Sam Bass (13 page)

“Yes. I'll do that. Then I'm leaving.”

“Well, we'll talk about it.” He got up and started up the slope, then turned. “Can Henry and Arkansas use your guns? They ain't got none.”

“No, I might need them.”

“Well, it don't matter. We'll stop in Dallas and buy some.”

Henry didn't go to Eagle Ford, either. Jim rode back up the hollow that night and told him his wife and children were at Henderson Murphy's place, anxious to see him. He rode away with Jim.

“This
is
a goddamn railroad station,” Sam said.

Next morning, he and Seab and Arkansas left to meet the train. I stood in the door and watched their horses struggle down the slope. Halfway down, Sam turned and looked at me, his eyes full of questions. I started to wave, but didn't.

I spent the morning on a blanket outside the cabin, reading
The Odyssey
. I had read nothing but Dr. Aiken's songs and my medical books since leaving Dr. Ross, and my mind soon was far away from Cove Hollow, wandering the Aegean Sea. I read slowly and with difficulty, as I still do. But even skipping over the words I didn't know, I didn't miss the majesty of Homer's lines. Or Alexander Pope's lines. I didn't know and still don't know who gave them their grace and beauty. It didn't matter then and doesn't matter now. I was far from Cove Hollow, hearing the waves dash against the open ship that Odysseus and I were sailing in, as unsuspecting as he was that it would take us so long to get to Ithaca and reclaim the faithful Penelope.

I would sit up to rest my eyes and back and arm from time to time and look around at the woods and the creek and the tiny clearing below me. I knew they weren't as beautiful as they looked, that the woods were full of snakes and tangles of vines, and that mosquitos soon would be breeding in the water. But the sun shining through the young leaves clothed the morning in emeralds, and cardinals and jays flashed red and blue among them, and a mockingbird set it all to an intricate, meditative music that made me sigh.

All day I was glad I hadn't gone to Eagle Ford and was alone. That night, though, the cabin was lonely and oppressive to me. I resented its squalor and the necessity of living in the wild like a fox waiting for the dogs to come. I moved my blankets outside and felt better in the company of the night, but concluded that I would go to Denton the next day. Not to stay, for I had promised

Sam I would be in Cove Hollow when he returned, but just to taste the larger human society again.

I rode down after breakfast. Just beyond Jim Murphy's place I saw Henry Underwood moving toward me. I wasn't glad to see him, but I knew he had seen me, so I stopped and waited. “How's the family?” I asked.

“Fine. They're going to stay with Henderson a while. Where you going?”

“To Denton, and have a drink and be seen. If I'm seen in Denton, that'll give Sam something of an alibi.” “Good,” he said. “I'll go with you.” I cursed him silently.

Bob Murphy, Jim's brother, was running the Parlor that day, and he wasn't eager to have our business. We had been fools to open the mails, he whispered, because the federals were interested in us now, and the Dallas newspapers were mentioning Sam and Henry and me by name and calling us train robbers. Most people in Denton didn't believe it or didn't care, he said, but if we gave Dad Egan an excuse to lock us up, we shouldn't expect to get out.

We were determined to brave it out, and chose a corner table where we wouldn't be conspicuous, but wouldn't be hidden, either. We drank whiskey and played cards the rest of the day and left town not long after dark without trouble. We had too much whiskey in us to ride far, though, so we stopped and unsaddled our horses and tied them in the timber beside the road not many miles outside of Denton, and made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the bare ground. Henry had armed himself with a pistol and a rifle at Henderson Murphy's, and we laid our arms beside us and went to sleep. We slept a long time, for the sun was well up when Henry poked me in the gut and said, “Horses.”

I jumped up and stuck my pistol in my belt and levered a cartridge into the chamber of my rifle. The riders, eight or ten of them, had rounded a bend in the road and spotted our horses among the trees. They had halted, and the man who seemed to be their leader was talking and gesturing. All but two of the riders split from the group and rode off, some to the left and some to the right.

