THE SEPARATION

That night was just wrought with mistakes, mostly mine. You know the saying that one lie just leads to another? Well that's true of mistakes as well. And the more of them that happen, the worse it gets.

My first mistake was even trying to argue with Heyes. He was having a bad night at a poker table, which is something that don't happen very often, less someone's cheating, and he can usually spot that right off.

We were pretty strapped for money, which seems to be a way of life for us. Even when we were outlawing, money just slipped through our fingers. But that night Heyes had squandered half of what little cash we had. I pulled him aside to the bar to remind him that we had expenses, but he kept insisting that his luck was changing. Said he could feel it. That was probably his first mistake, cause he's usually pretty skillful at poker, and makes fun of folks who put stock in Lady Luck.

Well, both of us has got tempers and mine was starting to flare. All Heyes' yakking about having those other players right where he wanted them, and how he was just about ready to move in for "the big kill," just started sounding like some stray cat in heat to me. You know, the sound just gets so irritating you just want to put that damn animal out of it's misery.

He was starting to feel that way about me, too. I could tell by the way he carried that smirk on his face, the way he kept prodding me. He just wouldn't listen to reason. He knew he should quit, and I knew if I hadn't gotten testy with him, he probably would have quit. But neither one of us was willing to give in to the other.

In the end, he pulled our money out of his pocket and tossed half of it on the bar in front of me. Then he just up and walked off, back to that damn poker game. Well, I figured two could play at that game, so I picked up that money and stuffed it in my shirt pocket, took my last gulp of beer, and walked out. I didn't give him a glance, but I could tell he was looking over the top of his cards watching me leave.

I didn't want to go back to the hotel cause I knew when he got back there one of us would be in an "I told you so," situation, which would have just started another argument. We seemed to be good at arguing lately.

So my second mistake was climbing onto my old chestnut and spurring him right out of town till I come to this little out of the way whorehouse called Adeline's. I'd been there before, and my temper hadn't cooled down, so I figured I could waste my money just as well as Heyes could his. I spent the better part of the night there and was down to twenty dollars when I knew I was too spent to go on, so that's when I headed back to the hotel.

I got back to the room just before the first hints of dawn. Heyes wasn't there so I figured maybe his luck had changed, in which case I would be on the losing end of the I told you so argument. So, I stripped off my gun belt and boots and clambered into bed, hoping to be fast asleep by the time Heyes got back. That was my third mistake.

It was noon before I saw the light of day. Heyes wasn't in the room, but I didn't think much of that. I figured he was probably back over at the saloon again. So I got myself some breakfast before I started looking for him. I went to the saloon first but he wasn't there. I asked the bartender if he had been in there today and he told me Heyes (he didn't call him by name, he just said "your friend"), had left with two men last night, late, and he hadn't seen him since.

That's when I really started getting worried.

I checked around town as best I could. His sorrel was still at the livery. The hotel clerk said he never came in last night. The waitress at the cafe said she hadn't seen him. I checked all the alleyways, didn't find him laying in a heap anywhere. I figured maybe he was in jail but I couldn't just go parading in there, so I scouted it out for a while and when the sheriff left, I walked in figuring I could ask a deputy. But the place was empty. So I went back to the saloon to see if I could get any more information out of the bartender. Hit a roadblock there, too. Said he didn't know the two fellas my partner left with last night.

Then I saw a couple of the whores sitting at a table in the back of the room, eating breakfast. Heyes don't typically take up with a whore with the same regularity that I do, but I figured it was worth checking with em anyway. The redhead said she remembered serving Heyes beers last night, said he played poker till he was busted and then offered a wager that everybody found pretty intriguing. She said the other players decided to spot him that wager for one final hand, which he lost. I asked her what the wager was and she said it had something to do with a safe full of money that he and some others had sunk in a pond. She said he told them he could show them exactly where the safe was and if they could retrieve it and open it, the money was theirs for the taken.

I debated what to do with this information, but being as it was Heyes, obligation won out over common sense. So I went back to the hotel, packed up our things and checked us out. Then I went to the livery to collect Heyes' sorrel. I knew exactly where he was talking about and it weren't more than twenty miles away, so I figured I'd best go rescue him before any of them fellows realized there weren't no chance in hell of them retrieving that safe, much less opening that safe. What I couldn't figure out was what was making Heyes so reckless all of a sudden and I spent a good deal of that ride just cursing the daylights out of him.

When I got close, I tethered my chestnut and Heyes' sorrel off a ways so no one would hear or see him. Then I slowly made my way up near the clearing. When I got close enough to take a gander at the situation, I hid behind a bush and pulled and cocked my gun just in case the situation had gotten out of Heyes' control. But when I peered over the top of the bush, the only thing I could do was roll my eyes in disgust. Two men were chest deep in the pond, all wading around trying to feel a safe in the muck of the bottom of the pond. Two gun belts were piled up in the dirt. Two horses were all tethered off to the left. Heyes, on the other hand, was sitting on a grassy spot near the shore, leaning against a big rock. He had his britches rolled up to his knees, and I saw he was chewing on a piece of grass.

