Jim Saddler 6

by Gene Curry

  “Sit and wait,” I said.

  I stuck the gun in my waistband and covered it with my coat. Then I went to the windows to make sure nobody could see in. I checked the door, too. Down at the other end of town the train was clanging its way into the depot. I looked at my watch: the train was right on time, and I figured they’d be there with the money in about ten minutes.

  When five minutes had passed since the train pulled in, I said, “Time to open the rear door.”

  “Anything you want,” he said. He was the most cooperative banker I’d ever met in my life.

  I marched him down a hallway with storerooms on both sides. At the end of it was a heavy oak door banded with hoop iron. It had a drop bar and a lock. I lifted up the drop bar and he unlocked the door with a big key. I pulled the door open and there was Cassidy grinning like mad.

  “Nice to see you, Saddler,” he said, ever the clown. Harry Tracy was behind him. So were Kilpatrick, Curry, Etta, and all of the others. I let them in and closed the door, turned the key in the lock and left it there. “Where are the horses, Butch?”

  “In a cottonwood grove right outside town. Old Butch is looking after them.”

  “Get in the office and keep quiet,” I said. “Pearl and I will handle it. Don’t come out till I make sure the law is gone. I’ll tell you when.”

  Tracy looked at me, but didn’t say anything. He and the others followed Butch into the manager’s office. The banker sat behind one of the tellers’ cages, but didn’t look too bad. I guess he was thinking of home and family.

  Pearl turned, “I think I hear them coming.” I shook my fist at her and she turned back to her ledgers. But she was right: they were coming. I watched the manager through two inches of open door. I felt Cassidy’s breath on my neck and elbowed him away. Knuckles rapped on the glass panel of the door and the manager jumped with fright. But then he took a deep breath, straightened his cravat, and called out, “I’m coming!”

  Before he opened the door he lifted the shade and looked out. “All right! All right!” he called out in a brisk voice. I liked that manager for being so sensible. He unlocked the door and four hard-looking men with stars on their chests came in. Two of them carried big canvas money sacks. The other deputies, carrying sawed-off shotguns, backed in after them.

  I pegged the toughest-looking badge toter to be the marshal. He carried a rifle. “Here it is,” he said, pointing the men with the money sacks in the direction of the huge vault built into the wall in back of the tellers’ cages. “Nothing happened on the train, nothing happened at all. I don’t know, but they must have been warned. Maybe they were too scared. The moneybags are still sealed, as you can see. Thought for a minute they’d try to get at us on the way here. Nothing!”

  “Thank God!” the banker said. He turned and went to the vault with the marshal behind him. The banker spun the dials quickly, then yanked down on the handle, and the massive steel door opened silently on oiled hinges. The banker turned. “Just set the bags down in there. On the floor is all right. I’ll get to it later.”

  The two deputies came out of the vault and stood waiting. The banker shut the door with a soft thud and spun the dials. Then he tried the handle. It didn’t budge.

  “That’s a corker, ain’t it,” the marshal remarked. “To blow a thing like that you’d need an awful lot of dynamite.”

  “Dynamite wouldn’t work,” the manager said, playing out his role. “All that dynamite would do is jam the lock, then no one would get it open.”

  The banker took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his face. The marshal laughed. “Makes you nervous, hey, Mr. Philpot? Don’t blame you one bit. Just getting it here from the train made me nervous. But I guess it’s safe enough where it is. If that’s all you need, I’ll be getting home to eat. I guess I can eat now that it’s over.”

  “Thanks, Marshal,” the banker said fervently.

  At the door the marshal turned. “If Cassidy tries to rob a bank in this town we’ll be ready for him. My deputies are the best there is.”

  The banker nodded and nodded. “Everything’s all right,” he said, and locked the door behind them. I left the office door half-closed when I came out to check the street. The marshal and his five deputies were walking away.

  “It’s all right to come out,” I told Cassidy.

  I steered the banker toward the vault. Cassidy and the others watched as he spun the dials and opened the vault again. Pearl had cleared everything off the long counter that ran behind the tellers’ cages. Butch broke the seal on the first sack and dumped the money out on the counter. Some of it fell on the floor. God! You never saw so much money in your life. Sundance lifted the other bag and emptied it. I stood behind Harry Tracy while they were doing it. Butch started to count and Tracy objected to that.

