Sundance, Butch and Me

by Judy Alter

  I didn't point out to him that what he'd just said represented some kind of double standard—he didn't want to be responsible for me, but he wanted to decide who I would be with and who I wouldn't. Instead, I said, "That's up to Butch. You better ask him. I truly don't want to stay in the woods either, but I'll do what Butch says." And then I crawled back into bed and turned my back on him.

  Sundance slept far away from me that night.

  We spent one more night at Hole-in-the-Wall, Sundance and me in our tent, and the others scattered around in smaller tents. Still angry at me, Sundance spoke little and stayed away at night. I lay on my back, wide awake, my thoughts jumping from train robberies to longing for San Antonio and safety and back again to Sundance and Butch.

  "Sundance?" I turned toward him and let my hand trail down his back—which was the side he presented to me.

  He reached a hand behind him and swatted impatiently at my hand, as though telling me to stop, delivering a loud and clear message that he would not be seduced.

  "Sundance," I said slowly, "we're going to be riding with those others for a long time. Not much privacy." My hand ventured back, this time tracing the ridge formed by his side and moving on down to his outer thigh.

  "That's all right," he said gruffly, but he stirred a little, and I moved my hand back up his leg and side and over onto his stomach, reaching down from there. He moaned softly and stirred again but refused to turn toward me. By then my own need for him was growing, and I moved so that I pressed against him, so that he could feel the stirring of my body. My hands moved over him.

  With a groan, he turned toward me. "You've trapped me," he whispered. "I... I can't deny you, even when I want to."

  I nearly laughed aloud. Truth was, I guess, that we were bound to each other, whether by love, or passion, or some indefinable combination of the two. But it would have been the wrong time to laugh. His mouth was on mine, working, and as his hands moved none too gently over my body, I met his every move with needs of my own.

  We were slow leaving our tent the next morning, which earned us sly, knowing glances from Maxwell and Kilpatrick, disgust from Curry, and a look of real concern from Butch. I gave him a sort of half-smile, by which I meant to say that everything was all right.

  He understood. "We shoulda been gone an hour ago," he said gruffly. "You ready?" He looked furiously at Sundance, who just nodded at him.

  "I'm ready too," I said, though no one had asked me.

  * * *

  We rode out through the notch and turned almost directly south, riding at a leisurely pace. The sun was warm on my back, and pretty soon I felt dirty, like I wanted to bathe and eat fresh fruit and dabble my feet in the creek. Instead, we kept up a steady pace for almost four hours and then stopped only to drink water from our canteens and eat the biscuits and jerky I'd packed the night before.

  Sundance studiously ignored me, not wanting, I suppose, to be accused of favoring me. Curry ignored me too, but it was different, and Maxwell watched me as though waiting for me to fall from my horse in a dead faint. Their looks only made me stiffen my spine and plaster a smile on my face.

  Butch was the only one of the five with a natural response to having me ride with them. Every once in a while—not too often—he'd ask, "You all right, Etta?" And when I'd nod, he'd go back to the lead, where he rode as casually and unconcerned as though he were headed to a picnic. Well, maybe he was—his kind of picnic.

  Nightfall found us near the Wilcox stop, and Butch seemed to know the lay of the land. Farther north, we had crossed a good-sized gully, and I remembered that there was a trestle bridge just before the spot they planned to stop the train. We must, I figured, be on the west side of the gully, and it must've gotten much deeper as it headed south.

  Butch led us at a slow walk into a grove of trees, where to my astonishment two men waited with six fresh horses. The men all howdyed, though I was distinctly left out of that ceremony, and then without much talk the two I didn't know put the horses we'd ridden on lead strings and disappeared into the woods.

  Butch studied all of us for a minute, then said, "Cold camp. More corn dodgers and jerky and water. Sundance, you come with me."

  Sundance threw me a look that clearly said, "See? I don't have to watch over you every minute."

  Left alone with one man I barely knew, one I despised, and one I liked but didn't know well, I unpacked the food, such as it was, and unrolled my sleeping bag.

  "You planning on sleeping?" Maxwell asked in disbelief.

