Etta: A Novel Read online

  Only yesterday, the stinking, drunken reprobate known as Tom O'Day dared to challenge Cassidy, probably over the plans for some new crime. For what seemed like an hour, O'Day raged at him, spitting invective and insults before the assembled band. Still, throughout the abuse, the leader remained magnanimous; the more O'Day drooled and seethed, the more Butch portrayed the soul of reason, the patient voice of diplomacy, urging rapprochement.

  “Now, now, Tommy,” Butch said, “you're deep in your cups. You don't want to take punishment for something you won't remember tomorrow.” Yet despite this fair warning, O'Day persisted. Worse, his curses had begun to stir some of the men nearby to nodding heads and their own whispered oaths.

  And then it was as if a switch had been thrown inside Butch Cassidy. Seizing a handful of dust from the dry ground, he flung it into the red eyes of the drunkard. O'Day opened his mouth to bellow and Cassidy kicked high. His boot caught the villain hard in the stomach, drawing all air from his lungs. As he began to fall, Cassidy caught him with a right hand beneath the chin. O'Day rose for a moment and then crumpled in the dirt.

  The encounter lasted not a second more than needed to acomplish its purpose. There was no note of revenge or cruelty, no show of pride in victory. Throughout the beating, Cassidy's wide serene face never changed. It was the same face I observed on the day I met him and every day since, the face he presented to all in camp any hour, day or night, the face that slapped backs and asked after babies. Watching him, I felt both a thrill and a shudder: frightened by the violence of which this man is capable but joyous in his victory over the kind of mindless brutality that, left unchecked, could only bring chaos to our domain.

  The thumping complete, Butch walked to his fallen hat and returned it to his head. Turning to the assembled outlaws he began matter-of-factly to issue instructions, his manner never admitting the slightest possibility that they would not be obeyed. Tom was to be carried to his bed and cold compresses applied to his chin. His ration of whiskey was to be increased for as long as the pain persisted, and no man was to mention the fight to him or remark upon his defeat, even in jest.

  Butch then brushed some dust from his chaps and walked toward me, still smiling but with eyes full of contrition. “Forgive me, Miss Etta,” he said. “I'm very sorry you had to see that.” He touched the brim of his hat, squared his shoulders, and walked off toward his tent.

  Chilling as it all was, perhaps it is also a lesson: that power may stem not only from the lead of bullets or the skinned flesh of the fist but also from the simple authority of one who dominates without the burden of malice and rules in the absence of anger. In these times, perhaps it is the only way to govern. Cassidy knows the modern world is coming, even to the bandit country. He sees the new ways of catching a man and the new breed of man so skilled in those ways. He knows of men snared by the telegraph, the horseless carriage, the new female agents and methods of disguise. And he sees perhaps more clearly than anyone else that the society of the desperado is ending, and any money still to be made had better be taken with the smallest amount of fuss and the minimum number of corpses. If, in the end, all this modernity is to get us caught, better to be seen by the jury as a thief than a murderer.

  Cassidy's second in command is a young man named Harry Longbaugh, who is referred to by all hereabouts either as “Kid” or (to distinguish him from numerous other “kids” around here) “Sundance,” this last being the name of a jail where he apparently spent some time. In any event, he is a fine-looking lad: tall and broad-shouldered with eyes like the hide of my dear Bellerophon, hair and mustache matching. And although the sun has given us all the skin of day laborers, it has only turned Mr. Longbaugh a luminous gold. His posture is far less that of the cowboy, who seems to sit tall only in the saddle, than of the soldier, upright at all times, as strong and unbending as the flowering desert paintbrush.

  Such beauty considered, when he strides across the grounds of camp he is invariably accosted by our ladies. Some are bolder in their propositions than a sailor fresh from a Schuylkill wharf, others catcall and even whistle as if he were the prettiest girl on a Tombstone corner. I suppose none of this is helped by his long eyelashes or the small black birthmark just above his mustache, the kind that fashionable ladies in the court of Louis XIV spent hours to create.

