to the saddlebag when I noticed a white envelope protruding from Eberle’s Notes. It was a letter, sealed, with my name written in Dr. Ross’s beautiful hand. I broke the seal and read it:

Dear Frank,

You can’t imagine the remorse I am feeling at this moment, having advised you to take a course that may well be the road to ruin. I was stupid to tell you that you were doomed to the tin shop forever. Of course that isn’t, true! You’re a fine, intelligent boy, capable of a good life and many fine deeds. Instead, you’re in the wilderness, embarking on a life of crime, and at my urging! I was foolish, made so by drink. If you can forgive, and if you can endure the company of a lonely old man a while longer, please return to my house at once.

But if your decision is truly made, accept this poor gift and go with my blessing. I used the saddlebags when I was young and made my rounds on horseback, but the chemicals are fresh and the instruments are in good condition. The books will teach you how to use them. I particularly recommend McGown, who was a classmate of mine at Transylvania. He’s a fine, practical physician.

I’ve given you all you need to be a physician in this wild land. All except a cool, comforting hand (which you may have already) and a beard. And, O yes, a black coat, which I urge you to purchase as soon as possible. The rest will come with experience, and no one will ask to see a diploma.

Goodbye, my son. Be kind to the people. Do not kill.

Yr. fmd.,
Ross

“It’s nothing. Just about the medicines he gave me.” I folded the paper and stuck it in Eberle’s book and buckled the bag.

“I hope you don’t get a chance to use none of that on me,” Sam said. “Or nobody, for that matter.” He gave me the whiskey bottle. He rolled and lit a cigarette and leaned back against his saddle and gazed upward into the dark trees. “This here’s what you call freedom, Frank. It’s worth taking chances for. No Dad Egan, no Ben Key, no doc telling us when to jump and how high. Just you and me and Henry. Horses, whiskey, cards, women and money. You’ll like it, Frank.”

He smiled. He watched the horses grazing quietly just beyond the small circle of firelight. He waved his cigarette toward them. “That Jenny. She’s to thank for it. Without her I’d still be freighting for old Dad. That ain’t no life for us, Frank. It’s no better than being a nigger. That ain’t no life at all for the likes of us. The world belongs to them that grabs onto it and pulls, and that’s what we’re going to do, ain’t it, Frank?”

“Remember when we used to go to the track together? That was good times, wasn’t it? We’ll do that again one of these days, to watch old Jenny make us rich.”

“Well, we’ll sit down and decide what to do next. Maybe find us a couple more good men.”

“Well, a stagecoach, probably. I’ve did them before. They’re easy. Give you a chance to learn the business.” He held out the bottle against the firelight. The whiskey was nearly gone. He handed it to me. “Finish her, and let’s turn in.”

I killed the bottle and threw it into the fire. We unrolled our blankets, arranged our saddles for pillows and threw two logs onto the flame. When we were bedded down Sam said, “Dream of gold, Frank.”

Lying there, I began to miss Dr. Ross and my room back home, and even the tin shop. I couldn’t sleep, despite the whiskey, and Sam couldn’t either. I heard him get up very late, when the fire was low. He pulled on his boots and walked out beyond the firelight to where the horses were. He spoke quietly to Jenny, and she snorted. He talked and talked. He was still talking when I fell asleep.

The morning was chilly. Sam poked at the embers, and soon a small flame flared. I fed it dry grass and twigs until it was strong enough to take a few small logs and make enough heat to drive the night cold from our bodies. As we hunkered there, I saw we were in a jungle. Most of the trees and bushes were bare, but grew so thickly they almost blocked out the early sun. I had seen such thickets, but had never ventured into one for fear of tearing myself and my horse on the sharp branches and the almost certain presence of snakes. It wasn’t a large wood, not more than a hundred yards across, with Hickory Creek running down its center. But I supposed it stretched as far as the creek did, a vein of marsh and jungle winding across the dry, brown prairie where nothing grew but grass, a testimony to the difference water makes on the face of the land.

“Learn this place,” Sam said. “You’ll be seeing a lot of it. Only a fool would come in here after an armed man.” He took a hunk of jerky from his saddlebags and sliced off several slivers with his knife and passed them to me. “It’s all I got.”

We bridled the horses and led them to the water. We lay on our bellies on the bank, sucking at the water with the horses, trying to moisten the dry, hard meat in our mouths. Then we led the animals back to the fire and saddled them in its warmth, scattered our embers and kicked dirt over them and mounted. We picked our way through the brush more quickly than we had in the darkness, and soon we were on the prairie, and the sun was full on us and warm.

We rode in silence in the pattern we had established the night before. Trot, gallop, trot, walk, trot, gallop, trot, walk. The rhythm of it took over my body, and as we traveled across the empty prairie I began to think of myself as a small boat, drifting on an ocean. If I had been in Denton at that hour, I would be fixing breakfast for Dr. Ross and myself, and the changeless pattern of my days would be beginning again. After breakfast I would wash the dishes and harness the doctor’s horse, then walk to the tin shop and do again what I had always done. But here I was, drifting on an empty ocean of grass. Not drifting, really, but moving toward the young man’s adventure that Dr. Ross wished he had had, a memory to store up and bring out again before the fireplace of Dr. Frank Jackson, an old man.

It was freedom I was feeling. A young man’s freedom, which is the absence of responsibility and the prospect of unlimited possibility. And danger! I was riding with a man who owned ten thousand dollars, taken at gunpoint from a Union Pacific train. A man who had tended animals at a hotel and grubbed brush, but who now was considered dangerous because he dared take what others wanted to keep. I liked that. I didn’t think of that as a crime, nor did many others. I had read in a newspaper that the Texas government had compiled descriptions of more than forty-five hundred men in the state who were wanted by the law somewhere, and almost a quarter of the counties hadn’t even filed reports. Oh, many people railed against the “lawless element,” I guess. But I venture to say that those who railed were rich, or had arrived in Texas with prospects of getting rich. Yankees, most of them, who hadn’t suffered the war and its humiliation or the carpetbaggers. Some had even profited from our misery. And many of those on the state’s list had got there for trying to keep what was theirs or regain what was taken from them. There were many others, weaker or more timid than they, who had suffered their losses silently, but cheered on and protected those willing to “grab onto the world and pull,” as Sam had put it. A man who had nothing to pull but a gun and who took only from those who had plenty was considered a criminal only by those who had plenty and feared for it. Believe me, there weren’t many of those in Texas in those days. Not in the countryside. So as Sam and I rode across the prairie in silence, dreaming our dreams, I felt like an outlaw but not like a criminal, and the beauty of the day and its freedom filled me.

When the sun was almost straight overhead we entered a thicket very like the one we had left in the morning. It, too, was bisected by a creek, which we began following upstream. This one was even more overgrown than the other, full of walnuts, oaks and acacias and thick tangles of vines and brush. High walls rose on both sides, not far from the banks of the stream. Large outcroppings of limestone gleamed white near the tops of the walls, shading caves and crevices whose depths I couldn’t determine. “Cove Hollow,” Sam said. “It runs about six miles up yonder, but we don’t have to ride that far.” We dismounted and led the horses to the creek and dropped the reins. The horses, their necks extended, their noses close to the ground, sniffing the water, stepped gingerly down the bank, found firm footing and dipped their muzzles into the stream. Sam and I flopped on the grass. He took off his hat and rubbed his sleeve across the sweat and dirt of his brow. “Welcome home, Frank,” he said.

When we were refreshed we remounted and picked our way up the creek. I could see that Cove Hollow was ideal for our purpose, but it struck me as an unpleasant, unhealthy place. The ground was spongy under our horses’ hooves. Clear Creek, as it was called, was dark and sluggish, and our course along its bank stank of rotting vegetation that had collected in numerous stagnant pools. Miasma and fever and snakes displaced freedom and adventure in my thoughts.

We had ridden about two miles into the hollow when a high, rasping voice screeched: “Throw up your props!” Sam halted his mare and raised his hands above his head. I looked around me, confused. I could see no one. The voice came again: “Throw up your props, Frank!” I did, and the voice laughed. “Can you see me?” it asked.

Henry Underwood rode out of the shadow of the limestone outcropping above us, disappeared into the trees, then emerged on the creek bank only a few feet ahead of us. He carried a new Winchester rifle across his lap. “I’ve had you in my sights for fifteen minutes,” he said. “Hello, Frank.”

I had lied when I told Sam I would be glad to see Henry. I didn’t like the man and didn’t trust him and didn’t understand Sam’s affection for him. His eyes were the meanest I’ve ever seen, little round dots of blue ice that squinted from under heavy red lids. If snakes had blue eyes, they would be like Henry’s. If snakes had eyelids, they would be like Henry’s. His skin was florid and scaly, his hair long and rusty and matted, and so was his beard, which was streaked below the corners of his mouth with the tobacco juice he drooled when he spoke. He drooled now as he squinted from under the droopy brim of his dirty black hat. He wore no shirt. Dirty suspenders crossed the shoulders of his dirty red underwear, and a pistol butt protruded from the unbelted waistband of his dirty brown pantaloons. His squint, amused and curious, was directed at me, and I knew why. He had returned to Denton months before Sam had, but I had avoided his company, for his company meant trouble. He had made part of his living as a bill collector among the nigger part of Denton’s population. Merchants who had trouble collecting from nigger customers would set Henry on them. They never inquired about his methods, and he always collected. He was a brutal, treacherous man, feared by many, and I could never abide his company outside of Sam’s presence.

Sam said, “Let’s go.” Henry turned his horse and headed up the creek, with Sam and me following single-file. About a mile farther up the stream he turned into the woods, and we began climbing toward the limestone outcropping near the ridge. It was a tough climb, and the horses lunged, grabbing for footholds, kicking small stones down the slope behind us. Soon we came to a small level place, a sort of stone porch jutting from the base of the limestone, and in this place someone long ago had built a tiny log cabin. It leaned a bit, and most of the chinking was gone from between the logs. There were holes in its rough shingle roof. A small fire burned outside the low door, and as Sam had predicted, the coffeepot sat on a bed of coals near the blaze. Beside the cabin was a limestone cave, shallow, but large enough to shelter the horses. A crude corral had been built across its mouth. The rails, held in place by piles of stones, were newly cut, and their ends glistened yellow in the sun.

