Butch Cassidy the Lost Years

by William W. Johnstone

  The shot made the engineer jerk his hand away from the throttle. I said, “I think you were reachin’ for the brake.”

  He sighed. I could see the reaction, even though I couldn’t hear it. He took hold of the brake and hauled back on it.

  With a shriek of metal against metal, the train began to slow. I could see the wash now, coming up fast. The train shuddered and lurched and came to a halt less than a hundred yards past it.

  The rest of the boys had already started running out of the wash. I heard the sharp crack of a shot from somewhere back along the train. Conductors were usually armed. I figured the one belonging to this train had spotted the fellas and realized what was going on.

  Return fire came from the tall scarecrow I knew was Enoch. I hoped he was aiming high or low, so the promise I’d made to Vince about nobody being killed wouldn’t be broken. But I couldn’t blame Enoch for defending his own life and the lives of his friends.

  “This is crazy!” the engineer said. “We’re not carrying anything special.”

  “That’s all right,” I told him. “Bound to be something worthwhile in the express car.”

  But what if there wasn’t, I suddenly asked myself. What if we’d risked our lives for nothing?

  It was too late to call it off now. I motioned with the Remington’s barrel and said, “Both of you get down on the floor. Move!”

  They did what I told them, stretching out face down with their arms over their heads. They couldn’t move very fast from that position.

  The shooting from the rear of the train had stopped. I leaned out from the cab and glanced in that direction. Gabe was hurrying toward me, huffing and blowing. I hoped his ticker wouldn’t give out on him.

  I couldn’t see Enoch or any of the vaqueros. They were probably inside the train already.

  Gabe climbed into the cab and stood there for a second, bent over with his hands braced on his thighs. I asked him, “Are you all right?”

  “Sure,” he said between puffs. “Just been a while . . . since I done anything like this.”

  I waited until he had caught his breath and drawn his gun. Then I nodded to him and swung down from the cab.

  Enoch had the conductor and a couple of brakemen out of the caboose and was prodding them forward along the tracks. He stopped next to the express car and waited for me to join them. When I got there I saw that the conductor had his bloody right hand cradled against the chest of his blue uniform jacket. Looked like Enoch had blown a hole through it.

  “Before you say anything,” Enoch spoke up, “he ventilated his own hand. Reckon he ain’t used to handlin’ a gun.”

  “Well, why would I be?” the conductor asked in an aggravated tone. “Nobody robs trains these days. This isn’t the Wild West anymore!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, amigo,” I told him. “The Wild West never dies. It just goes to sleep for a while.”

  He glared at me and didn’t make any reply to that. I went to the door of the express car and hammered on it with the butt of my gun.

  “Open up in there!” I yelled. “We got the conductor and the brakemen out here, and if you don’t open that door I’ll start shootin’ ’em in about a minute!”

  I didn’t really plan to shoot anybody, but sometimes that threat worked. Sometimes you had to tell the express messenger you were fixing to blow the door off the car with dynamite. I’ve also threatened to run the car off the tracks into a ravine so that it’ll bust open with the messenger still inside it. One time I actually had to dynamite the door. It made a mess, though, and I didn’t want to do that again. Besides, I didn’t have any dynamite.

  The conductor sighed and shouted, “Open up, Carl! Looks like the Wild Bunch rides again!”

  That made me give him a sharp look, but he didn’t seem to mean anything by it. He was just disgusted and mad and hurting from that wounded hand. He probably thought he was being a little sarcastic.

  From inside the express car, a muffled voice said, “But Mr. Newby—”

  “Just do what I told you,” the conductor said. “I’ll take the responsibility for it.”

  A few more seconds went by, and then I heard the door being unfastened inside. It rolled back, revealing a young man awkwardly holding a rifle. I didn’t give him a chance to figure out where to point it. I reached up, grabbed the barrel, and hauled the rifle out of the car, bringing the messenger with it. He let out a startled cry on his way to thudding down on the gravel at the edge of the tracks.

