Butch Cassidy the Lost Years Read online

  CHAPTER 21

  It took a second, but only that, for what the man had said to penetrate my brain. When it did, my eyes widened with shock. He had to be talking about Bert. I didn’t know who Jed Flannery was, but Bert didn’t need to be getting in a gunfight with anybody. I didn’t think Bert even owned a gun. He sure hadn’t brought one with him to the dance.

  But that wouldn’t stop this fella Flannery, who probably had friends with him. One of them would be glad to loan Bert a gun. I had seen that little trick pulled many times in the past, and it always put a burr under my saddle. Men who had no business matching their draw against someone else’s were practically forced into it, and they nearly always wound up dead.

  The man I’d overheard had said the trouble was outside. I wheeled away from the table and headed for the door as fast as my legs would carry me without running. The room was crowded, and I had to rein in the urge to knock some of the people out of my way. I weaved around them instead, hoping that the delay wouldn’t prove fatal to Bert.

  I wasn’t the only one headed for the door. Quite a few young men were going in that direction as well. Word of the impending fight must have spread through the schoolhouse. Fistfights were common at dances like this. They were sort of an added attraction, I guess you could say. But gunfights were rare, especially since the turn of the century. This was supposed to be a new, modern, more enlightened era.

  But some men still craved the smell of powdersmoke. I supposed they always would.

  There was a momentary bottleneck at the door because of the men trying to get outside in time to see the action. I wasn’t going to wait any longer, because I heard yelling outside and knew things had to be coming to a head. I shouldered a couple of men aside. They cursed and started to turn toward me, but the expression on my face made them step back instead and let me past.

  Light spilled through the schoolhouse’s open door and spread over the ground in front of the building. A couple of cottonwoods stood off to one side, giving shade to the area where the kids played when they had recess. Now a couple dozen men crowded under those trees, forming a rough half-circle. Bert was in that circle, with his back pressed up against one of the trees as if he’d retreated that far and couldn’t go any farther.

  I guessed that the man who stood in front of him, cussing and haranguing him, was Jed Flannery. Three other men were with him, standing back a little to let Flannery run the show.

  He spit vile names at Bert, the sort of things that no man with any pride could take. Bert looked scared, no doubt about that, but a red flush of anger was spreading slowly over his face as well. Even as mild-mannered as he was, he would strike back soon if this kept up.

  I recognized a couple of the other men with Flannery. One of them had his right arm in a sling. He was the drunken loudmouth from the saloon who Enoch had shot when he tried to plug me in the back. One of his buddies from that fight was with him. I didn’t know the third man, but I figured he had to be part of Flannery’s bunch, too.

  I’d never seen Jed Flannery before, but I knew the type. He was just handsome enough that gals would like him, and he knew it well enough that the knowledge put an arrogant smirk on his face. He wore a holstered gun, which set him apart from the other men at the dance. Most of them weren’t armed. I wasn’t, although my Winchester was in the saddle boot on my horse.

  It was easy enough to figure out what had happened. The man Enoch had wounded knew there was a good chance the Fishhook crew would be here at the dance tonight. So he had shown up looking for revenge, bringing with him a friend of his who fancied himself a gunman. This fella Flannery had jumped on the first one of us to cross their path, who happened to be Bert.

  No lawman was going to step in and put a stop to this, I thought. Largo had a constable, but Clyde Farnum had told me that he didn’t amount to much. Sheriff Lester or one of his deputies came up this way every so often, but I hadn’t seen any of them here tonight. It would have been just a fluke if one of them was on hand.

  That left it up to Bert’s friends to keep him from getting hurt. Which in this case meant me. I was about to step forward, raise my voice, and tell Flannery to leave Bert alone when a quiet voice spoke beside me.

  “You ain’t in this alone, boss.”

  I looked over and saw that Enoch had followed me out of the schoolhouse. He wasn’t by himself, either. Gabe was with him, and right behind the two of them were Vince and Randy, both looking scared but determined.

  “I’m the one who plugged that varmint,” Enoch went on. “His fight’s with me, not the rest of y’all.”

  “I don’t imagine he sees it that way,” I said. “I think they’ve got it in for all of us. So we’ll just meet ’em all at once.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Gabe said. “Come on.”

  His hands were clenched into fists as he moved into the crowd surrounding Bert and his tormentors. Enoch was on one side of him, I was on the other, and Vince and Randy were right behind us. People got out of our way as we strode forward.

  Just before we reached the open area under the trees, I heard the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting flesh. Biting back a curse, I shoved ahead and emerged from the crowd in time to see Flannery draw back his arm to strike another blow. The two able-bodied men with him had hold of Bert, each of them holding an arm. The wounded hombre stood to the side, watching with an eager expression on his cruel features.

  “If I can’t make you fight like a man,” Flannery was saying, “I’ll whip you like a dog.”

  “I’d say that you remind me of a dog, all right,” I spoke up, “but I like dogs, and that’d be insulting ’em. I reckon I’d rather compare you to a skunk.”

  My voice rang loud and clear as I said that, and the hubbub from the crowd died down immediately. They realized that a challenge had been thrown out, a challenge that was likely to be answered with violence, maybe even gunplay. I got the sense that everybody was holding their breath, waiting to see what was going to happen.

