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trash. He did not enter.
    â€œWhere the fuck you been, Sandy?” said John, then saw Sandy was not alone. John jumped to his feet.
    Sandy,
thought Longbaugh.
Yes. That was his name.
    â€œThis here’s . . . well, this here is . . .” Sandy turned and saw that Longbaugh had stayed outside. Sandy came back to the door. John followed. Better this way. Too many places in the room where a gun could be hidden, just out of sight under trash or heaps of clothing.
    â€œHoly Christ!” said John, then looked at Sandy. “I thought you said he was dead!”
    John was not quite drunk, but he was a few yards down the path. Longbaugh looked him over. He didn’t mind that Sandy did not resemble Parker, but
this
? John was also cowboyed up, every piece of gear one step too obvious, lacking taste and class. Longbaugh was disappointed. Some legacy. Whatever legend he had created now crashed against the image of John in his cheap costume. A pip-squeak imposter with a pathetic mustache.
    â€œHarry Longbaugh,” said Longbaugh coolly, by way of introduction. He did not reach to shake John’s hand.
    â€œWhy didn’t you say he was still alive?” John spoke as if Longbaugh wasn’t there.
    â€œHell, I didn’t know.”
    â€œAin’t this somethin’.”
    John sized up Longbaugh’s stance and demeanor, trying to mimic him, standing straighter, lifting his chin, sucking in his belly, tugging at a too-short shirtsleeve while sucking at the long strands of his scrawny mustache as if to bite them off his upper lip.
    Longbaugh watched and waited.
    â€œI was telling the Kid here that we got us some plans.”
    â€œWell, what did he say? He like ’em?”
    â€œLiked ’em fine.”
    John tried to whisper to Sandy without moving his lips, as if Longbaugh wouldn’t hear him, saying,
What about the split?
and Sandy kept his back to Longbaugh, saying,
With him along, I reckon we’re bound to get two, three times more,
and John saying,
They bring extra just ’cause he’s there?
and Sandy saying,
Glad you didn’t call me Butch back there.
    Sandy wasn’t his real name, thought Longbaugh. They called him Sandy because his food always tasted like it had something small and foreign in it.
    Sandy turned to Longbaugh as if he had been reading his mind. “You hungry? You want something? Why’n’t you c’mon inside.”
    A memory taste of dry grit caught in his back teeth. “No, thanks.”
    He thought he had better take this man John more seriously, and he gave him a full look. He couldn’t help but see him as one more jackass looking to make a name the easy way. John believed that if he could think of something, it ought to belong to him even if he wasn’t willing to do what it took to earn it. Unlike the young kid in the bar, this one did not have the excuse of a simmering grudge. He was simply built from greed and John was bound to decide at some point that he wouldn’t want to share the name he had appropriated. Near as he could tell, John was unarmed, but if there was to be trouble, Longbaugh wanted it on his terms in a place of his choosing. He was glad these boys did not know what was in his haversack.
    â€œWe got big fuckin’ plans,” said John.
    â€œNo. You don’t.”
    â€œWe do. And we’re willing to share, tell you all about ’em.”
    â€œYou don’t want to rob a train.”
    â€œWe don’t? The hell you say, I think we do.”
    â€œYou do not.”
    â€œWell, then, you say it, what
do
we want to do?”
    Longbaugh said nothing.
    â€œWe goin’ to get ourselves in some trouble, is what we gonna do,” said John, both prideful and belligerent. Sandy the cook looked a little sick to his stomach, watching John preen.
    â€œYou do not have the makeup for train robbery,” said Longbaugh.
    â€œWe got to do
some
thing; we got to make