Jim Saddler 6

by Gene Curry

  The night wore on and to keep me going they fed me drinks from a quart of whiskey they had in the cupboard. Laura drank along with me, but Pearl didn’t drink at all. It was well into the night when we called it quits, but instead of going to sleep they talked about themselves and wanted to hear about me.

  Snuggling against me, Pearl said she was just seventeen years-old but had been an outlaw for more than a year. Her specialty was robbing stagecoaches, and she’d only turned to robbing banks and trains when so many stage lines had gone out of business. Yes, she said, her story was the old, old story of the good girl who had fallen in love with an outlaw.

  “Now I’m a bad girl and love it,” she giggled, making the bed shake. “My man got caught and sent to prison, but he couldn’t have been too good at his job if he’d got caught, so I don’t care about him anymore. I love this life and wouldn’t go back to the old one if I could. How about you, Laura?”

  “Not a chance,” Laura said. She had worked at all kinds of lousy jobs, from waitressing in a restaurant to dancing in a saloon. “I feel wild and free, and to hell with the respectable life. When I get old, maybe about thirty, I’m going to take my money and go to Chicago. That’s where I’ve always wanted to go. But that’s years away, and right now I’m having a good time. How about you, Saddler? What are you going to do with yourself?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do years from now,” I said.

  Laura said quickly, “Does that mean you’re not a Pinkerton spy?”

  She hadn’t reached for her gun, so I was able to answer without any fuss. “Not a chance of it.”

  Pearl turned in the bed until she was facing me. “You’re sure of that, Saddler? I’d hate it if you turned out to be that.”

  Laura reached down to massage my shaft. “No lousy Pink-spy could ever pleasure a woman—a couple of women—like you’ve been doing. Butch doesn’t think you are, but it is kind of peculiar, you turning up like that in Jackson Hole.”

  I was getting hard again, but asked them, “Butch asked you to ask me?”

  Laura said, “True, he gave us the nod, and I’m glad he did. Butch is good people, Saddler, and I’d hate for something bad to happen to him.”

  “So would I,” Pearl said. “We’d have to kill you if you turned out to be the wrong kind, Saddler. You want me to tell you something else?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe you should decide to stay on with the gang.”

  “Why don’t you?” Pearl urged. “We could have a lot of nights like this. Carrying on the whole night through.” They were urging so hard that I began to get suspicious. They seemed to be telling me there was no way I could leave. They seemed to be hinting that I’d get shot if I tried.

  “Butch said I could leave,” I said. “He gave his word. We made a deal.”

  Laura said urgently, “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about Butch. You’d do well not to argue too hard.”

  Pearl slipped her hand between my legs. “That’s good advice, Saddler. Keep Butch happy and everything will be fine. Go against him and he’ll get mad.”

  “I guess I’d better think about it,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to make Butch mad.” And as I said that I knew I’d better start making some other plan to get out of there. Robbing banks wasn’t my life’s work and I knew I’d never get used to it. First and last I was a poker player, and a damned good one, if I do say so myself. All I wanted was to get away from the Hole in the Wall and keep on going. It wouldn’t be long before the Pinkertons or some other law put an end to Butch and his gang, and I didn’t want to be there when it happened.

  “Well, there’s no use worrying about it right now,” Pearl said. “I don’t think about what’s going to happen tomorrow, and you shouldn’t either. You want to have more fun or go to sleep?”

  “More fun,” I said. “Why think about tomorrow?” But I was lying. Really I was thinking about nothing else.

  “That must be Butch,” Pearl said about seven o’clock the next morning. Her voice seemed to come from a distance. Light came in the window and I wanted it to go away. I wanted it to be five hours earlier and dark so I could sleep. Lord knows I needed my sleep. After the night I’d had, my cock was sore.

  The door latch rattled again. “Anybody alive in there?” Even in my worn-out state there was no mistaking Cassidy’s goddamned cheery voice.

  Like me, Laura was tired. But Pearl—the kid of the outfit—got up and went bare-assed to open the door. And when she did, a blast of cold, wet air came in. Beside me, Laura sighed and snuffled and finally put her feet on the floor.

