Sundance (5 page)

John was not quite drunk, but he was a few yards down the path. Longbaugh looked him over. He didn't mind that Sandy did not resemble Parker, but
this
? John was also cowboyed up, every piece of gear one step too obvious, lacking taste and class. Longbaugh was disappointed. Some legacy. Whatever legend he had created now crashed against the image of John in his cheap costume. A pip-squeak imposter with a pathetic mustache.

“Harry Longbaugh,” said Longbaugh coolly, by way of introduction. He did not reach to shake John's hand.

“Why didn't you say he was still alive?” John spoke as if Longbaugh wasn't there.

“Hell, I didn't know.”

“Ain't this somethin'.”

John sized up Longbaugh's stance and demeanor, trying to mimic him, standing straighter, lifting his chin, sucking in his belly, tugging at a too-short shirtsleeve while sucking at the long strands of his scrawny mustache as if to bite them off his upper lip.

Longbaugh watched and waited.

“I was telling the Kid here that we got us some plans.”

“Well, what did he say? He like 'em?”

“Liked 'em fine.”

John tried to whisper to Sandy without moving his lips, as if Longbaugh wouldn't hear him, saying,
What about the split?
and Sandy kept his back to Longbaugh, saying,
With him along, I reckon we're bound to get two, three times more,
and John saying,
They bring extra just 'cause he's there?
and Sandy saying,
Glad you didn't call me Butch back there.

Sandy wasn't his real name, thought Longbaugh. They called him Sandy because his food always tasted like it had something small and foreign in it.

Sandy turned to Longbaugh as if he had been reading his mind. “You hungry? You want something? Why'n't you c'mon inside.”

A memory taste of dry grit caught in his back teeth. “No, thanks.”

He thought he had better take this man John more seriously, and he gave him a full look. He couldn't help but see him as one more jackass looking to make a name the easy way. John believed that if he could think of something, it ought to belong to him even if he wasn't willing to do what it took to earn it. Unlike the young kid in the bar, this one did not have the excuse of a simmering grudge. He was simply built from greed and John was bound to decide at some point that he wouldn't want to share the name he had appropriated. Near as he could tell, John was unarmed, but if there was to be trouble, Longbaugh wanted it on his terms in a place of his choosing. He was glad these boys did not know what was in his haversack.

“We got big fuckin' plans,” said John.

“No. You don't.”

“We do. And we're willing to share, tell you all about 'em.”

“You don't want to rob a train.”

“We don't? The hell you say, I think we do.”

“You do not.”

“Well, then, you say it, what
do
we want to do?”

Longbaugh said nothing.

“We goin' to get ourselves in some trouble, is what we gonna do,” said John, both prideful and belligerent. Sandy the cook looked a little sick to his stomach, watching John preen.

“You do not have the makeup for train robbery,” said Longbaugh.

“We got to do
some
thing; we got to make up a plan and get out there and fuckin' get into all of it, otherwise we wasted all this time. We got to
do
something.”

“Maybe you'll think of it.” Longbaugh stepped backward into the sun and turned without another word and walked quickly to the front. They stood dumbfounded and unarmed, and he figured it would be a few seconds before they caught on that he was leaving, a few seconds more to run inside and grab their weapons, and he was counting on their horses being unsaddled. It would give him a small head start, and he wanted all he could get.

He put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up and turned the horse and headed down the trail. He stowed the haversack in his saddlebag as he rode. Their voices started up behind him. A few minutes later, he glanced up and saw they were following. He kept a deliberate pace, knowing it was unwise to push his horse.

He reached the bottom of the face of the canyon where the land went flat. He figured them eight minutes back. They could catch him if they sprinted, but then their horses would be tired and he'd have the advantage. By now they were thinking, and even imposters would know to follow at a safe distance. He was, after all, notorious. They would be forming some off-the-cuff plan, and as they were less than professional, their plan would be unpredictable. By now, John would understand that Longbaugh had insulted him, and he would be looking to prove his manhood, and maybe lay sole claim to the name in the process.

Longbaugh rode through the passage, leaving the inner canyon behind, then rode out in the open flat of the valley, eventually fording the Green River as he made for a trailhead that would take him up into the Uinta Mountains. He saw them ford the river in a shallower spot downstream. They knew the land and had made up time.