  “Let somebody else count it,” he growled.

  “He’s right,” I said. “Let Pearl and Etta count it. Kilpatrick and Curry can band it when it’s ready.”

  “Suits me,” Tracy said.

  I watched Tracy instead of the money because with a madman like that there was no telling what he might do. All it would take was one gunshot to bring the whole town down on us, and I was not of a mind to face those shotgun deputies. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of Tracy’s thick neck. He sensed me watching him and turned. I traded hard looks with him before he gave his attention back to the stacks of bills.

  The counting went on and on, and no matter how fast they worked it still took time, for there is no quick way to parcel out $100,000 in bills no larger than fifties. Etta and Pearl pushed the stacks of bills along to Curry and Kilpatrick, who slipped rubber bands around them. Everybody was sweating, including me. The door handle rattled and everybody froze. They stayed that way while I went to the door with my gun in my hand and looked out by the edge of the blind. An old man in a rusty black suit stood there chewing his lip. After a while, muttering to himself, he went away.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Keep going.”

  Each time one of the women slid a stack of bills along the counter I knew it was getting closer to the end—the end of everything. I could sense the killing lust as it built up in Tracy. The hulking son-of-a-bitch was so close to getting everything he ever wanted: leadership of the Wild Bunch, and more money than he knew existed. The horses were waiting down in the cottonwood grove, but that didn’t mean much. The real trouble would start once the money was shared out. Butch was sure about Curry and Kilpatrick. I wasn’t sure of anything. I’d said it all along—Tracy was the one to get—but Cassidy wouldn’t listen to me. The crazy bastard still thought he could walk hand in hand with death, then just walk away before it got a firm grip on him.

  The tension fairly crackled as the two women started on the last batch of money. Etta had been making notes on a sheet of paper. “One hundred thousand dollars to the penny,” she said. “That’s it.”

  “Pass it out, ladies,” Cassidy said. “One bundle to a customer. Step right up, folks, and get what’s rightfully yours.”

  And that’s what they did. One after another they took their bundles of six thousand dollars, and stuffed them in their pockets or inside their shirts. Some grinned, some didn’t. Ben Kilpatrick nodded at Cassidy. “You played it straight, Butch, and I’m obliged to you.”

  Harry Tracy was stepping forward to get his bundle when I pulled my gun and slammed him across the back of the neck. Cassidy’s gun came out like a flash, and so did the Kid’s. I had to hit Tracy three times before he went down. I let him fall on his face. Cassidy and the Kid had the rest of them covered. Etta yanked her gun and covered Pearl.

  “What’re you pointing that thing at me for?” Pearl complained. “I wasn’t going to side with Tracy. He’s lost, hasn’t he?”

  For an instant there was silence as we moved apart. Ben Kilpatrick was dark-faced with anger, and I knew he was going to draw even if it got him killed. Curry was just as mad.

  “You lousy bastard,” Kilpatrick rasped at Cassidy, hi
s hand swinging close to his holster. “You planned it this way all along. They said you were a son-of-a-bitch, but I didn’t want to believe them. They were right all the time.”

  I had given Cassidy the chance to get the drop on Tracy. But that didn’t mean I was going to let him rob the straight-shooters who had been with him for a long time. I knew Cassidy was tempted to do just that. I moved over beside Kilpatrick and Curry.

  I said, “Tracy’s out cold so that gives you a start on him. I say let the rest of the boys take their share and go their own way. If Tracy wants to follow along when he wakes up, then you’ll have to deal with him.”

  Cassidy stared at me as if I’d gone mad. “Saddler, we could split the hundred thousand four ways. Me, Etta, you and Harry.”

  “I didn’t hit Tracy for the money. Put the gun away or start shooting.”

  Butch scratched his head with his left hand. “Aw, shit! It’s only money.” Butch put his gun away and grinned at Kilpatrick. He got a grin in exchange. Butch held out his hand and Kilpatrick took it.

  “Of all the fools!” Etta said.

  “You said it right,” Pearl agreed.

  “Get on with the sharing,” Cassidy said.

