Jim Saddler 6 Page 4

  On the face of it, taking me to the Hole was a dumb idea, but it would have been unwise to try to explain this truth to him then. Butch had no great ideas about how bright he was, though he was smart enough in many ways. He was more than a trifle crazy, and if he hadn’t been a notorious outlaw, he might well have been the head sport in some small town, playing rough practical jokes and cutting up at the dance nail on Saturday nights.

  “You don’t have to look so glum about it,” Butch said to me. “What’s the big hurry, Saddler? Why all the hurry to get back to Texas? I’ve been in Texas and it’s not that great.”

  Harry Tracy was ahead of us on the trail. “What about him?” I asked, ignoring Cassidy’s comment. “Maybe others in the Hole will share his opinion of me.”

  Butch smiled at Tracy’s back. “My opinion is the only one that counts. Most of the boys are all right. If Harry gets too rambunctious, I’ll just have to kill him. But I’ll decide when—I decide everything. It’s worked pretty good so far. We take what we need and try not to kill too many people. Of course not including Pinkertons and railroad detectives.”

  For a moment I saw the killer in Cassidy, and I didn’t doubt that he would kill me if he found cause to do so. There was no turning back. For him no amnesty was possible, for he had robbed and killed too many times to plead for mercy. If they trapped him they wouldn’t bother to take him alive. He knew he was a walking dead man, though he loved life more than any man I ever knew. There was no great injustice done to him in the past, and he never pretended otherwise. And though he might be taking me to my death, I liked him in an odd sort of way. I hadn’t the faintest notion of how I was going to get out of his grasp, but I was going to try like hell.

  The badlands began about twenty miles from where we were—wild, raw country cut with deep canyons that sometimes turned back on themselves. The whiskey was wearing off and I didn’t want to drink any more of it. We had left the old trail and were winding deep through the dun-colored wasteland. It was hot and dry in the deep canyons protected from the wind. It was rough country where a stranger could get lost in a hurry. Cassidy and the others rode with the easy confidence of men who had been through there many times, who knew every rock and bush and gully. The day wore on and we kept going.

  The sun started to slide toward the west and I figured we had come more than forty miles from Jackson Hole. Butch hummed and whistled a lot. The others were quiet. Tom O’Day drank plenty of whiskey, but he was silent too. I wondered how long it had been since they had pulled their last job. But nothing was said about business.

  We kept on going after it got dark, and after another hour, riding by moonlight, we started through a long, turning slit in the rock that provided just enough room for one rider at a time. In places it was almost covered by an overhang of stunted trees. Half-a-mile into this ravine we were challenged by two men squatting behind rocks on both sides.

  Butch called out the password, “Pinkerton,” and the two lookouts waved us through. There was some laughing at the password, which must have been a new one, and after that we made our way into a small, grassy valley hemmed in by high rock walls. Up ahead there were lights in a scatter of solidly built cabins.

  “What did I tell you?” Butch said to me. “We’re as snug as a bug in here. Only one way in and that can be defended by just a few men. Even if they find the place, they can’t starve us out. Got a fine spring back here and all the food we need for a long siege. Something else you didn’t know. We got dynamite planted in about a dozen places. I take good care of my little congregation.”

  I looked up at the high rock walls outlined against the night sky. “Any way to get in from the other end of the valley?”

  “No way in or out from that side. Country on all sides runs off to nowhere. Don’t even think about it, Saddler. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Thanks for warning me, Butch.”

  Butch laughed again. Laughter came as easily to him as frowning to a preacher. “I don’t want nothing to happen to you, Saddler. In years to come you can tell folks you knew Butch Cassidy. I’ll tell you again, soldier. Loosen up and enjoy yourself. You’re going to have one hell of a time. Yonder there on the porch stands my lady. Her name’s Etta Place, and I guess you’ve heard of her.” Everybody had. In her way Etta was just as wanted as Butch. I’d seen her picture—the Wild Bunch were the most photographed bandits in the world. But no picture could have done her justice. Some women just don’t photograph well, and she was one of them. She wasn’t all that tall, but what there was of her was well-built. She was dark-haired, pale-skinned, and tough as nails. The toughness showed in the lift of her strong chin and the defiant stare in her black eyes. Light flooded out onto the porch and I saw the glint of the heavy pistol belted high on her side. While she waited, two more women came out of the cabin and stood beside her. One had a halo of thick red hair. The other was several years younger, not much more than seventeen or eighteen.

