End of the Line

Butte, Montana 

July 3, 1901

Outside the cabin, the eastern horizon bleeds into the western dawn like a wound, the sky carnelian then magenta until daylight washes all color away, leaving only big sky and shattered dreams.

Inside, my face stares back from the crumpled poster. The others’ photographs would be beside ours, if they’d lived long enough to be “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

“Time to go.”

“You serious, LeRoy? We ain’t done. There’s more loot, more girls, more livin’ to do,” Logan says.

I examine his face, boyishly handsome, but spoiled by a tinge of snake oil salesman. “There ain’t no us no more. Not after your Wagner plan, there ain’t.”

I struggle to stand, body aching like an old man’s. Thirty-five ain’t old. But outlaws ain’t known for their longevity.

Logan snorts. “We all knew that job was risky.”

“Maybe,” I reply, although I wonder if the fatherless farm boys we left behind in the dirt knew anything for sure beyond their taste for cheap hooch and cheaper women. Still, their deaths are on me. Blinded by $$$. Won’t happen again.

Logan points to the sacks overflowing with bank notes. “Plenty more where that came from. Just one last—”

Harry puts his face in Logan’s. “You deaf, boy? The man said, no!”

I suck on the pipe I took from the engineer. I left him with his life, but Logan took it anyway, even though the trembling mess had already given up the key to the safe.

Logan squats beside me, breath reeking of whiskey and bad choices. “See, I was thinkin’—”

I shove him on his ass. “The thing is, you ain’t never thinkin’.”

Squirming like a dying bug trying to right itself, Logan persists. “Just hear me out.”

“You best shut up, boy,” Harry says.

“Thing is a train loaded with loot gonna be passin’ through Parachute, Colorado—”

I kick him as he tries to stand. “Been enough killin’. It ain’t right.”

“What? You finally buyin’ your Mama’s Bible bull—”

I lunge for his neck, squeezing until Harry pulls me off. I only release my grip because it’s Harry, the one man I trust, the only one whose demise I would mourn more than my own.

Logan smirks. “So, what you’re sayin’ is you’re a changed man, LeRoy?” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that?”

“There ain’t no changin’. You of all people should know that. There’s only survivin’ and that’s why we’re done here.”

Logan squints up at Harry. “How ‘bout you?”

“Etta cabled. Got us all passage on a steamer to Buenos Aires. First class from New York City.”

I eye Harry’s battered Derby. “Maybe when we get to New York, you can get you a first class hat too.”

Harry sticks a finger through the bullet hole in the crown. “Won’t need no fancy hat where we’re goin’.”

Logan gets up and flops onto a chair. “Hat or no hat. I ain’t goin’. I cain’t speak no Spanish.”

“What you cain’t speak is sense,” Harry says. “You had any, you’d git while the gittin’s good.”

I grab a fistful of dollars. “Rest’s yours, Logan. Use it wisely.”

“Meaning soon to get gone.” Harry fixes on the Wanted poster. “Only madmen hang around waitin’ on the law.”

“You boys have a nice time with the seňoritas.” Logan rubs his hands together. “Me? I got work to do gettin’ rich.”

I turn at the door. “You sure?”

Logan puts his boots on the table, hands behind his head. “Men like us can’t change. The real madness is thinking we can. Ain’t you heard?”

And as luck would have it, hear we do—from a newsboy at grand Central Station. “Extra. Extra. Read all about it! Wild Bunch’s Harvey Logan shot dead!”

“Logan was right for once in his sorry life,” I say and we both laugh.

New York Daily Tribune, November 10, 1908:

“An editor of this esteemed paper once proclaimed, ‘Go West, young man, and grow old with the country,’ advice not heeded by Robert LeRoy Parker (aka Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid). The leaders of the notorious Wild Bunch chose south instead, only to be found dead after a shoot-out with police stemming from a payroll heist at a silver mine in San Vicente, Bolivia. Reports say Cassidy shot the already fatally wounded Longabaugh to put his partner in crime out of his misery. Cassidy then killed himself with his final bullet.”