Saddle Dust

Chapter 7

The gang traveled along for several hours before stopping in slow-pond Blair for a rest and to restock on supplies. It seemed safe enough, the small town had heard no news of a missing girl, and the train robbery had quieted down in the wake of a large mine collapse that was said to have killed fifteen up in New Jersey. But it still would have been unthinkably dangerous to bring the girl inside the saloon, so Sundance led Casey and his own horse to a small road off to the side of the saloon.
"You ever ridden before?"
"Yeah, I lived on a ranch for the last six years. Never ridden a horse by myself though. Always with someone either riding with me or holding the reins. I want to learn to! If you would teach me?"
"Good. Well, at least you ain't never seen a saddle before. 'Course I would be furious if yer folks ne'er even taught you that much..."
Sundance stuck his hand under the back of his hat and rubbed his itching scalp as he muttered this last part under his breath. He cleared his throat, coming back to the road by the saloon, and tossed the reins of his horse over the saddle horn.
"You ain't too tall for bein' the age you are, but I reckon this horse'll do just fine. Now. See this stirrup here? Only use it for gettin' up on the saddle only until you can reach. After that, you will probably just be jumpin on the horse and gettin' the hell out. Use it for long rides, or for goin' fast. Makes it easier to turn around if you ever need to shoo...t? 'scuse me, turn around and look behind ya in the saddle."
Casey gave a small, sly smile.
"Don't worry, I'm not gonna be chasin' anyone down. I'll shoot, but only animals. I don't wanna hurt no one. Even if they done me wrong."
"Sure...alright doc, whatever you say."
Sundance said this quietly, drifting off, pondering the way that Casey set her jaw and dug her small shoes into the ground when she meant what she was saying. She's such a Longabaugh, and yet... she's got her own current pushing her along. He put a hand on the brim of his hat and tipped it back, his greasy hair falling stiffly forward. Guess that makes her even more of a Long. Yes, she was just like him. Eerily so.
He had said it not without some sadness in his voice. He remembered when he had been younger, and had shot his first man. The feeling of finality. He had only killed one man and didn't intend to kill any more. He felt even more like a father now.
"Ok, let's get you on the horse..."
Sundance's thoughts strode back, slow as a sober cowpoke on Sunday night.
"First, you're going to want to grab hold of the horn here, then, well... you know the rest. That's the 'I've got time on my hands and no one chasin' my arse' way to get on. The way I 'spose you'll be usin' — or at least when you can reach, is this:"
Sundance swiftly grabbed the horse in his left hand by the roots of its mane and half-vaulted half-climbed his way into the saddle. The horse continued to chew the few tough-stemmed blades of browned grass at its feet, seemingly oblivious to the weight that had just thrown itself onto the saddle.
"Wow! That was quick. I wanna do that someday!"
"Yep, now hop up there, an' try an' get the horse to move."
Sundance got down off of the horse, and Casey scrambled up onto the horse's back using an empty milk crate standing nearby. She wasn't half bad, she must have ridden quite a bit more than she said she did. She kicked the heel of her shoe into the horse and whistled sharply. The horse stood still, enjoying its dust grass. Sundance chuckled and walked up to the other side of the horse where Casey sat confused and more than a little embarrassed.
"Don't worry, even the most skilled riders couldn't get ol' Jangles here to move. He's trained right. You gotta pinch, hard. Just above his right shoulder there. He don't feel it nowhere else." Casey reached down and pinched the spot that Sundance had indicated. Her arms barely reached, but the horse started to move at a slow, sauntering walk.
"There ya go! Now just kick him on a bit, and he'll move along just fine."
Casey kicked Jangles, hard. He began to trot, then he broke suddenly into a loping gallop.
"Good. GOOD. GOOD! That's it! Now just look where you want to go, and he'll take you there!"
Casey looked, and then (her body remembering the few lessons she had already aquired from ranch life) leaned in the direction she wanted to go. Jangles turned smoothly. Casey whipped her body around, Jangles following along, and galloped straight at Sundance. She stopped short. Sundance's trail-beaten teeth grinned and he whipped his dust-roughed black gambler hat off, throwing it sharply at the ground. The hat made a snapping sound but Jangles didn't flinch. He was a seasoned horse.
