Sundance

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Book: Read Sundance for Free Online
Authors: David Fuller
“What are you doing at the hideout?”
    â€œI guess I live here. How’d you survive Argentina?”
    â€œBolivia.”
    Longbaugh inspected the man’s clothes. Cowboy clothes, but cheap, not made to last. A costume.
    â€œDidn’t see tracks,” said Longbaugh. “No one’s been in that cabin.”
    â€œNot in the front part.”
    â€œNo,” said Longbaugh, realizing his mistake. “But no tracks up here either.”
    â€œGot to taking the other way, in case.”
    â€œThere’s another way?” Harvey, not Howard. Or Pete.
    â€œWell, I reckon we blazed it some eight years back. Damn, it’s really you. You really are alive!”
    Longbaugh put his weapon in his belt and walked past the cook and through the tunnel, carrying his lantern and his haversack.
    He grabbed the scrub oak’s trunk to pull himself out, and from this angle, looking for it, he saw the second path. It would have been near impossible to see when approaching from the other direction. The cook came out behind him.
    â€œYou said ‘we.’”
    â€œYeah, that’s, well, you don’t know him. He’s new. Havin’ you here changes everything.” Longbaugh’s presence made the man disagreeably cheerful.
    â€œHe got a name?”
    â€œJohn?”
    â€œIs that a question?”
    â€œNo . . . I mean, his name is John.”
    â€œWhat do you go by?”
    â€œWell, they call me, uh . . .”
    â€œTake your time.”
    â€œYou see, sir, we got this plan.”
    â€œYou and John.”
    â€œWell, yeah.” He puffed his chest and looked important. “And we promised each other we’d use our new names until we did it. Pulled it off, I mean. And, well, it’s something you know about. We got designs on a train.”
    Longbaugh said nothing. The cook’s smile faded until he looked a little ill. The longer Longbaugh was silent, the more uncomfortable the cook became.
    â€œLook, it ain’t nothin’, I mean, you can have your name back. Both names. We didn’t hurt ’em, much.”
    â€œWhich one of you is Butch?”
    The cook stood a little straighter. “Oh, I am.”
    Longbaugh reconsidered him. He was dressed similarly to the way Parker had dressed. At least the way Parker had dressed when everyone called him “Butch.”
    â€œSo, John is . . . ?”
    â€œWell, John grew a mustache and there’s, you know, a resemblance. Sort of. Or there was.”
    The cook uncertainly pointed at Longbaugh’s clean upper lip with a timid finger. Then a strange expression crowded his face and he looked down at his own clothes. “About Butch. Is he, well, is
he
alive?”
    â€œNo idea. They got it wrong once, maybe they missed him, too.”
    â€œSo wait—so if you ain’t dead, who was there?”
    â€œHow would I know?”
    â€œMaybe some guy dressed up like you.” The cook looked down at his own clothes, as if he was considering the irony. “Say, I reckon you could teach us. You could show us. No, wait just a minute, I know! You could come along! We could make a new gang.”
    Longbaugh said nothing.
    â€œI’ll pick a different name, of course.”
    â€œKeep the goddamned name.”
    They descended to the hideout and on the way down the cook mused aloud about “wasn’t it something” and “he’s alive” and “this changes everything,” but as they drew closer to the cabin, the cook went quiet with something new on his mind. Just before reaching the cabindoor, the cook said, “He’s not a bad fellow, sir. And he likes being . . . well, he likes being you. That’s a compliment, right?”
    The cook opened one of the back doors of the hideout. Longbaugh held back, looking in. He did not like the cramped mess he saw. Clothes piled and dishes stacked, furniture buried under

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