“Jim Murphy brought us to this place,” Sam said. “It’s on his daddy’s land.”

“He’s worried about what his daddy would think. But he’s promised to help us on the sly. I guess old Jim has something of a yellow streak.”

Henry laughed harshly and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the fire. I resented their belittlement of our old friend, who had shown no sign of a yellow streak during my acquaintance with him. I would have preferred his company to Henry’s any day, but I said nothing.

We dismounted and unsaddled the horses and turned them into the corral. Sam handed me a tin cup, and I poured myself some coffee and hunkered by the fire, settling myself into the bandit life.

We played cards on a blanket spread by the fire in the daytime and moved the blanket into the cabin at dark. The nights were getting cool, and I guess we were lucky to have that cabin, but I hated it. The chimney, or what was left of it, didn’t draw well, and the place stank of smoke even when no fire was in the fireplace. When there was a fire we almost choked. But at night the fire and the walls offered some semblance of a real dwelling place, and the soft yellow light of the lantern on the edge of the blanket where we played created a certain intimacy among us that I needed and welcomed.

Sam and Henry talked endlessly. Sam described his Nebraska robbery in detail. How he and Joel and the others attacked the train. How he had discovered the forty thousand dollars in newly minted gold by accident, by kicking a wooden crate in the express car. How he and Joel and the others divided the gold, then split into pairs to make their getaway. How he and a man named Jack Davis bought a hack and stashed their gold under its seat, and how that sedate means of transportation had fooled the posses that pursued them. How he and Davis, posing as cattlemen, had driven part of the way to Texas in the company of a troop of soldiers who were searching for them. How he and Davis had split in Fort Worth, with Sam returning to Denton and Davis making his way toward New Orleans. Frankly, I found some of it hard to believe, but Sam told it with such detail and conviction that I didn’t challenge him.

Henry’s tales were less exciting and not as well told. They were about petty cattle thefts, scrapes with vigilantes, his escape from a doctor’s office where he had been taken after he was wounded by a posse that proved too merciful. If he had headed up the posse, he said, he would have strung up the thief, meaning himself, on the spot, wounded or not. I silently agreed with him. Why anyone would be merciful to Henry was beyond me. Just the odor of him day and night for weeks on end was enough to plant thoughts of murder in my mind. But among his wretched tales of barroom knife fights and nights in jail, drunk and puking, there were also warm references to his long-suffering wife and his two children, a boy and a girl whom he loved deeply. I couldn’t imagine Henry as a husband and father. How a woman or child could bear to embrace that filthy body or kiss that brown, juicy mouth was beyond me. But they did, and I envied Henry for that.

I had nothing to contribute to all the boasting, and one night I got bored and pulled Dr. Aiken’s book of songs out of my saddlebag and stretched out on the blanket by the lantern.

When all was wrapt in dark midnight

And all were fast asleep,

In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost

And stood at William’s feet.

Well, it was a long poem about the ghost of a woman who comes back to haunt her lover, who has been unfaithful to her. Most of the verses are her cussing him out, and he, of course, is scared almost to death. When morning comes and the ghost leaves, William jumps out of bed raving mad, runs to Margaret’s grave, throws himself on it, and promptly dies.

And thrice he call’d on Marg’ret’s name,

And thrice he wept full sore;

Then laid his cheek to the cold earth,

And word spake nevermore.

Well, I guess he dies. Either that or he’s struck dumb. Either way, it’s a good poem, and Sam liked it. “A ghost,” he said. “Just like them stories you used to tell me. Do you believe in ghosts, Henry?”

My reading became a part of our daily entertainment, and from time to time Sam would ask me to read about Margaret and William. Whenever I did, Henry would get up and walk out of the cabin. He believed in ghosts, all right. So did Sam.

From time to time we would ride down the creek to a little frame house that Jim Murphy had not far from the mouth of Cove Hollow. Jim would meet us there and bring us groceries and whiskey from town, and we would sit around all evening and drink. I liked Jim, and I enjoyed those times. Jim’s house was more comfortable than our cabin, and his conversation, full of gossip from town, was a nice relief from the tedium of our camp.

Some bandits we were! I had been with Sam for almost a month, and we had done nothing but sit on our behinds. “Sam,” I said one day, “you promised me a hundred dollars a month, and so far I haven’t seen a nickel.”

He pulled out several double-eagles and tried to give them to me, but I refused them. “I don’t work for wages anymore,” I said. “I just want to do something.”

That wasn’t what I had in mind, but I was ready for anything that would get us out of Cove Hollow. So we rode to Fort Worth.

The railroad had reached it, and it had boomed as Dallas had a few years before. Sam got us rooms at the El Paso Hotel, which was new then and had gas lights and carpets. Sam and I spent three days bathing, getting shaved, drinking, playing cards and dancing with the ladies in the saloons. Sam’s gold was welcome everywhere. He also bought me a new rifle like Henry’s and a new suit of clothes, including a long black coat like Dr. Ross’s. He would have done the same for Henry, but that savage had different fun in mind. As soon as we hit Fort Worth, he ducked into a dance hall, grabbed himself a whore, took her with us to the hotel and disappeared into his room with her. Neither emerged until the morning of the fourth day, when Sam banged on his door and told him we were leaving.

While we were at the livery stable saddling up, I said to Sam, “Before we go home, I think we ought to do some business.”

He stopped his work and glanced across at Henry in the next stall. “What do you think?” he asked.

As we led our horses out of the stable, Sam asked the hostler, “What time is the Fort Concho stage due?”

We rode toward Granbury, the last stop of the Fort Concho stage on the road to the city. The sky was gray and the sun so dim that we cast no shadows, but we were in a jolly mood. Sam talked and talked as we rode along. We were in no hurry. The stage wasn’t due in Fort Worth until evening, and we had nearly all day to find a place to lie in wait for it. Even Henry wore what may have been a smile, and from time to time he let loose a screechy “Hee, hee!” and spat and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. His laugh seemed to have nothing to do with what Sam was saying. Maybe he just felt as I did, light-bodied and light-headed at the prospect of ending our long idleness and acting. Yes. The long, dreary month was ending, and my new life about to begin in truth. Somewhere along this road I would start to make my fortune. On this very day! It was a fine feeling, and not dampened at all by the likelihood that we were about to get rained on. The sky in the west was getting darker and darker, and the wind was rising, but we didn’t care.

Nine or ten miles out of Fort Worth the road curved around a low hill with a small grove of live oaks at its foot. Sam decided this was the place to do the deed, that we would wait in the grove and step into the road when we heard the stage coming. The driver wouldn’t see us until he rounded the hill, so we would have a good drop on him.

We tied our horses in the grove. A large flat rock lay under one of the oaks, and Henry flopped there with the whiskey bottle and a deck of cards. We drank and played penny-ante poker for I don’t know how long, for the-clouds hid the sun, and we couldn’t judge the time. As the thunderheads kept building and building in the west, I took off my new black coat and rolled it into my blankets. At what would have been sundown, maybe, if there had been a sun, a bolt of lightning lit the landscape. Thunder cracked and rolled, and raindrops hit us like stones. The horses nickered in panic, and I dashed into the grove. Sure enough, we had almost lost them. Sam’s mare had freed her reins from the tree and was backing away, about to sprint for the open country. I grabbed her reins and untied the other horses, which were kicking and rearing, too. I led them out of the grove, and Sam ran to help me with them while Henry chased his cards, trying to save them from the wind and water. “Mount up, Henry, or you’re going to lose this horse!” Sam hollered.

Henry looked at him, open-mouthed and frowning, then recognized the situation and hurried to claim his horse from me. We mounted and quieted the animals, then just sat looking at each other in the flickering lightning. The rain had plastered our clothes to our bodies and was pouring off our hatbrims.

“Them cards is ruint,” Henry said, and for some reason, maybe the whiskey, that seemed funny. We laughed until tears mingled with the rain in our faces. If the stage had come at that moment, the driver would have thought us lunatics and whipped his horses past us so fast that we wouldn’t have known he had come and already gone. Then Henry remembered why we were sitting in the storm, and he said, “Hey! Where’s that damn coach?”

And suddenly we were miserable. The idea of sitting on the prairie, wet to the bone and waiting for the lightning to strike us while those we had hoped to rob were warming themselves in Granbury didn’t appeal to us at all.

But the wind finally blew the storm on by, and our spirits improved. The moon, high and silver, encouraged us to believe the coach would be along, after all. We secured the horses again, and Sam handed us each a large white handkerchief. We folded them corner-wise and tied them around our necks. And as we sat talking and smoking through what must have been the early morning hours, Sam suddenly raised his hand. The jingle of trace chains was on the wind.

Silently we raised the masks over our faces, drew our pistols and stepped into the road. My breath came fast and heavy through the handkerchief. I wasn’t scared. It was a delicious excitement that I would feel many times after that night, but never as wildly and acutely as I did then.

The coach rounded the bend. It was only a two-horse hack, moving slowly through the mud. When the driver saw us and pulled on the lines, in that instant when he had to decide whether to stop or whip his tired team past us, Sam presented his pistols and shouted, “Throw up your props!”

The driver held onto the lines but raised his hands above his head, and Henry grabbed the nose band of the closest horse and aimed his pistol at the man’s head. “You got a gun?” he asked.

The man did as Henry told him, and Sam and I dashed to the coach and raised the side-curtains. Two men, both well dressed and middle-aged, sat inside. One looked scared, the other disgusted. “This is outrageous!” the disgusted one said.

My man, the frightened one, was unarmed and carried only six dollars in greenbacks. “This bastard’s almost broke,” I said to Sam. “How about yours?”

“Five dollars,” he replied. “God amighty, they’re letting white trash ride the stage now. You fellows was heading to buy Fort Worth, lock, stock and barrel, wasn’t you? You oughtn’t travel with your whole fortune, though. No telling who you might meet on some dark road.”