"That's how ya ride! Now let's go back and tell Butch that we've got ourselves a regular rustler here!"
He ran up to Casey and took the horse's reins from her as she stepped back onto the old crate, and hopped down. Sundance picked her up and tossed her in the air, catching her in the arms of his rough white shirt. He swung her onto his shoulders and proudly sauntered out of the side street and turned towards the saloon, leading Jangles along.
"Hoo there! Elzy Long! Quit yer gander for a spell!"
A man in a slightly ripped red flannel and cow-crusted trousers trotted out of a small, closed-looking store selling shoes. He had a gun on his hip, and he held it in place as he ran.
Fshhhhtttt "Holy batshit hell...shitshitshit..."
Sundance inhaled sharply and let out a whispered string of profanities under his mustache as he stopped dead in mid stride and let the excited man catch up to them. Sundance took out a half-burnt cigarette from his chest pocket and bent to strike a match on the sole of his boot. He sucked in on the tobacco paper and spit out the smoke as the approaching man stopped short, the smile dropping from his face when he saw the young girl on Sundance's shoulders. The man's arms dropped heavily to his sides.
"You'a family man now, Sundance? Or did you just get back from Minnesota with one of yours?"
He smiled at his joke but quickly let it fall again when he saw Sundance's face which looked as cold as a dead man's grave. Sundance took the cigarette from between his lips slowly before replying.
"Waterton, this is my daughter, Casey Long. Casey, meet an ol'...acquaintance of mine, Hartford."
"Howdy Mr. Waterton."
Casey smiled politely but wore the same calculating expression as Sundance.
"I meant nothin' by it! Well, who's got yer hound up in a tree? Unless that minin' incident was yer doing?"
Waterton gave a deep, hearty laugh that would have been amusing to watch had it not made him spit profusely into the condensed space between them. He coughed several times and recovered himself slightly.
"But in no bullishness, I am a man of the law as you said, an' you an yer boys are my catch..."
Sundance gently slid Casey to the ground and stood partially in front of her. He snapped the cigarette to the ground, knocking the fire out of it in the dust. The muscles on his shoulders pulled themselves into a tense wall of hatred, but the fingers hovering a hair above the butt of his gun stayed relaxed.
"Hold on hold on! I'm not finished! I said I am a man of the law, but I'm also yer ol' mate. An' we had ourselves some good days in the bars an' up in Minneapolis. So I'm willing to give you an' your boysa pass. Just this once. Make sure y'all are out of here by sundown. I mean by, not after. If I can see so much as a dust cloud in the distance by quittin' time, I'll be ridin' at the head of a posse with guns a blazing. Fair? Fair."
Waterton stalked off calling out through his dust-beaten beard as he went.
"An git that Casey Long with some other people. She shouldn' be riding with yer folk anyhows."
Sundance's shoulders dropped, he looked like a mule at the end of planting season— tired.
"Let's go Casey."
He took her hand, letting his gun fall back heavily in its holster. The party walked towards the saloon. The sounds of bar tender elbow grease working its magic slid thickly out of the doors, and someone, in the hazy and surreal world inside, was ripping out a rather jaunty song on a piano which sounded like it was missing a few of its keys. Sundance went inside and dragged the rest of the gang outside onto the street. They came out like a rabbit being pulled from its hole by a fox, their faces red from the scene.
"Waterton"
Was all Sundance said and they sobered up enough to crawl onto the backs of their horses and kick them into a steady trot. Casey and Sundance rode on the same horse this time. The sun was beginning to set already.
The gang stopped at the base of a large valley several miles west of Blair to let the horses rest. The landscape was completely flat up until the valley, but there was no chance that Waterton or his men could see them. In fact, Waterton probably had his dirty boots kicked up on an over-oiled pine desk right at that moment. His thick, greasy fingers wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle sweating rings in the summer heat.
