by Judy Alter
"Some place called Alma, but I doubt it's a store and two houses."
"Well," my patience was wearing thin, "the town of some size."
"There aren't any in New Mexico, except Santa Fe and Albuquerque," Sundance said, but I ignored him.
"Maybe Santa Rosa, or Tucumcari... maybe even Las Vegas," Butch said reluctantly. "Etta, what're you thinkin'?"
"Find out which town the WS does its shopping in, and then find out if there's a respectable boardinghouse there. Mr. Parker has a sister who can't be left alone—their parents being recently deceased and all."
Sundance stared at me as though he'd never seen me before. Finally, after a long silence, he asked, "And what would you do in that town other than wait for me?" His voice was a little smug as he said it.
"I wouldn't wait for you, Sundance. A man can't hardly come spend the night with his sister.... Oh, he can visit for tea and such. But spend the night? Such scandal! Now, Mr. Lowe..."
I said that to tease him and instantly realized I'd gone too far.
It was Butch who protested. "Etta! I'm only comin' for tea, with Sundance."
I tried to pass it off with a laugh. "I know that, Butch. I'm just angry at Sundance." I whirled to face him. "I can always take in sewing," I said. "I do have a few marketable skills. And I can teach."
Neither of them said much after that, but I knew it was settled. I would follow them, settle in Las Vegas or Tucumcari or Santa Rosa and wait for this next experience to pass by. It wouldn't, I predicted to myself, be long.
"Etta," Sundance asked when we were alone, "can you really go all that time without... well, you know... without being with me?"
"You mean sleeping with you, Sundance? Of course I can." Deliberately I didn't even ask how long it would be—weeks, months, more?
Reaching for me, he muttered, "I'll show you that you couldn't do it."
I pulled away from his insistent hands. "Sundance, you're the one who couldn't do it. And if anybody gives away your identity, it won't be me. I can do whatever I have to."
He turned angrily away and said, "So can I, so can I."
Chapter 20
New Mexico was nothing like I'd imagined, and for me it was a long, dry summer and fall. I'd thought small towns in New Mexico would be like miniature versions of San Antonio, with the gracious Spanish influence everywhere. Instead I found dust and desert and dryness. The town of Las Vegas, where Sundance and Butch ensconced me in a boardinghouse, was best described as dingy... or left undescribed.
"My sister, ma'am," Sundance said to Mrs. Blackburn, the frazzled-looking lady who ran the boardinghouse. "My friend and I"—he nodded his head toward Butch—"will be working at the WS, and we want a safe, comfortable place for my sister to stay. Ethel is"—here he lowered his voice, looked sideways at me once quickly, and then almost whispered to Mrs. Blackburn—"well, she's delicate."
Mrs. Blackburn's gray head nodded, and she gave me a long, studying look. Then she whispered back to Sundance, "Don't you worry, Mr. Parker, I'll see that she's took good care of."
I tried to smile sweetly, when every instinct in me was to bash Sundance in the head—hard!
"Ethel hopes to take in sewing," Sundance went on piously. "Is there—ma'am, do you know?—is there a need in Las Vegas for a good seamstress?"
"Oh, my goodness, yes. She can begin by mending linens for me. I'll take it off your bill." Mrs. Blackburn's hands fluttered with joy that she'd found a way to please these gentlemen in front of her. I don't think she cared one whit about pleasing me, though later she would be most kind to me.
"We'll come visit of a Sunday," Sundance said, "and if Ethel needs us before then, Mr. French will be able to find us, though"—he rolled his eyes as though envisioning the hard, physical labor they'd have to do—"we'll be out on the range a lot."
Even Butch was beginning to squirm at the show Sundance was putting on.
"Now, Mr. Parker, just don't you worry about a thing. Ethel and me, we're going to be the best of friends." With that, she came and put an arm around me to demonstrate. She smelled strongly of violet water, and it struck me that she hadn't spoken one word directly to me. Sundance had effectively managed to leave the impression that I was addled or impaired or whatever but not able to tend to my own affairs—and I'd been so intrigued by his performance that I'd stood by like a dummy and let him do it.
