Sam Bass (10 page)

His lanky companion spoke loudly in a high, sing-song voice and laughed a lot, showing a mouth with few teeth. His cheeks were sunken. Long blond whiskers covered his narrow jaw. His pale blue eyes were grotesque. The left one twinkled and shifted from Sam to me and back while he talked. But the right one, which was larger than the other, had no light in it and gazed always straight ahead. I must have stared at it, for he said, “It's glass,” and tapped it with his finger. The click of his fingernail against his eye sent a shiver up my spine.

“Can you shoot with that eye?” Sam asked.

“Not with that one. But I can with the other one.” He laughed loudly at his joke.

His name was Tom Spotswood, and he had left a wife and a small son on a ranch somewhere northeast of Denton. Although his shiny yellow hair, which hung almost to his shoulders, made him appear young, he said he fled to Texas from Missouri just after the war, so he must have been between thirty-five and forty.

“What for?” Sam asked.

Spotswood stopped talking and glared at Sam with his good eye.

“I like to know who I'm working with,” Sam said.

“Killed a man. Two, in fact. The circus come to Sedalia. I had taken a fancy to a young lady that worked for it. Bareback rider. I got drunked up and was in an argument with a carpenter about which one was going to carry her home. I shot him. A store clerk caught one of my bullets, too. I climbed on my horse and lit out of there. The clerk died, too, I heared later. I reckon nobody carried that young lady home.”

“Had any trouble in Texas?” Sam asked.

“Not much. Tried to nail me for cattle-stealing in Wise County. Killed two niggers in Collin County. Got off both times.”

The coffee boiled over, and Barnes got up and lifted the pot off the fire. I handed him the cups. “Speaking of women,” he said, “I was in Dallas the other day. Met one that knows you, Sam.”

“I don't know no women in Dallas,” Sam said.

Barnes handed us the cups of steaming coffee. “Well, she said she knowed you. I told her I was from Denton County, and she asked about you. Name's Maude.”

“Maude? I knowed a Maude, but that was way up north.”

Barnes nodded. “She's the one.”

“Son of a bitch! Joel's girl!”

“She's working in Norene's house on Main Street,” Barnes said.

Sam laughed for the first time in a long time. He slapped my shoulder. “We're ready, pard!” he said. “You find Jim and stock this place with all the grub and oats and ammunition he can rustle. When I get back, we're going to work on the railroad!”

“Back from where?” I asked.

“Dallas!” he said.

While Sam was whoring, I found Jim at his Cove Hollow house. He left immediately for Denton and returned two days later on a wagon laden with sides of bacon, flour, coffee, tobacco, whiskey, beans, dried fruit, rifle and pistol ammunition and oats for the horses. We transferred it all to two pack horses Jim kept at his place and moved it up to our cabin. It took us several trips. Spotswood and Barnes and I slept at Jim's house that night, and the next morning he headed back to Denton, and we rode up Clear Creek to the cabin. Sam showed up about sundown, grinning. “Well, we're ready to move,” he said. “What's it to be?” I asked.

Sam was full of excitement. “The Houston and Texas Central's Number 4 train. The Nebraska train was Number 4, so this one ought to be lucky, too.”

He had done some long and careful thinking while he was with Joel's woman. The Houston and Texas Central passed through Collin County just east of the Denton County line. It was the nearest railroad to Cove Hollow, and we could have the cover of the cross-timbers and creek bottoms almost all the way to its tracks. Sam had learned that the Houston and Texas Central connected with the Katy for St. Louis, and it stood to reason that it might carry a bit of Yankee money. He had decided to strike the train at Allen, a tiny prairie station twenty-four miles north of Dallas. “The southbound is due there about eight o'clock in the evening,” he said, “so we'll have the darkness working for us. We can hit it and be back in the bottoms before anybody knows what happened. Frank and Seab will rush the locomotive and put the engineer and the fireman under their guns. Me and Tom will tap the express car.”

“What about the passenger cars?” Barnes asked.

“Forget them. It would take too long to search everybody, and some fool might try to make a fight of it.”