  Etta Place spoke first in a tough, husky voice that was hard to place. “You took long enough,” she said to Cassidy. “One of these days your whores are going to get you hanged.”

  Butch grinned at her. “In a pig’s ass they will. Anyhow, what’re you so hot about. I told you, me and the boys was going down there. Etta, my sweet, I’d like you to say hello to Jim Saddler, a lonesome Texas man far from home.” Etta stared at me with hard eyes. “Who the hell is he?”

  “A friend of the family,” Butch said.

  Etta wasn’t buying any of Cassidy’s blarney, at least not then, “This Saddler, what do you know about him?”

  “I know he’s going to teach me to play the piano. Where’s your manners, Miss Etta? Say how do to the man, for Christ’s sake.” He said to me, “The other two ladies are Pearl Hart and Laura Bullion.”

  “Ladies,” I said, and tipped my hat.

  “You sound like you’re from Texas,” Laura said, friendly enough. “Pleased to meet you, Saddler,” Pearl Hart said.

  The Hart girl was prettier than the others, though all were pretty enough. It was plain that Etta Place didn’t like what she saw of me. Call me contrary if you like, but I liked her fine. I wondered if all of them belonged to Butch, for anything was possible with him. To tell the truth though, women were not my concern at that moment. After a long, hard day in the saddle I was hungry as a son of a bitch.

  As if reading my mind, Butch asked what there was for supper. Looking at Etta, he said, “If there’s nothing to eat, I’ll eat you.”

  The other women giggled and Etta said angrily, “Watch your dirty mouth, Cassidy. There’s food on the stove if you want to eat it.”

  Butch clapped me on the shoulder. “In you go, Saddler.” Sundance went in ahead of us. Tracy and the other men went on to the other cabins. Etta Place stood aside to let me pass.

  It was a big cabin and the main room was well if roughly furnished. A cook stove glowed red-hot and against one wall stood the new miniature piano Butch had been talking about. It was scratched in a few places. Apart from that, it gleamed with wax polish. Etta Place went to the stove and took off a large pot of simmering stew, using a rag to protect her hands. She banged it down on the table and began to dole out plates of meat. After that she set out coffee and tin cups.

  The women had eaten, but they sat with us while we dug into the stew. It was good and hot with big, tender chunks of beef. No doubt the beef was stolen, just like the piano.

  It seemed as if Butch couldn’t take his eyes off that piano. He positively glowed with the pride of ownership. Etta saw him looking and got angry again, though she had sort of simmered down. She puffed hard on a brown cigarette and blew clouds of smoke at the roof. Getting angrier by the moment, she stubbed out the smoke, then lit another one. Butch, I noticed, had terrible table manners, or maybe he was just trying to annoy the dark-eyed gunwoman even more.

  Finally, she said, “Have you gone crazy, Cassidy? Here you have the whole country looking for you, and you bring home a so-called piano pl
ayer? If that isn’t crazy I don’t know what is. Who in hell is this man and where does he come from? You’re just as bad, Sundance,” she said turning to Harry. “Why did you let him do it?”

  “Don’t blame me,” Sundance answered. “You know anybody who can stop Butch when he sets out to do something?”

  “You didn’t even try,” Etta said, still blowing smoke like a chimney.

  “Can you really play it?” Pearl Hart said in that girlish voice she had.

  “Go on, play it,” Laura Bullion said, urging me. “It’ll be a change from Cassidy’s whistling and bellowing.”

  Well, what else could I do? I’d eaten all I could eat, and that was plenty. Etta watched me with hostile eyes as I pulled up a chair and opened the lid of the piano.

  “Saddler doesn’t even need sheet music to play songs,” Butch said, as proud of me as he was of the piano. “You should have heard him last night.”

