Sundance, Butch and Me

by Judy Alter

  "That's what he is," I said petulantly.

  She sat down heavily on the bed next to me. "I guess I didn't really raise you right, after all. Yes, he's a spoiled child, but you're not going to get anywhere by pointing that out to him."

  "What am I supposed to do? Ignore the fact that he's falling all over a whore half his age?"

  She bristled in indignation. "I don't like that word, Etta, and you know it." She was silent a long while, and I thought maybe it was her way of reprimanding me. But finally she said, "Let him know how much you love him. He'll know that what the two of you have is worth a lot more than a quick roll in the hay with that piece of baggage."

  "Isn't that as bad as saying whore?" I asked.

  She threw a pillow at me and left.

  Sundance came in much later—but not late enough that he would have had time to go upstairs with Elise. I feigned sleep, and nearly giggled when I heard that he was singing "Auld Lang Syne" under his breath while he struggled to undo his shoes. I waited, keeping as quiet as I could, until he had finally removed his clothes and crawled into bed with me. Then I began the slow dance with my hands—up his spine and around onto his chest, down his belly, and onto his thighs, circling around until I finally touched his privates.

  He moaned and squirmed, and then he muttered, "Don't, I've had too much to drink. I can't."

  It was all I could do to keep from crowing, but I kept on loving, telling him that didn't matter, I just wanted him to know how much I loved him.

  "You're jealous of Elise," he muttered thickly.

  My every instinct was to pull back, but I didn't. I kept rubbing and stroking, and Sundance, in his poor, drunken state, muttered, "You know, Etta, I'd never look at another woman—not seriously anyway. She... she's young and pretty... but she's not you." He planted a wet kiss on my face and fell suddenly asleep.

  In the middle of the night, Sundance awoke, and the effects of the alcohol had left him. As we panted together, I managed to murmur, "Elise?" and he said, none too gently, "Shut up."

  * * *

  Butch arrived three days later, and I was never so glad to see anyone in my life.

  Chapter 23

  Butch announced in July that we were going back to Wyoming for one last big robbery.

  "Why Wyoming?" I asked. "There are trains and banks in Texas. Why go all the way back up there?"

  With a shrug and a grin, he said, "Wyoming's home. Besides, there's all them imitators up there. We have to... uh, defend our reputation. Can't let 'em think we're responsible for all those botched jobs."

  We'd heard of several senselessly brutal robberies—men killed after they'd turned over the money—and it bothered Butch a great deal to have his name attached to that kind of violence.

  "Besides," Butch said, "the Union Pacific up there's been making a lot of noise about how they're now at the ready for trouble. No bandits are ever gonna catch them sleepin' again. I guess it's my pride, but I got to show them."

  I laughed aloud, so hard that Sundance finally frowned at me. "You can stay here, Etta. We're... well, we probably can't go back to Hole-in-the-Wall."

  Butch hooted. "No probably about it. They've got that place staked out night and day, even now. I am not going back there. Now, if you two want to be foolishly sentimental..."

  I threw a sofa pillow at him. If anyone was ever foolishly sentimental, it was Butch Cassidy.

  Yet there was a surprising wrench in me when I thought about never seeing that cabin again. I didn't care about the clothes and things of mine that were still there. I'd put them behind, and I'd brought Mama's picture with me. But Hole-in-the-Wall was the place where I'd gone with great expectations of adventure and—why not?—wealth. My dreams were tarnishing more rapidly each day, and maybe I thought if we could go back to Hole-in-the-Wall, we could start all over again and things would go in a different direction. In my sane moments, I knew that wasn't true.

  I studied on staying in San Antonio for several days, though I never did talk to Fannie about it and could only suppose that I would be welcome if I decided to stay. A big reason not to go with them: We would once again, most likely, ride all over Wyoming, grabbing an hour's sleep here and there, chewing on stale biscuits and always feeling the lump of hunger in our bellies.

  But staying in San Antonio sounded... well, unsatisfactory. It wasn't that I thought I'd fall into the life and it wasn't that I cared if others thought that, but something was incomplete—the same feeling I'd lived within the Roost. Oh, if I stayed in San Antonio, they'd come back for me... but things would never be the same. I wouldn't be part of both of them anymore.