“Why, General Robert E. Lee,” Sam said. “And this here’s President Jefferson Davis.”

“Well, I apologize,” Sam said, “but me and Jeff s trying to keep our whiskers out of the rain. Please be our guests for breakfast.” He handed each man a silver dollar. “We recommend the El Paso Hotel. Please climb aboard our carriage, and our man will take you there.”

The men returned to their seats, and I lowered the side-curtains. “All right, drive!” Henry said. The driver slapped his lines on the horses’ backs, and the wheels of the hack spattered mud on our boots and pantaloons as they turned down the road much faster than they had arrived. We stood watching until our victims disappeared into the darkness, and watched the spot where they had disappeared until we no longer heard the wheels and the harness and the cries of the driver. Henry lowered his mask. “All this for just three dollars each,” he said.

“Don’t fret,” Sam said. “This was just something to do. Just a start. The big one’s coming.”

We divided the money and mounted and headed northeast at an easy gallop. The wind dried our clothes quickly, and the prairie smelled clean and alive, and the soft, wet sound of the horses’ hooves in the long grass was soothing to the spirit. We skirted Fort Worth close enough to see its lamps, and by daybreak we were well on the way to Denton. “Hey, you know what today is?” Henry asked.

Sam said nothing, and neither did I. Henry’s words had turned us lonely, I guess, and we rode for some distance in the private company of our thoughts. Then Henry said, “I’d like to spend it with my younguns, Sam.”

“Just Christmas Day,” Henry said. “Then I’ll come back.” He reined his horse toward Denton and spurred it into a run. He waved goodbye without looking back.

Christmas never meant much to me. In Ben Key’s house we had a noon meal on that day that was more than we had on other days, but that was the sum of our celebration. Dr. Ross observed it by drinking a toast to the Christ Child early in the morning and then forgetting it. I don’t know what the day meant to Sam, but it couldn’t have been much, and our edginess that day wasn’t because of Christmas. It was because a face that we were accustomed to having around was missing, and Sam and I had only one face each to look at and nothing else to do but look at it. It was bitterly cold. The wind howled around the corners of the cabin and whistled through the holes like a pack of wild, insane animals. We kept the fire burning in the fireplace, and its smoke almost choked us at times, and we had to wear our coats all day. We finally gave up our attempt to play cards because our hands were so stiff we couldn’t shuffle well. So we quit and kept our hands in our pockets and sat and stared into the fire. From time to time one of us would get up and grab a stick and poke at the fire and then sit down. We fried bacon and made biscuits and coffee, and that was our Christmas meal, then I grabbed the water bucket and worked my way down the slope to the creek, just to get away for a while. The creek wasn’t frozen, but its water seemed to flow even more sluggishly than usual, and the wind whipped the bare branches of the trees in a dance as wild and insane as the animal sound at the cabin. I stood staring into the water until I couldn’t stand the cold anymore and dipped the bucket into the stream and climbed back up the slope with it. When I stepped through the door Sam said, “I guess I’ll check the horses,” and he left. That’s how the day went.

So we were glad when in the late afternoon we heard a voice drifting on the wind from below, shouting, “Sam! Sam Bass!” It was Jim Murphy, and Sam and I ran out of the cabin, waving our arms and calling back to him. Jim worked his horse up the slope and dismounted and took a quart of whiskey from his saddlebags. He handed it to me and said, “In honor of the day, from the Murphy family and the Parlor Saloon.” His face, what I could see of it between his hatbrim and his turned-up collar, was red and not at all cheerful. He led his horse to the corral and turned it in and walked back to us, rubbing his hands together. “The law’s got Henry,” he said.

Jim waved us toward the cabin, and we followed him inside. He stood in front of the fire, his back to us, warming his hands. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there,” he said. “Let’s have a drink.”

Jim drew the cork and took a long pull on the bottle. He coughed quietly. “It was Pinkertons,” he said. “They kept saying Henry’s name was Nixon and that he was with Joel Collins in Nebraska. Them and Dad Egan surrounded his house last night and kept hollering for him to give hisself up. And Henry kept hollering back that he ain’t been out of Denton since summer. Hell, Dad knowed that.”

“I know that!” Jim yelled angrily. “You think I don’t know that? Now let me tell it! Old Henry wouldn’t give hisself up. He just kept telling them he was innocent. But this morning they said they was going to storm the house if Henry didn’t give hisself up, so he did. He was afraid his wife and younguns would get hurt. So he just walked out and give hisself up on this fine Christmas morning.” Jim waved the bottle toward the door, where the wind was howling. “And his wife and kids come to me crying, and his wife says, ‘Do something, Jim. You know this ain’t right.’”

“Go tell that to Dad Egan and them Yankee detectives. I went to Dad’s house and said, ‘Look, Dad, Henry was working for me all during September. That’s when that robbery was, ain’t it?’ And old Dad just picked at his fingernails with his knife, and he said, ‘The Pinkertons said he was their man, and who am I to doubt it? I ain’t sorry to see Henry Underwood out of Denton County. I hope he goes to the gallows.’”

“They done taken him straight to Sherman and put him on a train,” Jim said. “And there was about four Pinkertons with him. Even if you was to catch up with them, they’d just kill Henry and say you done it. There’s a reward for him. For Nixon, anyway.”

“The same, I guess, if they know you was in it. They figure Collins for the leader, and they done got him.”

We fell into silence. Jim, standing with his back to the fire, looked at me and then at Sam and then back again, and Sam and I were looking at him. The wind seemed to be dying a little. The logs were popping and cracking in the fire. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but I knew somebody ought to say something. Then Jim said quietly, “How’s things, Frank?”

I kept thinking about Henry’s wife and children and how confused they must be by it all, and what a rotten Christmas it had been for everybody, and what a tiny bandit band we were now. Sam must have been thinking the same thing, for he said, “Join us, Jim. We need a good man.”

“It would kill Daddy,” Jim said. “Look what it’s doing to Henry’s family.”

“Henry’s been in trouble all his life. You know that. And your Daddy wouldn’t never know.”

“Make sure they’re good ones,” Sam said. “We won’t have time to teach them much.”

“All right.” Jim rose and stretched like a cat. “I got to go. It’s Christmas, and I’m expected.”

We walked him out to the corral and watched him swing into the saddle. As he was about to start down the hill Sam said, “Wait.” He took five double-eagles out of his pocket and handed them to Jim. “Send them to Henry when you know where he’s at.”

Jim looked at the coins and smiled. “I’ll send him greenbacks. These wouldn’t help his case if the law got hold of them.”

The wind definitely was dying, and the cold, fresh air felt good after the smokey confinement of the cabin. When Jim had gone, we led our horses to the water and watched them drink. They were quiet and rested, and the cold hair of their hides and the strong animal warmth underneath was pleasant to the touch. “I’m sick of this place,” Sam said. “Let’s get out of here.”

When the driver sighted us my rifle was aimed straight at him. Alarm spread over his face. He pulled frantically on his lines, shouting, “Whoa! Whoa!” The man on the box beside him, whom I guessed to be a passenger from his fancy dress, grabbed at the side of the seat to avoid being toppled overboard.

“No trouble!” the driver replied. “You won’t get no trouble out of me!”

Sam ran to the coach and opened the door. I shifted the rifle from the driver to the man beside him. “Get down,” I said. “Go for a gun, and your brains will be all over this road.”

The man climbed down and joined the four men Sam rousted from the inside. He lined them in a row and began searching them. I kept my rifle pointed at the driver’s chest. He was a small, skinny man with a droopy mustache and squinty brown eyes that stared at me without blinking. He wore a pistol in a holster, but it was well back from his hands, which still held the lines. “Stay away from that gun, and you won’t die,” I said.

His horses seemed to welcome the stop. They cocked their hind legs and dropped their heads as if sleeping. One snorted and shook his head. The harness jingled. “Whoa!” the driver said.

“Nigh onto three years. It was four men that robbed me last time. Mighty chancey doing it with just two, ain’t it?”

Sam was herding the passengers back into the coach. The man who had sat beside the driver got inside with the others. Sam slammed the door, and I said, “You can go now.”

The driver slapped the lines. The horses bolted like one animal and left us standing in their dust. A passenger poked his head out the window, then pulled it quickly back inside. The driver never looked back. Sam jerked his mask down and grinned. “Better class customers this time, pard. Four hundred dollars.” He sauntered to me, holding his hands behind his back. “And I got a Christmas present for you. Pick a hand.”

I tapped his left shoulder, and he said, “You got the pretty one.” He held up two gold watches swinging like pendulums on gold chains and handed me the one I had picked. It was one of those with a lid. The letters G.W.C. were engraved on the lid, and when I pushed the stem it opened and played a little music box tune and revealed the picture of a woman inside the lid, a young woman with long black hair and brown eyes, wearing a blue dress.

Sam divided the money, and we rode toward Denton. And I felt wonderful. I had never owned two hundred dollars, and my possession of the musical watch seemed to lift me into a different class of humanity altogether. I pulled it out now and then and popped the lid and listened to the music, and Sam and I would laugh to see the horses’ ears whipping back and forward, trying to figure out what they were hearing. “Hey,” Sam said. “Why don’t we ride up north and tap another stage. It’s a shame to quit while we’re on a winning streak.”

“Fine. But I’ve got to eat first. My backbone’s rubbing a hole in my gut.”

In the early afternoon we came upon a tiny cabin standing alone on the prairie, unprotected from the wind by trees or hills. The stalks of last year’s corn stood rotting in a small field beside the place. Smoke curled from the mud chimney, and I persuaded Sam to stop and ask for food. We rode to the door, and he yelled, “Hello! Anybody home?” We heard movement inside, but no one replied. Sam yelled, “Open! We’re friends!” The latch moved, and the door opened a crack, “We’re traveling through,” Sam said. “We need food. We’re willing to pay.”

The door swung open then and revealed the muzzle of a shotgun and a woman holding it. She was a gaunt creature in a ragged gray dress. Her brown hair was matted and hung almost to her waist, and her close-set black eyes glared with a heat that verged on madness. I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to blast us if she took the notion. “We mean no harm, ma’am,” I said. “We’re just hungry.”