  Slowly, Flannery lowered his arm and turned to look at me. He was older than I thought at first, probably close to forty. For a gunman to live to that age meant that he was smart, quick on the draw, or more likely both. A dangerous man, to be sure. But I had dealt myself in as soon as I opened my mouth, and there was nothing to do now but play out the hand.

  “Did you say something to me, mister?” Flannery asked with a sneer.

  “I did.” I glanced past him and saw blood on Bert’s mouth where Flannery had hit him. Fury welled up inside me.

  I’ve always been the sort to live and let live, at least I like to think so, but sometimes when I see something unjust, a black tide of hate washes through me. That’s what happened then, and I didn’t even think about the fact that Flannery had a gun on his hip and I didn’t as I went on, “I said that you’re not good enough to be called a dog. You’re a lowdown skunk and you’re stinking up the place. Now let go of that boy and take your stench on out of here so decent folks can go back to havin’ a good time.”

  I’ve been accused of being fond of the sound of my own voice, and I suppose there’s some truth to that charge. But at that moment I wasn’t really thinking about such things. I was just good and mad.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Bert swallow hard. Flannery’s smirk just got more arrogant as he said, “You talk mighty big. You figure on backing up what your big mouth says, mister?”

  “He’ll back it up,” Enoch said, “and he won’t have to do it alone, neither.”

  “That’s right,” Gabe added. Randy and Vince didn’t say anything, but I could sense they were right there with me.

  The man in the sling said, “That one, the tall, skinny bastard, he’s the one who shot me when I wasn’t lookin’, Jed. Watch out for him.”

  “Nobody’s shootin’ tonight,” Enoch said. He held his hands out at his side. “I ain’t packin’ an iron. Came to town to dance, not shoot.”

  “That was your mistake, old man,” Flannery said.r />
  I saw the little shift in his muscles and the tiny flick of his eyes. When you put yourself in tight spots on purpose, year after year, you learn to pick up those warning signs or else you don’t survive. I knew Flannery was about to make his move as soon as he did.

  So I made mine first.

  I reached out with my left hand, caught hold of his shirt, and jerked him toward me. My right fist came up at the same time and cracked against his jaw, slewing his head around. He was fumbling at his gun, trying to get it out but not having much luck because he was stunned by my punch. I didn’t give him time to recover. I got hold of his shirt with both hands, and as his head came back around toward me, I lowered my head and butted him in the face. A hard shove sent him staggering into one of the men who’d been holding Bert. Their feet got tangled up and both of them went down.

  I bent over and plucked Flannery’s gun from its holster. The crowd started to back off hurriedly. They had come out here to watch a fracas, but even the ones who had thought there might be gunplay were having second thoughts now about being this close when the bullets started to fly.

  The man with the wounded arm was still on his feet, as was the other fella who’d been holding Bert while Flannery punched him. Neither of them looked like they wanted any part of this anymore, but I grabbed the one in the sling before he could crawfish out of there.

  “You started all this, just like you started that trouble in the saloon,” I said as I rammed the gun muzzle under his chin. “You brought your gunslingin’ friend here hopin’ somebody would die tonight, didn’t you?”

  He couldn’t respond, of course. With that gun at his throat he couldn’t talk or move his head.

  “Well, somebody might,” I went on. “All I’d have to do is pull this trigger. And I’m thinkin’ mighty serious-like about it, too. If I let you go tonight, you’ll just slink off and sull up somewhere like a possum until you’ve built up enough courage to come after me and my friends again. Seems to me the simplest thing to do would be to just go ahead and kill you right here and now and put an end to it. I know I’m sick of seein’ your ugly face.”

  He looked like he wanted to talk, so I pulled the gun away a little.

  “You got something to say?” I demanded.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” he blubbered. I smelled a sharp stink coming from him and knew he was so scared he’d pissed his britches. “I w-won’t ever bother you again, Mr. Strickland, I swear it!”

  “So you know my name, do you? You been askin’ around about me?”

  “N-no, sir. I swear—”

  I interrupted him by saying, “I don’t want to listen to your damn promises. So I’ll make you one. Here’s what I’m gonna do. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. No talking. I’ll just kill you. If I see Flannery or any of your other friends, I’ll kill them. And then I’ll come find you. You know what I’ll do then?”

  “K-kill me?”

  “That’s right.” I gave him a push and kept the gun pointed at him as he stumbled back a step. “Now get out of here, all of you.”

  From the ground, Flannery said, “I won’t forget—”

  I let him look down the barrel of the gun as I said, “You’d better. You’d better forget everything that happened here tonight, mister, otherwise you won’t live much longer.”

  Flannery didn’t say anything else, but he glared at me with snake-eyed hate as he climbed to his feet. The crowd had backed off so far now that the four men had plenty of room to walk away. I didn’t lower the gun until they had swung up into their saddles and galloped off into the night.

  “Mr. Strickland, you . . . you saved my life,” Bert said.