  "For a little while," I said calmly. When Butch and Sundance came back, I was asleep and only dimly aware of their talk and of Sundance's nudging me with his foot.

  "Let 'er sleep," Butch said.

  "Well, hell," growled Maxwell, "she's gonna have to get used to going without sleep damn quick. Tomorrow will be a hard ride."

  "She's tough," Sundance said. "She'll do just fine."

  I held his words close as I drifted back to sleep. Sundance would never say that to my face. I didn't even care that I heard Curry mutter, "She's a whore," and Butch warn, "Sundance, let it be."

  That foot nudged me again; this time more seriously. "Come on, Etta. Time to get up."

  When you sleep in your clothes, can't make coffee, don't have any way to wash your face, there's not much to making your "toilette." After a trip to the bushes, I brushed at my hair sort of hopelessly, jammed my hat on my head, and rolled up my blanket. "I'm ready," I muttered, surprised at myself that I'd slept so well.

  "Here we go," Butch said, flicking open his watch. "You all keep those horses quiet, and be ready."

  So Sundance and I stood, holding the reins of three horses each, hands ready to clap over their noses if there was a sound. We waited... and waited.

  "What's happening?" I asked softly, but Sundance just put a finger to his lips and shook his head. As if men on a train would hear my whisper all that distance away! I wanted to kick him, but that indeed might have alarmed the horses.

  At long last I heard a train in the distance. I almost held my breath as it came closer, the sound growing ever louder, and then we saw over the tops of the trees the red flare that meant distress on the tracks. The noise of the train changed dramatically—there was the squeal of brakes, the banging of cars into each other, the hissing of the steam as it was released.

  For a long time after that we heard nothing. I looked at Sundance, but he seemed unconcerned. Then loud voices drifted toward us, angry shouting, and distantly I could hear pounding, men were pounding on the railroad cars, demanding entrance. Two shots rang out in fairly rapid succession, and I held my breath.

  "Sundance?"

  He only shook his head, though I could tell by the way he listened that he was paying much more attention now.

  Then there were two explosions, one fairly soon after the other. Later I would learn that they had in rapid succession blown open the mail car and then, seeing the second section of the train approach, had blown up the trestle bridge. Then there were train sounds again—the train was moving! To be sure, it was slow and laborious, but where was it going if Butch and the others were not back with us?

  "Follow me," Sundance said, and, listening carefully to the sound, he led me and the horses a little to the west. When he was satisfied we were opposite the train again, we stopped. "Mount up," he said.

  "What?" My voice grew almost shrill with tension.

  He gave me a disgusted look as he swung up on one of the horses. "Mount up," he repeated.

  I did as he said. More loud voices could be heard, and then suddenly it grew quiet. Far in the distance I could hear shouting—the train people on the second section, I supposed, now stranded on the other side of the gully.

  Then Butch, Maxwell, and Kilpatrick came walking into the clearing, Butch carrying a canvas bag, which he threw across the saddle of one horse. With no words and no time lost, they mounted and we rode out to the north. I would have thought we'd have ridden at breakneck speed, but we didn't. We kept a g
ood, steady pace, but we never put the horses into a run, and we were miles from the train before anyone spoke.

  "Probably close to fifty thousand," Butch said softly.

  Sundance whistled. "No trouble?"

  "Wouldn't have been if Curry hadn't taken a notion to beat the engineer," Maxwell said in disgust.

  "He wouldn't move fast enough," Curry said, with almost a whine in his voice.

  It was finally breaking daylight, and when I looked at Curry I saw that he was splattered with red. So were Maxwell and Kilpatrick. "You're hurt," I said. "We've got to stop." I started to rein my horse, but Butch, riding next to me, reached over to stop my hand.

  "Raspberries," he said. "They blew up a damn load of raspberries in that freight car."

  Sundance hooted, and even I giggled. The three stained men rode looking straight ahead, trying to ignore us.