He rode into the mountains and they followed. He listened for them, and every time he thought they had given up, he heard them again. He knew the way, but it had been years, and he encountered natural changes in the landscape that forced him to make quick
decisions and, in one instance, to backtrack. Clearly, the cook Sandy was more familiar with this terrain. He stayed on the trail that ran between steep sandstone cliffs, and then he was at the top and began his way down the far side. He eventually came to a road he had remembered as nothing more than a trail, and he turned to follow it, still working his way down. Not long after, he encountered a small camp just off the road, a woman with her daughter of around twelve. He thought they were Cheyenne, although they wore the clothes of white women. A few niceties kept them comfortable, a picnic basket, a blanket to sit on, a white sheet draped between branches to protect them from the sun.

He slowed, wondering about this pleasant scene in the midst of such unwelcome country. The young girl of twelve smiled but her mother stepped in front of her with a protective frown.

“Two men coming,” said Longbaugh. “They're not exactly friendly. I'd stay out of sight.”

The older woman put her arm around the girl's shoulder but did not answer.

“Are you alone out here? Is someone taking care of you?”

The older woman turned her daughter away and the daughter now looked at him with alarm, as if realizing she had just tempted a feral beast with a taste for sunny young females.

He watched them pull down the white sheet and stow it behind the tree, and while he still wondered how they had come to be there, he was satisfied they would stay out of sight. He continued on.

He stopped after a short ride, thinking about why the old trail had come to be expanded. While there was no one else on the road, clearly it was in frequent use. He listened for his pursuers and did not hear them. Previously he might have welcomed that fact, but now he thought of the Cheyenne mother and her daughter. He stared back over the road he had just traveled, watching for any sign of the cook and the man named John. He turned the horse to retrace his steps but heard the sound of what was now unmistakable even to him, an automobile engine coming up the rise, from the direction he had been headed. His first thought was that it was the posse, but he set that aside as unlikely.
He waited in the road and a motorcar with shovels, rakes, and brushes, as well as suitcases, lumbered around the bend.

A gentleman in shirtsleeves and wearing a waistcoat was alone at the wheel and pulled alongside Longbaugh and stopped. He had a friendly face, but Longbaugh sensed a cool tension that ran below the surface.

“You pass a woman and girl?” said the gentleman.

“Just did.”

“My wife and daughter. Figured it couldn't be much farther.”

Longbaugh understood. A white man with a Cheyenne wife and half-breed child could not let down his guard.

“On our way to the dig,” said the gentleman.

“Dig?”

“The excavation. Dinosaur bones. My daughter wanted to see the land where they come from. Figured we'd camp overnight.” He waved his hand at the suitcases with an embarrassed smile. “My wife decided to bring everything we owned.”

“You do the digging yourself?”

“Well, some, but mostly my workers. I'm a paleontologist.”

Longbaugh did not know what that was, but the word was long enough to impress him.

“Daughter was a little motorcar sick, so we stopped. Then I realized, after making sure I'd loaded all the suitcases, I'd forgotten my tools. Thought it better if they waited out here rather than endure the back-and-forth.”

Longbaugh guessed they had driven up from Jensen. “Motorcar sick. New industry, new ailment.”

“Yes.” The gentleman smiled. “I suppose that's right.”

“This road. I remember when it was a trail.”

“Lot of people working in there now.”

Longbaugh nodded. He kept thinking about the two imposters. He should have heard them by now. But with the gentleman on his way back, he thought the women would be all right.

“Better get along, then,” said the gentleman.

Longbaugh tipped his hat.

But he stayed in the road, sitting in the saddle, listening as the sound of the motor was lost in the wind. He waited another minute or more, then rode after the motorcar.

Before he reached the camp he heard a shotgun blast, then a second one. He spurred the horse and rode fast around the elbow in the road and saw it, the result of everything that had happened during the previous ten minutes.

The Cheyenne woman had a swollen eye and a cut lip. She sat on the ground, holding a blanket closed at her daughter's neck to cover the girl's body. The twelve-year-old fought to control her weeping, but every other courageous breath was followed by a cascade of sobs. Scraps of torn blue clothing were lying on the ground, and he remembered blue as the color of her dress. The girl shifted when she saw him, and the blanket briefly bowed open and he glimpsed blood on her inner thigh.

