At about the same time Lom Trevors was saying goodbye to Hannibal Heyes, Kid Curry was standing at the bar in Silvervale, wondering when Heyes would be coming back.
It had been six weeks since Heyes had gone to San Francisco and he hadn't heard from him at all. Curry had stuck by his resolution to wait for Heyes to contact him - Heyes had been the one to leave after all - but he was very glad that he only had two more weeks to wait to see his cousin again. He had missed him more than he would admit, even to himself.
He sipped his drink, longing for some company. Ben and Micky were sitting together in the corner, but he guessed he wouldn't be welcome. He still found himself shunned by everyone around him, but felt too restless to spend the evening with Mary and listen to her happy chatter about the upcoming wedding.
After a few minutes of standing alone and ignored, he saw a discarded newspaper abandoned on a table and started to flick through its pages. He quickly closed it and pushed it aside in irritation. Unlike Heyes, he'd never picked up the habit of reading the newspapers, unless it was the 'Help Wanted' section. Heyes always kept him informed of anything he needed to know, andhe assumed that if there was anything in the paper about his partner, then somebody would tell him.
Curry did glance at the headlines occasionally nowadays, just to be sure. He had no idea that Heyes' moment in the spotlight had been and gone. Heyes wasn't in the newspaper anymore because the story was over. He was old news.
Curry wasn't much of a reader generally, although he'd liked it on those quiet nights when Heyes had picked up whatever book he was reading and started to read it aloud. Heyes had a gift for reading aloud, he made anything sound interesting. Sometimes, the Kid would pick up the book Heyes had been reading and try to read from where he left off, but it wasn't the same. He couldn't picture the story in his head the same way he did when Heyes read it and brought the characters to life.
He remembered one time when Heyes had been reading a newspaper biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Curry had been fascinated by the things he'd done, as Heyes described railways and tunnels and steamships... Later, when Curry had picked up the article to read it for himself, the whole story seemed as dry as dust and he'd thrown it aside in boredom.
He was feeling low. He still loved Mary, of course he did. But as the date of their upcoming wedding loomed closer, he was beginning to feel anxious; it had all happened so quickly. Despite their last argument, Curry knew he'd feel happier when he could talk to Heyes about it.
Curry was just about to take another drink when he was surprised to see two familiar faces at the end of the bar, talking earnestly to Ben and Queenie.
"Guys?" He was careful not to use their names. "What are you doing here? Hey, it's great to see you! Let me buy you a drink!"
He had never before been so happy to see his two old gang members. Wheat and Kyle had never been his idea of the perfect drinking companions, but he was so desperate for company and so thankful to see a couple of familiar faces.
It took him a minute to see that they didn't share his enthusiasm. They looked at him for a long minute, and then finished their drinks and turned to leave.
He couldn't believe it! He was being cut by those two?
He moved forward and laid a hand on Wheat's arm. "Hey!"
Before he had time to react, Wheat had raised a fist and punched him in the jaw. The surprise of it gave it more force and he fell back to the floor.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and felt blood there. "What the hell was that for?"
"That's not even half of what you deserve, ya dirty double crosser!" Wheat stood over him, his fists still clenched.
"Yeah," added Kyle, "if there was any justice in this world, you'd swing for what you done!"
Kyle spat and it would have struck him if he hadn't quickly moved his head.
Curry's jaw fell open in shock. "What did I do?"
There weren't many people in the saloon that night, but he noticed that everyone was watching silently. He felt their sympathies were with Wheat and Kyle, not for himself.
"You know what you did, you filthy dog! I'd never've believed you could do that to Heyes!"
As soon as Wheat mentioned Heyes' name, Curry jumped up and grabbed his wrist.
"Heyes? What d'you mean? Have you heard from him?"
Wheat widened his eyes. "Heard from him? How the hell would we have heard from him, after what you did?"
Curry was clearly confused. "I don't know what you're talking about… what did he say I'd done? When did you see him?"
Wheat and Kyle exchanged a confused glance.
"Ain't nobody SEEN him!"
Wheat reached into his deep jacket pocket and brought out three crumpled sheets that Curry recognized as the front pages of the newspaper that Heyes would read when they lived in Devil's Hole.
He thrust them into the Kid's hands. "We're talkin' about this!"
Bemused, Curry looked down and opened up the first one. The headline seemed to jump off the page.
'Hannibal Heyes Arrested At Last!'
He grabbed the bar for support as he tried to make sense of what he was reading.
He read the first line:
'Hannibal Heyes was finally taken into custody yesterday, in the small Colorado town of Silvervale...'
He looked at the top of the page for the date. It was the day after Heyes left the ranch.
The day they'd argued.
The day that Heyes had said, 'Love ya, Kid'. Had he suspected something? Kid remembered his own sense of unease.
With shaking hands, he turned to the next page.
'Hannibal Heyes Sentenced to Twenty Years!'