  After we'd ridden several hours, we came to a tree-sheltered creek. As if by magic, six horses waited there. With quiet efficiency, the men took saddles from the horses they now rode, saddled the fresh horses, and mounted again. Sundance helped me, so that I wouldn't slow them down, and I didn't. But just as we remounted, Butch held up a hand, and we all stopped. Each man sat still in the saddle, not moving, and though I heard nothing, almost in unison they said, "Posse!" They apparently could hear thundering hooves that I could not, not having trained myself to listen.

  "Damn," Sundance muttered, while Butch said, "They shouldn't have been able to get a posse across that gully that fast. Let me think a minute."

  "Let's ride," Curry said, while Sundance, almost viciously, told him to shut up.

  "We'll take a stand here," Butch said, motioning his head to the other side of the creek. "In those trees. Shoot the horses, not the men. I don't want no killing. Etta you ride on in the direction we been going and don't stop until one of us catches up with you."

  "But—" I began to protest.

  "Do as I say," he said evenly, and I did, throwing a look at Sundance as I rode away. He did the unbelievable: He winked at me. I kept that wink with me for comfort.

  It seemed only minutes before I heard shots, and I had to force myself to keep riding, though I stole backward glances now and then. I had ridden out of the trees that sheltered that creek and was on typical Wyoming land, brown and bare with no shelter. If a posse came after me, I decided, I'd simply stop, even if it meant being sent back to Texas. With such irrational thoughts flying through my mind, I rode on. The shots continued forever, though growing dimmer in sound—how many times could they reload?—and then there was silence. I looked again, saw nothing, and kept riding, with no idea now how far away from them I was.

  To this day, I swear it was hours before they caught up with me. Sundance always said it was less than thirty minutes. But when they came, it was only Butch and Sundance. My first thought, of course, was the worst—even if I despised Curry, I didn't want to hear that he'd been killed. And the Tall Texan—I really liked him. Still, what mattered was that Butch and Sundance were riding toward me. The only other important fact I noted was that Butch still had the canvas sack. I knew they hadn't stopped to divide their take.

  They rode abreast without a word, and Sundance slapped my horse to kick him up to the speed they were maintaining. Now we rode too hard to talk, and I was left with a thousand questions going through my brain. All I knew was that they looked grim.

  We must have been nearly to Casper—or so it seemed to me—when we came to a rancher's shack. Butch slowed his horse.

  "Etta needs food, and so do we. We gotta stop."

  "What're you going to do?" Sundance asked. "Explain nicely that we're tired, 'cause we're running from a posse, and could we please have something to eat?"

  Butch ignored him. "It's a bachelor pad, no women there."

  "Oh, swell," Sundance said, "now you're reading signs. How do you know there's no women there?"

  "It plain ain't kept up good enough. If there's a woman, she's not much of one. Etta, you wait here. Come on, Sundance."

  I was so tired of being told wait here, ride there, that I wanted to scream, but I waited and watched, though it was dusk now and difficult for me to make out what was happening. I heard Sundance shout, "Hallo the house!" but then I couldn't make out what was happening, except a horse and rider left in a great hurry. Butch waved me in.

  "Gentlemen decided he didn't like our company," Sundance said. "Means he's headed for the law, and we can't stay long. Let's see what's to eat."

  The bachelor, whoever he was, wasn't much of a cook, but there was a day-old pot of beans, cans of sardines and tomatoes and peaches, and bread so hard you had to sop it into the bean juice to be able to chew it. We ate as though we were in Brown's Palace in Denver.

  While we ate, I slowly learned that they'd split up to make it harder for a posse, that Kid Curry had shot a sheriff named Hazen at the creek, in spite of all that Butch said about shooting only horses, not men. And that smokeless powder had saved their lives.

  "Smokeless powder?" I echoed stupidly.

  "Yeah," Sundance said, "posse can't tell where you're shooting from. Always before, they'd see that puff of smoke—they'd wait for it, the bastards—and then they'd shoot you. This new stuff, they can't tell exactly where we are."

  "Doesn't the posse have smokeless powder?" I asked innocently.

  "Naw," he said, "only the bad guys." But then he added, "So far."

  "Man probably deserved it more than the horse," I murmured.

  "Thanks a lot, Etta," Sundance said. "I nearly get killed, and you're on the side of the horses." But he was grinning as he said it, and he planted a swift kiss on my nose.