“They're trying to surround us!” I said. I raised my rifle and fired too quickly at the man who seemed to be the leader. He drew his pistol and fired back. His bullet went so far astray that I knew he hadn't seen us, only our horses. The leader and the man remaining with him in the road dismounted. I raised my rifle again, but before I could pull the trigger Henry yelled, “Look out, Frank!” I dropped to the ground, and the bullet, fired by the man with the leader, missed me, but was close enough to tell me I had been seen.

Henry and I took shelter behind two large trees and waited, but no more shots came. The posse had taken shelter, too. The road was empty, and I could hear no one moving in the woods. “They must not have rifles,” Henry said. “They can't fight us at long range.”

We waited for some time without hearing sound of man or horse, and I began to think they had gone. To find out, I shouted, “Why did you shoot at me?”

From somewhere near the road a voice replied, “Why did
you
shoot at me?”

“I didn't!” I said. “I shot at a rabbit!”

The other side was silent for some time, then the voice came again. “Come on out and tell us who you are!”

“No!” I replied. “We don't know you! Go away!”

There was another long silence, then the voice said, “Come on back, boys! I think we've flushed the wrong game!”

Hooves rustled in the timber to the left and right of us, then the men were reassembling in the road. Henry grinned at me. “See anybody you know?”

“No.”

“They must be from Dallas County. Hutchins, maybe.”

The men were bunched in the road now, but they weren't going away. They sat their horses quietly, looking up toward us. “Cover me,” I said. “I'm going to saddle my horse.”

Keeping our rifles trained on the posse, we left our shelter and walked into plain view. Henry sat down by the horses and rested his elbows on his knees, keeping the posse in the sights of his rifle. The horsemen didn't move. I picked up my saddle and blanket and lifted them to my bay. When I was finished, I covered the posse while Henry saddled. We mounted and rode casually into the road. The posse was motionless about fifty yards from us. We trotted fifty yards farther on, then I turned in my saddle and waved my hat and shouted, “All right, boys! Come and get us!”

The posse spurred after us, firing crazily into the air, but we had too big a lead. After half a mile or so, our pursuers reined in and watched us sprint away.

When we left the road and started across the open prairie, Henry shouted, “There goes another rabbit!” and pointed his finger at the ground and said, “Bang!” We laughed, and a few minutes later he did it again. “That bunny was wearing a hat,” he said and we laughed again. He did that all the way to Cove Hollow, and we laughed every time.

But our jolly mood wasn't shared by the crew that rode in from Eagle Ford that night. They had ridden constantly since the robbery the night before, and men and horses were exhausted. Their job had gone without a hitch. Although the express company had a guard in its car with the messenger, the man had a yellow streak, and our bunch had robbed both the express and mail cars without a shot being fired. But their loot had amounted to only fifty-three dollars, and Sam and Barnes were in a cranky mood. Arkansas Johnson was as silent and oxlike as ever.

Henry's wild account of our “rabbit hunt” cheered them, though, and after a few drinks Sam and Seab were able to laugh at themselves, too, and the labor and danger they had endured to earn their seventeen dollars apiece.

“Bob Murphy says we shouldn't have meddled with the mails,” I told Sam. “He says the federals are looking for us now.”

“Who gives a damn?” Sam said. “Let the whole world be looking for us. I've got the best damn bunch in the whole damn world.” The whiskey was working on him fast because of his fatigue.

Seab was drunk, too. “It's too bad you don't get a cut of this haul, Frank,” he said. “Now you can't retire with Sam and Arkansas and me.”

That reminded Sam of my decision to return to Denton, I guess. He picked up a bottle and asked me to go outside with him. We walked far enough down the slope to put us out of earshot of the others and sat down on the rocks. He said, “You ain't really leaving me, are you, pard?”

“Yes, I am. Eagle Ford proves my point, Sam. We ought to all give it up.”

“Hell, Frank! All we need is one good one! Look at my Union Pacific haul. All we need is one like that, and then we'll quit.

All we've got to do is get lucky.”

“We can all die before we get lucky,” I said.

Sam leaned back on his elbows and looked at the sky. “How far away do you reckon them stars is?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“What are they, anyway?”

“I don't know, Sam.”

