“I figure ever’ man has a right to choose his own way, and no matter what Ben’s done for you, you got that right. “I don’t know what you’ll do, but if you decide to step out of the gang I don’t want to be around when it happens. Old Ben will be fit to be tied. I don’t figure he’s ever really thought about how you feel. He’s only figuring on gettin’ out and havin’ somebody to take over. “He’s built somethin’ here, and in his way he’s proud of it.
Ben would have been a builder and an organizer in whatever direction he chose, but he’s not thinkin’ straight. Moreover, Ben hasn’t been on a raid for years. He doesn’t know how it is anymore.
“Oh, he plansl He studies the layout of the towns, the banks, and the railroads, but he doesn’t see how folks are changin’. He doesn’t listen to them talk. It isn’t just saloons, corrals, honky-tonks, and gamblin’ anymore. Folks have churches an’ schools. They don’t want lead flyin’ whilst their kids are walkin’ to school.
“Right now you’re an honest man. You’re clean as a whistle. Once you become an outlaw a lot will change. You will have to kill, don’t forget that. It is one thing to kill in defense of your home, your family, or your country. It is quite another thing when you kill for money or for power.” “Do you think I’ll have to kill Perrin an’ Molina?” “Unless they kill you first. You’re good with a gun, Mike. Aside from Ben Curry you’re the best I ever saw, but shootin’ at a target isn’t like shootin’ at a man who’s shootin’ back at you.
“Take Billy the Kid, this Lincoln County gunman we’ve been hearin” about. Frank an’ George Coe, Dick Brewer, Jesse Evans, any one of them can probably shoot as good as Ben. The difference is that part down inside where the nerves should be. Well, that was left out. When he starts shootin’ or they shoot at him, he’s like ice.
“Kerb Perrin is that way, too. He’s cold, and steady as a rock. Rigger Molina’s another kind of cat. He explodes all over the place.
He’s white-hot but deadly as a rattler.
“Five men cornered Molina one time out of Julesburg. When the shootin’ was over four of them were down and the fifth was holdin’ a gunshot arm.
Molina, he rode out under his own power. He’s a shaggy wolf, that onel Wild, uncurried, an’ big as a bear!” Roundy paused, puffing on his pipe. “Sooner or later, Mike, there’ll be a showdown. It will be one or the other, maybe both of them, and God help youl” Listening to Roundy, Mike remembered that time and time again Ben Curry had warned him to confide in no one. Betrayal could come from anyone, at any time, for even the best of people liked to talk and to repeat what they knew. And there were always those who might take a drink too many or who might talk to get themselves off a hook. What nobody knew, nobody could tell. Obviously, Ben practiced what he preached, for until now Mike had not even guessed Ben might have a life other than the one he lived in and about Toadstool Canyon. Of course, he did ride off alone from time to time, but he was understood to be scouting jobs or tapping his own sources of information.
Nobody knew what the next job was to be, or where, until Ben Curry called a conference around the big table in his stone house. At such times the table would be covered with maps and diagrams. The location of the town in relation to the country around, the possible approaches to and routes away from town, the layout of the bank itself or whatever was to be robbed, and information on the people employed there and their probable reaction to a robbery.
The name of the town was never on the map. If it was recognized by anyone present he was advised to keep his mouth shut until told. Distances had been measured and escape routes chosen, with possible alternatives in the event of trouble. Fresh horses awaited them and first-aid treatment if required. Each job was planned months in advance and a final check made to see that nothing unexpected had come up just before the job was pulled.
There were ranches and hideouts located at various places to be used only in case of need, and none were known criminal resorts. Each location was given only at the time of the holdup, and rarely would a location be used again.
Far more than Roundy imagined had Mike Bastian been involved in the planning of past ventures. For several years he had been permitted to take part in the original planning to become acquainted with Ben Curry’s methods of operation.
“Some day,” Ben Curry warned, “you will ride out with the boys, and you must be ready. I do not plan for you to ride out often. Just a time or two to get the feel of it and to prove yourself to the others. When you do go you will have charge of the job, and when you return you will make the split.” “Will they stand for that?” “They’d damn’ well better! I’ll tell “em, but you’ll be your own enforcer-and no shootin”.
You run this outfit without that, or you ain’t the man I think you are.” Looking back, he could see how carefully Ben Curry had trained him, teaching him little by little and watching how he received it. Deliberately, Ben had kept him from any familiarity with the outlaws he would lead. Only Roundy, who was no outlaw at all, knew him well. Roundy, an old mountain man, had taught him Indian lore and the ways of the mountains. Both of them had showed him trails known to no others. Several times outlaws had tried to pump him for information, but he had professed to know nothing.
The point Roundy now raised worried him. The Ben Curry he knew was a big, gruff, kindly man, even if grim and forbidding at times. He had taken in the homeless boy, giving him kindness and care, raising him as a son. For all of that Mike Bastian had no idea that Ben had a wife and family, or any other life than this. Ben had planned and acted with care and shrewdness. “You ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” Roundy suggested. “The law doesn’t know you or want you. You’re clean.
Whatever you knew about those maps an’ such, that was just a game your pa played with you.” And that was how it had been for the first few years. It was not until recently that he had begun to realize those maps and diagrams were deadly serious, and it was then he had begun to worry. “Nobody knows Ben Curry,” Roundy said. “Any warrants there may have been have been forgotten. He ain’t ridden out on a job in fifteen year. When he decides to quit he’ll simply disappear and appear somewheres else under another name and with his family. He’ll be a retired gentleman who made his pile out west. his Roundy paused. “He’ll be wanted nowhere, he’ll be free to live out his years, and he’ll have you trained to continue what he started.” “Suppose I don’t want to?” Roundy looked up at him, his wise old eyes measuring and shrewd. “Then you’ll have to tell him,” he said. “You will have to face him with it.” Mike Bastian felt a chill. Face that old man?
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “if I could.” “Is it you don’t want to hurt him? Or are you simply scared?” Mike shrugged. “A little of both, I guess.
But then, why shouldn’t I takeover? It’s an exciting life.” “It is that,” Roundy commented dryly. “You got no idea how excitin’ until you tell Kerb Perrin and Rig Molina who’s boss.” Mike laughed. “I can see them,” he said. The smile faded. “Has Ben Curry thought of that?” “You bet he hasl Why’s he had you workin’ with a six-gun all these years?” Here, around the Vermilion Cliffs was the only world he knew. This was his country, but what lay outside? He could only guess. Could he make it out there? He could become a gambler. He knew cards, dice, faro, roulette, all of it. Or he could punch cows, he supposed. Somewhere out beyond this wilderness of rust-red cliffs there was another world where men lived honest, hardworking lives, where they worked all day and went home at night to a wife, children, and a fireside.
It was a world from which he had been taken, a world in which his father had lived, and his mother, he supposed, although he knew nothing of her.
“Roundy? What do you know about who my parents were?” The old man stared at the ground. He had known the question would be asked someday. He had wondered how he would answer it. Now, faced with it at last, he hedged.