We fed the horses well and let them rest that night and all the next day and the following night. Shortly after noon on the next day we packed a few supplies and rode down Clear Creek single file. We rode in silence over the rough Cove Hollow terrain, but when we cleared the hollow and passed Jim's house we left the woods and rode abreast, following the course of the creek. Just northeast of Denton, where Clear Creek and Little Elm Creek flow into the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, we moved into the river bottom and turned southward, riding single file again. A couple of miles south of Hilltown Sam called a halt, and we pitched camp in the bottom. “The rest is open prairie,” he said. “We can make it fast when the time comes.”

The next day, George Washington's Birthday, 1878, Sam told Spotswood to ride into Allen and check out the situation. I thought Tom was a poor choice, because his gray horse and his yellow hair and glass eye made him the most conspicuous member of our band, but I said nothing. “Take your time,” Sam told him. “Don't waste your horse. Find out if there's anybody there that might give us trouble, and ask what time the train's due, just to make sure I'm right.”

Tom gave Sam a mock salute and spurred his gray up the river bank. Fog lay in the Trinity bottom that morning, and we quickly lost sight of him.

The fog lifted later in the morning, but the day remained gray and misty. We spent a great deal of time straining our eyes toward the east, looking for Spotswood's return long before he could have ridden to Allen and back. He emerged out of the mist about midafternoon. “Easy as pie,” he said. “Not a lawman in the place, and the train's still due at eight o'clock.”

We cooked the last of our food and ate every morsel, since it likely would be our last meal until we returned to Cove Hollow. In late afternoon we headed toward Allen. Not long after dark we arrived at the edge of town and dismounted. Tom pointed to a lighted building and said, “That's the station.” He swung his arm northward. “And the train will come from there. If it was daylight you could see the tracks. We've got a good view here.”

I looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes until eight. Sam touched my wrist. “Don't pull that out again till we're out of here,” he said. “We don't want nobody remembering the music.” We sat down under a tree and Sam took out his own watch and laid it on the ground in front of him. We could hear its ticking, and although we couldn't read its hands in the darkness, we kept staring at it as if mesmerized. I felt tension building in us. Barnes, sitting beside me, drew a long breath and expelled it in a great rush. Spotswood fooled with the rowel of one of his spurs. Sam picked up his watch and held it close to his face. “It's eight o'clock,” he said. “The train's late.”

I strained my eyes toward the station, half entertaining the foolish notion that the train had pulled in without our seeing or hearing it. But the station and the village around it were quiet. The tension grew even faster now, for we had no idea how long our wait would be. My hands were sweating and beginning to tremble. I grasped one with the other, trying to hold them still. Every few minutes, Sam would announce the time. “Eight-thirty.” “Twenty till nine.” “Fifteen till nine.” I didn't see the point of it, since we had no way of knowing when the train would arrive, and his announcements were adding to my nervousness.

Then suddenly it was there. The headlight cut through the misty darkness, and the whistle shrilled. Without a word we jumped to our feet, lifted our masks and sprang into our saddles. We dashed pell-mell across the stretch of prairie separating us from the station, reined in sharply at the platform and swung down with guns already drawn. Two men standing together on the platform stared at us, surprise and terror in their faces. “Oh, my Lord!” one of them said.

“Move and you're dead!” Sam cried.

Amidst plumes of smoke and steam the locomotive moved slowly alongside the platform, its bell clanging. Its headlight was bright in my eyes, but I could see its big wheel, and when it stopped turning I screamed, “Now!” In a flash Seab and I were up the engine steps and had our gun muzzles under the chins of the engineer and the fireman. The firebox door was open, and the dancing lights and shadows created by the flames made hellish imps of the men, who raised their hands above their heads. Four terrified, white eyes stared out of their sooty faces, and little streams of sweat coursed down the hard muscles of the fireman's bare chest. “Don't move!” I said and poked my gun closer to the engineer's face. My gun hand was steady now. With my left hand I drew my knife and cut the bell rope. I heard Sam's voice: “Throw up your hands and give us your money!” Then came a shot, and then another.

“God!” said the engineer.

“Shut up!” I said.

I heard three more shots, then one, then three more, then Sam's voice, but I couldn't understand his words. Seab's eyes, shiny in the firelight, shifted quickly to me, then back to the fireman.