  “You better roll out, Saddler,” she warned. “The boss man is here.”

  Butch came in as loud as a traveling salesman and slapped Pearl on her bare ass. “God bless all this fine mornin’,” Butch said. I guess he thought he sounded like Tom O’Day.

  The cold air was still blowing in and I knew I’d have to get up. With the fire burned down it was pretty cold in the cabin at that hour. I opened my eyes and knuckled the sleep out of them. Pearl was getting stove wood from a box. I looked at Butch and he didn’t look one bit tired. Butch never seemed to tire, but I’m mortal and I was tired.

  “’Tis a fine mornin’ we’re having,” Butch said, again in what he thought was Tom O’Day’s voice. “A shame it would be to lie abed on a mornin’ as nice as this one.”

  I knew it wasn’t a fine morning because I could hear the rain on the roof. In the Northwest it rains winter and summer. It can be hot and raining at the same time. Pearl was using the iron lifter to set the stove lid back in place. The dry wood began to pop and, leaving out Cassidy, it was the liveliest thing on the premises.

  The bed creaked as Butch sat on the edge of it and regarded me with affection. “Well, did you?” he asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Have a good time?”

  The girls had worked hard, even if he had set them to spying on me, and I couldn’t deny the pleasure I’d had. “Couldn’t have been better,” I said. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

  “Don’t mention it, soldier. There’s a big breakfast waiting for you. Who says you have to drink to have fun—that’s what I always say. At one point in the night I thought I’d come over and join you good people.”

  Jesus! The idea of being in bed with Butch Cassidy!

  “Rise and shine,” Butch said. “After you get a good feed of steak we’ll have our first music lesson. Guess it’s been on my mind all night long. Harry and Etta bitched at me for humming in my sleep. It seems they don’t have my great fondness for music.”

  Butch began to whistle tunelessly. Laura and Pearl giggled and started to get dressed. I guess there was nothing they didn’t do in the Hole in the Wall. Nothing was held back; they all took Cassidy’s lead and said whatever came into their heads.

  I swung my legs off the bed and Butch slung my pants at me. “I’m up,” I said. Butch gave me the rest of my stuff: shirt, boots, gunbelt. Suspected of spying or not, I hadn’t been deprived of my gun, which seemed to show that Butch thought I couldn’t do a thing about my situation.

  The girls had washed their faces and crotches and were combing their hair. All in all, it was a very homey scene. The fire snapped in the stove and a few minutes later I was dressed for whatever the miserable day had in store for me. I rubbed the stubble on my chin. Butch had shaved.

  Pearl suddenly said to Butch, “I don’t think Saddler was sent to work against you.”

  “Me neither,” Laura agreed, with hairpins in her mouth.

  Butch handed me my hat. “That’s all to the good,” he said. “Nothing in this world’s worse than a sneak. Come on now, Saddler, you got to get your strength back. Get the wrinkles out of your belly and we’ll have a go at the old pianny.”

  Laura and Pearl were fixing their own breakfast and said they’d be over directly. Laura made a face as she cracked eggs into a fat-sizzling skillet. “Listen to that goddamned rain,” she said, letting an egg down e
asy.

  The rain didn’t bother Butch. Nothing much bothered Butch. “Good for the crops,” he declared.

  The smell of food reminded me of how hungry I was. I didn’t feel like making music, but all the fucking and sucking of the night before had left me with a hollow feeling in my stomach.

  Butch and I ducked out into the driving rain and made a dash for his cabin. Etta had a big breakfast waiting when we got over there and slapped the water off our hats. I’d never seen so much food—steak and eggs, hot biscuits, fried potatoes, and gallons of black coffee. The Wild Bunch might be hunted, but they sure lived high on the hog.

  From the dirty look Etta gave me I thought the whole, good-smelling mess might be poisoned. But I was too hungry to worry about that, so I pulled up a chair and tucked in hearty. Butch joined me, though he said he’d eaten a first breakfast earlier.

  Etta sat at the table with us, drinking coffee and smoking one strong, brown cigarette after another. You would have to say she smoked in anger, but angry or not she was a good cook.

