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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Kid in the Cold
by John S. Craig
He had known many kinds of cold, and this was the sunless and bitter kind. He had known the cold of the Indiana and Kansas prairie as a boy, and the snowy cold of Colorado as he and his family marched to Denver along the Federal Road west into the dry, frigid winds that swept down from the distant Rockies onto the stark plains. He had known the cold of the Arizona deserts as he lay huddled in a pit of sand beneath a steady wind with little more than a saddle perched over his chest and tattered wool blankets around his legs, but this was the worst kind of cold. This was the cold of late December, 1880 the bitterness of chill, dark, and entrapment in eastern New Mexico Territory.
The abandoned rock hut they found an hour into night did little more than shelter them from the snow that ripped relentlessly from the northwest. Resting near the Arroyo Taiban, it was just 12 by 30 feet, had nothing but four walls, flat brush roof, and little more space than five men and two horses could find between themselves. There was nothing to eat save the few strips of beef and a few pieces of bread they had saved between themselves from the Wilcox ranch, and some hard candy the Kid had an affinity to eat during the winter, a sweet tooth he had acquired from his mother’s baking. That left the four walls and a holed roof that provided a minimum shelter from the bitter of the night.
Bigfoot Tom was gunned down and probably dead. There were only four left along with the Kid: Dave Rudabaugh, Charley Bowdre, William Wilson, and Tom Pickett. It had been four days since they had been ambushed by hidden gunmen outside the old military hospital of Ft. Sumner, and now after a brief stay at the Wilcox ranch they were on their own where the refuge of friendly ranches were scarce and the prairie rich in December snow. The Kid’s prize mount, his beloved and speedy bay he called Gray, along with another horse stood in a corner ready to be mounted for a quick escape through the door if needed, while the rest of the horses were roped outside to the roof’s vigas.
“Wonder if the posse thought Tom was me?” the Kid wondered aloud but no one responded. No doubt, Garrett and his posse were behind the Kid’s latest troubles in Ft. Sumner. None ventured a positive thought on the matter. Could Tom have survived that shot? They all doubted it. Saying so much would make matters worse.
“Suppose whoever shot just shot,” mused the Kid. Charley had told the Kid when they rode from Ft. Sumner that Tom was hit in the heart. “It was Garrett all right,” said the Kid. “It was a lie that he had headed south. He knows I’ve said I won’t be taken alive. He’ll shoot first and take my pistol later.”
“I know I hit one of them,” repeated Pickett, a boast he continued to repeat since they had met up with him at Wilcox-Brazil ranch. “I got that damned long-legged fellow that hollered ‘Halt.’ ” Pickett shot no one. Garrett and Chambers fired at the same time delivering wounds to Bigfoot Tom that would render him dead in less than an hour. Pickett had been separated from the gang, lost his horse, and walked the remaining twelve miles to the Wilcox ranch where he hid in a haystack hoping the boys would show up before Garrett. Lucky for him, the boys had made it and replenished their supplies along with another horse for Dirty Dave. After sleeping in the barn, having their fill of some food, they stowed away a few pieces of dried meat, bread, and a pint of whiskey for the ride. Staying any longer would be risking too much, so they had moved a few miles east and settled for the small comfort of the stone hut’s brace against the wind, hoping the weather would slow Garrett’s inevitable search.
There they were huddled in a snowstorm, the five of them wrapping themselves in blankets and preparing for the night. The snow would make their trail easier to find than not unless there was a stronger wind and more snow to sweep the tracks clean. Don’t matter, the Kid thought to himself. Garrett was a master tracker, and he had undoubtedly armed his searching effort with capable men. It would be a simple matter of staying ahead of the posse. They would have to push on as fast as possible. Garrett wanted them, the Governor wanted them, and the public wanted them, especially the Kid, a mysterious animal that would be the focus of a lynch mob in any town in the territory now and for many months to come. $500 Reward will be paid for the delivery of Bonney, alias, “The Kid,” to the Sheriff of Lincoln County, Lew Wallace, Governor of New Mexico.
