Hat brim pulled low over his eyes, Kid Curry was dozing in the corner of the stage coach as it pulled into Sweetwater to take on one more passenger. The sun hung low in the Texas sky, but it was still shining brightly. It was about two more hours until sunset, and that would be just about the time they would arrive in Abilene, where Hannibal Heyes would be waiting for him at the American House Hotel.
Curry had money in his pocket from his part of the delivery job for "Big Mac" McCreedy and he was looking forward to spending it. The toss of a coin had sent his partner from Red Rock to Abilene, while the Kid had been dispatched to Odessa. Both agreed that even though it wasn't exactly the "Queen of the Cowtowns," as her Kansas namesake was known, Abilene was certainly much livelier than sleepy little Odessa. After riding several days from Red Rock, Curry's horse had pulled up lame. Once he'd hand-delivered the land deeds to Big Mac's associate, rather than wait around for it to heal up, the Kid had decided to sell the animal to the local livery stable and splurge on a stage coach ticket. Now the journey was almost at an end, and the Kid was looking forward to meeting up with his partner. He figured Heyes owed him a steak dinner with all the trimmings for getting the better job. Then maybe they'd order up some hot baths, and afterwards, it was off to the Silver Spur for some poker and a nice, cold beer. A few nice, cold beers, he amended to himself, smiling in thirsty anticipation.
Curry had always made it a point to be aware of his surroundings, but ever since he and his partner had been going for amnesty, he had learned to be even more vigilant. He speculated to himself what the odds were that the newest passenger would know him. Pretty slim, Kid reckoned, but nonetheless, even though he had woken instinctively as the coach slowed on its entry into the town, he kept his hat down and continued to feign sleep. Surreptitiously, he shifted in the seat and squinted out of one slitted eye, peering from underneath the turned-down brim of his brown hat. The door of the stage was pulled opened to allow the newest rider to climb inside, but as luck would have it, the coach was oriented in such a way that the man was completely silhouetted against the afternoon sunlight, and his features were obscured by shadow. Annoyed, Curry adjusted his position so that he'd get a glimpse after the man was seated.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!"
The folksy exclamation was sudden and loud.
Blue eyes snapped open, only to be met with the sight and sound of a .45 caliber pistol being cocked menacingly close to his face. Curry's right hand froze in mid-motion.
"You're fast, Curry, but not that fast!" chortled the man holding the gun almost touching his nose.
The voice and face of the man were instantly familiar. He was fair-haired, clean-shaven, mid-30s, with even, somewhat ordinary features. The unmistakable glint of a tin star winking from the man's vest as he reached across with his left hand and slid the Kid's Colt from its holster caused his already dark mood to turn ever blacker. And just when things had been going so well, for a change…
His captor shoved the gun in his own empty holster and then pulled handcuffs from his back pocket. Curry began to sift through his brain in an effort to place this all-too-familiar and unwelcome lawman.
"Come on, Curry. Hands behind your back – you know the drill," instructed the man.
As the Kid complied, leaning forward in the seat, he heard the cuffs snap shut with a metallic finality.
As the rest of the coach passengers reacted with a mixture of stunned surprise and vocal dismay, the marshal tucked his own gun into his belt. Then he roughly pushed Curry back into the wooden seat with one hand to the chest, and reached up and pulled the Kid's hat back down over his face. Curry was livid! No reason to add insult to injury, he thought resentfully. He silently weighed his options: Should he speak up or would that just make matters worse for him? Better to bide his time…
"Sheriff, with all due respect," ventured the little old widow lady sitting across the coach on the opposite seat, "but I don't believe that boy is an outlaw. He has the nicest manners you ever did see. He carried my bags for me and when we stopped, he helped me in and out of the carriage. He's such a polite and gentlemanly young man."
"Begging your pardon ma'am, but I'm United States Marshal Brett Ellery, at your service. You see, ma'am, Curry and Heyes have always been known to be polite – even whilst robbing a train or a bank," explained the lawman.
"How do you know that's Kid Curry?" demanded another passenger. "You barely had time to look at him before you shoved his hat over his face."
"Not to brag, but I've a great memory for faces, and also for physiques, and for little details like the style of a fella's boots or the trim on his hat. Curry spent a day and a half in jail under my care, so's I had plenty of time to memorize his appearance. And I'd know that sheepskin jacket anywhere. But I see you got a new hat, Kid." The last remark was directed toward the prisoner.
This elicited some general remarks of surprise and curiosity, but no comment from the handcuffed man.
"I'm the marshal of Abilene nowadays. But I used to work as a deputy in El Paso. Marshall Slater was my boss. Remember him, Curry?"
Oh, yeah. Curry remembered Slater alright. And even though he'd never known Ellery's name, he remembered how he knew him now. Thanks to Grace Turner. Wonderful.
Curry recalled Ellery as being a quiet man, who hadn't said much before nodding off at his desk, but evidently, when given an audience, he was quite the storyteller. Kid couldn't help think of his partner as he recognized the signs of a body settling in to spin a lengthy tale.
"About a year or so ago," he began, "Marshall Slater got a telegram from South of the border. It was from a woman down in Hidalgo who claimed she was gonnna bring in Kid Curry and she was requesting that he arrange to get the reward money all set and waiting for her."
"How'd she know it was the Kid?" asked one of the passengers, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a mustache.