  Even in this happy hell of bandits he remains clean-shaven and fastidious. It is well known that he steals away four or five times a week to bathe in the small stream that provides us with our single sustaining trickle of water. And although they are never said to his face, his constant ablutions are the subject of much joking here, as naturally they would be in a place where the calendar can turn twelve pages before a man comes in contact with any liquid other than whiskey.

  If it is day, Harry Longbaugh is usually found sitting alone, apart from the card games and roistering. If it is evening, he can be found immersed in his summer-warmed water, attempting to remove the dust of hideout and trail and, I suspect, something else.

  A hurt, a lover, a memory?

  Something, in any case, deeper than skin.

  he encampment to which Laura Bullion and Ben Kilpatrick had taken Etta Place was as well hidden as a Harvey Girl's crinolines.

  The spot they called Hole-in-the-Wall was surrounded by sheer rock faces hundreds of feet high. The only entrance or egress was through a single narrow pass that was hidden from the main trail and passable only by horse or on foot and then only in single file. The surrounding canyons formed a sort of natural fortress. Its battlements were high stone cliffs, and its ramparts were rocky escarpments providing lookout points covering all directions. Butch Cassidy had told Etta Place that over the years a few of Mr. Pinkerton's detectives had succeeded in locating the redoubt, and all had received proper rites of Christian burial on the property.

  Perhaps Etta would not have loved the rocky hiding place so much had it not come with the freedom to gallop it horseback. From the day of her father's death until her rescue at the Grand Junction jail she had lived the life either of a pedestrian or a passenger. She had walked, been hauled by hansom, shared a wagon, or stared from the windows of trains. But here, as an outlaw, she had ridden and ridden hard. Ridden fast, ridden every day.

  Some of the animals had been quicker than others; some were skittish, some courageous. But she had extracted all there was from each, forcing the lazy to bolt like steeplechasers, the frightened to leap from ridge to ledge, the stubborn to obey like champions in a show ring.

  Now, most of a year had passed, and whatever horse was beneath her, Etta was able to traverse the calloused landscape like a seasoned bandit. Familiar with every stone and cactus, she committed the ways of every species of bird and beast to memory absorbing from each their ways of speed or stealth. Likewise she had learned the ways of each man in camp: the drunks and the players, the horsemen and the pederasts, the card cheats and the rustlers, the professional gunfighters and the nearly professional gunfighters, and the farmhands and cowboys who yearned to become gunfighters of any kind.

  And then there were the women and girls who, by their continual fornication with multiple members of the Bunch, brought a kind of comfort and peace to this odd society of troubled men. Etta had dubbed them the Prairie Saints.

  In many ways they reminded her of the girls with whom she had served in Grand Junction. Some hailed from the ranches of the West, others from the less reputable precincts of its cities. But they had been far less fortunate in life than her Harvey sisters. Most had been prostitutes, and those who had escaped that profession were the few deemed too unlovely or malformed for its purposes: Clara with her withered arm; Maria, the harelip; the slow-witted Belle; the balding Jeanine. It had been heartbreaking for Etta to hear their tales of hungry nights alone in the snow or rain, outcasts abandoned by all—parent, church, and law. After such an existence, Hole-in-the-Wall proved a kind of paradise. A place where the male population was less choosy where they took their pleasure; where a homely orphan was welcome
, even if only as a warm body. In return for their skills and affection, the Saints asked only for a canvas roof under which they could perform their duties and whatever victuals could be eaten in gratitude.

  Indeed, if anyone had asked, Etta would have freely admitted that, yes, these men and women were the scum of the earth and, yes, for better and for worse they were now her family. All the family she had in this world. And bless them, one and all.

  All save one.

  Harvey Logan was known as Kid Curry to the bandit world and whatever unlucky law enforcement encountered him. He stood no taller than most of the women and the smaller women at that. Everyone in camp knew he did all he could to increase his stature by a combination of high heels and carved deer-horn lifts secreted inside his boots. On the few occasions that Etta had met him, he had done little but stare and nod.