“You’ve got money?” Her voice had a strange, faraway quality, as if it came out of darkness.

She grabbed the door, still holding the shotgun on us with her free hand. It was a heavy gun, but she held it steadily. She backed into the cabin and pulled the door shut. I heard voices and the clatter of pans inside. Then she swung the door open so hard that it banged against the wall. Two filthy, almost naked children that seemed to be girls clung to her skirt. She and they moved slowly toward us, she holding the shotgun in the crook of her elbow, her finger still on the trigger. She offered me something wrapped in a towel. “Cornbread,” she said. “It’s all I got.”

She swung the gun to my chest again. “Mind your business. Where’s the money?”

Sam leaned down and handed her a double-eagle. She stared at it, frenzy in her eyes. “What is it? Is that gold?”

It was so quiet I could hear one of the children sucking her thumb. “It’s only cornbread,” the woman said. “I ain’t got nothing else.”

“Then bless you, son. God bless you.” Her voice was on the verge of tears. “What’s your name?” “Sam Bass, ma’am.” “I’ll remember you. I’ll pray for you.”

She swung the gun toward him. “Go now.” She backed through the door, pulling her children after her.

As we rode away I threw the towel on the ground and broke the pone in half and handed Sam a piece. The cornbread was old and cold, but my empty gut didn’t care. Sam and I didn’t speak until the pone was gone, washed down with water from Sam’s canteen. Then he said, “Poor woman. I wonder if she’s got a man.”

“If she does, I pity him, too,” I said. And we rode in silence for some distance, the woman much on my mind.

It was full dark when we arrived at Cove Hollow and bedded down. I felt as if I had just fallen asleep when Sam rousted me. It wasn’t yet daybreak. We had our coffee and made a sackful of bacon-and-biscuit sandwiches, then saddled up and struck out toward Sherman. About midafternoon we sighted the town but avoided it and turned westward on the road to Gainesville. When we reached the cross-timbers we scouted for a thicket where we could conceal ourselves and still have a good view of the road. Sam’s mood was cloudy that day. Whenever I tried to start a conversation, he answered shortly and let it die. So I amused myself with my new watch, popping the lid, checking the time, listening to the music, studying the face of the beautiful black-haired woman. But Sam said, “Stop that. It makes me nervous.”

At last we heard the sounds of the coach, and I jumped up and pulled my mask over my face. But Sam grabbed my arm and said, “No, let’s skip it.”

“Christ, Sam!” But anger clouded his eyes now, and I knew that if I pushed him we would fight. So I jerked my mask down and watched helplessly as the stage passed our hiding place. Nothing about it looked unlucky to me. But we climbed back into our saddles and had a long, quiet ride back to Cove Hollow. Our horses were exhausted when we arrived, and so was I. I rolled myself into my blankets and laid my watch beside my head, next to my pistol. The initials G.W.C. winked at me in the firelight. Those are the initials of the name on my shingle now, and my children hear many stories I make up about the lady in blue.

For weeks Sam was jumpy, and every effort of mine to find out what was troubling him met with angry looks and sharp words. He spent days sitting before the fire, smoking cigarette after cigarette and staring into the flames while I read my medical books and did whatever else I could find to keep my mind and hands occupied. I began to suspect that my friend had lost his nerve. I considered leaving him and striking out on my own, lest my career wither like the brittle leaves that still clung to some of the trees around us. But one night in the middle of February we were awakened by a horse nickering below us. We rolled out of our blankets, pistols in hand, and went to the door. The horses were scrambling up the slope now. “Who goes?” Sam shouted.

Two horsemen rode onto our limestone ledge. One, a short, stocky man, rode a small black, and the other, a lanky fellow with long, light hair and beard, sat a gray pacing pony. “Jim told us you was looking for help,” he said.

Sam stuck his pistols in his belt, and I stirred up the fire to put on the coffee. “Who are you?” Sam asked.

The stocky one, whose eyes and hair were almost as dark as Sam’s, said his name was Seaborn Barnes. He worked in a pottery five miles south of Denton, he said, and was tired of the confinement of a potter’s life. He was no older than I, but he had spent a year in the Fort Worth jail for killing a man. When he finally went to trial, the jury had pronounced him innocent. People, he said, called him “Seab,” which was what he liked to be called. His face was somber. He spoke so softly I had trouble catching his words.

His lanky companion spoke loudly in a high, sing-song voice and laughed a lot, showing a mouth with few teeth. His cheeks were sunken. Long blond whiskers covered his narrow jaw. His pale blue eyes were grotesque. The left one twinkled and shifted from Sam to me and back while he talked. But the right one, which was larger than the other, had no light in it and gazed always straight ahead. I must have stared at it, for he said, “It’s glass,” and tapped it with his finger. The click of his fingernail against his eye sent a shiver up my spine.

“Not with that one. But I can with the other one.” He laughed loudly at his joke.

His name was Tom Spotswood, and he had left a wife and a small son on a ranch somewhere northeast of Denton. Although his shiny yellow hair, which hung almost to his shoulders, made him appear young, he said he fled to Texas from Missouri just after the war, so he must have been between thirty-five and forty.

“Killed a man. Two, in fact. The circus come to Sedalia. I had taken a fancy to a young lady that worked for it. Bareback rider. I got drunked up and was in an argument with a carpenter about which one was going to carry her home. I shot him. A store clerk caught one of my bullets, too. I climbed on my horse and lit out of there. The clerk died, too, I heared later. I reckon nobody carried that young lady home.”

“Not much. Tried to nail me for cattle-stealing in Wise County. Killed two niggers in Collin County. Got off both times.”

The coffee boiled over, and Barnes got up and lifted the pot off the fire. I handed him the cups. “Speaking of women,” he said, “I was in Dallas the other day. Met one that knows you, Sam.”

Barnes handed us the cups of steaming coffee. “Well, she said she knowed you. I told her I was from Denton County, and she asked about you. Name’s Maude.”

Sam laughed for the first time in a long time. He slapped my shoulder. “We’re ready, pard!” he said. “You find Jim and stock this place with all the grub and oats and ammunition he can rustle. When I get back, we’re going to work on the railroad!”

While Sam was whoring, I found Jim at his Cove Hollow house. He left immediately for Denton and returned two days later on a wagon laden with sides of bacon, flour, coffee, tobacco, whiskey, beans, dried fruit, rifle and pistol ammunition and oats for the horses. We transferred it all to two pack horses Jim kept at his place and moved it up to our cabin. It took us several trips. Spotswood and Barnes and I slept at Jim’s house that night, and the next morning he headed back to Denton, and we rode up Clear Creek to the cabin. Sam showed up about sundown, grinning. “Well, we’re ready to move,” he said. “What’s it to be?” I asked.

Sam was full of excitement. “The Houston and Texas Central’s Number 4 train. The Nebraska train was Number 4, so this one ought to be lucky, too.”

He had done some long and careful thinking while he was with Joel’s woman. The Houston and Texas Central passed through Collin County just east of the Denton County line. It was the nearest railroad to Cove Hollow, and we could have the cover of the cross-timbers and creek bottoms almost all the way to its tracks. Sam had learned that the Houston and Texas Central connected with the Katy for St. Louis, and it stood to reason that it might carry a bit of Yankee money. He had decided to strike the train at Allen, a tiny prairie station twenty-four miles north of Dallas. “The southbound is due there about eight o’clock in the evening,” he said, “so we’ll have the darkness working for us. We can hit it and be back in the bottoms before anybody knows what happened. Frank and Seab will rush the locomotive and put the engineer and the fireman under their guns. Me and Tom will tap the express car.”

“Forget them. It would take too long to search everybody, and some fool might try to make a fight of it.”

We fed the horses well and let them rest that night and all the next day and the following night. Shortly after noon on the next day we packed a few supplies and rode down Clear Creek single file. We rode in silence over the rough Cove Hollow terrain, but when we cleared the hollow and passed Jim’s house we left the woods and rode abreast, following the course of the creek. Just northeast of Denton, where Clear Creek and Little Elm Creek flow into the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, we moved into the river bottom and turned southward, riding single file again. A couple of miles south of Hilltown Sam called a halt, and we pitched camp in the bottom. “The rest is open prairie,” he said. “We can make it fast when the time comes.”

The next day, George Washington’s Birthday, 1878, Sam told Spotswood to ride into Allen and check out the situation. I thought Tom was a poor choice, because his gray horse and his yellow hair and glass eye made him the most conspicuous member of our band, but I said nothing. “Take your time,” Sam told him. “Don’t waste your horse. Find out if there’s anybody there that might give us trouble, and ask what time the train’s due, just to make sure I’m right.”

Tom gave Sam a mock salute and spurred his gray up the river bank. Fog lay in the Trinity bottom that morning, and we quickly lost sight of him.

The fog lifted later in the morning, but the day remained gray and misty. We spent a great deal of time straining our eyes toward the east, looking for Spotswood’s return long before he could have ridden to Allen and back. He emerged out of the mist about midafternoon. “Easy as pie,” he said. “Not a lawman in the place, and the train’s still due at eight o’clock.”

We cooked the last of our food and ate every morsel, since it likely would be our last meal until we returned to Cove Hollow. In late afternoon we headed toward Allen. Not long after dark we arrived at the edge of town and dismounted. Tom pointed to a lighted building and said, “That’s the station.” He swung his arm northward. “And the train will come from there. If it was daylight you could see the tracks. We’ve got a good view here.”

I looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes until eight. Sam touched my wrist. “Don’t pull that out again till we’re out of here,” he said. “We don’t want nobody remembering the music.” We sat down under a tree and Sam took out his own watch and laid it on the ground in front of him. We could hear its ticking, and although we couldn’t read its hands in the darkness, we kept staring at it as if mesmerized. I felt tension building in us. Barnes, sitting beside me, drew a long breath and expelled it in a great rush. Spotswood fooled with the rowel of one of his spurs. Sam picked up his watch and held it close to his face. “It’s eight o’clock,” he said. “The train’s late.”