  "I don't want to stay here," I finally announced. "I want to go with the two of you."

  "Of course you do. I never doubted it." With those words, Sundance pulled me to my feet and began to dance me around the room in grand, sweeping waltz steps that carried us the length of the parlor in three moves. Then his steps slowed and shrank, and soon we were clinging to each other, barely moving to unheard music.

  "I'm going outside to ride my bicycle," Butch said in disgust, throwing a dirty look over his shoulder as he left. He'd found a used bicycle at a market one day and brought it home as proudly as though he were bringing $50,000 from a bank. After he'd painted and oiled it—with Hodge's help—he spent hours riding it through the streets of San Antonio. Then he looked at me just a moment. "I'm glad you're going, Etta," he said, and he was gone.

  I wanted to call after him, to tell him it was as much him I didn't want to leave as Sundance. But Sundance was insistent on other things—and I wasn't ready to fight that battle.

  * * *

  We took the train to Denver and then rode north by horseback. It was an old, familiar routine by now and one that I was glad we wouldn't be repeating.

  At night, around a small campfire—Butch said we weren't so desperate we needed to cold camp—they'd talk about how the West was changing. I'd fry beef we'd bought or trout they'd caught and put biscuits in a Dutch oven over the coals and listen silently to them.

  "You can't disappear into the land anymore," Butch said, with real sadness in his voice.

  "No," Sundance agreed, "the telephone and telegraph track you down, no matter where you go."

  "It ain't like it used to be," Butch said again. "I been on the wrong side of the law some ten years now. Used to be it was fun—good to show them bankers and railroad men they weren't as invincible as they thought."

  Every once in a while, Butch threw a big word—like invincible—into his otherwise everyday speech, and it always startled me.

  "But now the fun's gone. They're houndin' a man to death. I... I'm gonna do this one last thing, and no more."

  "You been in touch with Curry?"

  Butch nodded. "He'll meet us two days out."

  "I thought you wouldn't ride with Curry." I looked directly at Butch.

  He never flinched. "We need him this last time, but I promise you, Etta, he won't hurt anyone."

  Butch didn't know how wrong he was—or whom Curry would hurt.

  "You got a plan?" Sundance asked, and Butch nodded.

  When, I thought, does Butch ever go into anything without a plan?

  He pulled a wrinkled map out of his pocket and spread it before him, and I elbowed right in between the two of them.

  "Tipton," Butch said, pointing a stubby finger at Rawlins in southern Wyoming. "It's a coal station, out of the way, nobody around. And the train makes a long grade getting to it, so it has to be goin' slow."

  "The getaway?" Sundance asked.

  Butch's finger moved in a larger gesture. "South into Elk Basin and across to the Green River country in Utah. It'll be hard ridin', but we can do it if we stash fresh horses a couple of places." He looked up at me. "You ride that hard with us, Etta?"

  I nodded and resisted the urge to remind him of the hard rides I'd already made. Proud as I was of being "one of the boys," a part of me liked the way Butch protected me.

  "Sure she will," Sund
ance said heartily. "You know Etta can do it, Butch." Sundance didn't understand the subtleties at all, and I saw Butch look at him a minute and then look sideways at me.

  We rode slowly those days, as though none of us were in a hurry to get to the last big holdup. Was it fear that this time, the last time, something would go wrong? I looked at their faces as they rode and was sure that was not it. Instead, there was almost a sense of nostalgia, a wanting to draw out as long as possible this last bit of what had been their way of life.

  Somewhere in southeastern Wyoming—but beyond that I could not tell you—we stopped for horses. At night. Quietly.

  "You're going to steal horses?" Sundance, who had once been wrongly jailed for stealing a horse, was incredulous. There was something honorable about robbing trains and banks, but any common fool could steal a horse—and would.

  "They belong to the railroad," Butch muttered, as though that explained things perfectly. Maybe it did. "Won't nobody bother us," he said. "I arranged it."

