Sundance (4 page)

Butch. Longbaugh had been disoriented in prison after reports of his own death in another land, reported in '09, a year after it was supposed to have happened, and he wondered, was he alive or had he died along with his name? It meant that Butch was gone, and the loss of his friend had carved out a hole in his marrow. But at least back then her letters still came from New York, for another two years they came, and, even more than before, they were his lifeline. If the unreality of his own death cloaked him in heavy moods, her letters were the link to stable truth, even if they were addressed to Alonzo rather than his real name. Her letters had come weekly, reliably, creating a need he did not know he craved, until there was nothing. A silence that had lasted the past two years. He took a step, expecting solid ground, and his foot fell through black space, dropping headlong into the empty abyss of her silence. He had blamed the guards, their one sure method of punishment, but the guards swore they withheld nothing. He continued to send his own letters to her until a visit from the warden, holding those very letters, all returned from New York City, someone else's scrawl
refusing them. From the bottom of the abyss he knew the truth and he believed it, there would be no more correspondence, and in the blackness came a stunning ache.

Bringing on the second incident. The big man had snickered, the big man who thought he was important enough to tease the legend, making his insinuation about Etta public. Longbaugh did not remember reacting, he only remembered his eyes unclouding to find the big man on his knees, bloody and cowering. This shocked him, first that he was capable of it, then that he had lost control. There were no repercussions—the big man did nothing after it happened, the big man's friends did nothing, and no punishment came from the prison staff—as if no one believed Longbaugh capable of such fury.

The nightmare now let go and he drifted into an easy dream, the boy Harry growing up in Philadelphia, traveling west as a young man, breaking horses, living on ranches, the mind-numbingly dull winters, the first time he and the boys drank themselves stupid and robbed a bank, his favorite gun in his hand, a gun so polite that no one wanted to blame him.

His sleep went deep then, his dreams lost to him, and he rested.

•   •   •

H
E RODE WEST
for another two days and turned south near the Green River, heading for the Colorado/Utah border and the Outlaw Trail. He saw no one after him in that time and felt safe riding into Browns Park. He was on his way to an old hideout where he hoped to find certain things that he had hidden.

The way into the canyon was tricky and well disguised. Longbaugh maneuvered it effortlessly and saw no indication of recent visitors. The sun overhead pressed dense, compact shadows from every rock, tree, and bush, as well as one that traveled under his horse. The canyon was eerily empty, not that he wanted company, but he hadn't remembered the air being quite so dead between the canyon walls. Perhaps because he had so often ridden in with loquacious Parker. In the pressing heat, he felt a cold trickle between his shoulder blades. He had remembered
a breeze. Only the air above him moved, bending limbs that were out of reach. He rode with his head on a swivel, ears stretching out, overreacting to the sounds of nature. The noise of his horse's hooves seemed to come from behind him, the creak of the leather saddle following a second too late. The horse sensed his tension and thought to rebel, but Longbaugh urged him on. Longbaugh thought that even the horse believed they were riding into a trap.

The passage opened and the inner canyon lay before him. He rode directly to the post office tree, where members of the gang left messages. He found a rolled-up scrap of paper, brittle now and brown-yellow, with a faded message in pencil that had endured any number of downpours to reach this state of illegibility. If it contained a warning, the danger was many years old. He had an ominous sense that he was being watched. He looked up the face of the canyon and was not reassured. He dismounted under the shade of the tree and pondered the surroundings. His eyes ran up the ridge to where the cabin sat. He could not see it, but he knew it was there.

Not a thing felt right to him. The sun was high, the sky a special shade of blue, the smell of sagebrush strong, and all of that made the sensation odder. What could be off on such a fine, clear day?

He remounted the horse and rode slowly for the trail that would eventually lead him up the canyon wall and carry him to the hideout.