  “Son, you’re lucky I’m not in a killin’ mood today,” I told him as I handed the rifle to Enoch, who took it with his left hand while keeping everybody covered with the gun in his right.

  The messenger was almost crying as he lay there on the ground. He said, “You don’t understand. I’ll lose my job over this!”

  “Settle down,” the conductor chided him. “There’s nothing all that valuable in there.”

  Some instinct told me he was wrong. I hunkered on my heels next to the messenger and let the Remington’s muzzle rest against his cheek.

  “I’ve got a hunch Mr. Newby here doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Carl,” I said. “Is there somethin’ in the safe he don’t know about?”

  Before the young man could answer, Newby puffed up and glowered and said, “There damned well better not be. Nobody ships anything on my train without telling me!”

  “Carl.” I tapped his cheek with the gun barrel. “What’s in there?”

  He burst out, “The payroll for one of the mines across the border down in Mexico! It’s more’n eight thousand dollars!”

  Newby started cussing a blue streak. I grinned, took the gun away, and patted Carl’s cheek with my left hand instead.

  “That’s a good boy,” I said. “Now climb back in there and open the safe.”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Don’t bother tellin’ me you can’t. I know you can.”

  He didn’t have it in him to be stubborn, not with that gun so close to his face. He got to his feet, and we climbed into the express car.

  Banks, mining companies, rich ranchers, anybody who has to ship a lot of money, they tried all sort of things to get the loot safely to where it was going. Sometimes they put on a bunch of extra guards. Sometimes they used decoy shipments. Sometimes they tried to slip it in and out without anybody knowing except a small handful of people.

  It appeared that was the case here. Pure luck had led us to stop this train today, when it was carrying a decent payoff.

  I had just jumped down from the express car with a pair of canvas money pouches slung over my shoulder when that luck seemed to run out, though. I heard a familiar popping and rattling and looked toward town to see an automobile racing alongside the tracks toward us. To me, one of those contraptions looked pretty much like another, but from the way this one weaved back and forth, I had a pretty good hunch that Sheriff Emil Lester was at the wheel.

  The next second, somebody leaned out to the side from the passenger seat and powdersmoke spurted as the varmint started shooting at us.

  CHAPTER 29

  The sharp cracks told me the passenger was firing a rifle at us, probably a Winchester. That automobile wasn’t a very stable place to shoot from, though, especially with Sheriff Lester at the wheel. Sand kicked in the air a good twenty yards from the railroad tracks as a bullet struck there.

  I had planned to disable the engine or at least do enough damage to the controls that all they’d be able to do was limp on into the county seat. That was out of the question now. We had to git.

  “Go!” I barked at Enoch, then I ran alongside the passenger cars firing my gun in the air to get the attention of Santiago and his cousins. “Come on!” I bellowed at them.

  Gabe stuck his head out from the cab. I waved the hand with the gun in it to let him know to leave the engineer and fireman there and rattle his hocks.

  The vaqueros appeared on the rear platforms of the cars and leaped to the ground. We all took off in a stragg
ling line toward the wash. I hung back a little, waiting for Gabe to catch up. When he did, I grabbed hold of his arm to help him along.

  We could only hope that nobody got hit and the sheriff wasn’t able to cut us off from the wash. It would have been all right with me if that blasted car blew a tire or busted an axle as it careened along. I had no idea what had brought Lester out here, but right now it didn’t matter. The important thing was reaching the horses first. Once we were mounted we could take off along the wash and I was pretty sure the sheriff would never be able to catch us.

  Vince and Bert must have been keeping a pretty close eye on things from the wash. Without warning, they charged out of it on horseback, each of them leading three of the other horses. They galloped out to meet us.

  Lester was close, though. That damn car of his was fast. And his deputy, because that’s who the passenger had to be, was a pretty good shot. The rifle bullets were whistling too close for comfort around us now as Vince and Bert reached us with the horses and we started trying to climb into the saddles.