  After a while Sundance came out of the bedroom buckling on his gunbelt. He was wearing a clean red undershirt and pants. No socks, no boots. He grinned at Cassidy and then at me.

  “No use trying to sleep once Cassidy is up,” Sundance said. Etta shoved the steak platter his way and he heaped his plate.

  Sundance said, “You look like you’re in a good mood, missy. Why’d you have to get up so early? I was hoping along about now we could—”

  “No throwing hot coffee,” Butch warned Etta. “Hot or cold, don’t throw it. You got to learn to take a joke, girl.”

  “Save your jokes for your whores.” And having said that Etta lapsed into sullen silence, lighting one cigarette from the end of the one before. The door was open and wind-driven rain pattered on the porch. Heaped with wood, the stove glowed red, and another pot of coffee simmered on top of it. The piano stood waiting and I began to hate the goddamned thing. If it hadn’t been there, then I would not have been either.

  We hadn’t finished eating when Laura and Pearl came in, followed by Tom O’Day. Butch made them welcome. There was no sign of Harry Tracy and the others. Plenty of food was left and Etta told O’Day to help himself.

  “A shame to have it go to waste,” O’Day declared wisely. “There’s poor people starving in China.”

  Butch said grinning, “They’d be starving worse if you was there.”

  Laura and Pearl, though invited to dig in, said they were too full to eat another bite. “You don’t mind if we sit in for the music?” Laura asked. “Nothing else to do on a day like this.”

  “Heaven is open to all,” Butch said, getting up from the table. “I don’t mind a bit, Laura girl.”

  He looked at me.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go to it.”

  Etta snapped a dishrag at Butch. “Wipe your goddamned hands before you touch that piano.” Butch rubbed his hands with the damp rag and bowed in a bad imitation of a man on the stage of a theater.

  It was time to face the music.

  So there we were side by side, Butch with his sleeves rolled up, his freckled, hairy hands suspended above the keyboard. At first Butch’s fingers were like sticks, and I had to tell him to pretend he was reaching for his gun to get him to loosen up. I tried to remember all the things that old colored man back in El Paso had taught me. “Spread your fingers but keep them limber,” I said. They say you can teach anybody to play anything if you have enough time. Looking at Cassidy I wasn’t too sure about that. Still, I had to try because I figured that that piano was maybe my only way out of there. Nothing more had been said about me leaving the Hole, and I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t want to sound like a nagging wife.

  We started with “Down in the Valley,” and they don’t come any easier than that.

  “Forget about the left hand,” I told Butch. “We’ll get to that later. First we work on the melody—later comes the fancy stuff.”

  I took hold of Butch’s hand and brought it down on the keys. Then, pressing down on his fingers, I made him go dong dong dong dinggg dong!, and his face lit up like it was Christmas. He turned to me, about as grateful as a man could get. You’d think I had just saved his poor old mother from the workhouse. His blue eyes were full of wonder.

  “Holy shit! I played that, didn’t I!” He let out a whoop. “You old son of a bitch, Saddler! You’re teaching me to play.”

  If I had been an onlooker instead of a prisoner I would have thought it funny to see two big men wearing guns sitting together at a piano.

  “You’re doing good,” I said. “By the time I leave you’ll be playing with both hands. When I ride out a week from now you’ll be playing the easy ones.”

  I waited for his response to that.

  Well, they say give a man an inch and he’ll take a mile. Butch said, “Be nice if I could play more than the easy ones.”

  That had an ominous ring to it, and I knew damn well that he wasn’t going to keep his word. In a way it was something I’d known all along, but then I’m an optimistic galoot by nature. I’d been hoping for the best; now I knew I wasn’t going to get it.

  A few years back there had been a newspaper story about a crazy Mexican bandit-general who couldn’t read but loved adventure books about the Spanish Main pirates and so forth. This madman attacked a town garrisoned by federal troops just so he could carry off the whole library in wagons and oxcarts. Along with the library he took the librarian, some harmless, middle-aged gent, and sentenced him to read aloud for the rest of his life. Ten years later, with a very sore throat I guess, he was still doing it when the federals killed the bandit and the librarian got away.