I strained my eyes toward the station, half entertaining the foolish notion that the train had pulled in without our seeing or hearing it. But the station and the village around it were quiet. The tension grew even faster now, for we had no idea how long our wait would be. My hands were sweating and beginning to tremble. I grasped one with the other, trying to hold them still. Every few minutes, Sam would announce the time. “Eight-thirty.” “Twenty till nine.” “Fifteen till nine.” I didn’t see the point of it, since we had no way of knowing when the train would arrive, and his announcements were adding to my nervousness.

Then suddenly it was there. The headlight cut through the misty darkness, and the whistle shrilled. Without a word we jumped to our feet, lifted our masks and sprang into our saddles. We dashed pell-mell across the stretch of prairie separating us from the station, reined in sharply at the platform and swung down with guns already drawn. Two men standing together on the platform stared at us, surprise and terror in their faces. “Oh, my Lord!” one of them said.

Amidst plumes of smoke and steam the locomotive moved slowly alongside the platform, its bell clanging. Its headlight was bright in my eyes, but I could see its big wheel, and when it stopped turning I screamed, “Now!” In a flash Seab and I were up the engine steps and had our gun muzzles under the chins of the engineer and the fireman. The firebox door was open, and the dancing lights and shadows created by the flames made hellish imps of the men, who raised their hands above their heads. Four terrified, white eyes stared out of their sooty faces, and little streams of sweat coursed down the hard muscles of the fireman’s bare chest. “Don’t move!” I said and poked my gun closer to the engineer’s face. My gun hand was steady now. With my left hand I drew my knife and cut the bell rope. I heard Sam’s voice: “Throw up your hands and give us your money!” Then came a shot, and then another.

I heard three more shots, then one, then three more, then Sam’s voice, but I couldn’t understand his words. Seab’s eyes, shiny in the firelight, shifted quickly to me, then back to the fireman.

“Pard! Back it up!” Sam shouted. “We’re going to uncouple!” I waved the engineer to the controls with my gun. “You heard him. Do it.”

The engine chuffed, and the shock of the cars slamming against each other almost knocked me down. Barnes waved the fireman toward the steps. “Go uncouple it behind the express car,” he said. “Don’t do nothing funny. I’m right behind you.” A few seconds later his masked face appeared at the bottom of the steps. “She’s uncoupled,” he said. “Take her up.”

“You heard him,” I told the engineer. He moved the locomotive forward. When we had moved sixty or seventy feet I said, “Stop. Shut her down.”

I heard more shouts from the express car, then silence. The engineer and I gazed at each other, both of us listening, trying to figure out what was happening behind us. Then spurred feet were running, and Sam said from the bottom of the steps, “We’ve got it, pard. Bring him down.”

I herded the engineer into the small cluster of men standing on the platform under the guns of my companions. Sam and Tom clutched large parcels to their chests with their left hands. Seab was searching the men. Shouts and screams issued from the passenger cars farther down the track. “They’re clean,” Seab said.

“All right,” Sam said to our prisoners. “Stand where you are till we’re out of sight. Otherwise, you’ll die.”

We mounted and rode out fast. When we were beyond sight of the train and the station and Allen we halted, and Sam said to Tom, “Did he get a good look at you?”

“Well, we’ll hope for the best,” Sam said. “We made a good haul, I think.” “What is it?” Seab asked.

“Silver, mostly. Some greenbacks. Quite a bit, I think.” “What was the ruckus?” I asked.

“The bastard in the express car cut loose on us. He hid behind the boxes, and we had to shoot back to keep him down. I finally told him if he didn’t give up we’d set fire to his car, so he come out.”

We camped in the Trinity bottom again. Sam brought the parcels to the fire, opened them and counted the silver and the greenbacks into four equal stacks.

The morning was cold, and since we hadn’t waited to eat or even make coffee, we were a groggy, cranky crowd, not fit company for each other. Spotswood’s mood was the worst. He complained in his sing-song way of aches in his joints from sleeping on the damp ground, of hunger, of the long ride, of anything that came into his mind. The rest of us made no replies, but each was miserable in his own way, and I, at least, had no desire to have Tom’s unhappinesses heaped upon mine. I wasn’t sorry when he pulled his pacer to a halt and announced he would go no farther. “I’ve had enough cold camp,” he said. “I want my woman and a good dinner, and I’m going to go get them.”

Spotswood’s departure called to my mind Henry Underwood’s Christmas visit to Denton, and I said, “Family men. They aren’t very reliable, are they?”

“Tom’s all right,” Sam replied. “He just ain’t cut out for being rich.”

“It was his mask that fell down,” Barnes said. “He might be trouble. Maybe I should go get him.” “And do what?” “Make sure he don’t talk.”

What he was suggesting was murder. Sam studied Seab’s face. “No,” he said. I was relieved.

We arrived at our cabin late the next afternoon. After we took care of the horses we flopped on the bare stone in front of the fireplace and slept for hours before we mustered energy enough to eat. Seab, as it turned out, was a decent cook, and he fixed a meal of beans and bacon and stewed apricots and biscuits and coffee. Then we unrolled our blankets and slept like babies until well after daylight.

I got up before the others and went down to the creek and plunged my face into the cold water. While lying on the bank, I heard a woodpecker working. I looked around until I spotted him not high up on the trunk of an old acacia. I eased my hand down and unbuckled my spurs and then grabbed my hat. I tiptoed to the tree as quietly as I could, careful to keep out of the bird’s line of sight, and slapped the hat down on top of him. Barnes was stumbling down the slope, yawning and rubbing his eyes, and I said, “Seab! Guess what I’ve got under this hat.”

He made a face and stumbled on down the slope, and I said, “Stick your hand under there and grab him.” “He’ll peck the hell out of me,” he said. “No, he won’t.”

The bird did peck me pretty hard, but I held him. The pecker was a big one. His yellow-and-black eyes glared at me. He raised a terrible fuss and kept trying to get at me with his beak.

Seab went to the cabin and returned with an empty coffee sack and a piece of twine, and I dropped the bird in and tied it shut.

“Don’t know none that wanted to,” he said. “I caught me a jay once. He flew in the house, and I slammed the door and chased him around till I stunned him with Mama’s broom.”

“Made me a cage out of sumac sticks. Kept him for some time, too, before he died.” “Let’s do that!” He laughed.

Sam thought we both were crazy, and Seab tried to lay off all the craziness onto me. “If I don’t help him, he might get dangerous,” he said. But I knew he was enjoying my childish idea as much as I was, and we set about constructing the cage with enthusiasm and care. Seab and I went back to the creek and hacked down far more young, flexible sumac whips than we needed and shaved the bark off. I rubbed the strips of bark into several strands of crude string, while Seab gouged holes around the edge of a shingle that had blown off the cabin, to serve as the floor of the cage. We poked the ends of the sumac whips into the holes and tied them together at the top to form a sort of dome. Then Seab wove thinner branches in and out among them and lashed them with my string, leaving no opening big enough to allow the woodpecker to escape. He even made a small door and lashed it on. Sam sat ridiculing us while we worked, but I enjoyed it. It was the first careful work I had done with my hands since leaving Ben’s shop, and it felt good. Maybe the potter in Seab felt the same way, for he stopped saying “he” and started saying “we” when responding to Sam’s rawhiding. He even winked at me a couple of times, and a bond grew between us that never really broke. From then on, in any arguments or discussions, Seab was always on my side, except for one matter farther down the road.

We worked on the cage all day, and it was with a great deal of pride that we released the woodpecker into it and hung it from a rafter with the twine that had held it in the sack. The bird raised a ruckus, flapping about the cage, blinking at us with those yellow-and-black eyes. I don’t know whether dumb animals feel hatred or not, but those eyes looked like they were full of it.

After all the work was done, Sam became interested in the bird, too, and would stick his finger between the bars and withdraw it when the woodpecker attacked it. “Does he have a name?” he asked.

Sam laughed, and Seab asked, “What does that mean?” “We used to call our chief that when he grubbed brush for Dad Egan.”

“That ain’t no good,” Sam said. “Honest Eph won’t never be behind bars.”

The name stuck, anyway. And during the long days of nothing that followed, that bird was a godsend. “What do woodpeckers eat?” I asked, and Seab said, “Bugs, I guess. That’s probably what they’re looking for when they hammer the trees.” So he and I spent hours crawling along the banks of the creek, looking for the few bugs to be had at that time of year. Maybe we were crazy. I don’t know. I even tried to teach the bird to talk once, and realized how foolish I was when I saw my friends looking at me as if I were a freak.

When we had been in the hollow about a week, Jim Murphy rode up with the Dallas newspapers of several days before. We had created a sensation. The papers said several posses had gone to Allen but failed to pick up our trail. The Texas Rangers were investigating, and everybody was offering money for our scalps. The governor had posted a reward of five hundred dollars per man, which was matched by both the railroad and the Texas Express Company. “Fifteen hundred apiece. That almost makes it worth my while,” Jim said. “Two thousand for you, Sam, counting Nebraska.”

“I reckon nobody wants it,” Sam said. “I ain’t seen nobody coming to get it.”

“They ain’t identified you,” Jim said. “But life’s getting livelier. They picked up Spotswood yesterday, and the express messenger identified him. They just walked up to his wagon and arrested him. His little boy was with him, too.”

We were too stunned to speak. We glanced nervously at each other and at the ground until Jim said, “I wish I hadn’t sent him up here. I didn’t do nobody no favor.”

“Well, they’ll never convict him on just the messenger’s say-so,” Seab said. “It was dark.”

After Jim left, the three of us sat around the cabin, saying nothing. We were scared, I guess, and I was empty inside, without hope and angry. In a fit of rage I grabbed a stick and jumped up and jabbed it between the bars of the woodpecker’s cage, trying to hit the bird with it. “Hey, Honest Eph! You damn train robber!” I yelled. “Stand around there, boy! Stand around there, son! This is what Dad Egan’s going to do when he catches you!”