"I'm sure I'll be fine, Mrs. Blackburn," I said briskly. "My needs are really very few. I'll put a small ad in the newspaper for sewing, and meantime I'd be most pleased to mend your linens. If you need help in the kitchen, I can do that too."
She looked startled, as though amazed that I could talk.
They stayed, at Mrs. Blackburn's urging, for supper, though by then I was so furious at Sundance, I didn't care if he starved. Butch had hardly said a word, and for that I was almost equally mad at him. He could, I thought, have kicked Sundance in the shin or something.
Supper was a hearty lamb stew, with fresh new potatoes and carrots and—I could have sworn—a touch of red wine.
"Lamb?" Sundance asked.
"My, yes," she replied. "We got a lot of sheepmen around abouts, and it's reasonable. I cook it a lot."
I knew he was thinking that he was about to work cattle and wondering if he would be caught in the inevitable wars between sheepmen and cattlemen.
They left, Sundance and Butch both giving me brotherly pecks on the forehead, and Sundance saying gaily, "Sis, you be good till I get back next Sunday." I managed to smile through gritted teeth.
"My," Mrs. Blackburn said in a soft voice, "a girl surely is lucky to have a brother like that, one who takes care of her."
"Yes," I said distractedly.
Life settled into a routine in the few months I was in Las Vegas. During the week, I was a model boarder, mending linens for Mrs. Blackburn, setting the table for evening supper, attending church meeting on Wednesday—though I never could attend on Sunday morning when my "brother" and his friend came to visit me. As people began to know me—I went often to the general store, stopped in the milliner's, and generally tried to make friends—I got sewing jobs outside of the boardinghouse, and, as I told Sundance one Sunday, I soon had a fine business going.
"Good." He grinned. "I'll give up my business, and you can support us."
"We aren't staying here that long," I whispered fiercely. "I'm bored to death." I half suspected my landlady was just outside the pocket door that she discreetly pulled almost shut each Sunday. More loudly, for her sake, I said, "I'm afraid, brother dear, you wouldn't be able to live in the manner you prefer."
"Seems to me," Butch said quietly, "for all the risks we take, we ain't livin' very high on the hog. Most days we're on the run or living in some run-down cabin, with Etta doin' all the cookin."
Sundance and I both laughed, but the sound had a hollow ring to it.
On their Sunday visit, the "boys," as Mrs. Blackburn called them, sat in the parlor, which was badly decorated and uncomfortable, the chairs of stiff horsehair. Grim portraits—of Mrs. Blackburn's long-dead husband and forebears, I guessed—stared down from the walls as though they were eavesdropping, just as she was. Sometimes, as a little touch of refinement, she turned the key on a small music box just before she left the room, so that the mechanical sounds of "The Star-Spangled Banner" filled the room.
"See?" Butch said. "I told you we should have fought for our country."
One Sunday they reported to me that Kid Curry and Ben Kilpatrick had joined them. I didn't ask where Delia was, but I knew she wasn't with them and hoped she was back in Montana. Of course, Elzy was already at the ranch.
"What a crew!" I said. "If Mr. French knew what kind of help he had..."
"What I know," Sundance said, "is that Butch can keep those yahoos under control like nobody else."
"And," Butch continued, "what Mr. French knows is that cattle rustling on his spread has absolutely stopped. He thinks we're the best thing that ever happened to a ranchman."
"I'll bet he does," I said, laughing to think of the joke of it and glad that they were so scrupulously honest when their honor was at stake. It was one thing I loved about the outlaw life: It had a certain honor to it, at least for Butch and Sundance. Now, Curry was another matter....
Sometimes Butch would rise out of his chair and stroll to the window, standing, staring out at the nothingness of the little town. It was his way of giving us a moment's privacy—but Sundance and I found that short moment made the wanting worse instead of easier.
"Why didn't we say that Butch was your brother?" he whispered in my ear one day. "Then I could have courted you without raising suspicions."
"Only from a respectable distance," I said haughtily, pushing him away. "If Mrs. Blackburn saw you..."
"She'd have gossip all over this town in three minutes, and we'd be in worse trouble than we ever would for cattle rustling." Sundance laughed. "Just think, a man courting his own sister..."