As they burned a few twigs and scrub oak in the doorway of the hut in a vain attempt to warm themselves, they spoke of their plan for the morning and tugged at their share of a whiskey pint. Snow or no snow they would be forced to head southeast to some friendly ranches around Los Portales, and find some refuge along the way, a practice that the Kid and others had perfected during their years of rustling cattle and horses. There was the abandoned little house Charlie and the Kid had procured near Los Portales that had been stocked with some food for occasions just like this, a place where the Kid figured a stage line would travel through. It would be a profitable spot for a ranch in the future but it appeared that he had become too well known to every enemy, so there would be no chance of settling down there for any extended time.
The Kid’s companions secretly admired him for his ability to befriend even the unlikeliest of strangers. The Kid had a way with people and could speak an almost flawless version of local Spanish, which impressed the Hispanics when ruffians like their kind might come upon a ranch with the intention of simply seeking refuge instead of stealing livestock. He was always able to catch the eye of local senoritas with his charms. If there was any time he needed the warmth of one of his queridas, it was here. Now they found themselves half-frozen, one less strong, and stuck in a cold, stone hut in a place called, fittingly, Stinking Springs.
“Cold enough so we won’t smell Dave,” the Kid quipped in hopes of interjecting some levity into their misery, all of them knowing that Rudabaugh got his nickname from his filthy clothes and his hatred baths and water never bathed in it, never drank it. Dave, known as Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, had already established a reputation as a thief and murderer with the Dodge City Gang that raised hell in Kansas and New Mexico. Dirty Dave along with fellow gang member Tom Pickett, fell into the remnants of the Kid’s Regulators after working with Charley Bowdre. Though none knew it at the time, he held the dubious distinction of being hunted by the up and coming Kansas bounty hunter, gambler, and part-time lawman Wyatt Earp. When Wyatt followed Dirty Dave’s route to Ft. Griffin, Texas, Wyatt met Doc Holliday for the first time. It was Holliday who theorized that Rudabaugh had headed back to Kansas. Wyatt had telegraphed fellow lawman Bat Masterson informing him about the possibility of Rudabaugh’s return to Kansas and maybe Dodge. Bat apprehended Dirty Dave only to see him released after making a deal with a local judge for freedom if Dave told all he knew of Dodge City Gang.
The hut was circled in white death. The cold and snow had killed everything around it the stench of Dirty Dave, the stink of the springs, the hope of riding away from the ensuing posse.
Dirty Dave would have certainly been under the custody of Garrett and his posse just three nights before, if he had not quickly jumped onto Wilson’s horse after he had his mount shot out from under him during Bigfoot Tom’s killing at Sumner. Billy Wilson and Dirty Dave rode out together. Rudabaugh had come to the gang through the Kid’s good friend Charley, but the Kid knew Rudabaugh to be a dangerous, hardened criminal and murderer. The Kid did not trust him, but Dirty Dave was another gun in a situation that needed them. Rudabaugh had a way of finding trouble and brushing up with legendary lawmen and desperadoes, the Kid being his latest. To the Kid, Dirty Dave seemed as old as the thirty-year old Charley but it was hard to tell. Insulting Dave was not smart but the Kid had a way of ribbing people that seemed more comical than nasty when he punctuated his friendly gibe with a silly grin accentuated by his buck teeth. Maybe it was the whiskey going to his head. No one was in the mood for a fight between themselves for the night was snowy and the future too dark for fussing.
“How many men you killed, Dave?” queried the Kid. “Newspapers say I’ve killed 21.”
Dave snorted disgust beneath a blanket as he balanced his pistol on his chest “All of ‘em deserved it,” Rudabaugh whispered to the ceiling, frosty breath rising from his mouth turning his words into a sinister gray cloud.
Only Tom Pickett had any idea of how ruthless Rudabaugh could be. Pickett, in his early twenties like the Kid, was once a Texas Ranger, had landed a job as a peace officer for a short time in Las Vegas, New Mexico territory until he had been found mixing with the likes of Rudabaugh and the Dodge City Gang, which resulted in Tom being fired. Dirty Dave had robbed trains and stagecoaches, and recently murdered a Las Vegas jailer trying to spring another turncoat lawman, Marshall Webb. The man Rudabaugh killed happened to be Hispanic, a fact not lost on many of the town’s residents. Las Vegas was the last place Pickett or Rudabaugh wanted to see, and it lay just a hundred miles northwest with a citizenry that would rather lynch the likes of Dirty Dave and the Kid than feed them a single pan of beans in a jail cell.