Sam leapt up and jerked the stick from my hand and whipped it across my belly. The stick broke, and a piece of it flew across the room and almost hit Barnes. Sam’s hand was trembling. He flung the other half of the stick out the door and made a fist in my face, his eyes black with fury. “Don’t never say that!” he screamed. “You’ll be in hell before they put Sam Bass behind bars!” Then he grabbed the cage and tried to yank it down. The twine held, but a couple of the bars broke, and the woodpecker was out and gone in a flash of red and blue.

Sam’s eyes and mine were locked on each other, unable to move. We didn’t move a muscle, and neither did Barnes. It was deathly quiet. And suddenly I felt sad and thought that if something didn’t move I would cry. Then Sam’s eyes softened. He breathed out a big breath and laid his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, pard,” he said. “There wasn’t no call for that.”

“I shouldn’t have done what I did, either,” I said. “I was just nervous.”

“We’re all nervous.” Then he threw up his hands and laughed. “Hey! Tomorrow we’ll find us another train!”

Seab was in front of the fireplace wearing his coat and hat, hugging himself. The fire was huge, roaring up the chimney. “I’m freezing,” he said. “Something’s wrong with me.”

I stepped over Sam, who was still rolled in his blankets, and Seab turned and looked at me. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes very bright. His teeth were chattering. “Something is wrong with you,” I said.

His lips and fingernails were blue. I pushed his hat back and laid my hand on his forehead.

“Some kind of fever, probably. We’ll know soon. If it’s fever, you’ll get hot.”

Sam stretched and got up himself. He looked at Barnes and said, “Jesus, you look like hell.” “Your bedside manner isn’t the best, Dr. Bass,” I said. “Well, you’re the great healer. Do something.” I arched my eyebrows at him. “I will, Dr. Bass.” “It ain’t funny,” Seab mumbled.

I opened the saddlebags that Dr. Ross had given me and pulled out McGown and Eberle and flipped the pages to the sections on fevers. “You’re cold, ache all over, and your head hurts, right?”

“You probably have an intermitting fever. We’ll know for sure if you get hot. Dr. McGown says hardly anybody dies of intermitting fever. You’re lucky, Mr. Barnes.”

I had seen Seab’s symptoms many times on my rounds with Dr. Ross, and I thought I knew what would happen to him. “Yes, I can.” The words gave me a feeling of immense power. I opened the medicine side of my saddlebags and got the quinine and laudanum. “Give me a cup, then go get some water.” Sam jumped to obey, and I poured what I guessed to be about fifty drops of laudanum into the cup. McGown didn’t say whether the laudanum and quinine should be given separately or together, so I assumed it didn’t matter and dropped what I guessed to be about ten grains of quinine into the laudanum and stirred it with a stick and gave it to Seab. “Drink this.”

He obeyed and made a face. “Sam’s getting some water,” I said. “Sulphuric ether would make you better faster, but I don’t have any. This will do it, though.”

Sam brought a bucket of water. I dipped Seab’s cup into it, and he drank gratefully. “Now roll up in your blankets and lie down,” I said. “You’re going to get hot and then go to sleep and then start sweating, but don’t worry. You’ll be all right.”

Without a word he did as I told him, and a few minutes later he was asleep. Sam and I sat watching him. “Well, no trains will run today,” Sam said.

Suddenly I understood all that Dr. Ross had told me. My real knowledge of Seab’s illness was scarcely deeper than his own or Sam’s. But because I could read and because I possessed and had administered the medicines and was answering Sam’s questions with an air of confidence, I was a doctor. I found myself wishing I had a beard, and pretending I was chilly, I put on the black coat that Sam had bought me in Fort Worth. I was a physician, for I had a patient and a concerned friend, a relative of the patient almost, who needed comforting and believed whatever I said.

My professional reputation grew when Barnes became feverish and then broke into a sweat, as I had predicted. I bathed his head and neck in cold water, gave him draughts from the cup, and followed the nursing procedures dictated by McGown and Eberle with a great deal of ceremony, barking orders to Sam to fetch whatever I needed. By nightfall Seab was feeling better, and he smiled weakly at me and said, “You ain’t so dumb.” I gave him more quinine and laudanum and a little calomel and said, “You’re not through it yet, but you’re going to be all right.”

Sure enough, the chill-fever-sweat cycle recurred during the night, but with less intensity and shorter duration. I reckoned that my diagnosis must have been right and followed the instructions of McGown and Eberle to the letter, wishing that Dr. Ross were present to judge my performance. I remained at Seab’s side until he lapsed into his sweat. Then I went to sleep, since there was nothing to be done at that stage, and I knew it would be followed by remission.

“It could be any number of things,” I replied casually. “My guess would be miasma.”

“Bad air from swamps or marshes. You’ve been sleeping in too many creek bottoms lately.”

In four days Seab was up and around, though still weak and shaky. Sam asked if it would be safe to leave him alone and ride out to scout our next job, and I said it would.

We left that morning and spent the next three days scouting the Houston and Texas Central through Collin and Dallas counties. We struck the railroad just south of Allen and rode southward in a leisurely manner, sticking to the roads most of the time and stopping and talking to people whenever and wherever we liked. We posed as ranchers looking for land to buy, bought drinks and shared tobacco with men lounging at crossroads stores and talked about cattle, weather and, of course, trains. Sam could be a good talker when he wanted to, and his generosity with his money made many whiskey-jug friends who were eager to tell him everything he wanted to know about anything under the sun.

We chose the village of Hutchins, about eight miles south of Dallas, as the site of our next adventure. The layout there was almost identical to Allen, and the southbound train arrived about ten o’clock at night, which would give us the advantage of the darkness again.

Our decision made, we headed north. When we neared Dallas Sam said, “I’m going to town and visit Maude. Want to come?”

“There’s lots of pretty girls there. You ain’t had a woman in a long time, Frank, and Maude has lots of friends.”

Sam touched his hatbrim and rode away toward Dallas. It was the first time I had been alone in four months, and I was glad to have the chance. It had been a good winter for rain, and the countryside was bright in the new green of spring. The sky was cloudless and the sun warm, and everyone, it seemed, had found work to do outdoors. Women were washing clothes and yelling at children. Men were mending or building fence, and a few had already begun their spring plowing, trudging the rows behind their patient mules. It was still cool, and a great day for that kind of work. I envied them. I stopped at midday at a farm just south of Lewisville and was given fried chicken for dinner and held a little girl, the youngest child of seven, on my knee while I had my final cup of coffee and speculated with her father about when the first herds would pass through on their drive north. I could feel the sap running in me, and regretted that I had declined Sam’s invitation.

But I was getting close to Denton now, so I left the road and struck out across the open prairie, aiming in a general way toward Cove Hollow. I was in no hurry, but my horse felt the juice of spring, too, and I let him have his head. He moved at a long-striding, lazy gallop for a while, then, receiving no restraining signal from me, broke into a run. The cool breeze roared in my ears, and I could feel my blood pumping through me. The bright grass passed under my horse’s hooves in a blur. God, it all felt good after the long winter in the creek bottoms. When we reached Hickory Creek we stopped and drank and rested, then continued at a slower but still brisk pace. If horses could sing, I believe mine would have that day.

Seab was enjoying the spring, too. He was stretched on a blanket on the limestone ledge in front of our cabin, soaking in the sun. He sat up when I started my horse up the slope. “Where’s Sam?” he asked.

On the night of March 18 Sam and Seab and I rode into Hutchins and tied up at the station platform. We had passed the train on our way into town, so we already were masked, and our guns were drawn. Only the agent and a nigger porter were in the station, and they threw up their hands when we entered. “All right, keep them up and move out to the platform,” Sam ordered.

As soon as the train stopped, I leapt to the engine. The engineer and the fireman raised their hands, too, and I recognized them. “Is this Number 4?” I asked. The engineer nodded, and I said, “You probably remember me, then.”

I herded them down the steps, and as my foot touched the platform a face appeared around the front of the engine. I swung my gun to it and said, “Join us.” Two men crept slowly around the engine and climbed the platform steps.

“Riding free on the cowcatcher,” Sam said. “The railroad don’t like that, boys.”

The men, shabbily dressed, grinned weakly and took off their caps and held them against their chests, as they no doubt did when asking for handouts. We moved them and our other hostages down the platform until they were opposite the express car door, which was open and lighted. A man holding a bag appeared at the mail car door, just behind the express car, and shouted, “What’s the matter?”

The man stepped back and slammed the door and yelled, “Robbers on the platform!” The light went out in the express car, and its door slammed, too. Sam cursed and ran into the station and returned with two axes. He handed one to Seab, and they attacked the door. Soon its splintered parts fell away, and Sam and Barnes were facing the muzzle of a pistol. The express agent was backed against the far wall, taking aim. The station agent yelled, “Don’t shoot! You’ll kill us!” The man lowered his gun, and Seab and Sam jumped into the car while I held our prisoners under my gun. In less than a minute they came out carrying two cloth sacks and ran to the mail car. Sam banged on the door with his pistol butt. “We’ve got you! Come out or it’ll go hard for you!” The mail clerk made up his mind quickly and opened the door.

While my companions were ransacking the mail, a burst of gunfire issued from the rear of the train. One of the tramps groaned and fell. I fired two blind shots into the darkness, then a shotgun boomed, and the station agent grabbed his face. Sam and Seab backed out of the mail car, and we retreated slowly toward our horses, laying down heavy fire toward the muzzle flashes. We mounted and lit out toward the west. A few miles out of Hutchins we swung north toward the Hickory bottoms. It wasn’t until then that we slowed and Sam asked, “Any casualties?”

Our haul was disappointing. Three hundred and eighty-four dollars from the express car and a hundred and thirteen from the mail. One sixty-five apiece. “It’s a good thing old Spotswood ain’t along,” Barnes said.

Barnes ran into the cabin, grabbed his rifle and said, “Riders!” Sam and I grabbed our rifles, too, and we bellied down behind the rocks on the slope. “They’re coming slow and quiet,” Barnes said. “Two of them.”

At last my eye caught the sun glinting on something, then I saw a black hat and part of a face. “Here they come!” I whispered.

The riders showed no signs of panic. They turned their horses slowly until they faced us, and one called, “You ain’t going to kill me, are you, Sam?”