He spent more than an hour when the ride would normally take half that, rounded the bend and came in sight of the structure. It appeared unchanged. The immediate area had not been cleared that season or possibly even the year before. That brought him hope. The cabin had been built with a unique floor plan, four rooms, each with its own entrance, and none of the rooms connected inside. He approached the door to the front room and stepped into quiet. Human life had not moved here for months, maybe years. His boots made tracks in the dust on the planks. Stove, kettle, pans hanging on the wall, a couple of chairs, a cot, cobwebs, little else. He took the lantern and a box of matches, and returned to the outside, chased by a shiver.

He left the horse and walked the slim trail that took him up to the
caves. He passed a series of cave mouths until he came to one in particular. He lit the lantern while standing in the sun, and was unsure in the brightness whether the wick burned. He held his palm over the chimney and felt the sharp heat. He climbed the boulder that partly blocked the cave entrance and took hold of the base of a small scrub oak bush that was thicker now and grew in a place that worked as a handle so he could lower his weight inside. Once in the dark, he held the lantern up as his eyes adjusted. When he was satisfied he was alone, he stooped and moved deeper.

He remembered the way, and after twenty yards was able to stand, taking a left, a left, and a right, until he approached the hiding spot. It was clean and dry, a thin layer of dirt underfoot that showed no footprints, and wherever possible he walked on smooth rock to keep it that way. He found the place and set down the lantern and reached within a crevice between large rocks, and for a terrible moment thought that either someone had found it or he was in the wrong place. But he reached deeper, his shoulder pressed hard against the cold rock, patting the ground until his fingers touched fabric and he was relieved to pull out the package. He unwrapped his old oiled canvas duster to reveal the Civil War haversack given to him as a gift by Etta's uncle. He took a moment to appreciate it. Her uncle had been a high-ranking Union officer, so it was a fine one. The haversack itself was crafted of good leather, and its single shoulder strap was of the same leather. The flap was buckled with a belt-style closure, and he fed the tongue up through the frame of the buckle, pulled the prong from the punch hole, then lifted the flap to reveal the contents. It was all still there, the bills and coins. Fourteen years, undisturbed. The bulk of his share of the Wilcox train job in 1899, hidden in a rare moment of foresight when he had also thought to sew coins into his saddle. He knew Butch would never have touched it, no matter how quickly Butch went through his own share, but the others were less righteous. He thought again of Butch, buried somewhere in the ground of South America, and, being in a place where they had often been together, his heart was hollow with grief. While these moments now came rarely, when they did come they brought on a
swift, chest-clenching sadness, and he paused until the ache began to ease. After a time, he went back to his work.

Under the haversack, wrapped in a smaller piece of oilcloth, was one of his guns, a classic Colt Peacemaker. This was the brother to the one stolen from him at Rawlins. He spent some minutes wiping it, admiring it, reassembling it, and loading it. He unloaded the cheap revolver and was about to break it down when he heard a sound and knew he wasn't alone.

He spun on instinct and underhanded the old gun at the face of the man standing there, calling loudly “Catch!” The man dropped his own weapon and his lantern, and before the gun hit him in the nose, caught it with both hands. The man's lantern broke and the flame went out, so that only Longbaugh's lantern gave light.

“Hell and tarnation!” said the man.

Longbaugh strode past him, picked the man's gun off the ground, and saw that the weapon was unloaded and a piece of junk. He handed it back so that the man now held two useless shooters. He brought his own lantern close to the man's cleanly shaved face and recognized him.

“You were the cook,” said Longbaugh.

“And you—hey, holy—it can't be, but—it's
you
, ain't it!?” The cook's expression was incredulous. He shivered as if he was talking to a ghost.

“I need to go someplace people don't recognize me,” Longbaugh said to himself.

“Ain't this the damnedest thing, I mean, ain't it? You're really standing here, breathin' and all, you ain't a spirit or nothin'.” He reached out to poke Longbaugh as if to prove he was made of flesh, then thought better of it. “Guess you're a might older, and I reckon you shaved your mustache. Damn, I thought, I mean we all thought, I mean, everybody, damn, Kid, you're supposed to be dead!”