“Stuck with Dirty Dave in Stinking Springs,” Tom Pickett said continuing the dangerous jab at Rudabaugh, but no one was game enough to continue the cold jesting of a known killer when he returned an icy stare at Pickett. The room became quiet again save the occasional snort and uneasy rustling of the two horses.
“Suppose the Las Vegas Gazette writers will claim ‘the Kid’ killed Bigfoot Tom,” mused the Kid. The loss of Bigfoot Tom was hard on the Kid and Bowdre. They had known him from the beginning of their trouble in Lincoln County years before, and Tom had been a part of the loosely-banded Regulators that had jumped on the side of the law in hopes that they could turn the tables on the murdering Murphy-Dolan Gang. Now that was all ancient history and once again the Kid had to find a way to escape his troubles.
The Kid leaned back on his saddle and covered himself in blankets, his double-action Thunderer .41 Colt and Winchester rifle tucked close to his side. It was late December and the night would be long. Losing Tom was a blow akin to the murder of the first real adult friend he ever had, John Tunstall, the reason the Regulators were formed. They had revenged Tunstall’s death as well as they could but revenging Tom’s now seemed a waste. When would the killing end?
Escape. It had always seemed to be a part of the Kid’s life. Escape from Indiana, Wichita, as a boy to the west, escape from the drudgery of a life living off the dusty plain, or the sad town life of Wichita. Escape from a jail cell in Silver City when he was just fourteen to working on ranches in Arizona territory. Escape from Windy Cahill’s insults and slaps from a pool cue with a lethal pistol shot to his ribs by Cahill’s own gun, and then escape back to New Mexico. Escape from the burning McSween house into the Rio Bonito amid the rifle shots of the local soldiers and Lincoln vigilantes, as well as the miraculous escape from the Greathouse-Kuch roadhouse when it was surrounded by another group of vigilantes. Escape never happened for hostage Jim Carlyle when he crashed through a window to freedom only to be cut down by the gang’s pistols, the Kid’s included, a merciless act that showed the vigilantes they would not be taken alive. He was devoted to his brothers, so there were no second thoughts when he helped pull out Jesse, Tom, Catrino, and the others from the stinking, festering dugout Lincoln called a jail. There was the escape from Ft. Stanton soldiers when he was hidden between two mattresses beneath the Mexican couple that had risked their freedom when they sheltered him. Start anew, Bigfoot and Charley had told him, go to Texas and leave this place. Escape from his name: what was his name? His mother called him Henry and he knew his father as Michael McCarty but not for long. After his father’s death, his mother took on her maiden name again, Bonney, a name he would use instead of his stepfather’s, a name they had called him in Arizona when he was a boy, Kid Antrim. Now he was just the Kid to his associates or Billy, William H. Bonney to the law, Billito to his amigos, and within the last few weeks the Las Vegas Gazette had branded him with a new alias -- Billy the Kid, a name he may never escape.
The night reminded him of the cold of the past. His mother whispering to brother Joe of their father’s death in a flat, unemotional tone that was meant to be overheard by Henry. She had spoken with her usual cool. It was not her way to coddle and coo her boys with warm hugs and kisses. She had known hardship from her life on the plains, so her boys would be better served facing the cold turn of the world straight on than expecting warmth from a mystery that never gave up love without earning its charity. He is gone, she told the boys without any further feeling as they lay in bed, gone and nothing is to be done about it other than going on. She showed no tears, and they would show the same. The cold continued when a man came to steal her warmth from them. There was the cold reception he and Joe had given their mother’s beau and future husband William Antrim in Kansas for they wouldn’t share her love; it was all they had and they were too poor to share. He was proud of his mother, and Joe and he reveled in her attention and sweets she drew from her oven. Their mother’s sickly cough that grew to kill her left Joe and William speechless and fifteen-year-old Henry cold with hate for the world. Michael McCarty was gone, so was Catherine, and now he would abandon the boy he had been, Henry Antrim, and become a survivor with whatever name he needed to see the next day. He had been shown kindness by Silver City families when his mother died, and their stepfather spent more time in distant mining camps than with his stepsons. He would not forget the Truesdales’ or Hudsons’ kindness, nor would he forget the harshness the town showed toward foreigners, the Chinamen in particular. The band of schoolboys had mirrored their parents’ disgust with more violent affronts to the foreigners: rocks, insults, and theft came the foreigners’ way. The old sheriff should not have left him in that jail for stealing. There was a way out and he found it. His shimmy up the jailhouse chimney to freedom would mean he would escape his troubles and leave behind the log house next to the Big Ditch, the Truesdales, the school, Joe, William, and never return to Silver City. When the world presented cruel coldness, he would match it with the same.
