by Gene Curry
For an answer I got, “Ain’t you never going to get through whaling that little girl?”
Two
Now, I’ve been in a few ridiculous situations in my time, but this one beat all. It was hard to stand on my dignity because I had none. Rosalie kept on laughing until I jumped off the bed, and then she yelled, “Don’t hurt him, Butch!”
The name Butch meant nothing to me, and it was my firm intention to hurt him, and not the other way around. I didn’t grab for my gun, which was slung over the back of a chair, because the derby-hatted gent didn’t look that dangerous. It was just as well I didn’t go for my iron. Before I got my hands close to his neck, he reached inside his coat and snaked out a double-action .45 with a shortened barrel.
He grinned at me and said, “Hold on there, soldier. Let’s not get hot over nothing. Sorry if I barged in on you at the wrong time. Doxy said you’d be all through by now. Since you ain’t, how’s about I wait a while in the hall?”
That started Rosalie laughing again. She laughed so hard the bed shook. “You got a nerve, Butch!” she said, kicking her heels in merriment. “What you think you’re doing, anyhow?”
Butch leaned against the doorframe with the stubby revolver dangling from his hand, regarding Rosalie with good-natured interest. “What am I doing, little sister? Looking for a piano player is what I’m doing.”
No one else seemed embarrassed so why should I have been? Standing there naked with my limp cock dangling, I asked him, “Is that what you think I was doing? Playing the piano?”
“More like the old trombone,” Butch said, sending Rosalie into gales of laughter. “Come on now, soldier. Where’s your sense of humor? In case you don’t got any, you can forget about that gun of yours. Wouldn’t do you any good to try for it.”
I turned, feeling like a fool. “I’ll be going,” I said. “I just want to put on my pants. That all right with you?” Butch flipped his coat open and slid the short pistol into a well-oiled shoulder holster. “See! I’m putting my gun away, only you won’t want to forget I can get it out again just as quick. I said I was sorry for barging in on you.”
I didn’t know what to make of him. He was all duded up like a cowpuncher on his wedding day, uncomfortable in his stiff, new clothes. But there was more to him than that. The speed with which he handled a gun was proof of that, and the shoulder holster itself was out of the ordinary. A sun squint made a permanent crease between his light blue eyes, or maybe he just needed glasses and was too vain to get fitted. I didn’t know him, and didn’t want to know him. All I wanted to do was to get out of there.
Would that I had been so lucky.
I knew I’d be looking at his gun again if I tried to take him. It wasn’t that important, so I didn’t try. You can’t trade bullets with every fool who crosses your path. Keeping my hands away from my gunbelt, I dressed quickly and sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots, while Rosalie lay back and looked at me. “Take it easy, Jim,” she said. “We’re all friends here.”
“That we are,” Butch agreed.
I had buckled on my gunbelt under the eye of the derby-hatted man and turned to go when the stranger said with a rough edge in his voice, “Where do you think you’re going, soldier?”
“Going out,” I said.
That got him mad in a mild-mannered way. It’s hard to describe how it got him mad. Everything about him was so good-natured, as if he wanted to be liked and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t. I guess he wasn’t too bright; most good-natured people aren’t.
“What’s your hurry?” he said, snaking out the gun again. He was very fast with that iron. He grinned at me, the sun squint deepening as he did. “You got an invitation to play the piano downstairs. We’re going to have ourself a party.”
I looked at the chopped-down .45. “Play it yourself,” I said.
“Not friendly, is he?” Butch said to Rosalie, who had pulled a corner of the sheet over her cooze. “I invite him to a party and he gives me a sourball look. That ain’t nice, soldier, and I don’t like it when people ain’t nice. Life is too short for sour looks and hard feelings.” He raised the revolver and grinned at me, not wanting to take no for an answer. “I think you better come down and play that piano.”
Well, you know how it is. When they push, you have to push back. The path of peace had gone crooked on me, and I was ready to step off.
“I don’t want to play the piano,” I said facing up to him, waving Rosalie away from us with my left hand. My right hand hung close to my gun. Butch had the .45 in his hand, but it wasn’t cocked.
Butch gaped at me. “You are mad, ain’t you? You’re ready to shoot it out over a few tunes on the piano.”
