Saddle Dust

Chapter 8

1865

"I lived with them for many years. I learned how to shoot, faster than Laura Bullion, Wild Bill, News Carver, Deaf Charlie, and Even Butch Cassidy. But never Sundance Kid. That's part of being an outlaw. You never teach how to shoot faster than you can. Or ride. I could ride a horse alright, but I only really got good enough to jump onto a moving train from the horse. With Steadfast though, I can outride any Pinkerton who'd try to catch me for the rope.

I've robbed lots of trains. But only from where it won't be missed. The gang always gave me dill for that." Casey gave a laugh that sounded like flint hitting steel.

"As you know, Sundance was caught up in a...a shootout in Bolivia...he..." She stood slowly, her fingers bleaching as she gripped the saddle horn hard, and looked at the dust-smattered glass. A spider had left little whorls and drip-shapes in the grime.

While her voice was shaking when next she spoke, it was still much steadier than Mary expected.

"...he loved a lot of things. And he killed. And he stole. And he was dirty. And he cheated and lied and slept up North lots and...cared. About me. He was my pa." Casey gently picked up the Stetson in her shaking fingers and crumpled its brim almost lovingly in her fist. Nails digging into the thick soft leather. Veins standing out on her arms. Mary stayed silent. She felt like a cat watching the scene in front of her unfold with curiosity frozen in place. Casey was broken by the death of a man who was said to have killed many. A man who, as Casey had said herself, had frightened and stolen from innocent people, lied as a religion, frequented the brothels of the North, and was a morally and habitually filthy man. He was an outlaw. A man so corrupted by the devil that he was outside of the law's protection. Mary sat, quietly disturbed by the battle between snake and fox that was taking place in Casey's past.

A sainted father, a man who stole for kicks.

An outlaw.

"Casey, I...I'm sorry that he died...but you do know that...that it was bound to happen at some point?"

Mary's voice came out clipped and proper and almost disapproving. More so than she had expected.

"Yeah. I did. I do. He had it coming." Casey turned from the window. Her face reddened from the few tears sliding down her face. She sat down again and put the gambler hat gently in her lap. "But he was still everything to me. Because he showed me how to live. I wasn't meant to have the life of a lady. I think there are a lot of folks out there who aren't living the lives they're supposed to have. That's what Sundance always told me at least. And Sundance gave me a purpose."

"To rob? And cheat and lie?"

She turned away from Mary again and shook her head in a way that almost convinced Mary that Casey thought she was being silly and immature. " As for the rest of the gang, Laura's still alive. The rest of the gang's dead. Mostly. That was after the shootout in Bolivia."

"Now don't go tellin' me that ye were there as well?"

"No, I wasn't. Sundance let me rob most all banks with him, even let me follow along with Bill and Carver and Butch in sticking up the lickfingers in the places we collected from. And trains were my specialty. I led a few robberies on those. Most of the time, I was the second or third in the gang on bank robberies, but in Bolivia, Sundance said there were too many Pinkertons and others after us and I would have to run back up. AKA, horse duty. He just wanted me to stay alive. We were planning a lower-scale robbery, but it was still going to be one of the most dangerous ones yet. He said while we were in Bolivia, I would be on horse duty unless told otherwise and not to try anything." Casey snorts.

"You believe that? Yeah..."

Mary lets a small smile spread politely across her freckled face. Casey didn't seem to notice. She was somewhere else. Back at the bank in Bolivia. With the sound of the men on horses outside and the smell of fear coming off of the bank teller in the small town bank. She had seen the news article describing the bank, but it had been a simple editorial at the back of the paper. Nothing compared with the shootout which had left Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy dead, along with members of the heroic band of men who defended the bank.

"Well, they were planning another robbery after that, I was planning on going whether Sundance said or not. But I guess he saw what I was thinking, and pulled me over and looked me in the eye. He looked more afraid than I had ever seen him before. He said that this time, the bank was big business and that I needed to stay back on this one. That it was even more dangerous than the smaller bank we had robbed a few days before.

I argued of course, but he said that if I didn't stay back and be ready to leave as soon as I saw them on the trail, then I'd be dead to him. An outlaw's pride is a code to keep, he said. Things didn't go well. You know the details, and I only saw Butch one last time before he an' Sundance an'...that...that was the last time I ever saw them...I...went back to the scene of the shootout..." Casey's eyes were clouding.

"Bill made it through all right though....he— "

"That gang is just a bunch of ruffians." Mary bursts in suddenly. "I can't believe you went back for them!"

The clever smile that spread across Casey's face tells Mary that the man in Casey's story, Waterton, had been right about her and Sundance being one and the same. Just, Casey had never killed. What was it she had said earlier? Even if they done me wrong? She had said that in her fever dream right after she was shot in the saloon as well. The mist surrounding Casey grew even heavier as she continued explaining her stampeding past.

"People were crowding around the bodies of Sundance and Butch and Carver. One man was taking photos and...people were passing drinks around. I'm not proud to say that I pulled my gun out and had a path cleared within five seconds of the nearest reporter realizing who I was and what I was holding just six inches from his face."