  Sometimes Curry would not be seen in camp for weeks, and even when he did appear the little man could keep silent for days at a time, ignoring all greetings or invitations to gamble, eat, or drink. Compared with him, Etta thought, Laura Bullion was a gossipmonger. But unlike her taciturn girlfriend, Etta had also seen Kid Curry launch into rambling and violent rants: obscenity-laced speeches filled with conspiracies and fueled by loathing. She could recall how, about a month into her stay, she overheard a casual discussion between Dave Lant and Bob Lee about the recent rise in ticket prices on the Union Pacific. Curry, silent for days, had suddenly turned on his heel and aimed a spitting tirade at the pair.

  “It's an invention of the Freemasons!” he shouted at the two cowboys. “It's them what causes these fares to rise for American folk. The Masons in New York City set them prices according to what jewels and furs their wives still need. How I would love to get ahold of some of their fat women! The lessons I would teach them they would remember longer than any commandments from their prophet.”

  Now, as she knelt to gather water for the midday meal, she heard a muffled scream. One of those lessons had begun. And all in camp knew who the “pupil” would be.

  Over the months she had been at Hole-in-the-Wall, Etta had caught brief glimpses of a tiny Indian woman peering from the rocky cave where Curry made his home. Sometimes she would emerge from its opening to discard refuse or tend the fire and then quickly scurry back inside. Everyone in camp referred to her as Little Snake.

  Etta knelt to fill her water bag and again heard the woman's howl. This was not like the moans she had heard from the tents of the Prairie Saints. This sound was joy's reverse. The Indian language nothwithstanding, Etta understood her words, each one begging Harvey Logan to cease whatever acts could cause such suffering. In the space between her cries she thought she could hear Curry laugh, or make whatever sound such a monster made in place of laughter.

  Curry's “lesson” over, Little Snake would not be seen for days at a time. Others in camp had told Etta that the man's squaws usually lasted him about a year before they vanished. “Run off,” Curry would say, before beginning his hunt for a fresh one.

  “Your pardon, Miss Place, but you're getting that water all down your dress.”

  The man's voice seemed to snap like a dry branch. Etta looked down to see the leather sack overflowing. Placing it on the ground before her, she straightened her skirt and shook the water from her hands. As she stood, her knees trembled slightly. She turned toward Harry Longbaugh and murmured a too-quiet thank-you.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Can I get something to dry you down, maybe?”

  “No. No, thank you, Mr. Longbaugh. You're most kind.”

  Harry looked at her long enough for his eyes to soften and then put his forefinger to his hat. He bowed slightly and began to walk off across the compound.

  “Mr. Longbaugh, wait.”

  Harry stopped and turned to face her.

  “Mr. Longbaugh, this is a delicate subject, but I am sure you could not fail to notice the sounds being made by the Indian woman who shares that cave with Mr. Curry.”

  “Yes, ma'am. Hard not to.”

  “Well, as a Christian, how can you stand by? Those horrid cries. My God! I've been told of the fate worse than death. If it has a sound, I imagine we have just heard it.”

  Harry Longbaugh took two steps closer to Etta. The toe of his boot drew a circle in the dust. “Miss Etta, here in camp a man's business is his own. This is where the laws of the world are evaded, not just the money laws or the property laws but the laws between man and woman. Now, if she was a white woman, Butch might see fit to interfere. But the Indian is made different from the human. Organs in different places, brain smaller. And though them sounds might be to white ears terrible, it could just be the savage way of female satisfaction. Until Butch says different, it ain't our'n to come between man and wife or whatever they call themselves in a place like this. Now, I could rustle a few huskies to move your tent as far away from Curry's hole as this acreage will allow. It won't stop the noise from bouncing off the rocks, but farther away is farther away.”

  Etta drew herself up to her full height. A vein in her left temple colored and began to pound. “No, Mr. Longbaugh, I am afraid that would not be satisfactory. You see, it is not the hearing of the act to which I object but the doing of it. I am used to hearing such nonsense about location of organs and displacement of the brain. In Philadelphia we often are subjected to similar stupidities about our blacks. But no matter where her heart might lie, in your own you must know that this is a human, your stupid code be damned. Can it be that the great Sundance is either so ignorant of pain or so afraid of Kid Curry that he cannot put a stop to such perversion in his ranks?”