He took in what was left of John, facedown, the back of his head blown off by a shotgun blast that exposed his useless brain. John was naked from the waist down. His pants might have been anywhere, tossed aside in his grimy lust. He was unlikely to cause Longbaugh any more trouble. He stared at him, pressed flat against the sandstone that, below him, held millions of years of dinosaur bones, and he thought of how puny and insignificant John was lying there. Except to that girl.

The gentleman was tying off the end of a rope on the rear bumper of the motorcar loaded with tools and suitcases. The rope looped over a stout branch that had earlier held the white sheet, some eight or ten feet off the ground. The rope came down the other side of the branch, where it was noosed around Sandy the cook's neck. Sandy the cook's hands were tied behind him. Sandy was gut shot, his long underwear mottled and bloody with dark chunks of something stuck to the fabric. His eyes blinked to a beat, and Longbaugh heard his gasping intake of breath.

How had it come to this? Neither he nor Butch would ever have considered behaving this way, and would never have tolerated it from
their gang. He was disgusted, appalled that these two men thought this was the way to emulate their role models.

Sandy the cook saw Longbaugh and knew he was saved. He relaxed and waited for Longbaugh to charge in and cut him loose. The gentleman rolled his eyes over and blinked red at Longbaugh, and he saw the stamp of horror, the ugly thing the man had witnessed that was now branded onto his everyday future. The gentleman snarled at him with boarlike ferocity, but when Longbaugh made no move, the gentleman went on with his nasty business. Sandy smiled, waiting. The gentleman finished and climbed into the front seat and started the motorcar and the vehicle jerked forward. Sandy the cook's eyes bulged, his intake of breath was cut off, and his feet left the ground quite suddenly, his forehead thumping the branch. The gentleman turned in the driver's seat to watch him wrench and shudder and kick and slam his forehead again and again against the branch, tongue swelling out of his mouth. His movements slowed, his body sagged, and his sphincter and bladder released.

Longbaugh did not look away as the man died. The gentleman turned to him, as if he might be next. Longbaugh met his gaze and saw something die in there.

The woman lurched to her feet, leaving her daughter sitting on the ground wrapped in the blanket. She moved to where their picnic basket had been overturned, picked a red apple off the ground, stood straight, then hurled it as hard as she could directly at Longbaugh. The apple fell short of where he sat on his horse. She continued to glower at him, breathing heavily, hands at her sides, her eyes full of a deep, coarse hatred.

He turned his horse and rode away from all that.

W
ilhelmina Matthews commanded her front porch like a ship's captain on a quarterdeck, keeping Joe LeFors standing on the dirt, looking up, two members of his posse posing behind him with rifles. One of his boys rested his foot on a rock so he could lean the buttstock of his rifle on his knee and aim the barrel at heaven. The other held his across the crook of his arms with fingers folded over the magazine.

“We have no idea, ma'am,” said LeFors, “if it's your brother-in-law or not. But you're his nearest relative in these parts.”

“You brought all these men because you think it's not him?” said Mina.

“Only got eighteen, ma'am.”

“Twenty,” said the man on his right.

“Twenty, well,” said Mina, “then it's a fair fight.”

LeFors and his boys looked at one another, not sure if it had been a joke.

Mina, her little sister's name for her, struggled with her emotions, as she was a naturally obedient woman who trusted authority, yet she found these men and their mission distasteful.

LeFors had the cocksure look of a man with a grand idea, waiting for it to pay dividends. “I could take him alone, ma'am. But I hid all those men in the trees to make sure nobody gets hurt.”

“How very equitable of you,” said Mina coldly. She tapped her foot in annoyance, caught it, and forced herself to stop. She was unaware that her fingers continued the tapping on her upper arm to the same beat.

“When does your husband return?”

“My husband is deceased, Mr. LeFors.”

“I am grieved to hear it.” He was not. “I wonder if living on a ranch this far outside Denver is safe for a woman on her own.” He leaned in so that she would not miss his meaning.

She glared at him and he backed up in surprise. She turned away, at which LeFors waved his men back to the trees.

Mina came in off the porch and shut the front door. Thinking she was alone, she let her body deflate, falling back against the door, hands shaking. She brought them to her face. After a moment, she lowered them, then jumped with a small shriek when she saw him leaning against the wall, in shadow between two windows, out of sight of the outdoor posse.

“Lord have
mercy
!” said Mina.

