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The stolen car blew a tire in Nebraska’s sandhill country. Two men came walking up just as Henry was mounting the spare. One drew a shotgun from a sling setup he had under his coat-what was called a bandit hammerclaw back in the Wild West days-and pointed it at the runaway lovers. Henry had no chance at all to get his own gun; it was in his coat pocket, and if he’d tried for it, he almost certainly would have been killed. So the robber was robbed. Henry and Sha
The girl with him, the farmer told a reporter, stood on the porch looking away. The farmer said he thought she was crying. He said he felt sorry for her, because she was no bigger than a minute, just as pregnant as the old woman who lived in a shoe, and traveling with a young desperado bound for a bad end.
Did she try to stop him? the reporter asked. Try to talk him out of it?
No, the farmer said. Just stood with her back turned, like she thought that if she didn’t see it, it wasn’t happening. The farmer’s old rattletrap Reo was found abandoned near the McCook train depot, with a note on the seat: Here is your car back, we will send the money we stole when we can. We only took from you because we were in a scrape. Very truly yours, “The Sweetheart Bandits.” Whose idea was that name? Sha
A day or two later, there was a hold-up in the tiny Frontier Bank of Arapahoe, Colorado. The thief-wearing a flat cap yanked low and a banda
A week later, a young couple calling themselves Harry and Susan Freeman boarded the train for San Francisco in Colorado Springs. Why they suddenly got off in Grand Junction I don’t know and Arlette didn’t say-saw something that put their wind up, I suppose. All I know is that they robbed a bank there, and another in Ogden, Utah. Their version of saving up money for their new life, maybe. And in Ogden, when a man tried to stop Henry outside the bank, Henry shot him in the chest. The man grappled with Henry anyway, and Sha
By then it was near Thanksgiving, although which side of it I don’t know. The police west of the Rockies had their descriptions and were on the lookout. I had been bitten by the rat hiding in the closet-I think-or was about to be. Arlette told me they were dead, but they weren’t; not when she and her royal court came to visit me, that was. She either lied or prophesied. To me they are both the same.
Their next-to-last stop was Deeth, Nevada. It was a bitterly cold day in late November or early December, the sky white and begi
Instead of ringing the police (or pit security at the nearby copper mine, which would have been quicker and more efficient), he decided to make a citizen’s arrest. He took a rusty old cowboy pistol from under the counter, pointed it at them, and told them-in the finest Western tradition-to throw up their hands. Henry did no such thing. He slid out of the booth and walked toward the fellow, saying: “Don’t do that, my friend, we mean you no harm, we’ll just pay up and go.”
The counterman pulled the trigger and the old pistol misfired. Henry took it out of his hand, broke it, looked at the cylinder, and laughed. “Good news!” he told Sha
He put 2 dollars on the counter-for their food-and then made a terrible mistake. To this day I believe things would have ended badly for them no matter what, yet still I wish I could call to him across the years: Don’t put that gun down still loaded. Don’t do that, son! Green or not, put those bullets in your pocket! But only the dead can call across time; I know that now, and from personal experience.
As they were leaving (hand-in-hand, Arlette whispered in my burning ear), the counterman snatched that old horse-pistol off the counter, held it in both hands, and pulled the trigger again. This time it fired, and although he probably thought he was aiming at Henry, the bullet struck Sha
Seriously wounded-perhaps dying already-Sha
Just inside the town limits (but still well beyond the edge of the village), the last of Henry’s luck let go. With Sha
He spied the ghost of a building through the thickening snow, and got Sha
“What about the baby?” he asked her.
“The baby is dead, and I want to die, too,” she said. “I can’t stand the pain. It’s terrible. I love you, honey, but put me on the ground.”
He carried her to that ghost of a building instead, which turned out to be a line shack not much different from the shanty near Boys Town, the one with the faded bottle of Royal Crown Cola painted on the side. There was a stove, but no wood. He went out and scrounged a few pieces of scrap lumber before the snow could cover them, and when he went back inside, Sha