It was Henry Underwood. I could name fifty people I would rather have seen, but I was relieved that the face was a friendly, although ugly, one. Henry’s companion rivalled Henry himself in ugliness. A big, florid, pig-eyed man with a flat nose and pockmarked jowls, he dismounted and watched, his mouth hanging open stupidly, while Sam and I shook hands with Henry and introduced him to Barnes. “This here’s Arkansas Johnson,” Henry said. “Him and me’s rode all the way from Nebraska together. And spent a long spell together before that.”

I took their horses, and Sam threw his arm around Henry’s shoulders and walked him toward the cabin. Barnes glanced at me skeptically, then followed with Johnson. The horses had been ridden hard and looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Their noses never left the grain while I rubbed them down.

When I entered the cabin Underwood was bragging loudly of his escape from the jail in Nebraska. “Your money done it, Sam,” he said. “I give part of it to a man that was getting out, and he proved true to his word. He got me a file and some saw blades, and Arkansas’s wife fetched them to us in a bucket of butter.”

Seab Barnes showed little interest in Henry’s narrative, but the silent Arkansas Johnson made not the slightest move without Seab noticing it. When Henry paused for breath, Seab pointed at the new man and said, “Tell us about yourself.”

Johnson turned his pig eyes to Barnes and gazed stolidly at him. “Ain’t nothing to tell,” he mumbled.

Again Johnson lapsed into silence, regarding Barnes with a vacant stare, as if he couldn’t remember. Then he said, “Stole some lumber. I got to piss.” He got up and slouched outside.

“I don’t like him, either,” Sam said. “He’s white trash, and this here’s a high-class outfit. We ain’t got no use for trash, Henry.”

“Aw, Sam,” Henry pleaded, “I couldn’t have made it without him. I promised him.”

Sam smiled. “Well, all right,” he said. “I’ll try him once. Then we’ll see.”

Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, another rider came up the creek. “We don’t have to go looking for no trains,” Sam said. “This place is a railroad station.”

I rode down the creek with Jim. “I’d listen to them if I was you, Frank,” he said.

Dr. Ross’s hack was standing in front of the house, and my visitors were in the tiny parlor, drinking coffee. They rose when

I went in, and my sister hugged me. Jim went outside. Through the window I saw him walking toward the barn. My sister held a small handkerchief, and she twisted it into a small roll and wove it in and out among her fingers. Ben and Dr. Ross shifted in their chairs. Their feet were noisy on the bare floor. I was glad to see them, but felt embarrassed. Finally Dr. Ross said, “We want you to come back, Frank.”

Tears welled into my sister’s eyes. She unrolled her handkerchief and daubed them away.

“Dad Egan’s looking for you,” Ben said, “but who he really wants is Sam. He’s getting hell from the railroads, and he thinks Sam is some kind of traitor. But come home now, and I think he’ll leave you alone.”

“No, but he might when he’s tried. Everybody knows he was hanging out with you and Sam.”

“That doesn’t have to mean anything,” I said. “We have a right to our friends.”

“That’s my point,” Ben said. “If you come home before the trial, I don’t think your name will ever come up. Dad won’t try to prove anything on you.”

A breeze blew the curtains into the room, and the sun shining through them made patterns like maps on my sister’s gray skirt. Dr. Ross was slouching in his chair, stroking his beard, not fidgeting anymore. “I cured a man,” I told him.

He smiled. “Did you enjoy it?” “Yes. And I have a black coat now.” Dr. Ross laughed.

“Come with us, Frank,” Ben said. His high forehead was furrowed. I had never noticed he was getting bald. “The shop ain’t the same without you. Nothing’s the same without you.

Ain’t that right, doc?” “I won’t go back to the shop,” I said. “Well, do something else, then!” Ben said. “But come back!” “I’ll have to think about it,” I said. “Come with us now,” my sister said.

“Let him think about it,” Dr. Ross said. “I’m sure Frank will do what’s best.” He slapped his knees and stood up. “I brought you something.” He pulled a small book from his coat pocket and gave it to me. It was The Odyssey. “It’s about a man who traveled to many places and had many adventures, but he finally came home. You’ll remember him from another book you read once.”

“Thank you.” I shook hands with him and Ben. I grasped my sister’s hands and pulled them away from her face and lifted her gently from the chair and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” I said.

I was deeply moved by their care for me, and by the time I reached our cabin I had decided to return to Denton.

We walked down the slope and sat down on the grass. “They want me to go home,” I said, “and I’m going.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” I said. “I’m getting no closer to what I really want.”

“I think I could get off if I leave now, even if they tried me.” “No, you’ll go to prison.”

“It’s no good,” I said. “We’re not making much money, and we’re getting in a lot of trouble. I think we should all quit now.”

Sam picked at the short green grass with his fingers. “I can’t, Frank,” he said. “Even if I beat everything here, they’d get me for that Nebraska job. And I need you. I don’t even have Joel anymore. I can do without Johnson, and I can do without Underwood. I can even do without Barnes. But I can’t do without you, pard. You and me’s friends, ain’t we? Brothers, almost. We been together too long. Without you and Joel, I’d be too alone to stand it, no matter who else was with me.”

“I know it ain’t gone good, Frank. Maybe I just don’t have Joel’s brain. But all we need is one break, one big haul. Then you can go off to Kentucky and become a doctor. Hell, maybe I’ll go with you. They race a lot of horses there.” I said nothing.

“I got plans for a big haul,” he said. “We’re going to hit the Texas and Pacific at Eagle Ford. It ought to be a rich train. Then we’ll go to Kentucky or somewhere. Deal?”

I figured he was making it up as he went. I shook my head. “I’m not going. To Eagle Ford, I mean.”

“My head isn’t in it, Sam. I wouldn’t be any good to you. I just don’t feel like going.”

“All right, pard. I’ll deal you out of this one. But stay here till we get back, and we’ll talk some more. You can do that, can’t you, Frank?”

“Well, we’ll talk about it.” He got up and started up the slope, then turned. “Can Henry and Arkansas use your guns? They ain’t got none.”

Henry didn’t go to Eagle Ford, either. Jim rode back up the hollow that night and told him his wife and children were at Henderson Murphy’s place, anxious to see him. He rode away with Jim.

Next morning, he and Seab and Arkansas left to meet the train. I stood in the door and watched their horses struggle down the slope. Halfway down, Sam turned and looked at me, his eyes full of questions. I started to wave, but didn’t.

I spent the morning on a blanket outside the cabin, reading The Odyssey. I had read nothing but Dr. Aiken’s songs and my medical books since leaving Dr. Ross, and my mind soon was far away from Cove Hollow, wandering the Aegean Sea. I read slowly and with difficulty, as I still do. But even skipping over the words I didn’t know, I didn’t miss the majesty of Homer’s lines. Or Alexander Pope’s lines. I didn’t know and still don’t know who gave them their grace and beauty. It didn’t matter then and doesn’t matter now. I was far from Cove Hollow, hearing the waves dash against the open ship that Odysseus and I were sailing in, as unsuspecting as he was that it would take us so long to get to Ithaca and reclaim the faithful Penelope.

I would sit up to rest my eyes and back and arm from time to time and look around at the woods and the creek and the tiny clearing below me. I knew they weren’t as beautiful as they looked, that the woods were full of snakes and tangles of vines, and that mosquitos soon would be breeding in the water. But the sun shining through the young leaves clothed the morning in emeralds, and cardinals and jays flashed red and blue among them, and a mockingbird set it all to an intricate, meditative music that made me sigh.

All day I was glad I hadn’t gone to Eagle Ford and was alone. That night, though, the cabin was lonely and oppressive to me. I resented its squalor and the necessity of living in the wild like a fox waiting for the dogs to come. I moved my blankets outside and felt better in the company of the night, but concluded that I would go to Denton the next day. Not to stay, for I had promised

Sam I would be in Cove Hollow when he returned, but just to taste the larger human society again.

I rode down after breakfast. Just beyond Jim Murphy’s place I saw Henry Underwood moving toward me. I wasn’t glad to see him, but I knew he had seen me, so I stopped and waited. “How’s the family?” I asked.

“To Denton, and have a drink and be seen. If I’m seen in Denton, that’ll give Sam something of an alibi.” “Good,” he said. “I’ll go with you.” I cursed him silently.

Bob Murphy, Jim’s brother, was running the Parlor that day, and he wasn’t eager to have our business. We had been fools to open the mails, he whispered, because the federals were interested in us now, and the Dallas newspapers were mentioning Sam and Henry and me by name and calling us train robbers. Most people in Denton didn’t believe it or didn’t care, he said, but if we gave Dad Egan an excuse to lock us up, we shouldn’t expect to get out.

We were determined to brave it out, and chose a corner table where we wouldn’t be conspicuous, but wouldn’t be hidden, either. We drank whiskey and played cards the rest of the day and left town not long after dark without trouble. We had too much whiskey in us to ride far, though, so we stopped and unsaddled our horses and tied them in the timber beside the road not many miles outside of Denton, and made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the bare ground. Henry had armed himself with a pistol and a rifle at Henderson Murphy’s, and we laid our arms beside us and went to sleep. We slept a long time, for the sun was well up when Henry poked me in the gut and said, “Horses.”

I jumped up and stuck my pistol in my belt and levered a cartridge into the chamber of my rifle. The riders, eight or ten of them, had rounded a bend in the road and spotted our horses among the trees. They had halted, and the man who seemed to be their leader was talking and gesturing. All but two of the riders split from the group and rode off, some to the left and some to the right.

“They’re trying to surround us!” I said. I raised my rifle and fired too quickly at the man who seemed to be the leader. He drew his pistol and fired back. His bullet went so far astray that I knew he hadn’t seen us, only our horses. The leader and the man remaining with him in the road dismounted. I raised my rifle again, but before I could pull the trigger Henry yelled, “Look out, Frank!” I dropped to the ground, and the bullet, fired by the man with the leader, missed me, but was close enough to tell me I had been seen.

Henry and I took shelter behind two large trees and waited, but no more shots came. The posse had taken shelter, too. The road was empty, and I could hear no one moving in the woods. “They must not have rifles,” Henry said. “They can’t fight us at long range.”