  A more distant rifle shot sounded. The sheriff’s automobile slewed even more violently to one side. With a yell, the deputy went flying out the open door on his side. He lost his Winchester as he hit the ground.

  More shots cracked, and a loud hissing sounded as steam boiled out from the front of the car. Somebody up on the ridge was shooting at Lester’s vehicle, I realized, and doing a damned fine job of it, too. The automobile shuddered to a halt.

  By that time I was in the saddle, and a quick glance told me the others were, too. I waved a hand toward the wash, not wanting to yell because Lester had heard my voice too often and might recognize it. The others were watching me, though, and followed orders. We all galloped at an angle away from the railroad tracks.

  I looked back and saw Lester hopping around beside the car. He was so furious he couldn’t stand still, I thought. He pointed a handgun at us and squeezed off a few rounds, but we were already out of effective range. He probably knew it, too. He was just blowing off steam—like his automobile—by shooting at us.

  I didn’t know for sure who had been up on the ridge helping us out, but I had a pretty good idea. Sure enough, when we emerged from the wash a little later I spotted a rider on a familiar horse galloping on a course that would intersect ours. I pointed him out, and we veered toward him to meet him quicker.

  By now we had all pulled our bandanna masks down. The hombre who had come to our aid wasn’t wearing one. When we came up to him and reined in, Bert exclaimed, “Randy!”

  That’s who it was, all right: Randy McClellan. With anxious fear on his face, he looked at each of us in turn.

  “Nobody’s hurt?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “And you deserve some of the credit for that, son, stoppin’ the sheriff in his tracks the way you did.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be part of this,” Vince said.

  Randy made a face and shrugged. He said, “That’s what I thought, too, but the longer I sat there at the ranch the more it bothered me that I hadn’t come with you. We’re all supposed to be partners. That’s what riding for the brand is all about, isn’t it?”

  “All for one and one for all,” Bert said. “Like in a book I read once.”

  “Anyway,” Randy went on, “when I couldn’t stand it anymore I decided to come after you and keep an eye on you, just in case you needed help.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said. “But how’d you know where to find us? We didn’t let you in on the details of the plan.”

  “Oh, I eavesdropped outside the window a couple of times when you were all talking,” he said. “It wasn’t hard.”

  I stared at him for a second, then burst out laughing.

  “I didn’t think you were that sneaky,” I told him. “Good thing for us you were, though. We might’ve gotten away from Sheriff Lester anyway, but when you pitched in like that, you made sure of it.”

  Enoch said, “How’d that lawman know to come racin’ out there from town?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can figure that out later. Right now let’s just get back to the ranch before somebody happens to come along lookin’ for us and wonders where we all are.”

  We set off for the Fishhook again, not galloping now but keeping the horses moving at a ground-eating lope. I kept an eye on our back trail, watching for any signs of pursuit. I didn’t think Lester would get that automobile going again without some major repair work on it, and I didn’t think he’d be able to get his hands on horses for him and his deputy without going back to the county seat first, but in this business it never hurts to expect the unexpected. Big surprises can be fatal.

  I didn’t see anyone following us, and that was the way I liked it.

  As we rode along, Enoch asked me, “You really didn’t know about that payroll bein’ in the express car, did you, Jim?”

  “Payroll?” Gabe echoed before I could say anything. “What’s this about a payroll?”

  “Eight grand that was bound for a mine below the border,” Enoch said. “The conductor didn’t even know it was on board. But I reckon you did, Jim.”

  “You reckon wrong,” I told him. I could have let them think I was a lot smarter than I really was, or at least a lot more well-informed, but I wanted to play it straight with them. “You’ve got to have some luck in this business, and that’s what this was.”

  Enoch shrugged. I could tell he didn’t really believe me, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had told the truth.

  “Eight thousand dollars?” Bert said, sounding like that was such a vast sum he couldn’t even comprehend it. “Really?”