  Harry Longbaughs eyes flashed for a moment and then turned sad. “No, Miss Etta. I am certainly not ignorant of pain.”

  Etta approached him. She placed one hand on his forearm and looked up into his dark eyes. “And this woman, Mr. Longbaugh. If she were I?”

  Harry Longbaugh paused for a moment and then turned toward the screaming. Etta picked up her skirts and followed him. She could hear the jangle of his spurs as his heels crushed the alkali. At the entrance to Curry's cave, Harry stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Logan! Harvey Logan!”

  Perhaps twenty seconds passed before Curry emerged. The little man was in shirtsleeves and blinked at the light of day.

  Behind him stood the even smaller figure of Little Snake, her dark eyes darting left and right. Her face was filthy with grime and smudged with tears. Her buckskins were torn into rags and stained here and there with blood. The beautiful beadwork that had once adorned her breast and collar had been wrenched away, leaving only the odd lonely bangle amid a line of broken threads. And perched upon her head, bent at its center, its plumage stripped to ribbons, was a single eagle feather, placed there as a cruel parody of what once had been an ornament of pride. As Etta got her first close look at the tiny Indian she realized that the girl was little more than a child, sixteen years old at most, and she began to tremble in horror and fury.

  “We'll get right to it,” Harry said. “Them screams from your squaw are upsetting Miss Place.”

  Curry spat in the dust. “And why should I give a mule's damn about what upsets Miss Place?”

  Longbaugh hooked his finger in his belt. “They upset me too.”

  Curry inhaled the contents of his nose, swallowed, and smiled. The sight chilled Etta like a first frost. “I see,” Curry said. “What upsets Miss Place upsets you. And what upsets you upsets Miss Place. Ducky. Well, last I looked this was Hole-in-the-Wall, not San Francisco or—where is it you hail from?—Phoenixville-goddamn-Pennsylvania. I can't help what an Indian sounds like when she's taken. What would you do, Longbaugh, stifle all the whores here from hollering their pleasure?”

  “No matter, Curry. It's pain. And we'll have no more.”

  “And what about Miss Place here, Mr. Sundance? What kind of noise does she make?”

  Harry Longbaugh reddened from cap to collar. He strode toward Curry and, with one jerk of the little man's linen, l
ifted him until their eyes were even.

  “This is the only way we're the same size, Curry. And just as I'd not beat a child, I'll not fight a dwarf. If you'd prefer we get equal by iron, then we'll settle it that way. Otherwise give me the woman.”

  Curry glared hatred but gave no answer. Harry dropped him to the ground.

  As the dust rose around Curry, Little Snake bolted from the mouth of the cave and through the center of the camp. Etta gave chase, following her to the edge of the tents and through a maze of rock and brush. When she emerged into a stony clearing, Etta shaded her eyes against the setting sun. The girl had disappeared.

  She could hear the clatter of her boots upon the flat stones. How could she track the woman here? This land was the birthright of the Indians, and not even a hundred years of white theft had been enough to negate their magical ability to dematerialize into it. Then, between two jagged crags, she saw the twisted dirty-white eagle feather standing only an inch or two above the rock. Etta clambered over a long flat stone and into the crevasse.

  The girl was curled into a ball, her face tight up against a rock wall, arms encircling her legs. Her eyes were wild with fright, her teeth bared in defiance. Etta approached her slowly, speaking soothing words she knew Little Snake could not comprehend but hoping that their tone would convey her good intentions.

  And then, as if called by memories of comfort, Etta began to hum a soft melody. It was a lullaby her nanny would sing to her whenever she was afraid.

  Hush-you-bye, don't you cry.

  Go to sleep, you little baby…

  She murmured the lyrics carefully, individually, long breaths between each. And as she sang she recalled the cradle of those soft black arms and how every note had felt like the balm of Eden.