  “Play if you’re going to play,” Etta said, staring at me harder than ever. I wondered if she meant to keep up her badmouthing, or if she’d leave off after a few minutes. She was a dangerous woman and would make a bad enemy if she decided to be one. I guess she loved Cassidy for all her tough talk. And maybe she knew what I knew, that Cassidy didn’t have that long to live. She was smarter than Cassidy, and maybe tougher as well, and she must have known that the relentless Pinkertons would find a way to run him down. They had scattered the James gang not so many years before, and what they could do to Jesse they could do to Butch.

  I only knew a few tunes and I started with the one I could do without getting too many thumbs into the music. Butch grinned at Sundance, enjoying every minute of it.

  “I declare, that’s very pretty,” Pearl Hart said. “Don’t you think so, Laura?”

  “Pretty as can be,” Laura agreed.

  Only Etta didn’t like my lousy music. She looked over at Butch. “Anybody can play one song,” she said.

  “Not Saddler,” Butch said. “He’s got a whole trunkful of tunes.”

  Of course I didn’t, but I did my best, and while I played what I knew I wondered how many members were in the gang. I had seen the two lookouts in the ravine. Unless I was wrong, there would be more than that.

  Etta was as good as any man there, and she had her own list of dead men. I had never heard of Laura Bullion, but it seemed to me that I knew something about Pearl Hart. My recollection was that she had come from Colorado or New Mexico. I couldn’t be sure about that though. One thing was sure: she was nowhere as famous as Etta. Etta and Butch were always mentioned in the same breath, and in a short time together they had made one hell of a reputation.

  I played until I was thoroughly sick of it. Etta frowned as I began to hit more sour notes than sweet ones. Sundance didn’t care how I played. He kept looking at Etta and yawning. At last he said, “I don’t know about you folks, but I’m going to bed.”

  Etta stood up and looked at Butch. “You plan to stay up all night, do you?”

  Butch yawned too before he gave his attention back to me. “Better hit the hay, Saddler. Too late now to give me a lesson. These two fine young ladies will make you comfortable.”

  Butch and Sundance went into the only bedroom. Etta followed them and closed the door. I looked at the door and must have showed surprise.

  Laura laughed and Pearl joined in. “That’s how it is with them,” Laura said, shaking her head. “They’ve got their own special arrangement. Some people are like that. Come on now, Saddler. We’ll show you where you’re going to sleep.”

  “I’d just as soon not have to bunk in with any of the men,” I said, afraid that they might put me in with Tom O’Day. I’d sleep out in the rain rather than have to smell that rank Irishman all night. I had nothing against the walrus-faced Irishman, but it was like that gent had never heard of soap and water.

  Pearl and Laura came up close to me and began to tug at my clothes. Pearl managed to feel my muscles without making it too obvious. Laura admired me too. I began to feel like a stud at a horse auction. Not that I minded all the attention.

  Sounds of combat came from the bedroom and Pearl giggled. Winking at me, she went to the door and put her ear to it.

  “Hot damn!” she said. “Sounds like a wrestling match in there.” She looked at me and licked her lips.

  “I’m beginning to get excited,” Laura said.

  “Me too,” Pearl said.

  Together they propelled me toward the door.

  “It’s way past your bedtime, Saddler,” Pearl said.

  Four

  “Dutch wants you to have a good time here,” Laura explained as the two lady outlaws led me through the darkness to a small cabin not far from where Cassidy and Sundance were now bedded down with Etta Place. I wondered how they did it with Etta. Did they both take her at the same time, one from the back, and one from the front? It was just an idle thought and none of my business. Like Laura said, they had an arrangement. If they both wanted to sleep with Etta, it was jake with me. My own arrangement was going to be just as uncommon.