  That blackness was still roiling around inside me like a storm cloud, but I put a smile on my face and said, “Naw, they just wanted to push you around a little. I reckon the only ones they really wanted to kill were me and Enoch.”

  “They’d have had trouble doin’ that,” Enoch said. I noticed for the first time that he had a two-shot derringer in his hand.

  “I thought you said you weren’t armed.”

  “I stretched the truth a mite,” he said as he tucked the derringer away at the small of his back, where his shirt covered it.

  Vince took out his bandanna and handed it to Bert as he said, “Your mouth’s bleeding, pard. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I . . . I’m fine.” Bert dabbed at the blood. “Let’s just go on back inside.”

  “How’d they come to corner you out here?” Randy asked as the three of them started toward the schoolhouse.

  “I just stepped out for some fresh air,” Bert said. “It’s a little warm in there.”

  He was right about that. A big crowd moving around fast gave off a lot of heat.

  Enoch, Gabe, and I fell in behind the three of them. I still had the gun I had taken from Flannery in my hand. I tucked it behind my belt for the time being as I asked them, “How’d the two of you know there was trouble out here?”

  “Saw you movin’ fast toward the door,” Enoch said. “We figured there had to be a good reason for it and came along to see what it was.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did.”

  Enoch chuckled and said, “I don’t know why. Looked to me like you didn’t need any help.”

  “But if I had needed it, you were there.”

  “We ride for the brand,” Gabe said. “When a Fishhook man needs help, we’ll be there.”

  It was good to see that some things about the West hadn’t changed, even in a new century.

  As we came up to the door, though, Enoch and Gabe suddenly shied away from me. I asked in surprise, “Where are you fellas goin’?”

  “Somebody’s waitin’ for you,” Enoch said.

  He was right. Daisy Hatfield stood there just outside the door, and I couldn’t tell from the look on her face whether she was appalled by what I’d done . . . or if it had stirred her emotions in some other way. She wore an intense expression, though.

  “I thought you boys claimed to ride for the brand and stand by a pard in times of trouble,” I said in a weak voice.

  “Well, yeah,” Gabe said, “but not where angry females are involved!”

  CHAPTER 22

  The crowd outside the schoolhouse had been mostly men, but some women had come out to watch the trouble, too, and it appeared that Daisy was one of them. As I came up to her, I said, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Miss Hatfield—”

  “I’m not,” she interrupted. “And I thought you were going to call me Daisy.”

  “Yeah, I reckon I forgot. But about that little ruckus—”

  “I think it was thrilling the way you stood up for your friend. More people in this world need to stand up for what’s right. That’s the only way to keep the bad men from taking over.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said, even though in years past I had been what most of the people at the dance would consider a bad man.

  “I should say not. Do you think those men are really gone, Jim?”

  I glanced in the direction Jed Flannery and the other three men had disappeared when they rode off, and I said, “I sure hope so. I’d hate for anything else to interfere with our dancin’.”

  A smile lit up her face.

  “Me, too,” she said as she linked arms with me. “Come on. I think they’re going to start playing again soon.”

  “I never got that punch for you.”

  “It can wait until next time,” she said.

  So it did. The musicians started up again, and we swung into a waltz. Daisy danced a little closer to me this time, although there was still nothing improper about it.

  We danced until the next break. Daisy had to fend off several men who tried to cut in. She did it politely but firmly, and eventually they all gave up. She was insistent enough about having all the dances with me that I felt compelled to remind her of the difference in our ages.

  “I really think you should be enjoyin’ the company of fellas who ain’t old enough to be y
our daddy,” I told her.

  “You’re not that old,” she said.

  “You’re wrong about that. I was born in 1867.”

  “You’re not even fifty years old yet. My father is fifty-five. And he looks and acts older than that. You look and act like a man fifteen years younger than you really are, Jim.”

  “Even if I was fifteen years younger, I’d still be too old for you,” I said.

  She just laughed.

  “You don’t know much about women, do you?”

  That sort of surprised me. I thought I was pretty well-versed in the ways of the fairer sex. I said, “I know plenty—”

  “Women mature much faster than men. I feel like I’ve been grown up for decades now. That’s why women prefer older men. Intelligent women do, anyway.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. So I didn’t say anything. I just kept dancing with her. I’d made my feelings clear to her, I had warned her, if you will, so whatever happened from here on out, my conscience would be clear.

  That’s what I told myself, anyway. I wasn’t sure if I believed it or not.

  During one of the breaks during the evening, when I finally got around to fetching those cups of punch for Daisy and me, Randy, Vince, and Bert came over to the table where the punch bowl sat. Randy and Vince slapped Bert on the back, and Randy said, “You need to tell Bert how proud you are of him, Mr. Strickland. He’s been dancing with some of the prettiest girls here.”

  “Well, is that right?” I said with a grin. “See how easy it is once you get over bein’ scared, Bert?”

  His mouth was a little swollen from the punch Flannery had landed on him, but that wasn’t enough to keep a smile off of it. He said, “I never actually got over bein’ scared, Mr. Strickland. But girls keep coming up to me wanting to dance. I don’t understand it.”

  “He’s too much of a gentleman to let them down, though, so he goes ahead and dances with ’em,” Randy said.