by Judy Alter
As though they'd rehearsed this a thousand times, Butch threw Sundance a rock, which he then pitched in the air. Butch's shot shattered it before it reached the arc of its flight. They repeated this only twice, and I knew they were saving the bullets. After all, they were the ones with guns in hand. The officers would have awkwardly had to pull out revolvers or rifles from their cases. Clearly, Butch and Sundance had the advantage.
"Pardon us for shooting rocks," Butch said. "We do this every day because we are bored."
"Si, senor," the commissar said. "We are sorry to have bothered you."
And they turned and rode away.
We left the estancia that night, under cover of darkness, leaving behind most of our possessions and a note giving the livestock to the two men who worked for us. We were on the run again.
* * *
"Dimaio will be here in no time. Probably already in Buenos Aires, if I know Apfield," Butch said.
We were camped in the mountains. A small fire glowed at our feet, and we clutched cups of coffee laced with whiskey. Whatever else we left behind, Sundance had remembered the whiskey.
"Can't we go to Bolivia or Chile? Someplace else, anyplace?" I asked.
Sundance shook his head. "They're onto us. I think we could go to Egypt, and they'd find us."
"Or join a monastery," Butch said glumly.
"I suppose," I said, trying to add a light note, "I'd have to get myself to a nunnery."
Then Sundance laughed aloud, a hearty natural laugh. "I think they'd see you coming a mile away, Etta," he said. "No, we'll have to think of another plan."
"Well," Butch said, "we can't hide in these damn cold mountains forever. Winter's coming. And we got no money. We left everything at the place. I guess we'll have to rob a bank."
Sundance's eyes suddenly glowed with the light of interest. "Now, there's an idea! I wonder why I hadn't thought of it myself?"
"You said no more banks," I reminded them, drawing my skirts close around my legs and, in effect, drawing into myself.
"That was then, and this is now," Sundance said glibly. "Now we have no choice."
I knew there must be a choice, but I didn't know what it was.
Chapter 26
That was why I went to Rio Gallegos with them—no choices. I couldn't stay in Esquel at the estancia. Dimaio would rather have caught Butch or Sundance, but he'd have taken me if he could. And in the back of my mind always hovered the fear that if I were captured for being with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, someone would find out about Pa's murder in Texas.
I couldn't get to Buenos Aires—even I was not foolhardy enough to set out across the pampa on horseback by myself. Nor could I go over the mountains to Chile—no one in Tierra del Fuego could, for there was not yet a pass. The only pass was far to the north at Mendoza, a place that I did not know then but would know too well one day soon. So I went to Rio Gallegos, in the southern tip of Argentina's coastal Patagonia region, a land less intriguing to me than Tierra de Fuego. The Andean range there breaks up into rocky bays and islets, and deep canyons break the windswept plateaus. It is sheep farming country, and Sundance told us that wool was shipped north from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires.
"When they've just shipped a load of wool, there'll be money in the bank," he said triumphantly. "We'll watch for the right time."
All I cared about was that the wind blew constantly and I wanted it to stop.
As we neared the small city, though, I began to care about something else—my safety. "We've got to have a plan," I announced one night as we huddled around a campfire. I thought I spoke with some authority. What I really meant was that I didn't intend to get captured or shot doing this, and I wanted a plan to avoid that.
"Excuse me?" Sundance said. "Who put you in charge?"
A furious reply died on my lips when Butch said softly, "Of course we do, Etta. I know that... and I got a plan. I'm sorry I haven't told you about it yet. Didn't know you were worrying."
"I was," I admitted.
"Well," he said, "here it is." And he proceeded to lay out a plan so simple yet so perfect that I laughed aloud. "It's your chance to wear those breeches and ride like hell," Butch said, and then, "Pardon my language, Etta."
We camped three miles from the town for almost three weeks, and twice a week we rode into town for provisions. We did not ride leisurely. We rode as though the devil himself was after us, racing, calling to each other, urging our horses to greater speeds. More than once I beat both of them, and I would pull my winded horse to a stop and stare triumphantly at them. Butch laughed, but it made Sundance angry.