“Hell, pard, I thought you knowed everything.”

I didn't reply. He just gazed at the stars and drank from the bottle. Then he said, “Well, you're the best man around, even if you don't know everything.”

I said nothing to that, either. And he said, “I've got a lot of that Nebraska gold left. I'll give it all to you if you'll stay.”

“You can't do that. You're paying the freight for the whole outfit with that. When that goes, all the boys will go.”

“Well, I can do without them. But I can't do without
you
. If I got a friend in the world, you're it.” He looked at the stars again. “Pretty, ain't they? I don't remember them so pretty. I have got a friend, ain't I, Frank?”

I gave up. “All right, Sam,” I said. “I'll stay with you for one more job. But if it isn't a good one, I'm leaving. That's fair, isn't it?”

“That's fair,” he said. He got up and climbed back to the cabin and the drunken laughter.

We were at Mesquite, twelve miles east of Dallas. Our train was late, but that wasn't our biggest worry. Less than a hundred yards beyond the station, another train stood on a sidetrack. Its cars were lighted, and now and then a man would walk out of the shadows and cross the bright windows. He cradled a rifle or shotgun in his arms. “Convict train,” Arkansas said. “Construction gang, most likely.”

“How many guards, I wonder,” Sam said.

“I've saw just one,” Arkansas said, “but there's bound to be more.”

“More trouble,” I said.

In the darkness beside me Sam was breathing heavily. He shifted in his saddle. The leather squeaked. “They won't bother us,” he said. “If their prisoners was to get away, they'd be in a peck of trouble.”

“We can't count on that,” I said.

We heard the whistle then, and Sam raised his mask. “Let's go-

As we stepped onto the platform, the station agent came out carrying a mail bag. “Hold up your hands!” Sam ordered. Then the train pulled alongside the platform, and he said, “Onto her, boys!”

Seab and I dashed up the engine steps, and the engineer and the fireman raised their hands. I cut the bell rope and said, “Take it easy. All we want is money.”

“That ain't no skin off my back,” the engineer said.

Then I heard a popping sound, and the guns of our companions roared in reply. “What's that?” I asked.

“The conductor, probably,” the engineer said. “Julius carries a derringer.” “Climb down.”

Seab and I herded the engine crew to the platform. Arkansas had the station agent and another man under his gun there. The station door opened, framing a woman's head in the lamplight. “Come out here, lady,” Arkansas said, but she ducked back inside and slammed the door. He fired a shot into the door.

“Don't do that!” I said.

The engineer tried to break away, and I clubbed him. The man rolled into the space between the platform and the train. I thought he was out cold, but he must have crawled under the train, for suddenly he was running through the darkness toward the convict train. I fired a couple of shots in his direction, but I couldn't tell whether I hit him or not.

Sam and Henry banged on the door of the express car, shouting something. A pistol roared from one of the sleeping cars. It was the conductor again. “The bastard has a six-gun now,” Arkansas said. He and Seab and I let fly at him at the same time, and he tumbled down the steps. “Die, you son of a bitch!” Arkansas said. But the man wriggled under the car and fired at us until his gun was empty. In the confusion, the fireman had disappeared.

A shotgun blast and several pistol shots came at Sam and Henry from the express car windows, and they ducked into the space between the platform and the train as the engineer had done. Sam crawled down the space to the engine, jumped to the steps and returned with a can of oil and splashed it on the express car door. “I'll count to fifty!” he yelled. “If you don't come out, I set fire to your car! One! Two! Three! Four!” He was counting fast. At twenty-five the door opened a crack, and Sam stood up. But the man in the car fired a shot and slammed the door again. Sam resumed his count. When he shouted, “Forty!” someone inside the car yelled, “Don't be in such a rush! Give us time to counsel a little!”

“You better talk fast!” Sam said. He counted again. When he reached fifty he said, “Are you going to open up?” There was no reply. Sam struck a match and was moving it toward the splash of oil when the door opened. The express messenger and two guards threw out their guns and stepped to the platform. Sam and Henry and Arkansas jumped into the car, leaving Seab and me to guard the prisoners.