He felt bile rise in his throat. He laid that page aside and opened the last one.
'Kid Curry Granted Amnesty!'
'After the revelations from the trial of Hannibal Heyes, when Heyes took responsibility for all crimes attributed to him and Jedediah "Kid" Curry, the governor has granted Curry a full amnesty...'
Curry stared at the papers in horror for a few minutes, then threw them aside and ran for the door. Once outside, he vomited in the street until he could do nothing but retch.
He felt hands on his shoulders as someone led him back into the saloon and sat him in a chair.
He was surprised to see that it was Bill, who was examining him curiously. Bill turned to the bartender.
"Can we get a shot of whiskey?"
A glass was laid in front of him and he drank it quickly.
Bill stared at him in disbelief. "You didn't know?"
"No." Kid reached for the papers again and tried to make sense of it all. "I thought he was in San Francisco…"
Wheat exchanged a glance with Kyle, who looked equally baffled. "Why would you think Heyes was in San Francisco?"
"He told me he was going to visit Soapy for two months. I was waitin' for him to come back."
Wheat gestured for the Ben to give him the bottle of whiskey. "Well, you'll be waitin' a while. He ain't comin' back for another twenty years!"
Curry felt the blood drain from his face and the room started to spin around him.
"Steady there." Bill lowered the Kid's head towards his knees. "Sit like that for a moment. It'll pass."
Curry waited for the world to stop spinning and then he thought of another question. "Does Mary know?"
Now everyone was watching Bill.
"She knows."
Curry tried to understand. He may not agree with her keeping this from him, but she probably didn't want him to be hurt.
"When did she know?"
"She's known from the beginning. Told the ranch hands that she'd fire 'em if anyone spoke to you about it, though she wrapped it up a little nicer than that."
Curry felt his mouth go dry. He felt like he'd been punched in the stomach.
"But the people in town? No-one said anything."
Queenie came over with a bottle, refilled his glass and looked closely into his face. "You really don't know anything, do you?"
Seeing his look, she shook her head.
"No-one here said anything because we all thought you knew. She told Curly you turned Heyes in. The day he left the ranch, Hannibal Heyes rode down to the train station where a group of armed guards were waiting for him. The next day, the future Mrs. Curry made a deposit into the bank of ten thousand dollars."
At his blank look, Micky moved forward. "The bounty on Hannibal Heyes."
"No..." Curry couldn't take it in. He knew Mary didn't like Heyes, but this? He didn't believe it. "No, you're wrong. She wouldn't have done that."
Queenie sat beside him and poured out another glass of whiskey for herself. "Joe down at the telegraph office said that two days before the arrest, she sent a telegraph to the governor. It was two words - 'Friday train'."
Mary couldn't have done that. She loved him, she couldn't do that to him and his cousin, she must know what Heyes meant to him.
And then he realized.
That was why she'd done it.
She knew exactly what Heyes meant to him, and she knew what the Kid meant to his cousin. There was only one impediment standing between her and Kid Curry, and that was Hannibal Heyes. Heyes goes to jail, and Mary becomes ten thousand dollars richer and gets an amnesty for the man she wants to marry. He wondered how she had arranged it.
He moved back to the floor and read the newspaper articles again.
'...taken into custody while trying to leave town…'
'Heyes confessed that Kid Curry was only a bystander during all of the robberies…'
'...granted Kid Curry a full amnesty…'
He moaned and ran his fingers through his hair. He reached forward and drank the whiskey Queenie had poured. How could Mary do this to him? To them? How could he be with her, how could he touch her ever again knowing what she'd done...
Everyone was quiet. He raised his head and looked around the room.
"You all believed I did this? That I would do that to him?"
Micky shrugged. "You didn't seem that close, him bunking with us and you up in the house with Mrs. Adams. You didn't seem to miss him - you never mentioned him again. An' you seemed real happy with her. Plus, you got the reward and the amnesty. We figured you and her worked this out together."
He looked at his former friends. "Wheat? Kyle? You thought I could do this to him?"
Kyle looked at the ground. "We knew you wanted that amnesty real bad."
Wheat nodded. "And you got yourself a rich young widow into the bargain. Figured you didn't need Heyes anymore."
An idea suddenly struck him with such intensity that he almost recoiled.
"He couldn't have believed it though... He couldn't think that I'd choose her over him? That I'd turn him in for an easy life? He must have known that I couldn't be happy with him in jail!" Nobody agreed with him and he felt sick at the thought of it.
He surprised them all by rising suddenly. "I have to get back." Turning once more to Wheat and Kyle, he said "I would never have done that to him. You have to believe me."
Wheat still looked uncertain, but Kyle nodded. "If you say so, Kid, it's good enough fer me."
Bill looked around the silent saloon. While the Kid's shock and revulsion seemed genuine enough, there were still a few that weren't sure he was entirely guiltless.