The townspeople of Rio Gallegos, needless to say, were taken aback. They watched us openly. They stared. Some women averted their eyes from mine, as though they couldn't believe a woman would behave so. These were not the rich women of Tierra del Fuego estancias; these were women whose men were shepherds or worked on the docks where the ships came to get the wool. The women themselves worked hard cleaning and washing and cooking for their families. I doubt any of them had ever been allowed to ride a horse, and it made me want to shout at them, "I can teach you to shoot a rifle!" After all, I'd taught the women of Esquel.
Butch talked me out of that idea rather quickly, and Sundance said, "You're doing a swell job of making a spectacle of yourself, Etta."
"That's what Butch wants," I said serenely.
But those rides into town told us what we wanted to know: We soon learned when the next big shipment of wool would go out—prepaid, as it were. The bank was a small one, a stucco building with a fading tile roof and a wooden hitching rail in front. It had a verandah covered by a wood roof that sat on wooden poles. Several old men gathered daily on the benches on this verandah to talk of wool and ships and weather.
"Will they be a problem?" I asked softly one day, nodding in their direction.
Sundance was scornful. "You think I can't outshoot those old men?"
But Butch was reasonable. "They have no guns," he said. "They'll be upset, but they won't bother us." And when the time came, they didn't.
When we weren't riding hell-bent for town, we were bored. In our haste to leave Esquel, I had brought no books or magazines. There were no streams for fishing, no small game to hunt, nothing to do. Butch had a deck of cards, and they played endless rounds of anything they could think of, from gin rummy to poker. I spent a lot of time thinking about the future, but it got me nowhere.
Finally the day of shipment came. The next day when we thundered into town we had all our belongings rolled behind our saddles. We hit the bank at noon—some of Butch's habits never changed!-—and were out within minutes, carrying 20,000 pesos and a tin box with gold ingots in it. I had done my part, training a rifle on the cashier and guard, and I bet it was a long time before the people of that small town stopped talking about the norteamericano lady bank robber. I just hoped Dimaio never ventured that far. Then I realized that was a foolish hope—once the robbery was made public, he'd be down there.
The perfect thing about Butch's plan was that when we galloped out of town, no one paid us any mind. After three weeks they'd gotten so used to our loud craziness that they just went about their business. Even the old men didn't realize anything had happened as we ran out of the bank, vaulted onto our horses, and took off at a dead gallop without a backward look. Just like every other time, we shouted. Only this time, in English, we shouted out loudly about our success. We were probably twenty miles away before anyone thought to organize a posse.
We made cold camps at night—we hadn't bought all those provisions in Rio Gallegos for nothing—and sometimes we rode at night. Just over a week later, we were back in Esquel—or near it. Under cover of dark, Butch rode in to see friends. When he returned, the news was not heartening.
"Dimaio's been here, and the federal authorities have warrants for us. We can't stay."
"Can we go to Madryn and take a boat to Buenos Aires?" I asked.
Sundance hooted. "Show up in Buenos Aires? Now that
they know who we are, we'd be in jail before we had our first sip of whiskey in the Hotel Europa."
Reluctantly I realized that he was right. We were on the run again. We might as well have stayed in Wyoming, I thought bitterly.
We rode north, edging along the mountains, until we finally cut east to Neuquen, a town in the middle of the pampa on Rio Negro. Butch and Sundance robbed the bank without ever once having ridden into the town.
"That's stupid," I raved the night before when they told me of the plan. "The dumbest thing I ever heard of."
Even Butch was grinning. "Thank you, Etta. I appreciate your confidence."
"Butch—"
Sundance interrupted. "You got to admit it beats other plans just for sheer excitement."
"I'm not looking for excitement," I said angrily.
"Why, Etta," he said smoothly, "I always thought you were."
"You aren't coming with us this time," Butch said. "It'll make it look different if there are only two of us, and I... well, I don't want you to take the chance."