Rosalie grabbed at my left arm and I pushed her away. “You better play for them,” she said, no longer laughing but breathless and frightened. “This is Butch Cassidy you’re talking to. Don’t say no, Jim! The rest of his boys are downstairs.”
I stared at the most famous outlaw in the country, and he grinned back at me. The man who ran the railroads ragged. The bandit who gave bankers the shits. Cassidy had done all the things they said couldn’t be done. They said the Wild West had had its day, but someone had forgotten to tell Cassidy. He ranged the Northwest like a tiger, taking what he wanted and moving on.
I don’t know how many lawmen, official and private, were chasing him, maybe a small army. He had broken all the laws and dared them to come and get him. They had tried. Lord knows how they had tried! When they beefed up the guards on the banks, he switched to robbing the railroads. Back and forth he switched, and always got away with it. He was denounced in state legislatures all over the Northwest, and even in the Congress of the United States. Butch was an affront to every honest citizen in the land. But then, in so many ways, so was I.
Butch grinned at me, watching for my reaction to his name. Not getting any, he said, “Pleased to meet you, Saddler.” He flipped the gun to his left hand without taking his eyes on me. “Why don’t we shake, soldier? I’d like it if you was to shake hands with me.”
I shook hands with him.
“Now, why don’t we start all over?” Butch said. “I’ll go out in the hall and knock.”
“This is horseshit,” I said.
“Most everything is. That’s why you can’t take life too serious. I don’t.”
He went out and when he knocked I told him to come in. Butch was a clown, though a dangerous one. Standing in the doorway, he said, “My name is Cassidy, and I’m looking to hire a piano player for the evening.”
“Why don’t you try the next house?”
Ignoring that, he said, “I’ll pay five hundred for the right man.”
Rosalie, buttoning her dress, let out a whoop and her eyes brightened at the sound of five hundred dollars. I guess mine did too, but I didn’t say anything.
“I can vamp a little,” Rosalie said. “Lordy! I wish I could play.”
Butch regarded her fondly. “So do I,” he said. “I love you, Rosalie darlin’, but between us we couldn’t play ‘Chopsticks’.”
Rosalie pouted prettily and Butch got back to me, displaying impatience for the first time. “Be a pal, Saddler, and don’t make me mad. Me and the boys are here to make an evening of it, so don’t get me mad. Come on downstairs and play the fucking piano.”
He dug into his pocket and threw a fat roll of bills onto the bed. Rosalie grabbed it and said, “Can I be Saddler’s manager, Butch? Singers and musicians always have a manager. I read that m the paper. How much do I get, Butch?”
Somehow that broke the tension in the little, sex-smelling room, and I found myself smiling at both of them. “You get ten percent like all the other managers,” I said.
“I’ll kick in another ten,” Butch said.
Rosalie squealed and threw her arms around him. I guess old Butch had enjoyed her favors a few times, because he squeezed her ass before he let her go. Rosalie peeled off five hundred dollars, kept fifty for herself, and gave the rest to me.
Butch told her to take his ten percent, which came to another fifty. There must have been five thousand in that roll. Butch stuffed it back in his pants without even looking at it.
“I sure hope you can play ‘The Cowboy’s Lament’,” Butch said to me. “That s one of my favorites.”
It so happened that I could, and I was glad of it. There was a wildness, a madness about this man that I found myself drawn to. Reckless beyond reason, he seemed to look at the world as through a cracked mirror, taking nothing seriously. I have some of that in me, though not nearly as much as Cassidy, and for the moment, I was ready to go along with him. How it was going to end I had no idea at the time. And if I had known, would I have said no? Of course I wouldn’t have because there was no way to say no, graciously or otherwise.
I was glad I’d said yes when we got downstairs and saw the merrymakers I was expected to entertain. Butch had holstered the gun and was singing “The Cowboy’s Lament” before we got all the way down. He sang like a bull moose. The house guard was adding bottles to the bottles already on the big table in the parlor. Smiling like a mechanical doll, Doxy was pointing where everything should go. She was eager to please, telling the house guard to fetch more liquor, ice for the champagne, and wood for the fire.