"Oh, she told us everything in the telegram," replied Ellery. "Must've cost her a fortune to send it! Said she'd been a passenger on a train the Devil's Hole Gang had robbed. She gave the name of the train line, the date it happened, the exact spot the hold-up occurred, even what seat she'd been sitting in. We had quite a few days to check out the story while they traveled up from Hidalgo, and it all held up. The railroad checked their records for the passenger manifest and corroborated all the details. She even told us what folks to contact to arrange the wire transfer of the reward money. That Grace Turner is one smart cookie. The Marshall himself told her she done something no man was ever able to do."
"How'd she do it? How'd she bring him in?" asked another passenger, this one young, barely in his twenties and dressed in cowboy gear.
"She tricked him! She used her feminine wiles on him," answered Ellery with an admiring shake of the head.
"Oh, the poor boy. Bamboozled by a Jezebel," murmured the old widow sympathetically.
"Yes, Ma'am," agreed Ellery. "Mrs. Turner asked Curry to be her escort as she carried a considerable quantity of extremely valuable diamonds from Mexico up to El Paso. She said she'd pay him out of what she got after they delivered them. So he done it."
"Did she ever pay him? For helping her with the diamonds?" queried the first passenger.
"Diamonds!" spat out the lawman scornfully. "There weren't never no diamonds! She just had a little valise with some pebbles in it!"
"And Kid Curry fell for that?" asked the third male passenger, a middle-aged man in a navy blue business suit, with a note of skepticism in his voice.
"He never asked to see them? He never opened up the valise when she wasn't looking?" the other men queried.
"Well he must be a trusting soul," answered Ellery with a smirk.
"OR a damn fool." scoffed the businessman with derision.
"Well, she was quite a good-lookin' young lady," explained Ellery with a sly wink, which prompted many knowing nods from the menfolk and a judgmental scowl from the elderly matron.
"Maybe he fell in love with her…" suggested the youngest passenger.
Curry couldn't take it any longer. "I'm sittin' right here!" he protested in annoyance, his voice muffled by his hat.
But the rest of the passengers ignored him and continued discussing him avidly.
Ellery went on with the story, "He had all the appearance of a man betrayed by a woman he cared about. And that was the clincher, too. He said to her, right in front of the Marshall and us deputies: How long did you know I was Jed Curry?"
"Jed? That's Kid Curry's real name?" asked the cowboy.
"Yeah, and I never even knew that myself until a couple days previous because I was the one what had to take care of all the paperwork for Slater. Jedediah Curry, that's his Christian name, and he up and admitted it in front of God and everyone!"
Ellery paused, remembering the scene in front of the El Paso jailhouse, so many months ago.
"And here's another kicker, she was in love with him, too – or so she said!" Ellery shook his head, continuing, "I'm still not sure if she really did fall for the Kid or if she was play-acting at the end. But she was sure convincing!"
"What!?" The listeners were completely caught up in the story, hanging on Ellery's words.
"Oh, yeah. When she turned him in, she got all misty-eyed and apologized to Curry. She told him right in front of us she didn't "intend to fall in love" with him!" Ellery imitated Grace's voice and exaggerated her inflections, giving her words a hint of melodrama. "She seemed all broken up at the time, but not too broken up to accept the ten thousand dollars!"
He laughed uproariously at Grace Turner's duplicity.
Kid was doing a slow burn under cover of his hat. It was bad enough thinking about how he had fallen for Grace's lies, that he had been stupid enough not to check out the valise for himself - that he'd actually thought she really cared for him. What a fool he'd been! But to be forced to listen to his humiliation being discussed by this group of strangers was getting to be a bit more than he could take! Meanwhile, the garrulous Marshall continued to hold the other passengers enthralled.
"How'd he get away?" asked the cowboy, eagerly.
"Well, I'll tell ya! A couple days later, somebody blew a great big hole right through the jail cell walls with dynamite and that was the last we saw of Kid Curry. Until now, that is!"
"So they were in on it together the whole time!" exclaimed the mustachioed man, the others nodding in agreement.
"That's naturally what we all thought, but that ain't the end of the story!" Ellery paused dramatically, leaving his audience hanging, literally on the edges of their seats. "A couple weeks later, a dapper young gent marched into the Marshall's office, sayin' he was Curry's lawyer. He brought a cashier's check for the reward money! He told us that Curry was trying to go straight, that he was NOT in on it with the Turner woman, and that he wanted to pay back the ten thousand dollars so's to keep his record clean."
"Probably got it from robbing a bank!" scoffed the businessman.
"Not according to this lawyer fellow! He swore up and down and six ways to Sunday that Curry and Heyes had tracked down Mrs. Turner and persuaded her to pay the money back. So I s'pose she must've had some feelings for him after all."
"How do you know the supposed lawyer wasn't Hannibal Heyes himself and they stole that money?" demanded the man with the mustache.
"Oh no, this guy couldn't have been Hannibal Heyes!" Sheriff Ellery insisted.
He began chuckling over the absurdity of the fastidious lawyer being mistaken for the dangerous and notorious outlaw mastermind!
"His name was Hotchkiss, and he was a skinny, citified guy - a real tinhorn! Wore a sissy-looking brown suit and a derby hat and these little gold spectacles. He used so many big words I pretty nearly needed a dictionary to keep up with the conversation! And he had a stack of papers and forms for Marshall Slater to sign. It was all very official. And before he would surrender that check to the bank, he insisted Slater telegraph the railroad what put up the reward AND the governor of Wyoming, and some sheriff name of Trevors that the lawyer said had a special interest in Heyes and Curry. Oh, it was all very legal and above-board, believe you me."
Kid smirked beneath his Stetson. For the first time since he had found himself looking down the barrel of Marshall Brett Ellery's six-gun, he felt a glimmer of hope. Heyes was waiting for him in Abilene! If anyone could get him out of this fix, his genius partner could do it…