  Listening to Cassidy that’s how I felt. I decided then not to hand out any more guff about leaving the Hole. You have to work with what you’ve got, and what I had was Butch’s friendship. Sort of, I did. I had to find a way out of that place. The ravine was well-guarded and hard to get through, and I guessed Cassidy wasn’t lying when he said that was the only way in or out. He wouldn’t be likely to hole up in a place where the Pinkertons or the law could get at him from the rear. Right then I had no idea what my plan was going to be.

  After a rest we did “Down in the Valley” again, and kept at it until Butch was able to do it himself. At last, sick of it, I said, “That’s enough for today. You don’t want to wear yourself out.”

  “I don’t feel wore out,” Butch said.

  “Who’s teaching here, you or me?” I asked, thinking that if the music wasn’t going to be a way to freedom, then I might as well drag out the lessons. Maybe by doing that I’d manage to stay alive. I wasn’t forgetting Harry Tracy. I wasn’t forgetting him for a minute.

  Butch nodded obediently, though he wanted to go on. “You’re the teacher. How soon do we start on the left hand?”

  “Tomorrow,” I decided.

  “Why don’t we just take a rest and go on with it? I feel so good about this,” Butch said.

  To show me what he meant, Butch let out a whoop and a holler. “That’s how good I feel,” he said. “When I’m having a good time I want the whole world to know about it. You got to shake off that hang-dog look, Saddler. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Some newspaper feller said that one time, and he got it exactly right. Course he was just putting my own feelings into words.”

  “Can’t you ever get enough of anything, Cassidy?” Etta said irritably. “God Almighty! Hasn’t there been enough racket around here for one day? Give that damn piano a rest so our ears can get a rest.”

  Butch smiled at her. “Your ears hurting you, Etta? If they are we’ll get you to a doctor next time we hit some town. Anything else bothering you besides your ears? Be a shame if a good-looking gal like you had some ailment we don’t know about.”

  That got Etta very mad. “The only ailment I have is you, Cassidy. Why is it you’re such a pain in the ass?”

  Nobody smiled too hard because now Butch himself was getting mad. He stared at Et
ta. “There’s a cure for what’s wrong with you, girl. It’s called getting the hell out of this cabin and out of this valley. Works wonders for what ails you. I think maybe you ought to try it. Listen to what Dr. Cassidy is telling you, my sweet.”

  I wondered why a woman like Etta put up with him. Away from Cassidy, away from the Hole in the Wall, she would have had men hanging all over her with offers of marriage and other things. A woman like that could name her own price. So why did she put up with him? Because she loved the big, roaring bastard, I guess.

  Cassidy had to prove his point—that he owned her—in front of the rest of us. I hate to be a party to things like that, but I wasn’t calling the shots, so I kept my mouth shut. I guess it was a scene that had been played many times. Still, the others there in the cabin were an interested audience.

  “So how about it?” Butch wanted to know.

  Suddenly the defiant light in Etta’s eyes went out and her fine body went slack. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said, Cassidy. Go ahead. Beat on the piano all you want for all I care.”

  Butch grinned. “Thanks for telling me,” he said. “I know you like my piano playing as much as I do.” Now that he had won, Butch was prepared to be merciful. Or maybe he knew that he could push Etta just so far. “Maybe Saddler’s right about trying to learn too much the first day. That’s what you said, ain’t it, Saddler?”

  “That’s what I said. The trick is to learn just so much at one time. That’s how all the great piano players do it, I’m told.”

  Still smarting from Cassidy’s humiliation of her, Etta turned her bad humor on me. “What great piano player told you that, Saddler?”

  “An old colored man in a whorehouse in El Paso,” I answered.

  Everybody laughed and Butch let out another whoop.

  “That’s telling her, Saddler. Course you wasn’t suggesting that sweet Etta ever worked in a whorehouse?”

  “Gosh no,” I said, explaining that the old colored gentleman I spoke of had been a demon at the keyboard. “It’s too bad you don’t have him here instead of me,” I added sincerely.