That was something new! Was he worried about me or was he sensing that my own newly developed worry might make me cautious and therefore a liability at robbery? Or did he sense that one day, probably soon, they would be caught or killed? I shivered. I didn't want an answer to those questions right away.
I waited on horseback for them to come roaring into camp. They passed me without stopping, and I spurred my horse to catch up with them. We disappeared into the tall grass of the pampa, but I was not pleased with my companions.
We were exhausted by the time we made camp that night, and Sundance and I quarreled over the placement of the sleeping rolls, what there was—or wasn't—to eat, almost anything we could find to pick at each other about.
"You two need some time alone," Butch announced. "I'm going over yonder." It had been almost a month since Sundance and I had slept together, and Butch apparently thought that was why we were getting testier with each other by the minute.
Sundance grinned at his longtime friend. "I don't think that's going to solve the problem," he said. "But thanks."
I remained silent.
Sundance was right. It didn't solve the problem. But neither did I regret a minute of that long night, nor did I mind riding across the pampa in a sleepless haze the next day. Every once in a while Sundance—who was bright and chipper, blast him!—would look at me and laugh. Butch kept his eyes either straight ahead to where we were going or behind to see if we were being followed. We weren't.
We were next headed for the bank at Mercedes, on the railroad line between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso, Chile.
"What happened to hiding out between times and letting things quiet down?" I asked.
Sundance favored me with a withering look. "Things aren't going to 'quiet down,' as you so delicately put it. Our philosophy this time is to hit 'em hard and run."
"Run where?" I asked sarcastically.
"Bolivia," Butch said calmly. "I figure we'll just rob our way north until we can get passage to California. And if we make a big splash in Bolivia, then the Argentina authorities will know any robberies that happen here weren't committed by us."
Only later did it occur to me that they could have ridden right over the mountains at the pass at Mendoza. They would have been in Chile, headed for Valparaiso and easy passages to California. No, they wanted to give it up and go home—but not quite yet, thank you. At the time I thought they were protecting their reputations.
"Nobody else down here robs banks," I pointed out.
"Never can tell," Sundance said airily. "There might be other visitors."
Why, I wondered, did I feel as if someone had walked on my grave? And when did they have time to plan this all out without my knowing it? Were they whispering while I was asleep? Clearly, whatever and however, the two of them had made plans without taking me into their confidence.
"You going with us to Mercedes?" Sundance asked innocently.
"We could use a third person, Etta," Butch said. "This is a bigger bank than Neuquen. But not, Etta, if you don't want to...."
"I'm with you, aren't I?" I almost spat the words out, and then I felt instant remorse over having been harsh with Butch.
Butch chose to ignore my sharpness. "Good," he said, "this is what we'll do." And we hunkered around a fire and watched him trace pictures in the dirt. How he knew to plan a robbery in a town he'd never checked out is beyond me, but I think Butch operated by finely honed instinct a lot of the time.
We rode into Mercedes just before siesta. I have to admit that Butch's noontime habit was a good one in South America, where everything closed down after lunch for a siesta. We ate a good lunch—beef and beans—in a small cafe, and Butch and Sundance each had one local beer. No more. In that heat, I thought even one was taking a chance on dulling their sharpness, but Butch pointed out that everyone would think it strange if they did not have a drink with their meal. I drank water.
We robbed the bank but not without incident. As had become usual, I trained my rifle on the cashiers, lined up against a wall, while Butch and Sundance rifled the cash drawers and explored the safe. Since it was siesta, we didn't have to worry about either customers or an officious bank president. Whoever he was, he was home having a siesta.
But one cashier was determined to be a hero. He was a slight and young man, though already balding, and he wore great round spectacles—an unlikely-looking hero. But if I turned my head the least to the right, watching the others, he began to edge toward his cage. I whipped around, pointing my rifle at him and waving him back. We did this three times, until even I was losing patience with this foolish man. But I knew what he did not: I would never shoot him.
Then he began to yell as loud as he could, "Robbery! Help, robbery!"