* * *
It all came to an end when Sundance and Kid Curry decided to have some harmless fun way west. They wanted to ride to Nevada.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because we've never been there. Hear it's a great place."
"Butch?" I said.
He shrugged. "I told them not to go, but I can't do much more. Don't worry, Etta. I'll watch after you." He said it so sweetly, so kindly, that I hadn't the heart to tell him my welfare wasn't what concerned me. I could always take care of myself—but could Sundance when he threw in with the likes of Kid Curry?
Within a day I went from worry to flat-out anger—and ruined Mrs. Blackburn's image of me forever.
"You don't have to go! It's the dumbest idea I ever heard of. It's dangerous... and foolhardy! Even Butch says so." I literally screamed at Sundance, paying absolutely no attention to Butch, who stood looking steadfastly out the window, and Mrs. Blackburn, who no doubt was positioned just beyond the pocket door.
"You 're raising your voice," Sundance said mildly. "Butch doesn't tell me what to do, and I don't tell him." His eyes narrowed in cold anger. "And you don't tell me either."
"You've tried to run my life," I answered hotly. "You'd have sent me back to Fannie's if I hadn't made a fuss."
"This fuss isn't going to work, Etta. I'm going to Elko. I..." He hesitated just a little. "I'm restless, not used to working hard all summer like we have. I... well, I just got to cover some miles, see some new sights."
"With Kid Curry," I said scornfully. "You'll end up seeing the inside of the Nevada jails."
He shrugged. That gesture that sometimes I found endearing now exasperated me beyond words. "If I do, I do."
Silence fell on the room, so profound that I could hear each of us breathing—or thought I could. Within my own head, I heard the ragged breathing and the pounding pulse of deep anger. Distantly I thought I heard Butch sigh, but he neither turned away from the window nor spoke. Sundance stood watching me.
It was Sundance who broke the silence. "I'll see you at Hole-in-the-Wall in... oh, maybe three weeks."
"I don't know if I'll be there," I muttered, turning my back on him.
"That's always been your choice," he said levelly. "I... well, I'll say that I hope you will be." With that he came toward me, used one hand to spin me around until I faced him and the other to tilt my chin upward. Then he planted a quick kiss on the tip of my nose and turned to Butch. "You ready?"
Butch turned. "Yeah, I'm ready. Etta, I'll be by to get you first thing in the morning, just after light." His look was sorrowful, as though if he could he'd have replayed the scene just past to an entirely different script.
Mrs. Blackburn stood in the hall, hands akimbo on her hips. She watched them leave in silence, but the minute they were gone, she said harshly to me, "You'll be leaving now!"
"I'll be leaving in the morning, Mrs. Blackburn," I said. It occurred to me that she was afraid of Butch and Sundance now that eavesdropping had told her they were outlaws and that was why she waited to issue her proclamation.
"I won't be harboring your kind in my house," she sputtered.
I'd had enough for one day. In my most level tone of voice, I asked, "And what kind is that, Mrs. Blackburn?"
"You know... outlaws and their women—why, I bet you're no more his sister than I am."
"You're absolutely right, Mrs. Blackburn. I'm his lover. And I grew up in a whorehouse." With that pronouncement, I swept up the stairs to my room. And once there, finally alone, I fell to crying, even pounding the pillow in anger, though I tried hard not to make any noise for fear of further alarming Mrs. Blackburn. But, with Butch and Sundance gone, I was overcome with the unfairness of it all... maybe the unfairness that Sundance wouldn't—couldn't—ever become what I needed him to. I had to face the fact that he'd never change, that about him there would always be a charming, childish selfishness, a lack of responsibility that led him to do what struck him at the moment, and the devil take the hindmost.
The devil take the hindmost! It had been my phrase—hadn't I once said that to Sundance, when he'd questioned my following him? Maybe I meant it then, or maybe I'd turned responsible, though I couldn't figure why, but it seemed to me that we have obligations to those who love us. Sundance would never understand that.
Mrs. Blackburn never made good on her threat that I must leave immediately—would I have slept in the street?—but just to be safe, I stayed hidden in my room. That meant that by the time Butch came for me at sunrise, I was ravenous. Mrs. Blackburn stayed out of sight while Butch tramped up the stairs and brought down my blanket roll.