  "For Pete's sake," Butch complained, "we got a lot to worry about, more than whether she's on your side or the horse's." But his anger was at Sundance, not me.

  "Can't we... couldn't we just sleep for an hour?" I asked.

  Butch shook his head. "Nope. He'll be back, bringing the law with him."

  Sundance grabbed my arm almost roughly. "Come on, Etta, you wanted to ride with outlaws. Now you got no choice."

  I kicked him, hard, just between his knee and the top of his boot. When he let out a yowl, I said, "Just be glad I didn't aim higher."

  We rode fast again, though I could tell the horses were tiring. When it began to rain, a hard rain, Sundance let out a loud "Damn!"

  "Now what?" I asked over the noise of the storm.

  "Mud," he shouted back. "Makes it easier to track."

  "Maybe," I said, "the rain will wash away the trail."

  "Not with our luck so far," Butch countered.

  I think then I realized that I was really, truly about to become a fugitive, in a way that I never had been in Texas.

  Chapter 22

  "We didn't want to hurt anyone," Butch said, shaking his head in puzzlement, "but that damn fool clerk... he wouldn't open the door."

  "You coulda made a little more noise," Sundance said. "We could barely hear all that shouting and pounding."

  "Wonder they didn't hear it clear to Casper," Butch said.

  We were camped—a cold camp, naturally, with no fire—under a grove of trees, somewhere in western Wyoming. Butch had said we could sleep the night, and I could barely keep my eyes open to hear the story he told. And yet I wanted to know. I curled into my bedroll and listened to the two of them without saying a word.

  Butch went on. "Fireman and engineer, they were all right men. We laughed and joked with them, told 'em we didn't mean no harm to anyone, even asked 'em for tobacco."

  "And they gave it out of the goodness of their hearts," Sundance said. "Your guns had nothing to do with it."

  "I wouldn't shoot a man for a plug of tobacco!" Butch said indignantly.

  "I'm sure they felt reassured by that" was the reply.

  "Curry, though," Butch said, "he didn't think the engineer moved fast enough, started beatin' him on the head with his rifle butt."

  "Nice," Sundance murmured. "What'd you do?"

 
"Told him to stop," Butch said simply. "Don't see no reason for beating up folks."

  "We heard shots," Sundance prompted.

  "Yeah." Butch's voice had a chuckle in it. "I shot out the water tower. Figured that'd get their attention. But then we did have to blow the door off the freight car. The messenger just wouldn't open the door, no matter how many guns we told him we had pointed at him. So we blew it up... kind of overdid it, 'cause it just crumpled the whole car. Guess we used too much dynamite. That's when we got into the raspberries."

  "The messenger?" I asked.

  "Had to help him from the car, but he was all right. Fightin' mad, though."

  "Well," Sundance drawled, "you'll surely be remembered in these parts for blowing up the trestle bridge. It'll take them a month of Sundays to build that thing again, and meantime, no trains can go through."

  Butch grinned like a mischievous child, delighted in his handiwork. After all, no one had been seriously hurt.

  "The money?" I asked.

  "Well, look who's awake after all," Sundance said. "Don't worry, Etta, I'll get my share."

  I considered kicking him again—higher. "I didn't mean that," I protested. I wanted to claim my own share, not just Sundance's, but I decided I'd best let that be for the time being. "I just wanted to know if it was worth all the trouble—all those extra horses hidden around and people to bring them to you and...." My voice trailed off.

  "It was worth it," Butch assured me, "it surely was. Now, Etta, you go on and get some sleep."

  They sat in silence, and within seconds I was asleep. I awoke, however, minutes—or hours?—later to hear them talking softly.

  "First train was pretty good, Butch, but we can't keep doing this. Our luck's going to run out."

  "Yeah," Butch said, "and I'm feeling old. This ride this time, it's wore me out." He paused a minute. "And Etta, she can't do this too often."

  I wanted to sit up and tell them that I could do whatever they could, but I was in one of those deep sleeps where you can hear around you and yet you can't will yourself to wake up.