Butch said, “We got ourself a piano player.”
Five pairs of eyes regarded me from the parlor. I knew Ben Kilpatrick, known as the Tall Texan, from his wanted posters. Ben was wanted for many crimes in many states and territories, and I had seen his likeness nailed to walls, fences, and trees long before I arrived in Wyoming. It was said that Ben always ordered ham and beans in restaurants because he couldn’t read the menu. A stringbean of a man, he was dressed up in new town clothes like Cassidy: derby hat, embroidered silk vest, even a watch chain. The chain was heavy, solid gold, and must have cost its real owner a pretty penny.
For a moment they looked like they were grouped for a photograph, holding themselves in a stiff studio pose; and indeed the members of the Wild Bunch were well known for their fondness for photographs, something that was going to get them all killed. I realized that I had seen all of them before—not in the flesh but in wanted posters. They looked the same, and yet they were different. I wasn’t delighted by what I saw.
Butch made the introductions, though there was no need. I got a quick smile and a strong handshake from Harry Longbaugh, known to the world as the Sundance Kid. They said Harry was from New Jersey, and he was handsome and knew it. After the Kid I traded handshakes with Tom O’Day, a demented Irishman, Harvey Logan, notorious as Big Nose Kid Curry, and an ordinary looking man named Will Carver. I didn’t know anything about Carver.
“And last but certainly not least,” Butch said, “I’d like you to meet Harry Tracy. Everybody loves Harry and you will too. Come on now, Harry, shake hands with the man.”
Some killers don’t look like killers. Harry Tracy did. The murderous nature of the man reached out at me. Mostly it was the eyes, as it usually is with killers. They were big and flat and gray, mindlessly hostile and utterly lacking in compassion, humor or mercy. He had a wedge-shaped face the color of a smoked ham, his iron jaw stuck out, and his whole chunky body was like a bunched-up fist ready to strike. Though he was dressed up for a party like the others, his cropped head gave him the look of an escaped convict. The hand that came out to shake mine was dry and hard. He didn’t just shake my hand though, he tried to crush it. Our eyes met and Tracy smiled his killer’s smile, and it went on like that for a few seconds until Butch yelled at him to let go.
“What the fuck you trying to do, Harry, crush his fingers? The only piano player we got?” Butch yelled again and Tracy let go, not liking it but taking it from Cassidy. Butch was the boss of the gang, but I could see that Tracy had his own ideas about that. The others looked good-natured enough, more or less like Butch himself; only Harry Tracy didn’t seem to fit in. But he was there and had been part of the gang for a long time.
Butch clapped his hands and the group photograph came to life. The Sundance Kid asked me what I was drinking and when I told him he sloshed out a full glass of Jack Daniels and shoved it at me. I downed it in two swallows, and Tom O’Day, already half-drunk, allowed I was a scholar and a gentleman and a judge of good whiskey.
“Play!” Butch commanded.
I limbered up by cracking my knuckles and, fired by bourbon, I launched into “The Cowboy’s Lament” while Butch sang about two hundred yards behind the music. I guess I didn’t do too badly because Doxy, nervous until now, began to smile. It began to shape up as a real party, the whores chattering like magpies, the whiskey going down like water. Another drink of Daniels put real life in my fingers, and at Butch’s urging I played all the old easy tunes I had learned back in the whorehouse in El Paso. Maybe I wasn’t very good, but you’d never have known it from the way Butch sang and applauded at the end of every song.
Inspired by more whiskey, I was able to manage a waltz and everybody but Butch and Tracy got up and danced. Butch was too busy singing to dance; Tracy didn’t want to. All Tracy did was drink a lot and stare at me, as if measuring me for a coffin. A few times Butch tried to get Tracy into the mood of the party, but all he did was smile his killer's smile.
I played another waltz and Butch danced with Rosalie, steering her around the parlor like a man pushing a wheelbarrow. He sang as they danced. Butch sang all the time. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and he sang loud if he didn’t sing good.
The Sundance Kid admired himself every time he danced past the big mirror over the fireplace. The Kid was the best dancer in the bunch, and he knew it, just as he knew he was the handsomest man in the room. All the whores took a shine to the Kid, even old Doxy herself. A real gentleman, the Kid danced with everybody and had a fancy line of talk that never stopped.