  “Well, I haven’t counted it yet,” I said as I patted a hand against one of the money pouches I’d slung over the saddle. “But that’s how much the express messenger claimed there was, and once he’d admitted it was there, I don’t see why he’d have had any reason to lie about the amount.”

  “Eight thousand,” Vince said. “That’s . . .” He paused to do the ciphering in his head. “Almost nine hundred dollars for each of us!”

  “No, amigo,” Santiago said. “My cousins and I, we plan to take only half of the share coming to us. The other half goes to your madre.”

  “You can’t do that,” Vince protested. “It’s not fair to you, after all the risks you ran.”

  “We all ran those risks, son,” Enoch said. “And we all plan on splittin’ the money with you and your ma.”

  I told Vince, “There’s no point in arguin’. We all talked about it when you weren’t around, and that’s what we decided to do. We probably wouldn’t have done this if the railroad hadn’t cheated your ma.” I couldn’t help but grin. “And it was so much fun it was sure enough worth it!”

  “Getting shot at was fun?” Vince asked.

  Enoch said, “There’s nothin’ like the sound of a bullet goin’ past your head to make you feel alive.”

  He was right about that. I nodded in agreement and said, “When we get back to the ranch we’ll divvy up the money. You’ll need to take the part that goes to you and your ma into town and give it to her. She can’t put it in the bank, though, at least not right away and not all at once. That would make folks too curious about where she got it. Tell her to wait a little bit and then deposit some. She can say that relatives back east sent it to her, or some such.”

  Vince nodded.

  “I understand,” he said. “She’s doing some work as a seamstress, too. She can use some of the money and claim she earned it that way.”

  “There you go. Now you’re thinkin’, son.”

  “I’ll leave all of my part with her,” he went on. “I don’t need it. With that much money, she might be all right from now on.”

  I knew he was wrong about that. Money has a way of running out, no matter how much of it you have. I’ve heard people say that they have more than they could ever spend, but I don’t believe it. You can always spend more money.

  Bert said, “So we won
’t have to do this again, will we?” I thought he sounded a little disappointed.

  “You mean nobody has to risk their lives again,” Vince said.

  “We’ll see,” I told them. “You can’t ever tell what might come up.”

  That drew some odd looks from the three youngsters. Enoch and Gabe just smiled a little, and the vaqueros remained impassive.

  As for me, the wheels of my brain were spinning around so fast they were about to run away from me. In Enoch, Gabe, Santiago, and the Gallardo brothers I had the core of a tough, competent bunch. Randy, Vince, and Bert were raw as they could be, but they didn’t lack for courage and they were smart enough to listen and remember the things I told them.

  The possibilities were downright intriguing.

  I knew I couldn’t go any further with this, though, unless I told them the truth. They deserved that much. They deserved to know what they would be getting into.

  I turned that over a few dozen times in my mind on the ride back to the ranch. By the time we got there I had reached a firm decision about what I was going to do. It could wait until after we handled a few other chores first, like dividing up the loot from the train robbery.

  Night was falling as we rode in. Gabe said, “If one of you boys will take care of my horse, I’ll get some coffee boilin’ and rustle us up some grub.”

  “I’ll tend to your horse, Gabe,” Randy volunteered.

  Gabe headed for the cook shack while the rest of us unsaddled and rubbed down our mounts, then made sure they had plenty of water and grain. The horses had done gallant service today, and they deserved some rest and good treatment.

  I carried the money pouches in and set them on the table. An air of eagerness hung over the room, and I knew the boys wanted to gaze on those greenbacks. It wouldn’t be right to do it without Gabe, however, so we waited until he brought in the coffee.

  “Stew’ll be ready in a while,” he told us. “Let’s go ahead and have a look at that dinero.”

  I unfastened the strap on one of the pouches. Just before I upended it to dump the contents on the table, the thought crossed my mind that ol’ Carl might have lied to me. I didn’t think so, but what if something besides money poured out?