The murdering coldness of the Murphy-Dolan Gang when they cut down his mentor John Tunstall was fresh in his mind. And what of the letters he had sent to Governor Wallace asking him to meet his part of their bargain . . . I have done everything that I promised you I would, and you have done nothing that you promised me no there would be no amnesty as Governor promised, no warmth from him or the rest of the world, just a bounty on his head and newspaper tales of horrors he committed, both real and imagined. All he had was himself and his horse, for surely outside his long friendship with Charley there was nothing he could trust. Even his stone hut companions would turn their backs on him as soon as it benefited them. Now there was more than just the old Murphy-Dolan Gang in the shadows. Yes, more of the likes of Texas Joe and Buckshot Roberts ready to risk all to say they had bested the Kid, but for now it was just Garrett close enough to cause trouble.
A quiet settled into the hut with the occasional whistle of wind through the walls and the labored breathing of the horses and men. Tomorrow would be another day devoted to escape, and how could the day after be any different? It was all the same with this life until he met with one of his dancing girls in Sumner or Puerto de Luna. They were the only warmth he knew. The kisses of young Paulita in Sumner were the sweetest of latest memories, and he had wished he had been able to slip past Garrett’s posse to find her but their tryst would have to wait. For now, Sumner’s memory was nothing more than the thought of good Tom’s body being buried in the frozen earth of the old military cemetery. Maybe someone in Sumner, somebody like Paulita or Dulevina, attended to his body with some dignity, the kind of respect folks in Silver City had shown his mother when she breathed her last, troubled breath. Somewhere in Sumner, there had to be a warm thought for Tom, but that was just another wish he had in an evening and day full of them. A spread of land like Wilcox’s ranch would be his wish for his young Paulita, his own horses in the pasture, brother Joe by his side, an orchard of fruit trees, and hands working his land like . . .
A moan from one of the boys cut through his sleep and broke the light stretching from a morning sun over his ranch. He would return with closed eyes and escape the black chill of his temporary imprisonment. Quien es? he asked of the moan in the dark. Was it Paulita? No, but he would find her in this sunny, whiskey dream.
He had put hardship behind him through escape. He had escaped through a chimney in that old jail in Silver City, a route that sent him away from the suspicious eyes of the prospector William Antrim, and into his current race from his past. The light over his ranch brought the sound of Tunstall’s bunkhouse and dining room to his vision, a place of friends like Charles and Tom. It was a place that Tunstall had given him, a house that he never knew existed with laughter and respect from an educated man who spoke with a foreign accent and a voice that lilted poetry of ancient men. It was the foreigner Tunstall’s challenge to each of them to read and learn of the gentler ways of life. He was a man that had impressed all of them, and brought them together like the ancient knights he told them about in that far away land where men gave their word to their king and sought his wish of a cup that replenished life. It was a holy cup that forgave a man the sins that all of them wore as heavy as their checkered pasts. Tunstall’s voice softly repeated tales by memory at their meals, It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. . . With that Sir Arthur turned with his knights, and smote behind and before, and ever Sir Arthur was in the foremost press till his horse was slain underneath him. Among the tales of the brave knights, Tunstall would launch into words that lilted like a song without music promises of love, longings for a woman . . . but soft what light from yonder window breaks, it is the east and Juliet the sun . . . short lines of words that flowed like a river in his ear and sparkled like stars, words and a voice he never heard before or since . . . arise fair sun and slay the envious moon . . . what was that world that Tunstall knew so well, that had the hardened boys of his ranch so gripped with fascination and touched them with a quiet none had experienced . . . where was that place that was ruled with the might of justice and tables full of drink and game that were gained with an honest day’s labor that brought real peace of mind and answered wishes?