"You tell the landlady goodbye?" Butch asked innocently.
"No need," I answered. "She told me... last night. Says she doesn't let outlaws and their women stay in her house!"
"That right?" Butch said. "You have any breakfast?"
I shook my head.
He put the blanket roll down. "Stay here." With that he strode down the hall and into the kitchen. I could hear his voice drifting out through the swinging door. "Mrs. Blackburn, Etta... well, we're going to leave right now. But she surely does need some food. If you'll just give me about half a dozen of them biscuits you've baked... and maybe a slice or two of that ham. No, no, don't bother with the gravy—we couldn't eat it ahorseback."
Grinning like a bad child, he emerged from the kitchen with a package wrapped in one of Mrs. Blackburn's tea towels. The good lady never appeared, and Butch said later she'd supplied all he asked for without once speaking a word and without looking him in the face.
"Goodbye, Mrs. Blackburn," I called out gaily as I left. In seconds, Butch had restored my good spirits.
Riding across country a long distance gives people a certain intimacy... well, at least familiarity. Butch and I, who knew each other so well, reached a new level of understanding on the ride back to Wyoming, but it wasn't something we talked about or even, at the time, knew was happening. We did talk about Sundance.
"You gonna leave him?" Butch asked abruptly one night, reaching to stir the coals of the fire that still heated our coffee. We'd dined sparsely that night—canned sardines and soggy crackers bought midday in some small town—and the smell of the coffee tantalized my uneasy stomach.
I shrugged and then realized that doing so made me just like Sundance. "I might," I said cautiously. "I don't see him ever changing, ever... well, you know, growing up."
"So he don't have to go to Elko and raise hell?" Butch asked, and in the firelight I could see his grin.
"I don't mind the hell-raising," I said, "if I'm part of it. But I won't be treated like a convenience."
"Ah, Etta, you're never that to him. He loves you like he's never loved anyone, not even Anna Maria Thayne. But he's scared... and he's doing the only thing he knows to keep the devil off his back. He's running hard."
"What's he scared of?" I asked scornfully, I knew, of course, that he was scared of jail and a lot of other things, but Butch put it more clearly for me.
"That we'll find we can't do w
hat we do here anymore. Those governors are going to beat us one way or another, Etta. We can't go on living on the dodge, making an occasional score—we'll either be killed or go to jail."
"I don't want to wait to see either one," I said, and then added, "for either of you."
He tipped his hat in my direction. "I appreciate your concern. Sundance and me, why, we might go to South America some day—take our winnings, if we've got any, and disappear." He stared at me over the fire. "We'd take you, Etta," and then he added hastily, "long as you wanted to go."
I'd heard that talk before, but that's not what I said to Butch. "You don't know that Sundance would," I said angrily. "He wouldn't even take me to Elko."
"Ah, Etta, he was going with Curry. You wouldn't have wanted to go. And it's just what I told you—a fling to take his mind off worrying. He didn't mean nothin' by not takin' you. But he'd take you to South America—that'd be more than a fling. It would mean changing our whole lives permanently."
"You won't either one live that long," I predicted grimly. Then, suddenly, I sat up straight. "Butch, why can't you and I disappear... right now, just leave, go someplace and take up new lives and forget the Wild Bunch and robbing trains and—"
He held up a hand. "Because not either one of us would do that to Sundance."
"He went off and left me," I fumed, "and I don't owe him anything."
Butch's voice was calm. "Think about it, Etta. If you left now..."
We didn't either one speak for a long time, probably the better part of an hour. But then, as Butch rose and stretched—an obvious sign he was preparing to turn in for the night—I said, "And we can't run away, because no matter what's between you and me, it's not the same. There's always Sundance, and there's always Mary Boyd... and nothing's going to change that."
"Not even," he said, grinning, "bad marriages or bad behavior. We're stuck with them—and that's our own doing."
"Butch Cassidy," I said, rising and moving toward him, "I really do love you." I reached up to plant a kiss on his cheek, and he in turn gave me a rough hug.