Longbaugh sensed that something other than LeFors's presence was upsetting her, but he did not know how to ask her what it was. “Eighteen's not enough, but twenty makes a fair fight,” he said with a half smile, trying to get on her good side.

“How did you get in here?” she hissed, as if the posse might be listening.

“I thought your husband was alive.”

“He is. In Indiana with his new . . . family.” She struggled for composure. “Care to tell me how you got past all those men?”

Longbaugh shrugged. “LeFors never was too bright.”

“He's a lawman, perhaps you should show him respect.”

“Something's wrong, Mina. What is it?”

“
You!
You scared me half to death!”

He knew better than to press her. He was silent a moment, then said, “Where is she?”

“You are some kind of brazen, sneaking in here like this. But you always did sneak around.” There she was, the old Mina he had expected, the haughty sister-in-law who looked down on him.

“So you're back to being Wilhelmina Matthews. No more Mrs. Fallows.”

She glared at him and he was sorry to have retaliated.

“Will you at least tell me if she's all right?” he said.

“I'd say it's fortunate that Mr. LeFors told me you might be alive. I would have had you for a ghost. I should call him back in right now.”

“Why don't you?”

“That man is a nincompoop, he doesn't deserve to catch you. But I'd do it, Harry, I'd do it. Only she wouldn't like it.”

“Where is she?”

“New York! Where
you
sent her!”

“She's still there?”

She crossed her arms. “I do not know.” He thought her anger was forced. She may have disliked him, but once again he guessed she was covering something. He looked around to give her a moment to collect herself. He had always liked this room, large and masculine, heavy wooden furniture, a fireplace made of large stones and walls stained dark brown, although now that her husband was gone, so were the old hunting trophies. The room had been softened by flower and landscape paintings, with doilies under lamps. The foreman would have stayed to handle the ranch for her. He was a good man, and would not have left a woman to try to run it by herself. He didn't remember the foreman's name, and he flashed on the moment in Browns Park when he hadn't remembered the cook's name, then realized all that had happened only three days before.

“You were a fool to come here, Harry.”

“I'll be gone soon enough. When did you last hear from her?”

“A year, I suppose. Or two—it's not safe here.”

His pulse quickened. “A year or two?”

“Does that surprise you?” Mina smiled coldly.

Longbaugh said nothing. She would be pleased to think that her baby sister was out of touch with the man Mina disliked.

“Fine. Stay and risk yourself. I'd feel sorry for you, except for what they told me.”

“What did LeFors say?”

“He said that you killed a boy.”

“I see.”

“That's it, that's all? No explanation? No justification?”

Longbaugh said nothing.

Her voice softened, impressed that he made no excuses. “I've never thought of you as a killer, Harry.”

“I want to find her. If she's done with me, she needs to say so.”

Mina watched him in the shadow. “Apparently the newspapers were mistaken about South America.”

Again he said nothing. Etta had told her early on that he was in prison, but Mina's response had been so full of I-told-you-sos that Etta had told her nothing more. Mina must have assumed he'd been released. When the newspapers said he was dead, she had no reason not to believe it.

Mina stared at him a long moment. Then, without warning, she walked into the next room. Through the open door, he watched her search for something. She opened a drawer, and he realized the drawer was full of her sister's things. He saw Mina pull out and set aside a collection of papers she had saved, work done by Etta's former pupils. While he was curious as to why Mina had kept them, seeing them again carried him back to an earlier time.

When he first met Etta, she had been a schoolteacher. He had been impressed by her intelligence, knowing how limited opportunities were for smart women, particularly in the West. He thought back to the day they met. Etta had been astonished by him, this interesting, handsome cowboy who also happened to rob banks and trains. Longbaugh wasn't astonished in the least. He had known her immediately, believing that he had met the right one. He wondered why she didn't know it, too. At
the time, she had been engaged in a flirtation with a clever young fellow who was a teacher in a nearby town. Longbaugh thought the flirtation irrelevant, as chemistry was chemistry. But he did wonder why, for her, it came down to a choice between men rather than the thunderbolt it had been for him. That lack of perception on her part was the first warning sign, and he took a mental step back.

The other man appeared to be the very model of civility and stability, too good to be true, and then he was indeed too good to be true, as she discovered he was married. Even so, young Etta had managed to convince herself that, to be modern, perhaps a married man was what she was supposed to want. Longbaugh considered that a second warning sign, and took another mental step back.