The wind groaned harder through the walls, snow spitting into the hut as one of the boys crawled out of the single door covered with a single blanket into the night. The Kid pushed his big green sombrero over his head harder and sought the warmth of the sunny days of Tunstall’s ranch on the Rio Feliz . . . a place he had stumbled upon and found a young Englishman willing to risk his wealth to many a shady young character like the Kid. The comfort he and the boys felt at Tunstall’s ranch was brief and ended with the murdering Murphy-Dolan Gang shooting his employer in the head . . . then the war . . . the reprisals of his own gang, knights who would serve right and payback their own way . . . Morton and Baker, the killers of Tunstall cut down by the Regulators in revenge. Sheriff Brady, Deputy Hindman, and the Murphy man Buckshot Roberts all paid with their lives after the Kid had swore vengeance for Tunstall’s murder. “Hands up, Roberts!” “Not much, Mary Ann!” came Roberts’s odd reply followed by his gunfire, defiant to the end. Buckshot had nearly licked them all before he died the next day from Charley’s gut shot, but before he died he had killed the Regulator’s leader Dick Brewer. Courageous or not, all involved would pay for what they did to Tunstall. None of his brethren dismissed the Kid’s promises lightly. Yet, none of this was what he wanted, and it was years ago, far in the past. He was no longer a kid. He had dreams other than revenge, and a life rustling cattle, cleverly changing the brands, and selling them for what he could get quickly was becoming a losing proposition. Trouble was, the Kid thought, that one thing always leads to another just like other killings he was suspected of committing, Carlyle, Bernstein, Cahill. He had heard that some people believed he had killed a blacksmith in Silver City when he was a boy a damnable lie; he cursed the liars. There was one thing he would not abide by and that was a threat, and so when Texas Joe Grant had pulled a gun on him in Sumner, the Kid gladly put three slugs in his chin, after “fixing” Joe’s gun so that his desire of killing the Kid and becoming a hero would be nothing more than his last unfulfilled wish. He was happy to rid the world of another drunk braggart, a bully like Windy Cahill. The Kid could clearly see where this had all got him McSween and Bigfoot Tom dead and his old friend Garrett, a mucho alto fellow the Kid had met at Sumner’s Beaver Smith saloon, chasing him for his own reward. The Kid knew Pat’s resolve and so his search to hunt the Kid down was more than just a stab at money and fame. You won’t take me alive, Pat. Tomorrow would be a dash away from this misery, a final escape before Garrett sent them all to a train to Santa Fe or a mob’s rope in Las Vegas. There’s nothing left to fight for but Billy.
What were the others dreaming, the Kid wondered as he drifted back to sleep. Wishes of their own? For now they were all trapped in a four-walled cell with only a tiny door for escape. Rudabaugh and Pickett were dreaming of a place far south of the lynch mobs of Vegas, or maybe there was a chance to drift back into Kansas. The teen-aged Billy Wilson may have dreamed of his childhood in Ohio and Texas before he got mixed up with the free-wheeling desperadoes he found in Dodge City, White Oaks, and Sumner. Images of the cuss that stole his White Oaks livery stable with a payment of counterfeit bills may have burned in his brain along with the whiskey and frost. Was there enough time for him to start a new life and go back to his real name of Dave Anderson? Maybe in his dreams he was always the boy, Dave Anderson. Charley, the Kid’s last real friend from the days of Tunstall’s ranch, had the brightest of futures if he could ever find enough space to return to his wife, a good woman that the Kid admired. At thirty-years old, Charles Bowdre’s dreams must have been full of wishes, the pungent aroma of baked bread and smiles from his sweet, Mexican wife, whom he had hoped to find in Sumner before Garrett’s posse opened fire.