  One by one, the men got their money and went out the back door. Finally there were only five of us left; six, if you counted Harry Tracy, lying on the floor.

  Cassidy went over and kicked Tracy in the ribs. “I think I’ll be sorry if I don’t kill him. I could knife him. It’d be quiet. But I just can’t do it, Saddler. No matter what you hear, I never killed a man in cold blood.”

  “Then kill him in hot blood when he comes after us. If the Pinkertons don’t get him, that’s what he’ll do,” I said.

  Twelve

  When we got back to the cottonwood grove we met the original Butch Cassidy, bearded and peg-legged, not knowing what was going to happen next.

  “I stayed, Butch,” he quavered. “All the rest of them took off, but I stayed. You’re going to take me with you, ain’t you? You’ll always need somebody to look after the horses.”

  Cassidy patted the old man on the shoulder. “You’re going to get us out of this country, old-timer. Some of our own boys will be coming after us. Our own boys and the Pinks will be chasing us to hell and gone.”

  “I’ll get you out,” the old man said. “You can depend on me, Butch.”

  Butch shoved Harry Tracy’s six thousand dollars at the old man. “Here! Buy yourself a cigar.”

  The old man’s eyes popped at the sight of all that money. “Holy Christ! I’m a rich man. Let’s be going now before they start throwing lead at us.”

  We mounted up and rode out wide and circled the town. It looked like we still had a jump on them. The old man pointed toward the mountains to the west. “That’s how we’ll do it. Go clear across the mountains and down into Nevada. After that it’s California and you can get into Mexico from there.”

  “You mean to cross those mountains?” Cassidy said. “That’s worse country than where the Hole is.”

  “No other way to do it,” the old man said. “But I’ll get you across, and after I do I’m going back to the Hole in the Wall. Yes, sir.”

  “You plan to go back in there?”

  “You just made me rich,” the old man said. “I’m going back to the Hole with every damn thing I need for the rest of my life, which ain’t going to be long, but I mean to enjoy it. I’m going to pack in a whole mule train of supplies. Grub, guns, a saloonful of whiskey. Two saloons. Then I’m going to blow that dynamite so no living man can disturb my peace.”

  We rode all that day and far into the night. Before us the foothills lay jagged and broken. I couldn’t see if we were following any particular trail, but the old man seemed to know exactly where he was going. A few hours earlier we had heard something like a cannon going off. It sounded more like a cannon than dynamite. Then a little later we heard it again.

  We made cold camp on the lower mountain. As high up as we were the glow of even a small fire would have been seen from a long way off. A cold moon sailed across the sky and the peaks seemed to climb right up to the top of the world.

  We took turns standing watch, then moved on again before first light. The country got wilder and at one bad place we had to lead our horses along a ledge that dropped down hundreds of feet. The mountains seemed to go on forever, one long range following another. The old man was up ahead of us, stopping now and then to shade his eyes with his hat.

  “You sure he knows where he’s going?” I asked Cassidy.

  “He ought to,” Cassidy said. “In the old days he prospected all through these mountains.”

  I shrugged. What I didn’t say was that men get old and their memories go bad. But we were there and had to make the best of it. By now we were two days out from Mansfield, and there wasn’t a sign of pursuit. But these mountains were so rugged that they might have been no more than a mile 'or two behind us; with the wind blowing so hard, no dust would be seen.

  Now we were rounding the highest of the peaks, cutting through ravines that seemed to have no end. The old man turned in his saddle and pointed. “About forty more miles will take us down from here. That’s when we start hitting the desert. Soon as we get to the top of that next high ridge we’ll stop a while.”

  I looked back and saw nothing. Not a thing moved out there in that rocky wilderness. We got to the top of the ridge and took our horses down to the safe side of it. Then, flat on our bellies, we scanned the country behind us. An hour passed and nothing happened, but the old man said we’d best wait a while longer.

  We had been there for more than two hours when I saw the first of them coming up out of the deep ravine we had come through earlier. The distance was too great for any accurate shooting, but I was able to make out the great bulk of Harry Tracy astride his horse. I counted six other men and I could just make them out. Tracy had recruited Fallon and Reeves, the Gundersen brothers and Tom O’Day. Tracy rode in the lead, looking at the sign we had left.