“Pard! Back it up!” Sam shouted. “We're going to uncouple!” I waved the engineer to the controls with my gun. “You heard him. Do it.”

The engine chuffed, and the shock of the cars slamming against each other almost knocked me down. Barnes waved the fireman toward the steps. “Go uncouple it behind the express car,” he said. “Don't do nothing funny. I'm right behind you.” A few seconds later his masked face appeared at the bottom of the steps. “She's uncoupled,” he said. “Take her up.”

“You heard him,” I told the engineer. He moved the locomotive forward. When we had moved sixty or seventy feet I said, “Stop. Shut her down.”

I heard more shouts from the express car, then silence. The engineer and I gazed at each other, both of us listening, trying to figure out what was happening behind us. Then spurred feet were running, and Sam said from the bottom of the steps, “We've got it, pard. Bring him down.”

I herded the engineer into the small cluster of men standing on the platform under the guns of my companions. Sam and Tom clutched large parcels to their chests with their left hands. Seab was searching the men. Shouts and screams issued from the passenger cars farther down the track. “They're clean,” Seab said.

“All right,” Sam said to our prisoners. “Stand where you are till we're out of sight. Otherwise, you'll die.”

We mounted and rode out fast. When we were beyond sight of the train and the station and Allen we halted, and Sam said to Tom, “Did he get a good look at you?”

“I don't think so. I got it back up pretty fast.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Tom's mask fell down when he jumped into the express car,” Sam said.

“Damn!” I said.

“Well, we'll hope for the best,” Sam said. “We made a good haul, I think.” “What is it?” Seab asked.

“Silver, mostly. Some greenbacks. Quite a bit, I think.” “What was the ruckus?” I asked.

“The bastard in the express car cut loose on us. He hid behind the boxes, and we had to shoot back to keep him down. I finally told him if he didn't give up we'd set fire to his car, so he come out.”

We camped in the Trinity bottom again. Sam brought the parcels to the fire, opened them and counted the silver and the greenbacks into four equal stacks.

“Are you just taking an equal share?” Spotswood asked him.

“Yes. We all did equal work.”

We got three hundred and twenty dollars apiece.

The morning was cold, and since we hadn't waited to eat or even make coffee, we were a groggy, cranky crowd, not fit company for each other. Spotswood's mood was the worst. He complained in his sing-song way of aches in his joints from sleeping on the damp ground, of hunger, of the long ride, of anything that came into his mind. The rest of us made no replies, but each was miserable in his own way, and I, at least, had no desire to have Tom's unhappinesses heaped upon mine. I wasn't sorry when he pulled his pacer to a halt and announced he would go no farther. “I've had enough cold camp,” he said. “I want my woman and a good dinner, and I'm going to go get them.”

“All right.” Sam's voice had a little anger in it.

Spotswood's departure called to my mind Henry Underwood's Christmas visit to Denton, and I said, “Family men. They aren't very reliable, are they?”

“Tom's all right,” Sam replied. “He just ain't cut out for being rich.”

“It was his mask that fell down,” Barnes said. “He might be trouble. Maybe I should go get him.” “And do what?” “Make sure he don't talk.”

What he was suggesting was murder. Sam studied Seab's face. “No,” he said. I was relieved.

We arrived at our cabin late the next afternoon. After we took care of the horses we flopped on the bare stone in front of the fireplace and slept for hours before we mustered energy enough to eat. Seab, as it turned out, was a decent cook, and he fixed a meal of beans and bacon and stewed apricots and biscuits and coffee. Then we unrolled our blankets and slept like babies until well after daylight.

I got up before the others and went down to the creek and plunged my face into the cold water. While lying on the bank, I heard a woodpecker working. I looked around until I spotted him not high up on the trunk of an old acacia. I eased my hand down and unbuckled my spurs and then grabbed my hat. I tiptoed to the tree as quietly as I could, careful to keep out of the bird's line of sight, and slapped the hat down on top of him. Barnes was stumbling down the slope, yawning and rubbing his eyes, and I said, “Seab! Guess what I've got under this hat.”