  Somehow Butch had a friend, someone who owed him for something and who was keeping the railroad horses. We left him tied just tight enough to look like he'd been blindsided but not enough to hurt him, and we rode off with twenty horses, a fine string.

  "Three apiece and a little to spare," Butch said with a smile.

  We crossed the desert and rode south, leaving the first bunch of horses in a meadow. Then southwest another twenty miles or so, where we camped on a small stream and left another string of horses. We rode back to the first string of horses the next day and found them well rested and watered.

  "We'll camp here," Butch said. "Two days. Curry should be drifting in between now and then."

  "You knew about this particular spot?" I asked, but they both just grinned at me.

  Trouble began, as I'd known it would, when Curry rode in.

  "What the hell is she doin' here?" he demanded before he'd even dismounted.

  Butch opened his mouth to reply, but I jumped in, figuring I best fight my own battles. "I'm riding with you," I said distinctly.

  "Not with me, you ain't," he growled, swinging off his horse to stand menacingly in front of me. "I ain't ridin' with no woman. I don't care whose whore she is."

  I pulled back my hand to slap him, as I'd done before, but this time he was too quick for me. He grabbed my arm roughly and said, "You done that once and got away with it. I wouldn't try it again, if I was you." He tightened his hold, squeezing until the pain made me stifle a cry. Then he let go, so suddenly that I almost fell—and then I pretended to. As he stood there, smug in his power, I swung a boot hard into his groin.

  He cried out once in real agony, and then all the breath was gone from him as he doubled on the ground, writhing and twisting, his eyes closed. The others stood and watched. No one said a word.

  When at last Curry lay quiet on the ground, his face still a mask of pain, his eyes closed, Sundance came forward and stood over him. "Something you should know, Curry. She once killed a man for raping her. You might be the one best watch out."

  "Give me your knife," I said to Sundance.

  Curry's eyes flew open, and even Sundance looked alarmed. "What for?" he asked. I guess he figured with Curry still helpless I might be planning some gruesome but appropriate revenge.

  "Just give me your knife," I repeated, holding out my hand.

  He removed the sheathed knife he wore on his belt and handed it to me. Without a word, I took it and turned away. Then they all understood.

  "She's armed now, Curry," Butch said. "Ain't none of us gonna come to your rescue, you get in trouble with Etta." And he too walked away.

  Curry recovered enough by supper to eat the stew I had fixed from an antelope that Butch got, but as I moved about the campfire I was aware of his eyes watching me. His walk, as he approached the fire, had been slow and painful, and I knew he'd remember me for a while.

  Later, Sundance said to me, "Hope you didn't mind my telling him about your pa, even if I didn't say that was who it was. I just thought he ought to know that about you."

  "It's okay," I said. "I don't think I'm through with him yet, though."

  "I was afraid," Sundance said with a grin, "that you'd crippled him too bad to ride with us."

  "Would that be a loss?" I asked.

  Sundance looked at me. "Guess not. You could take his place."

  "I will anyway," I said.

  And that's what I did.

  * * *

  The next night, just before sunset, we headed north and a little east, toward Rawlins. We rode slowly again, this time for fear of tiring the horses. They would need all their strength after the robbery, for this was the string we would ride for that first, fast getaway. If they didn't carry us successfully, it wouldn't matter how fast or rested the other horses were.

  I rode next to Sundance but always a little behind, where I could keep an eye on Curry. He avoided me, almost too much so, but whenever I caught him glancing my way, I returned the coldest look I could muster. I caught myself trying to imitate the steel of Sundance's eyes when real anger blazed in them.

  We reached Tipton about one-thirty in the morning, the night dark enough to hide us until we were almost to the fueling station. The company eating house was dark, and so were the few shacks scattered there for workers' families. Still, sleeping men could wake, and we were quiet.

  "Curry," Butch said softly, "you take the horses and ride about a mile west. Light a fire next to the track. Use some greasewood so it'll burn good."

  "I ain't ridin' nowhere," Curry said too loudly. "Make her do that." He jerked his head in my direction. "I'm gonna be part of the action."