That brought Sundance and Butch both on the run, and Butch flattened the man with one hard punch to the chin. All the starch went out of him, and he sank to the floor.
"Let's go," Butch said, his tone edging closer to frantic than I'd ever heard from him.
We were mounted and out of town in seconds, and we rode for a long time without speaking. Finally, when the horses could hold the pace no longer, Butch signaled for a walk, though he kept looking nervously over his shoulder.
"You should have shot that blasted fool," Sundance said, turning to me angrily.
"That would have brought attention faster than his yelling," I replied. "Besides, I'm not going to shoot anyone."
"If you're not going to use it, you shouldn't carry a rifle," he answered in an irritatingly smug tone.
"I never in my life shot a man," Butch said quietly.
Sundance stared at him. "I don't want to ride with either one of you unless you decide you can use those damn rifles. I'm not risking my life for your principles."
When we made camp that night, Sundance made a big show of pulling his bedroll off to one side of the small clearing we'd chosen for a cold camp. Deliberately I laid my roll out where I'd be between the two men—and some distance from Sundance. Nights were cool on the pampa, even though we were moving north toward the warmer climate of northern Argentina. I settled down into the warmth of my bedroll with a small sigh of satisfaction, the only comfort I'd known all day long.
"Etta?" Butch whispered my name as he crept toward me on all fours.
Instantly I sat up. "What is it?" I demanded aloud, sure that we were surrounded by federates.
"Shhh!" he whispered. "Don't want to wake Sundance."
From across the clearing came a clear voice. "It's all right. I'm awake. You two just go on and do whatever you want to do." Sundance's tone had a bitterness to it that was familiar to me by now.
"Ah, Kid," Butch said. "I just want to talk to her."
"Be my guest," came the reply.
Butch reached out and brushed the hair off my forehead, his touch ever so gentle. For a long minute he just stared at me with a look as tender as those Sundance gave me in the early days of our togetherness. At last he spoke
. "You aren't going on any more jobs with us, Etta. I... I don't want you to face that kind of danger."
"You think I've lost my nerve, don't you?" I whispered back.
He shook his head. "You've always had more nerve than any twenty women I know, Etta. It's not that. It's just that it's time for it to be over for all of us. Sundance and I, we don't have a choice even here in South America. We thought we did, but Pinkertons has hounded us down here. But you do. From now on, you'll wait for us at safe places."
"We could leave," I ventured.
He stared off into space. "We can't, but you could. And if you want to, I'll see that happens. But I guess I hope you'll go north with us, and finally we can all go back to the States together."
I reached for his hand and was surprised by the electricity that flowed when we touched. "I'll stay," I told him, "because I love you."
"Ah, Etta!" He was once again the bashful, brotherly Butch.
From behind me came a plaintive. "What about me?"
"Go to sleep, Sundance," I said, but I was laughing as I said it to make it a joke, and he took no offense. Or if he did, he was silent about it for once.
What bothers me to this day is that, Pinkertons or no, they could have left. They just couldn't bring themselves to give up the only way of life they'd ever known, no matter how much they talked about new lives.
We rode west to San Martin, keeping parallel to the railroad tracks, but always out of sight. Then, at San Martin, we hitched the horses in front of a store and left them, knowing someone would care for them. We boarded the train for Mendoza, which really wasn't much farther.
"Why didn't we just ride there?" I asked.
"Because they'll be looking for us to be horseback. They won't expect us to arrive by train."
"It would be better if I had good clothes, wouldn't it?" I said.
"Yeah, but you don't."
In Mendoza we checked into a small, old hotel. The lobby had a stone floor with dirt between the stones, and the stucco of the walls showed great gaps and cracks. The clerk at the worn wooden counter was as bored as he could be and barely gave us a look as Butch signed us in. If asked later, he'd never know he'd seen the famous norteamericano outlaws. While we stood waiting for him to figure the room rates, a pig ran squealing through the open area, chased by a young boy of about ten who was yelling at the top of his lungs. Butch and Sundance were not impressed, but I was—and not favorably.