Chisum, you owe me! I owe you nothing, Bonney.
Governor, this is the way it is. Chisum is the man who got me into Trouble and benefited by my work and now is doing all he can against me . . . but so far as my being at the head of a Band there is nothing of it, for in several Instances I have recovered Stolen Property, where no chance to get an Officer to it . . . ask Hugo Zuber and Pablo Analla of Puerto de Luna for they will give you a different impression than Chisum and his Tools.
They had been betrayed, and maybe Chisum and his fortune were at the center of it. The Kid had been betrayed by Wallace, though they had met in John Wilson’s Lincoln house just last year when he agreed to testify against the murderers of Chapman, a lawyer the Kid saw murdered on Lincoln’s main street by the Murphy-Dolan Gang. Now Wallace refused his promise of amnesty for the Kid, which meant more treachery from the rich and the governors. Now there were spies on the plains. The young Juan Valdez was one of them. Valdez had given the Kid a note saying that Garrett’s posse had left Sumner and returned to Roswell, a likely deception by Pat himself. As he and the gang had moved into Sumner that night, he had a sense there was something wrong, so he had doubled back from the side of Tom to Wilson and asked for some tobacco. Sure enough, his intuition was correct when he heard the gunshots at the abandoned hospital. However, for this night, he was confident there were no spies among them, only the desperate wishing for a new road, or a new victim, or an easy grab of gold coins from the unsuspected, all among groans of wind, snores, grunts, and within the four walls colder than any jail cell in the territory. For now, he was a survivor, and for tomorrow maybe a new day and a new chance. Run, Gray, run! A spring over the horizon where Paulita waits and fresh grain for you, partner. The sun is warm there and the water is fresh. Run!
Start anew, rambled through his mind. Sombrero Jack, his partner in petty theft in Silver City went straight, and if he could, thought the Kid, so could he. Was he fooling himself? Would he ever lose the rage that he felt for men like Cahill or Texas Joe? Woe to the man who turned a gun or a cold eye to William Bonney for he vowed never to be taken by force by anyone. Even innocent men like Jim Carlyle raised his fury to a murderous level. Could he walk away from poker, monte, rustling, or the comfort of his Colt Thunderer?
The night was long but the gang slept heavy beneath their blankets. Henry, whispered brother Joe. Cinnamon bread! Mother had baked again, and it would be a fine breakfast, if he could get to the table before she shooed him to school. The Kid’s thoughts fell into the shade of the orchard at his ranch moments before Charley quietly raised himself into the bitter cold of dawn, secured a bag of grain for his horse, and pulled the Kid’s green-banded sombrero off his face. The Kid held fast to the comfort of his dreams, and the hope of a ride to Los Portales to find amigos that always helped him. The Yerby ranch to the northeast, closer and just as friendly, would be a likely place Garrett would search, if he and his posse were not already there. Wallace now they call me Billy the Kid, a captain of a Band of Outlaws from Portales there is nothing of it I have done everything I promised now what of your promises? am I to be left out in the cold? Who was that in the dark? Quien es? Charley pulled the round hat tightly over his head and dipped his head into the wind of the door as he walked into the morning light screened with heavy clouds and light snow.
Multiple cracks of Winchesters rang from Garrett’s posse. For the past four hours, Garrett and his men had huddled in the snow in a riverbed 75 yards from the snoring men. No one in the posse knew what the Kid looked like but Garrett. He made an order not to shoot until he made the command. Seeing the Kid’s familiar sombrero gave Garrett no pause to call the shot and end the reign of the Kid’s terror, but it was Charley Bowdre that took slugs to the chest, throwing him back into the house where the Kid jumped up and grabbed his friend. It was Charley that jumped from the dark.
“You have shot Charley!” the Kid screamed. The rest of the gang scrambled from their blankets and grabbed weapons.
The Kid looked into Charley’s face. He knew he was as dead as Bigfoot Tom, gut shot with rifles.
“They’ve killed you Charley. Go out and take some of them sons of bitches with you.”