  Butch kept his voice low and even. "Last time you did that, a sheriff got killed. You'll do as I say, and you'll get your share. Otherwise..." He let the threat hang in the air, and I remembered Butch's promise to me about Curry. I wondered how far Curry would have to push Butch. Now, Sundance... that was another story.

  "Etta, you come with me," Butch said, adding, "but keep your mouth shut."

  I was dressed like they were, in rumpled pants, shirt and vest, a hat pulled low over my eyes, my hair tucked up under it. I fancied that I looked like a man, albeit a slight and young one. When I asked Sundance about that, he agreed with me, but his eyes danced with laughter so that I knew he was teasing me.

  Just before two-thirty, when the train was due, we saw the light of Curry's fire down the track. Then I heard the whistle of the train as it began the climb up the grade. As soon as the train stopped, Butch climbed in one side of the engine and Sundance the other. I stood with my rifle trained on the door to the engine.

  The conductor came down the track to see what was going on, the fire having alerted him. Instantly, Butch was out of the engine, his rifle trained on the man, ordering him to unhitch the mail, express, and baggage cars.

  "I do that," the man said, "and them passenger cars will roll back downhill out of control. Might hurt some people pretty bad. Let me set the brake."

  Butch nodded agreement, and he and I both covered the conductor while he set the brake. Then Butch leaped back onto the engine and motioned for me to follow. The engineer, a rifle pointed at him, moved the three cars up the track past the fire. Butch told him when to stop. We left the conductor to explain things to the passengers.

  "Now," Butch said, jumping off the engine and heading for the baggage car, "get the dynamite ready."

  They gave the clerk inside the car a chance to come out, but he refused adamantly. Butch nearly pleaded with him, telling the voice within the barricaded car that he was afraid he'd be hurt if he set off the dynamite, and he didn't want to hurt anyone. The man remained firm until the conductor arrived, having run up the track the mile or so we'd moved the train.

  Whirling, I turned my rifle toward the man, even as I heard Butch behind me saying, "Easy now."

  Holding his hands in the air, the conductor said, "Let me talk to him."

  Butch nodded, and the conductor came right up to the
door. "Woodcock," he barked, "don't be a damn fool a second time. They're fixing to blow this thing up, with you in or out. Get out here now."

  In spite of himself, Sundance echoed, "Second time?"

  "You all blew a car up around that same fellow last year at Wilcox. You'd think the fool would learn something."

  Neither the conductor nor the threat of dynamite had any effect on Mr. Woodcock. He refused to budge, making me both nervous and angry. From Butch and Sundance, I knew about honor—among thieves and, I guessed, among clerks. I admired this Woodcock for his foolish but brave stubbornness—but I wished to hell he'd come out of there before he caused us real trouble.

  Sundance said, "Well, hell, Butch, let's do it."

  Butch nodded, and they threw two live sticks of dynamite against the door of the car. They dented the door badly but did not blow it apart. Still Woodcock did not appear. Sundance shouted—cursed, really—at the agent again, and when there was no response he threw a third charge at one end of the car. It crumpled the frame but still did not produce Woodcock. If I weren't so worried about the time we were wasting, I'd have applauded the man for bravery. I was now very curious about Mr. Woodcock.

  Finally Sundance threw a charge at the other end of the car, and this time the agent came out, holding his hands high. He was a small, slim man with a green shade over his eyes, glasses perched on his nose, and a defiant stance in his body. He wasn't, I thought, the type to be a hero, and that made his stubbornness all the more to be admired.

  Sundance searched him, took a pistol, and told him to stand by the engineer and the conductor. "You're a mighty brave fool," he said to Woodcock.

  Two more blasts of dynamite and they had the safe open, the contents in saddlebags, and we were ready to leave. Rifles still trained on the men, we backed into the brush where Curry waited with the horses. Behind us, we left a totally demolished railroad car, it's hulk almost in shreds.

  "Wait a minute," Curry protested. "We ain't checked the passengers back there." He jerked his head toward the east, where the passenger cars were still about a mile from us. "They probably got gold watches and travelin' money and all sorts of things we ought to have."