by Jack Sheriff
Then, with a swift, decisive movement, he brought the Winchester ’73 to his shoulder, drew a bead on Cajun Pride, and squeezed the trigger.
For all its speed, the action was slowed down in his mind, indelibly imprinted yet with the important details of what had happened, what did happen, confused and unclear. There was the crack of the shot; the sharp stab of pain in his left shoulder and the pause that seemed to stretch into eternity; the hiss of the bullet and the slow toppling of the man who went down as limp as a kid’s rag doll. But for ever afterwards Will Sagger would look back and find himself wondering if, in that still and silent moment before he took the Utah Kid cleanly out of his saddle, the mortally sick man had turned his had slightly, seen what was about to happen – and deliberately remained motionless.
And if he really dug deep, Will would imagine that over that distant face seen in the half light of weak crescent moon he had seen the flickering of the faintest of smiles.
Epilogue
Harry Tracy was the mad dog of the Wild Bunch. Sullen, tight-lipped and with deep-set icy blue eyes, he was partnered by Dave Lant when the semi-illiterate killer, Swede Johnson, rode into Hole In The Wall in 1898. When Johnson killed seventeen-year-old Willy Strang over a minor incident, the three were forced to flee the Hole. Posses from three states hunted them down, and the outlaws were cornered near Powder Springs. There, Lant and Johnson surrendered, but Tracy fought on, dodging from rock to rock in a small canyon. Finally, in sub-zero temperatures, even Tracy was forced to surrender – on his terms! Three states – Utah, Colorado and Wyoming – fought over the three men. Lant and Tracy went to Colorado, Johnson to Wyoming, but Tracy proved far too slippery. Twice he broke out of the jail in Aspen and, although recaptured after the first break, on the second he made good his escape.
On 2 June, 1899, the first section of the Union Pacific’s Overland Flyer was stopped at Wilcox, Wyoming, by Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy), George Curry, Harvey Logan (Kid Curry) and Elza Lay. They used a red lantern placed on the track to stop the train, tried to force the engineer, W. R. (Rhinestone) Jones, to uncouple the express car and, when he refused, drove the train across a small wooden bridge. There, they blew the safe apart with dynamite – but, in a scene played out several times on modern-day television, they used too much explosive and sent $30,000 in bonds and banknotes fluttering into the air.