The Kid twirled Charley around and bid him his final adieu by pushing him out the door where he had already been killed once. Charley staggered toward the riverbed, gasping, the green-banded sombrero falling into the snow, mouth open and eyes glazed from shock. He lifted a single arm toward Garrett who crouched in the riverbed, Winchester cradled across his thighs, and then without regard of being shot himself, Pat stood and took a few steps toward Charlie.
From the doorway, the Kid angrily raised his Colt toward Garrett and then lowered it. Who was that? Was it really Garrett, thought the Kid.
Charlie fell to one knee and spoke to Garrett. “I wish . . . I wish . . . Wish . . . I’m dying.”
Garrett grabbed Charlie and dragged him to a blanket in the riverbed. When he set him on his back he died.
For a moment, there was a silence from the house and riverbed.
“You killed him Garrett but you wanted me!” taunted the Kid as he yelled from the door, pistol in hand. It was now that the Kid would have to move quickly with his bay, and make a daring run like the one he had executed at the McSween house. That was his wish. Before he could jump on Gray, Wilson and Pickett jumped from the door and began pulling their mounts toward the door. Garrett opened his Winchester on one of the horses and it fell in front of the door, blocking any chance the Kid had of getting his bay into the open. Pickett and Wilson ran into the hut.
“Come out,” Garrett yelled. “It’s over.”
“You come and get us,” screamed the Kid as the others began desperately digging a hole to escape from under the far wall of the hut.
“There’s plenty of firewood out here to get warm with,” suggested Garrett. “Just come out and get it and we’ll talk.”
“Can’t abide by that, Pat.”
A few more shots into the hut’s walls from the posse of twenty seemed to silence the Kid’s cursing and sounds of digging.
The Kid and Garrett traded barbs throughout the day. In the afternoon, Garrett sent for a wagon of firewood, built fires, and cooked beans and bacon. The seductive smoke wended its way into the hut throughout the afternoon. As the Kid considered his options among the long hours of the cloudy day, he whistled and sang one of his favorite tunes, though he knew just a few lines.
Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today,
Life is fading fast away.
Just before dusk, Rudabaugh threw his hands up and exited the hut to negotiate with Garrett. Dirty Dave knew that they would all be taken to Vegas and a lynch mob would surely form as soon as the town got wind that Dirty Dave and the Kid were in custody. Rudabaugh had the most to lose, as he figured it. Garrett struck up a deal. All would be fed as soon as they threw down their arms and left the hut. He would protect them from any vigilantes between here and their trials. Garrett, thought the Kid, had found his calling. He was a lawman.
Dirty Dave returned to the hut with Garrett’s promise.
For now, there was only one escape walking through the door to the inviting warmth of the fires and into the restraint of Garrett’s ropes. The Kid walked out last, tossed his Thunderer Colt and Winchester ‘73 to the ground, and slowly shuffled through the snow to his sombrero that had saved him and killed Charley. He picked it out of the snow, straightened the green band over the crown, and pulled it over his head. He looked back to the hut but Gray hoofed the ground nervously and refused to follow him, spooked by the dead horse that lay at the doorway. Frosty fog from the Kid’s mouth billowed over his face, shrouding his features as some of the posse squinted in the dim morning light. That was the Kid, some said to themselves -- my God, he looks like a schoolboy. “Shoot him now, he’s slippery,” egged on one of the posse to Garrett. “I’ve got the Kid’s gun!” yelled another as he jerked the Thunderer from the snow.
He had survived, the Kid thought to himself as he extended his hands into the restraint of ropes, and set himself close to a wood fire cooking bacon and beans, the aroma that annoyed him for hours. That scent gnawed at the Kid until he realized it was time to take his medicine. The joke was on him now. Standing next to a fire was all he could wish for until he had made his next escape.
Charlie. He got the shot intended for the Kid. Tom was shot and surely killed by posse guns that really wanted the Kid. As he had done so well in the past, the Kid escaped his four-walled, frozen cell with a promise of a meal and protection from a man who kept his word.
Now Gray and his guns were behind him and gone forever. He was left in the cold with the only hope of his ropes being exchanged with metal cuffs, restraints that could be a weapon. It would take the right time. The Kid figured he would be fitted with irons by the evening.
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