I walked just inside the clearing and glanced out at the men wading around in the water. Both were intent on what they were doing and neither of em noticed me. I looked back over at Heyes and cleared my throat. Startled, Heyes shifted real fast and started to reach for his gun, till his eyes caught sight of me and he let go a sigh and settled back down.

"Enjoying yourself, are ya?" I asked and gave another glance toward the continued commotion in the pond.

Heyes got up slowly and brushed bits of grass off the seat of his pants.

"You gave me a start there, Kid."

"Uh-uh. You plan on being out here long?"

"Haven't given it much thought."

"Heyes, you know that safe ain't out there."

"Uh-uh."

"What do you suppose those fellows are going to do when they realize that safe ain't out there?"

Heyes shrugged. "Give up and go home."

"Likely not until they put you at the bottom of that pond."

The possibility, no the probability of retaliation had simply not occurred to Heyes, and he suddenly became worried.

"I'm gonna take care of this, Heyes. Then you and me are gonna ride out of here. And tonight, we're gonna have ourselves a talk. Now, you go move their guns and horses up to that hill over there. My Chestnut and your sorrel are tethered behind that bush over there. You go get them and bring them on over here."

I watched as Heyes quickly gathered the guns and holsters and tugged the reins of their horses, and moved it all to the top of the nearby hill. Then I walked down to edge of the pond and stood with my arms folded across my chest.

"Excuse me, fellas," I said loud enough to be heard over the splashing around.

"Who are you?" one of them shouted.

"Well, I just came here to pick up my partner. But I thought you all ought to know, there ain't no safe down there at the bottom of that pond. You all been snookered."

"He said there was a safe full of money down here!"

I nodded and couldn't help but smile a bit. "Oh, there used to be. But it's gone, now. You see your poker partner over there, well he told a Sheriff in Porterville where it was and a whole mess of lawmen came and dredged it up a year or more ago."

"Why should we believe you?"

I shrugged. "Believe what you want. It's a nice hot day for swimming. Now my partner and I are going to be leaving. You all can stay put in the water till we're out of sight, then you can climb up that hill and get your guns and horses."

One of those men started wading toward me, so I drew my gun and he stopped right off. Heyes then came walking up to me with our horses. I waited till Heyes climbed up onto the saddle then I climbed on to my Chestnut and slid my gun back in to the holster.

"You all have a good day now, gentlemen," I said and Heyes and me both spurred the our horses into a gallop and were well out of sight before those fellows had reached the edge of the pond.

That night I insisted we sleep out under the stars. I didn't want Heyes anywhere near no poker game, even if he didn't have any money. And I'll be honest, I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to knock some sense into him, but, being partners as long as we've been, well, we both know we got to cut the other one a little slack now and again and I figured that's what I had to do now. But I also knew that, like it or not, we was gonna talk this through.

"Mind explaining," I asked as calmly as I could muster as we sat around the campfire drinking coffee.

"I'll try, Kid. But I'm not sure I can. I knew I shouldn't be throwing our hard earned money around like that, and I knew it wasn't all my money to be throwing around like that, but... I just kept thinking the next game I'll get it all back, the next game I'll win the whole pot, the next game...the next game until...there wasn't going to be a next game, cause I'd run out of money and ideas."

"Heyes, You've always looked at poker like a math problem. You always know the probabilities almost as soon as you sit down at the table. You can read the other players real good... But if you're going to start playing poker like some walk-off, Heyes, then...maybe you shouldn't play at all, at least, not till you get you thinking straightened away again."

"I know Kid, you're right. It's just like...you know how sometimes you get to thinking we ain't ever gonna get the amnesty?"

I nodded. I do get that feeling more often than naught.

"Well, I've been feeling that way...about our lives, Kid. Always pinching pennies, always having to decide if we can afford a hotel, or even a bath or a meal," Heyes sighed heavily.

"You think folks with jobs don't pinch pennies, Heyes? Hell, unless you got the kind of money that Silky, or Soapy, or Big Mac has, you pinch pennies. You think our lives is miserable? Hell we got the whole wild west to call home. We got the stars to keep us company at night. And most important, Heyes, we got each other, Heyes...family."

Heyes just looked at me, his eyes so dark and full of intensity. And real slow like, he started to nod his head, never taking his eyes off of mine.

"You're right, Kid. We're rich with the things that are important. I guess I just need a little reminding once in a while."

I smiled across the fire at him. "Like me and that damn amnesty, Heyes."

"Yeah... Just like that."

"Sometimes, Heyes, it takes me a while to get back on the straight track about the amnesty."

"I know... I won't gamble till I'm back on the straight track, Kid."