Incidentals

by Kathy Knudsen1

Every episode has both major and minor characters and sometimes there is more to a minor character than meets the eye. Each Chapter will be about one such character. Not all chapters will fall in the same order as the series episodes, and likely one or two episodes will be skipped over (i.e. Return to Devil's Hole because I never watch that one).

33. Chapter 33

George W. Baxter (From the Day the Amnesty Came Through)

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I would not have believed those two young men were Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes. I mean, the way they was dressed, all neat and clean, and how polite they both were. I've never seen the likes of that from an outlaw. I mean that Kid Curry, why he was almost timid when we was introduced in my office. I tell you, it's a fact, them two fellas just don't look like outlaws.

I will say you have to admire their tenacity. I seriously doubt that I could stay working at getting an amnesty for as long as them two have. That's willpower or at least blind stubbornness. I almost felt a little guilty asking them to go walking into an outlaw hideout. Why, if it had been anybody else, that could have been a suicide mission.

But I understand there is something called the outlaw code, or some such jargon about outlaws stickin' together, at least up to a point. After the whole incident was done and over, Sheriff Trevors told me that Charlie Taylor always professed some long standing grudge against Kid Curry, so I'm guessing that timidness I seen in Curry was something no outlaw has ever seen.

To tell you the truth, I had a twinge of guilt or remorse stringing those boys along, especially after they managed to bring little Ellen Anderson back home to her father, but letting two of the most notorious outlaws off with an amnesty is gonna take a more brazen governor than me. Amnesty was designed to cut down on the jail population by releasing all the chicken thieves, land-grabbers, and rag-picking penny stealers, and wiping their slates clean. But wiping the slates clean for bank and train robbers, well that's like givin' a horse thief a slap on the wrist and sending him off to Churchill Downs to work in the barns.

Yeah, if some damn fool governor ever does grant those two an amnesty, well he can just kiss his political career goodbye. Most governors have aspirations to become senators or congressmen one day, which, to my way of thinking, just makes them legal outlaws themselves, cause what they get paid for the amount of work they do, why that's just highway robbery.

But the truth is, I hope the Wyoming Territory does get a maverick governor like that someday, cause those two boys really are putting in the work, and to my way of thinking, they've already more than earned that free pass. The railroad tycoons and Cattleman's Association wouldn't agree with me on that, and that's pretty much why those boys are just beatin' a dead horse. Money talks, and more important than that, money buys elections, so there ain't a politician alive that ain't gonna get a beatin' for letting Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry off the hook. That's what political suicide really means.

Yes siree, I do feel bad for them boys. Sheriff Trevors tells me that the governor that struck the deal with Heyes and Curry promised them the full amnesty if they could stay outta trouble for just one year. Well, I understand they are half way through their third year of waiting, and I ain't gonna be the man to tell them they are just chasing a pipe dream. No, they'll just hafta figure that out for themselves, and I hope that comes sooner rather than later.

If I was them, and I did figure that out, why I think I would figure I had one of two options. I would either pull off the biggest bank job in history, then high-tail it outta the country, fast...

Or I'd run for public office.