My fingers flew over the keys. I wondered then why a talented musician such as myself had to make his living playing cards and hiring out his gun. Of course I was getting drunk, and as one tune followed another I got a lot drunker than that. No one seemed to mind that I had to keep repeating the five or six tunes I knew, and maybe they didn’t sound the same, the way I played them. Only Harry Tracy didn’t like the music, or maybe he didn’t like me. He drank and continued to stare at me.
Done with dancing, Butch came back and leaned on the piano, and tears came into his mild blue eyes when I played “The Cowboy’s Lament” for maybe the tenth time. I did some fancy trilling with my right hand, and Butch couldn’t have liked it more. He wrapped his arm around Tom O’Day’s shoulder and they sang together, the Irishman in a shaky tenor, Cassidy in a gravelly roar. Outside the night wind whipped against the house but inside all was good cheer—just a bunch of good fellers having a good time.
There was a lot of reward money in that parlor. Butch was worth a fortune all by himself. I don’t know why I thought about reward money then, for I had no thought of turning them in, even if I got the chance.
I got drunker but never forgot that Harry Tracy was watching me. I knew he wanted to start trouble and was wondering how to go about it. I knew it would come before the night was over. I guess he wanted to kill me, though I couldn’t imagine why. Harry Tracy didn’t need much of a reason to kill a man I guessed. Any reason would do. At the time he didn’t bother me much, and that shows you how drunk I must have been, for any man in his right mind would have been bothered by Mad Dog Harry.
Like the Sundance Kid, Tracy was an Easterner, a New York Stater. Other than that, the two men had nothing in common. I liked the Kid. I even liked Tom O’Day, who smelled pretty rank in spite of his new suit and boiled shirt. O’Day looked like a confused walrus, with his cross-eyes and straggly mustache.
In the middle of the party, the house guard lugged in a whole mess of food and set it out for the merrymakers. Concerned for my well-being, Butch yelled at me to take a break from playing. By now he was drunk enough to want to play himself. I let him have the stool while I drank whiskey and worked on a fat roast chicken. Tom
O’Day waltzed with a turkey drumstick in one hand, singing with his mouth full.
Before he banged out a note, Butch stroked the piano keys like a man stroking a naked woman. His wet, blue eyes were full of love for the instrument he couldn’t play. I felt sorry for the poor feller.
The dancing went on without music, and sometimes Harry Tracy watched the Sundance Kid, but his eyes always came back to me. I guess he hated the Kid because the Kid was everything Tracy was not. He was handsome, even charming in a way, and the whores hung all over him. They all stayed away from Tracy. Now and then Doxy said a few words to him, but she gave up in the face of his sinister smile. Sinister was the only word for Tracy. Even now, years later, I find it hard to put him into words. All I can say is that Harry Tracy was the worst man I’d ever met in my life.
Curry and Will Carver were still waltzing and I was still playing, stone drunk now, but happy as a pig in shit. Curry, big-nosed and awkward, danced with two whores at the same time. Tom O’Day sat in a stupor with a bottle in his hand. It was well into the night and the parlor reeked of liquor and cigar smoke. Maybe I shouldn’t have winked at Harry Tracy, but I did, and he drew his gun so fast I hardly saw his hand move. It came out smooth as velvet, with the hammer back. The trigger was squeezed tight and only his thumb was keeping the hammer from dropping on a cartridge. Tracy was drunk, but his hand didn’t waver.
“Stand up, you stinking spy!” he rasped in his dead-cold voice. One of the whores crashing around with Curry gave out a short scream when she saw the gun. Curry pushed the whores away and stood watching. Will Carver stared at the gun in Tracy’s hand, then his eyes flicked over to me. O’Day, half-asleep, didn’t even notice what was going on.
“Listen, Harry,” Curry said cautiously. “You don’t want to wreck the party.”
Tracy didn’t look at the big-nosed outlaw. “Keep out of it, Curry. Don’t get in my way, I warn you. While you been banging around with the whores I been figuring things out. This son of a bitch is a Pinkerton spy. Stand up, sneak, or I’ll kill you where you sit!”