By now, Longbaugh knew she was too young for him. Chemistry was not enough for him to lose his heart, and the thunderbolt did not saddle him with an emotional obligation. Surveying her with a cool head, he acknowledged issues of timing and age compatibility. He rationalized now, thinking it was a great deal to ask, even of a mature woman, that a female member of polite society might commit to a man whose very name was associated with a life on the outside of that society.

It was time to get on his horse and ride away fast. He was more than ready to do just that. He knew it was the wise move. And yet, he did not. Something about her potential kept him there.

But potential could only be fulfilled by time and patience, and that was not in the cards for a man in his occupation. So he pressed the matter and put her to the test, fully expecting her to fail. Recklessly, he took her to visit a bank in a neighboring town, not to rob it, but to show her how he might go about robbing it. He wanted to know her reaction.

He parked their carriage off the main street. She was appropriately curious and excited as they approached the bank, and seemed to be taking in all the details, as if this was a onetime event and she wanted to be sure to remember it all for her diary. Once inside, bad luck struck immediately, as he was recognized. He showed no panic. But Etta was anxious for him and wanted to get him away. Enjoying her display of nerves, he lingered to watch the whispered news of his identity pass
from teller to teller. He was flattered to be recognized, and further flattered to see her impressed by his fame. Finally, he led her to a side door to the hallway that would take them out through the back. But once away from bank employees and customers, she took his hand and pulled him toward the stairs. She wanted to go
up
. It seemed a questionable move, but he saw something in her eyes. He took a chance and, again recklessly, went along. Armed lawmen burst into the bank through the front, met a roomful of excited wagging fingers pointing out the outlaw's escape route, rushed out the side door into the hallway, past the stairs, to the rear door, where they came face-to-face with more lawmen.

Now on the roof, Etta led Longbaugh to the ledge, where it was but a small jump to the roof of the next building. As they leapt together, she jubilantly tossed her hat high in the air. It fell in the exact wrong place, dropping between the buildings all the way to the alley below.

She looked at her hat two stories down in the dirt, and he heard for the first time that special laugh that he would later learn was just for him. She smoothed her hair, gathered in her mirth, took his arm, and soberly led him down the stairs into the general store. They went out the front door while the owner and his customers were glued to the big window, seeking a glimpse of the famous outlaw who had been recognized in the bank next door. She pulled against his arm to go back for her hat, but people were coming out now and he met her eye with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She immediately understood and went with him the opposite direction, across the street and around the corner to their carriage. No one noticed them ride away.

Etta was hooked. But so was he. Before they had entered the bank, when he thought she was simply trying to memorize the moment, she was appraising the landscape. She had seen that the roof of the general store was the same height as the bank and the buildings had been built close together. She had formulated an escape plan when he hadn't imagined they would need one. She was thinking more like the Kid than the Kid. From that moment on, they were together.

Mina had found the old letters under the student papers in the drawer, and she came back to him with one of the letters in hand. He
understood something then. Etta had, rather casually, left those old school papers with her sister years ago. It was Mina who had decided they were precious. They were not precious to Etta, but as a part of her baby sister's past, Mina cherished them. His heart ached for Mina's love. He recognized the envelope Mina carried, but was surprised to see it torn open and smudged with fingerprints. He saw the handwriting and recognized that as well.

Mina looked sadly at the envelope. “This was her last letter. It came two years ago.”

So Etta had stopped writing Mina as well. It gave him a moment of comfort, until he realized it suggested another possibility.

“You think Etta's dead,” said Longbaugh.

“
No
one thinks she's dead, and her name is
Ethel
!” Her rage was quick and inappropriate, and he knew it had nothing to do with her sister's nickname. “Despite the Pinkertons writing her name wrong, which you and she thought was
so funny
!”

“Tell me now. What's wrong, Mina?”

Mina was ashamed of her outburst, ashamed that there was something else, and ashamed that he had seen through her to know it. She shook her head back and forth.

“Men came. Two years ago. They had this letter.”

“What men? Who were they?”

“I don't know.”

“What were they like?”

“They were like big monkeys in suits,” she said belligerently.

“Were they local, had you seen them before?”

“No.” She sagged. “From back East, maybe. They had accents of some sort. They frightened me, Harry. They frightened me and I never heard from Ethel again.”