KID'S REFLECTIONS

Everybody in the Devil's Hole gang remembers when Heyes and me decided to try our hand at going straight. Stealing that Pierce Hamilton 202 safe right off the Union Pacific train, then dragging it and leaving a trail twelve miles up the side of a mountain, only to throw it over the edge of a cliff... Well, was just plain stupid. And then to go and do it a second time with the same safe, well stupid don't begin to describe what that was.

But that fiasco did mark the day that Hannibal Heyes came to realize that modern technology was advancing far quicker than even Heyes' genius mind could out scheme. Yep, times were changing and banks and trains weren't easy prey no more.

Heyes and me knew that the railroads and banks wouldn't just up and cancel the rewards they'd been offering for our capture, and the Wyoming Territory wouldn't just wipe the slate clean of the twenty-year prison sentences they threatened us with. So, when that little old lady from Boston handed me that flier about amnesty, I thought maybe we had latched on to something. But Heyes just scoffed at they idea, and being that Heyes was the thinker, I figured he was right. After all, in the dozen years Heyes and me had been outlawing together, he had always managed to get us through hard times.

But the idea of amnesty started to fester on Heyes' mind. In hindsight, we might have been better off just leaving the country, but the idea of becoming law-abiding and upstanding citizens presented a challenge to Heyes, and Heyes loves a good challenge.

So, after all was said and done, Heyes and me spent the next ten years outrunning, outsmarting, out maneuvering posses and bounty hunters, all for the promise of amnesty. A promise that we had been told would take a year to achieve. That one year turned into ten long years and likely would have been even longer except for the fact that Heyes and me just faded into the past. After ten years no one even remembered the brilliant mind and the fast draw, not even the Railroad Companies and Banks. Hell, we could of used Heyes and Curry as easily as Smith and Jones, cause no one cared.

Then the amnesty came and each of us started carrying a neatly folded piece of paper in our wallets that declared we were no longer wanted, we could come and go as we pleased. Heyes was proud of that piece of paper. I never held much stock in it. Hell, we could have walked into some print shop and had them printed up the day we decided to stop being outlaws. Probably would have saved us a lot of grief, and who would have ever known they weren't legal? Heyes didn't like it when I pointed that out to him. He said it wasn't about the paper, it was about the achievement and I guess, for him, it probably was.

But those ten years were hard on the body and the soul. I lost count of the number of times we had to sneak out of a town cause someone recognized one or both of us. I lost count of the number of times one of us got shot or hurt out running a posse. I know I live with aches and pains of those years that won't ever go away. I try hard not to think about what could have been with the women that stole my heart, but it makes me sad not to have known the pleasures of a wife or the joy of a baby.

With amnesty in our pockets, Heyes and me no longer had a need to stay together. We didn't have to watch each other's backs. We didn't have to protect each other, didn't have to depend on each other. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think Heyes needed to find a new challenge. That brain of his needs to always be working. So, after giving it a lot of thought, went our separate ways.

Oh, we keep in touch from time to time, a letter here and there. Heyes moved east; first to St Louis, and then on to Boston. He got some more schooling and now he works for Pierce and Hamilton, designing safes. Just the idea of that gives me a chuckle.

We met up once in the four years since we parted. That was when we both went to Denver to attend Clementine Hale's wedding. We spent a few days together, got drunk, played poker, got drunk again. It was funny cause we didn't even need to talk about the old days. We could still read each other's faces at a poker table, knowing no one else there had a clue what kind of cards we was holding. We both just fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. Those two pieces can be on opposite sides of the table, but they just fit together perfect every time. That's Heyes and me. We don't have to be together to know we are.

So now, I just continue to roam. I don't know no other way. Sometimes I think about that silver tongue, that infectious smile, that clever brain, the only person that I could ever count on in my life, and it brings a kind of a sad sigh to me. Sometimes when I'm riding, I pretend he's behind me, watching my back, telling me I'm being proddy, reading one of his books. It makes me smile, brings me comfort cause I know in his heart, he really is there with me, just like I'm there with him.

I don't know if, or when we'll see each other again, but I do know we'll always be partners.

HEYES' REFLECTIONS

I have to smile when I think about the last job Kid and I pulled as part of the Devil's Hole gang. If Kyle hadn't gotten that dynamite wet, Kid and I might have stayed outlays, at least for a time. Those safe companies were starting to cause me a lot of frustration with all their fancy new designs like silent tumblers and dynamite is one thing to work with, but nitro is a whole other ballgame. Add that to the fact that telegraph wires connected every town in every state and well... the writing was clearly on the wall.

So, when Kid showed my that flier about amnesty, something just started gnawing on my brain. While amnesty sounded like a pipe dream for the two of us, I knew I had to come up with some way of making it happen.

Kid's right about me always needed a challenge. I'm still that way. My brain just latches on to some idea and then I just starts racing. Kid and I had many a conversation about how to convince the governor that two of the most notorious outlaws of the day deserved a shot at amnesty. I think I was the one that thought of Lom Trevers as a go-between, but Kid was the one who thought of how best for each of us to walk into Lom's office. Yea, my scheming skills and Kid's back-watching skills were a perfect fit.

When the amnesty finally did come, it turned out to be kind of bitter-sweet. We were free to come and go, but I don't think either one of us had given any thought to the fact that the freedom meant we no longer had a need to be protective of each other. So, after a month or so of drifting just like we'd been doing, we came to realize that maybe our lives needed to go in different directions.

It wasn't easy to leave Kid. We'd been so tight knit for so long that neither one of us really knew any other way to be. Kid went west. I went east, and then further east, ending up in Boston. Now that's a fine town and I took full advantage of everything Boston had to offer. Even took some college courses. I got a job helping to design those safes I used to take such pride in cracking. I suspect Kid sees as much irony in that as I do.

We keep in touch now and again, even got together once when our friend Clementine Hale got married in Denver. It surprised me how easily Kid and me just melded, how natural it felt being together again. Partners is the only word that explains it.

We're thousands of miles apart now, but I don't think a day goes by that I don't think of Kid. I can close my eyes and see him smiling at me. I can hear him being all proddy and such. Doing that makes me smile.

Sometimes Pierce and Hamilton will have me try to crack one of their newly designed safes, and when I do that, I can feel Kid standing there right beside me, watching my back, telling me to hurry up, prodding me about how I always use to say cracking a safe is as easy as cutting a piece of cake.

Yea, Kid and me might not be physically together, but there's no disputing that no matter what, like it or not, we're connected at the hip.

No matter what, we're partners.