  Pearl opened the door of the cabin and went in to turn up the lamp. Outlaws or not, they had fixed up the place as only women can. Framed pictures hung on the walls, and the floor had been scrubbed and strewn with clean, white sand. The fire had burned down and Laura threw in chunks of wood. It was a one-room cabin with a double bed against the wall. The bed had a quilted spread and the pillows were the big kind I like. It was warm in the cabin after the fire blazed up and somehow Wyoming didn’t seem so bad after all. We all took off our guns and hung them up, and after that the two women helped me off with my clothes. I was tired but not as tired as I had been, and the more clothes I got off the less tired I became.

  “It’s very nice of you to be doing this,” I said as Laura unbuttoned my pants and took out my cock. It stood up stiff and throbbing as they peeled off their clothes. Both had very good bodies, young and soft, and I wondered if I was going to get any sleep that night.

  Pearl was the more ladylike of the two. Both were fine with me though, and I hoped it wouldn’t come to killing between us at some point. I will say that I did feel like a man in a dream. I had been on my way to Texas the day before, with every expectation of getting there, and now I was on my way to bed with two lady bandits. My life is like that, I guess, always full of surprises.

  Then we were all in bed; the fire was banked, and the lights were turned low. The north wind whacked itself against the cabin, and we were the best of friends. We piled in together and it was agreed that I should do Pearl first—because, as Laura explained, she hadn’t had a man for a long time.

  Pearl was ready and wet for me and when I thrust into her, she gasped with pleasure. That got Laura all excited and she wriggled around until I got my head behind her legs while I was fucking her friend. I tongued Laura until her backside bounced on the bed. One girl excited the other and I excited both of them. I wondered how Butch, Sundance, and Etta were doing over yonder. I held back while Pearl had her come and then she shifted from under me and I pushed myself, still rock-hard, into Laura.

  It went on and on like that until the bed creaked and swayed under our weight. All tiredness left me and I worked like I’d never worked before. I was able to hold back because I’d done so much fucking the night before. We went on and on until we were sweating hard in the dim, warm light of the cabin. And then, sated for the moment, they urged me to have my first come, and I was deep inside Laura when I did. Then we all lay back and rested until it was time to start again.

  “When he comes he really comes,” Laura said to Pearl. “All some men can manage is a little dribble, but this rowdy comes like a stallion with his first mare of the day. You come like a real stud, Saddler,” she said to me. “It just shoots out of you, strong and hot. You haven’t felt that yet, Pearl, but you will. You won’t forget it in a hurry. I can still feel it, the way he volleyed into me.”

  “I want to feel it,” Pearl said. “That’s what I miss about not having a s
teady man of my own. To feel him shooting off inside me. I like to tighten my cunt muscles when a man comes inside me. It’s like I can trap his prick inside me and never let it out. All real woman-loving men like that. As long as their prick is in there, in the warm woman-juice, they can get hard again in half the time. Isn’t that true, Saddler?”

  “It sure is,” I said honestly. I felt like a hospital patient being discussed by a doctor and a bunch of medical students. But that’s what the women were like in the Hole in the Wall. They were free of shame. That was great for a man like me who loves sexually free women more than anything—more than steaks or whiskey or even poker.

  I lay on my back with the two women on either side of me. Laura had just had a tremendous come and she was satisfied for the moment. Pearl had come a number of times, but she wanted more. She played with my cock, coaxing it back to hardness. It didn’t take much coaxing. It was starting to come up again, stiff and strong. Pearl massaged it expertly. My balls began to tighten with anticipation of yet another come.

  “Men love it when you pull their prick,” Pearl said. “I used to jerk off my older brother and he loved it. Then my younger brother—he was fourteen—found out what we were doing and he wanted to be jerked off too. Why not? I loved both my brothers. Odd thing is that it was my kid brother who first put his fingers in me. The little devil knew I wanted him to do it. I guess my older brother was too shy. My kid brother was anything but. In no time at all he had his fingers in me, diddling me while I jerked him off. But that wasn’t enough for the little devil. He wanted more. One night when he came to my room to be jerked off, he brought a pad of butter and rubbed it all over his cock. My hand flew up and down his buttery cock and you should have seen the look on that kid’s face. It was like he’d died and gone to heaven. He put butter on his fingers before he diddled me. Those were happy times, Saddler. Then my parents died and the family broke up.”