Sundance's tobacco cracked sharply on a rock at his feet as he turned back to climb onto the saddle.
A dog howled into the cooling air. It sank a series of clean-fanged barks into the void. The void that the gang now saw, was quickly shrinking at the approaching of a large cloud of dust being stirred up by...
"Waterton...WATERTON! DAMN YOU! YOU FILTHY DAMN NO GOOD STEALIN' LICKFINGERS GOLD-PATCHED BITCH! You'd cut the legs off of your horse just so you could see your face shine in your damned badge! DAD ABOVE! You'll be fixin' to meet yer granny just soon as I can get this barrel down yer big-talkin' jaw flapper! I'll—"
"Sundance! DAMN IT that's ENOUGH! Let's go! You can't trust no one who wears that hogshit patch. Even if they did same as you! He's just short on backs to stab so he's a pickin' you. The almighty bitch."
Butch continued cussing out the dirt, horses, and the very air itself as he kicked his horse into a gallop and the gang flew down into the valley.
"Casey, hang on like the devil's own rustlers are chasin' us down. 'Cause they are."
"I will! I don't intend to lose this new life in such a puppy-sad way. Those leaf-hoppers couldn't hit the ground with their hats if they had three throws."
Sundance grinned with teeth that had seen their fair share of the western landscape. She had a belly of fire and a mouth to match. She picked up fast. Real fast.
"Casey, you're a real kid there."
The horse picked up pace as the gang followed a shallow stream running along the valley's slowly winding path. Waterton's posse was close behind, but the gang preferred to travel quietly as opposed to galloping quickly through the stream bed and risking a horse's hoof to the deadly rocks and hidden holes below.
The pursuing posse fired their own steel death into the air but soon the valley began to split and break into a thousand different winding paths which only Butch Cassidy knew.
The posse's dogs forgot the scent about thirty minutes in, and the men's corral ponies lost wind at the hour mark. They stopped pursuit about an hour and a half in. The two parties had remained the same distance apart nearly the entire time. The posse leader brought his heaving horse to a full stop and yelled after the Wild Bunch.
"You an' yer gang's goin' straight to HELL! Ya hear? Curse the horses you ride! And Sundance! Waterton says that girl of yer's no match fer the west. She'll die or be killed before she reaches the cat houses!"
These final words ricocheted off of the pocks dented into the valley walls by the elements and split into several running copies of the original threat.
Sundance packed his ears with the sound of his horse's hooves and hoped Casey hadn't heard the tailing remarks from the no longer pursuing posse. He would catch that sunofagun Waterton if it was the last thing he did.
The posse wheeled its horses around in a tight circle, turning back towards the sleepy town where Waterton's over-shined boots presided over a polished desk, and before a warming beer. The foam caught in his mustache as he sipped.
Damn Butch Cassidies. Now they've a got themselves a new recruit. Maybe the one from the train I'm almost certain they robbed a few days ago...probably not though. If it is, her family'll pay me a fine price to get her back home to momma hen...it can't be her though. She's probably just the daughter of one of his favorites...Call me a bull's balls if I know why in the hell'd brought her 'long with them boys. Chickenshit move that was. They've a got their minds scattered about the coop...
Helluva bitch that Sundance...Girl's just like him...Smart, quick, and prickly...The little bitch...she won't last a nickel's worth of ladies out there... in the name of Dad's they doin' with her anyways...oh well...they can go to hell across lots with her ornery little carcass if they want... about as subtle as a budgy mule in a church service...
The beer made his mind clearer as he sipped and mulled over the encounter.
It could have worked out, really. He was willing to sit down and have a few drinks with Sundance. Just for old time's sake. But Sundance had blazed over any chance of that when he put his hand on the gun.
Sundance deserved whatever was going to come to him next. Waterton was sure of this.
The rest of the gang should be expecting a bullet in his head any day now.
"Yeah. Him an' his new little bitch-bastard."
The beer did not respond to this fresh testimonial. It usually didn't.
"Can't have THAT shit pissin' on my boots...