  “What do you think?” Cassidy said to me.

  “We can hold them here for a time,” I said. “But if Tracy can pick up our sign the Pinkertons can do the same with him. The Pinkertons will have a lot more men than Tracy.”

  “Saddler’s right,” the old man said. “We’ll still be trading lead with them when the Pinks show up. We can’t beat a whole big posse of Pinks. It looks like we’ll have to find the right place to finish Tracy for good.”

  “It better be before the desert,” I said. “You got any ideas?”

  The old man pulled at his beard. “There’s a place that might do. Two ravines run along a distance from each other. It’s kind of hard to see the first one because of all the brush. If they come riding at us full tilt they’ll drop like stones. Course if they don’t we’ll be in for a real fight.”

  “Then it’s off we go,” Cassidy said, running down the slope and vaulting into the saddle.

  Everybody got down the slope at a fast clip, then Pearl’s horse stumbled and broke a leg. Pearl jumped to her feet cursing like a mule skinner. Without thinking she yanked her gun to shoot the horse. I rode right down on top of her and kicked the gun from her hand. Then I reached down and grabbed her by the back of the belt and threw her across my saddle.

  She kicked and screamed so hard I felt like dumping her off. In a minute it wouldn’t have mattered if she had shot the pony because Tracy’s men heard the commotion on the far side of the ridge. They hadn’t opened up yet because there was nothing to shoot at. That would come in a minute. I could hear them yelling from a long way back.

  We still had cover when we crossed the next low ridge, but they were coming fast. Butch and the others had a good start on me, with the old man leading the way. From the second ridge there was a long downhill run for about a quarter of a mile. I turned to look back, but I couldn’t see them. Below me I saw the old man leading the others to a narrow place in the first ravine. They jumped their horses across. I followed on down hoping I could ge
t across before Tracy got close. If they caught on about the brush-screened ravine the ambush wouldn’t work.

  “Hold still, you damned fool,” I snapped at Pearl. “You’re going to get us killed.”

  I aimed my horse at the narrow place in the ravine. My horse was carrying double, but at least Pearl was light. I had to risk a fairly wide jump with a double load. I urged my horse to do his damnedest. That deep, narrow ravine came at me like Judgment Day. Then up and over we went, the brush whipping at my horse’s legs. His forefeet touched earth and we were safely across. Up ahead Butch was yelling at me to get a move on. Then he skidded his horse down into the second ravine. I made it there and if my horse hadn’t been so sure-footed we might have been killed or crushed as we went sliding down in a shower of sand and shale.

  Once the noise stopped we heard them coming, hard, desperate men with blood in their eyes, thinking of all the money that was getting away. Yelling, they came down the slope at a reckless pace. We lay along the lip of the ravine with our rifles ready. It was all pure gamble. If they spotted the trap we’d be in for a hell of a fight, and that would finish us if the Pinkertons showed up in the middle of it. There was no hard evidence that the Pinkertons were on our trail, but we figured they would be. Those boys knew how to narrow things down because that was their business. If we hadn’t gone out the other ways, then we just had to be heading west.

  Butch yelled his excitement when Tracy tried to turn his hard-running horse before it plunged over the edge of the first ravine. But he was riding too hard and the horse went over screaming in panic. We opened fire as he did. Some of the others dropped and some went over with their horses. Fallon managed to skid his horse to a stop. I shot him. Butch shot Reeves, who managed to throw himself from the saddle.

  Everybody was dead except Tracy and O’Day. There was no sign of O’Day. I wondered where Tracy was when suddenly I saw him come charging up from the side of the ravine. The son-of-a-bitch came charging at us like a maddened grizzly. We all fired at him at the same time, but he was running fast and I don’t think he was hit. I’ve seen that happen—a whole lot of lead thrown at one man and none of it doing any harm. I followed Tracy’s run and fired. He threw up his hands and fell. He didn’t get up. I turned my rifle away from Tracy and fired at a man who stuck his head up from the ravine. I was squeezing the trigger when I recognized the walrus face of Tom O’Day. The bullet from my rifle blew away a chunk of his head.