"I'll go with you, make sure you get home alright."
Queenie nodded at him, and the bar started to return to life again.
They were silent as they rode, but Curry's mind whirled endlessly in the same circles. Why had she done that to Heyes? Was it really just jealousy?
Kid Curry felt sick when he thought about his cousin condemned to twenty years in prison. They'd enough conversations over the years to know how bad prisons could be and Curry knew how much Heyes feared being locked away. Those nights, back at the orphanage. Curry didn't mind so much since he was still young enough to fall asleep anywhere, but Heyes had hated it.
And now he was locked away for twenty years.
Twenty years.
He thought that Heyes would be an old man when he got out, before he realized how small the odds were that Heyes would ever survive that long.
Curry had never heard of anyone surviving twenty years in prison.
He couldn't imagine what it would be like to never see his cousin again.
Never seeing that impish grin and dreading whatever hairbrained plan would follow it. Never again wishing that Heyes would just shut up for five whole minutes and let them ride in peace. Never again galloping side by side across the plains as if the devil was at their heels.
Could he visit him? Break him out? This was Heyes - he must have figured out a way to escape by now. Maybe he already had and was even now flying across fields to come home again.
Home.
With Mary.
His Mary, the woman he loved, who betrayed him and sold his cousin for ten thousand dollars.
He had to know why she'd done it, as if there could be something, anything that could excuse what she did...
He'd listen to her, he wouldn't judge her yet. Maybe she was being blackmailed by someone…
He was sure she loved him, of that he had no doubt. Until this moment, he thought that he loved her with every fiber of his being, but now?
He loved his cousin, his only protector since childhood. The only family he had left. Heyes had been father, mother, brother and friend to him since they were children. Heyes had stolen so they could eat, he had watched over him when he was sick, and when he wasn't much older himself, he had wiped away the younger boy's tears and told him that everything would be alright, because he was there to look after him...
There was no-one in the world he owed more to than Heyes.
He didn't even notice when they arrived at the house.
Bill came up beside him. "Mr. Curry, sir? We're here."
Curry nodded and slid off his horse. Bill took the reins from his hands.
"I'll take care of the horses."
He nodded again and walked inside.
It looked like a book illustration of domestic bliss.
There she sat, her golden hair shining in the candlelight, as she bent over her sewing. As he entered the room, she looked up at him and smiled.
The smile died on her face when she saw his expression. "My darling, what's wrong?"
"I went to the saloon. I met a couple of old friends there. They told me what happened to Heyes."
She moved her eyes away from him. "Oh?"
"Yes. And they told me what you did. How could you do that to him?"
She seemed to realize that she couldn't bluff her way out of this.
"He wanted to split us up, wanted you to leave me! I couldn't stand by and let him do that. I love you and you love me! Besides, you could have had the amnesty years ago if it wasn't for him. He's the one they wanted when they posted all those rewards. He's the one that made them look like fools, time after time. They didn't care about you."
"Why would you think that? Heyes never hurt a living soul in his whole life! I've killed people!"
"In self-defense and protecting yourself! And anyway, no one cares about those people. They were just nobodies... they weren't anyone important."
He was speechless for a moment, his breath taken away by the callousness of her comment. He looked at her as if she was a stranger. There was no softness about her now, no tenderness.
He had hated killing people. She was right, it had been necessary, but that didn't mean that he didn't think about it all the time with regret.
He had taken human lives; they were people. They had mothers and fathers, perhaps brothers and sisters and lovers, people who would miss them and be sorry they were gone. People who would weep for them. They weren't just human detritus to be forgotten. They had as much right to live as he did and he saw their faces in his mind every day.
To say they weren't important seemed shockingly callous.
She still hadn't answered his question. "Mary, how do you know all this? How did you arrange for me to get the amnesty?"
She lifted his chin and met his eyes. "Governor Hamilton is my cousin."
Kid Curry gasped and sank down into a seat.
"I told him that we wanted to get married and have a family. He told me there was no way anyone would let him give an amnesty to Hannibal Heyes, but no-one would mind if he gave one to you, especially if everyone thought you turned him in!"
"I would never have betrayed Heyes, you know that!"
"Well, apparently, I'm in the minority. Everyone else believed it easily enough!"
"Because you told them!"
"Yes! For us, so that we could get married and have a family!"
"I never wanted a family that didn't include Heyes. He IS my family."
She stood up angrily. "Well, you couldn't have both! I did this for you, Jedediah Curry, so that you could have your freedom, and I think you should take a moment to see how much I've done for you!" She stormed out of the room in a flood of tears.
He stared into the embers of the fire and thought about everything that had happened.
He'd loved this woman and planned to marry her. When he compromised her virtue, it had been with the understanding that he would marry her when the opportunity came. Now he had that opportunity, because of what she and Heyes had done. But now he knew her part in it, he was revolted by her. He couldn't imagine even touching her hand again.