Longbaugh moved back to his gear, relieved to see the haversack flap in place, the contents hidden from the cook's prying eyes. He did not remember the cook's name. Howard. His name was Howard. No, not Howard.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I reckon I followed you. Got a little lost in the tunnels back there before I saw your light.”

He made his question clearer. “What are you doing at the hideout?”

“I guess I live here. How'd you survive Argentina?”

“Bolivia.”

Longbaugh inspected the man's clothes. Cowboy clothes, but cheap, not made to last. A costume.

“Didn't see tracks,” said Longbaugh. “No one's been in that cabin.”

“Not in the front part.”

“No,” said Longbaugh, realizing his mistake. “But no tracks up here either.”

“Got to taking the other way, in case.”

“There's another way?” Harvey, not Howard. Or Pete.

“Well, I reckon we blazed it some eight years back. Damn, it's really you. You really are alive!”

Longbaugh put his weapon in his belt and walked past the cook and through the tunnel, carrying his lantern and his haversack.

He grabbed the scrub oak's trunk to pull himself out, and from this angle, looking for it, he saw the second path. It would have been near impossible to see when approaching from the other direction. The cook came out behind him.

“You said ‘we.'”

“Yeah, that's, well, you don't know him. He's new. Havin' you here changes everything.” Longbaugh's presence made the man disagreeably cheerful.

“He got a name?”

“John?”

“Is that a question?”

“No . . . I mean, his name is John.”

“What do you go by?”

“Well, they call me, uh . . .”

“Take your time.”

“You see, sir, we got this plan.”

“You and John.”

“Well, yeah.” He puffed his chest and looked important. “And we promised each other we'd use our new names until we did it. Pulled it off, I mean. And, well, it's something you know about. We got designs on a train.”

Longbaugh said nothing. The cook's smile faded until he looked a little ill. The longer Longbaugh was silent, the more uncomfortable the cook became.

“Look, it ain't nothin', I mean, you can have your name back. Both names. We didn't hurt 'em, much.”

“Which one of you is Butch?”

The cook stood a little straighter. “Oh, I am.”

Longbaugh reconsidered him. He was dressed similarly to the way Parker had dressed. At least the way Parker had dressed when everyone called him “Butch.”

“So, John is . . . ?”

“Well, John grew a mustache and there's, you know, a resemblance. Sort of. Or there was.”

The cook uncertainly pointed at Longbaugh's clean upper lip with a timid finger. Then a strange expression crowded his face and he looked down at his own clothes. “About Butch. Is he, well, is
he
alive?”

“No idea. They got it wrong once, maybe they missed him, too.”

“So wait—so if you ain't dead, who was there?”

“How would I know?”

“Maybe some guy dressed up like you.” The cook looked down at his own clothes, as if he was considering the irony. “Say, I reckon you could teach us. You could show us. No, wait just a minute, I know! You could come along! We could make a new gang.”

Longbaugh said nothing.

“I'll pick a different name, of course.”

“Keep the goddamned name.”

They descended to the hideout and on the way down the cook mused aloud about “wasn't it something” and “he's alive” and “this changes everything,” but as they drew closer to the cabin, the cook went quiet with something new on his mind. Just before reaching the cabin
door, the cook said, “He's not a bad fellow, sir. And he likes being . . . well, he likes being you. That's a compliment, right?”

The cook opened one of the back doors of the hideout. Longbaugh held back, looking in. He did not like the cramped mess he saw. Clothes piled and dishes stacked, furniture buried under trash. He did not enter.

“Where the fuck you been, Sandy?” said John, then saw Sandy was not alone. John jumped to his feet.

Sandy,
thought Longbaugh.
Yes. That was his name.

“This here's . . . well, this here is . . .” Sandy turned and saw that Longbaugh had stayed outside. Sandy came back to the door. John followed. Better this way. Too many places in the room where a gun could be hidden, just out of sight under trash or heaps of clothing.

“Holy Christ!” said John, then looked at Sandy. “I thought you said he was dead!”