We waited for some time without hearing sound of man or horse, and I began to think they had gone. To find out, I shouted, “Why did you shoot at me?”

The other side was silent for some time, then the voice came again. “Come on out and tell us who you are!”

There was another long silence, then the voice said, “Come on back, boys! I think we’ve flushed the wrong game!”

Hooves rustled in the timber to the left and right of us, then the men were reassembling in the road. Henry grinned at me. “See anybody you know?”

The men were bunched in the road now, but they weren’t going away. They sat their horses quietly, looking up toward us. “Cover me,” I said. “I’m going to saddle my horse.”

Keeping our rifles trained on the posse, we left our shelter and walked into plain view. Henry sat down by the horses and rested his elbows on his knees, keeping the posse in the sights of his rifle. The horsemen didn’t move. I picked up my saddle and blanket and lifted them to my bay. When I was finished, I covered the posse while Henry saddled. We mounted and rode casually into the road. The posse was motionless about fifty yards from us. We trotted fifty yards farther on, then I turned in my saddle and waved my hat and shouted, “All right, boys! Come and get us!”

The posse spurred after us, firing crazily into the air, but we had too big a lead. After half a mile or so, our pursuers reined in and watched us sprint away.

When we left the road and started across the open prairie, Henry shouted, “There goes another rabbit!” and pointed his finger at the ground and said, “Bang!” We laughed, and a few minutes later he did it again. “That bunny was wearing a hat,” he said and we laughed again. He did that all the way to Cove Hollow, and we laughed every time.

But our jolly mood wasn’t shared by the crew that rode in from Eagle Ford that night. They had ridden constantly since the robbery the night before, and men and horses were exhausted. Their job had gone without a hitch. Although the express company had a guard in its car with the messenger, the man had a yellow streak, and our bunch had robbed both the express and mail cars without a shot being fired. But their loot had amounted to only fifty-three dollars, and Sam and Barnes were in a cranky mood. Arkansas Johnson was as silent and oxlike as ever.

Henry’s wild account of our “rabbit hunt” cheered them, though, and after a few drinks Sam and Seab were able to laugh at themselves, too, and the labor and danger they had endured to earn their seventeen dollars apiece.

“Bob Murphy says we shouldn’t have meddled with the mails,” I told Sam. “He says the federals are looking for us now.”

“Who gives a damn?” Sam said. “Let the whole world be looking for us. I’ve got the best damn bunch in the whole damn world.” The whiskey was working on him fast because of his fatigue.

Seab was drunk, too. “It’s too bad you don’t get a cut of this haul, Frank,” he said. “Now you can’t retire with Sam and Arkansas and me.”

That reminded Sam of my decision to return to Denton, I guess. He picked up a bottle and asked me to go outside with him. We walked far enough down the slope to put us out of earshot of the others and sat down on the rocks. He said, “You ain’t really leaving me, are you, pard?”

“Hell, Frank! All we need is one good one! Look at my Union Pacific haul. All we need is one like that, and then we’ll quit.

Sam leaned back on his elbows and looked at the sky. “How far away do you reckon them stars is?” he asked.

I didn’t reply. He just gazed at the stars and drank from the bottle. Then he said, “Well, you’re the best man around, even if you don’t know everything.”

I said nothing to that, either. And he said, “I’ve got a lot of that Nebraska gold left. I’ll give it all to you if you’ll stay.”

“You can’t do that. You’re paying the freight for the whole outfit with that. When that goes, all the boys will go.”

“Well, I can do without them. But I can’t do without you. If I got a friend in the world, you’re it.” He looked at the stars again. “Pretty, ain’t they? I don’t remember them so pretty. I have got a friend, ain’t I, Frank?”

I gave up. “All right, Sam,” I said. “I’ll stay with you for one more job. But if it isn’t a good one, I’m leaving. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“That’s fair,” he said. He got up and climbed back to the cabin and the drunken laughter.

We were at Mesquite, twelve miles east of Dallas. Our train was late, but that wasn’t our biggest worry. Less than a hundred yards beyond the station, another train stood on a sidetrack. Its cars were lighted, and now and then a man would walk out of the shadows and cross the bright windows. He cradled a rifle or shotgun in his arms. “Convict train,” Arkansas said. “Construction gang, most likely.”

In the darkness beside me Sam was breathing heavily. He shifted in his saddle. The leather squeaked. “They won’t bother us,” he said. “If their prisoners was to get away, they’d be in a peck of trouble.”

As we stepped onto the platform, the station agent came out carrying a mail bag. “Hold up your hands!” Sam ordered. Then the train pulled alongside the platform, and he said, “Onto her, boys!”

Seab and I dashed up the engine steps, and the engineer and the fireman raised their hands. I cut the bell rope and said, “Take it easy. All we want is money.”

Then I heard a popping sound, and the guns of our companions roared in reply. “What’s that?” I asked.

“The conductor, probably,” the engineer said. “Julius carries a derringer.” “Climb down.”

Seab and I herded the engine crew to the platform. Arkansas had the station agent and another man under his gun there. The station door opened, framing a woman’s head in the lamplight. “Come out here, lady,” Arkansas said, but she ducked back inside and slammed the door. He fired a shot into the door.

The engineer tried to break away, and I clubbed him. The man rolled into the space between the platform and the train. I thought he was out cold, but he must have crawled under the train, for suddenly he was running through the darkness toward the convict train. I fired a couple of shots in his direction, but I couldn’t tell whether I hit him or not.

Sam and Henry banged on the door of the express car, shouting something. A pistol roared from one of the sleeping cars. It was the conductor again. “The bastard has a six-gun now,” Arkansas said. He and Seab and I let fly at him at the same time, and he tumbled down the steps. “Die, you son of a bitch!” Arkansas said. But the man wriggled under the car and fired at us until his gun was empty. In the confusion, the fireman had disappeared.

A shotgun blast and several pistol shots came at Sam and Henry from the express car windows, and they ducked into the space between the platform and the train as the engineer had done. Sam crawled down the space to the engine, jumped to the steps and returned with a can of oil and splashed it on the express car door. “I’ll count to fifty!” he yelled. “If you don’t come out, I set fire to your car! One! Two! Three! Four!” He was counting fast. At twenty-five the door opened a crack, and Sam stood up. But the man in the car fired a shot and slammed the door again. Sam resumed his count. When he shouted, “Forty!” someone inside the car yelled, “Don’t be in such a rush! Give us time to counsel a little!”

“You better talk fast!” Sam said. He counted again. When he reached fifty he said, “Are you going to open up?” There was no reply. Sam struck a match and was moving it toward the splash of oil when the door opened. The express messenger and two guards threw out their guns and stepped to the platform. Sam and Henry and Arkansas jumped into the car, leaving Seab and me to guard the prisoners.

Then the goddamn peanut vendor showed up on the steps of one of the coaches, his peanut box still slung around his neck and a pistol in his hand. I ran to him and stuck my own pistol in the boy’s face. “We don’t want any peanuts,” I said. “Drop it and get back inside.” The boy obeyed. I walked back to Seab and said, “We’re getting it from every direction, aren’t we?”

It was a bad luck comment, I guess, for several shotguns boomed from the convict train, and Seab groaned, “God, they got me.”

“Stop it!” one of our prisoners yelled toward the convict train. “We’ll be killed!”

The guards must have thought there were a lot of us, for they stopped firing. I ran to the door of the express car and yelled, “Hurry! We’ve got a casualty!”

Sam jumped to the platform. He had a cloth sack in his hand, but Henry and Arkansas were empty-handed. Seab was sitting on the platform, still holding his gun on the prisoners. His pantaloons were bloody in several places. “Can you walk?” I asked him.

“Help me up.” He raised a hand, and I pulled him to his feet and helped him to his horse. “Hurt bad?” I asked.

I held his stirrup with one hand and put the other under his butt and pushed him into the saddle. We departed Mesquite at a run.

I don’t remember much else about that night. We moved fast, afraid a posse would be coming. And for all we knew, the prairie and woods were full of posses still after us for Allen and Hutchins and Eagle Ford. We left the road and galloped, galloped across the prairie for a long time. We crossed a creek. I remember Henry asking, “Are we going to stop?”

We moved on and on through the night. We crossed another creek, and Seab’s horse stumbled on the rocks. He wailed, “Oh, what shall I do? I can’t stand it!”

My medical bags were at the cabin, but I took off my shirt and tore it into strips and wrapped them around Seab’s wounds, outside the pantaloons. “Buckshot,” I said. “I don’t think your legs are broken.”

We stayed at the creek long enough to let our horses blow and drink, then started again at a slower pace. The night was so black I could barely see my companions. We said nothing. Seab groaned with every step of his horse.

We didn’t reach our cabin until dark the next day. Arkansas and Henry took our horses to the corral, and Sam and I helped Barnes inside and laid him on a blanket near the fireplace. “Give him a bottle,” I said, “and build a big fire. I’ll need all the light I can get.” While we waited for Barnes to get drunk and the blaze to grow, I pulled Dr. Smith’s Minor Surgery from my saddlebags and looked for gunshot wounds. The closest thing I found was “The Extraction of Foreign Matter from Wounds.” I turned to the page and found that the section was only a paragraph:

Requires the use of forceps which are modified according to circumstances, and generally treated of in the works on Gun-shot Injuries. But when the substance is only particles of dirt, or such fine matter as cannot well be seized by the forceps, the free use of a stream of tepid water, either by means of a syringe or from a sponge, will suffice.

I cursed Dr. Smith and returned the book to the saddlebags and got out the case of instruments that Dr. Ross had given me. Henry and Arkansas came in from the corral. Henry grabbed the cloth bag we had taken from the train and poured the contents on the floor. He and Arkansas began counting the money aloud. Sam hunkered beside me, watching me. I opened the case. Seab groaned. The fire gave a glow to the green velvet lining of the case. The instruments glinted like treasure. “Do you want me to do something?” Sam asked.

I looked at my hands. They seemed as big as hams, and they were trembling. “Give me a drink,” I told Sam. “And then come hold him.”