The Kid

With the cuff of his overlarge sweater, the Kid wiped a garden of frost from a four-pane window and looked out at rifles bristling in the flare of first light. “We been here before, Tom.”

Ever slow on the uptake, Tom Folliard asked, “You mean Alex McSween’s house?”

The Kid nodded. “And lived to tell the tale.”

Whiskey Jim Greathouse went outside with his cook, feeling it safer to hang with the White Oaks contingent, and to stir up aggravation he told Hudgens, “Kid Bonney says you’ll only take him as a corpse.”

“We don’t just want the Kid. We want Dave Rudabaugh and Billie Wilson, too.”

Whiskey Jim shrugged. “Well, if you want them, go and take them.”

Because he was famous in White Oaks, Billie Wilson was the first who was asked to surrender. He declined for the time being but asked to talk to Jimmy Carlyle, a young farrier who’d shoed horses for him in his livery stable and was, like Wilson, originally from Trumbull County, Ohio. Whiskey Jim offered himself as a hostage to guarantee the deputy’s safety, and Carlyle handed off his rifle and holstered pistol and held his hands in yellow gloves high as he waded forward through knee-high snow to the ranch house.

Young Billie Wilson welcomed him inside with a tin cup that he sloshed full of whiskey. “To take the chill off,” he said.

Carlyle drank it all down and held the tin cup out for another ration.

The Kid asked, “You wearing my gloves?”

“I just found them somewheres.”

“And I just forgot em. Hand em over.”

Carlyle complied.

“You been out all night?” the Kid asked.

“Yep.”

“Your men feelin cranky?”

“Well, darn cold and hungry.”

The Kid looked to the cook. “Let’s get this officer of the law some breakfast.”

“Anybody else?” the cook asked.

Hands went up.

Rudabaugh walked into the front room, and Carlyle winced at the overpowering stink of him. “Shall I kill him?” Rudabaugh asked, like he’d just offered the man a fine seat at the table.

“I’ll have to see your papers,” the Kid told Carlyle. “Your warrants for our arrests.”

“How was we s’posed to get papers and chase y’all at the same time?”

Rudabaugh slugged him in the mouth. “Don’t sass him.”

Carlyle felt his teeth with his tongue, found an incisor floating in blood, and spit it onto the floor. Ever untidy, Rudabaugh didn’t seem to mind. Bowdre was watching and told Carlyle, “It’ll feel better when it quits hurtin.”

“Here’s our conditions,” the Kid said. “Your posse rides off to White Oaks and we go elsewhere.”

“We’d just be giving up!”

“Exactly.”

“We got thirteen guns fixed on this ranch house and you’re actin like you got the upper hand!”

“Don’t you go getting my dander up,” Rudabaugh said and held his gun to Carlyle’s head. “Seems to me we do have the upper hand, far as you’re concerned.”