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).

24. Chapter 24

Kyle Murtry (From The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap)

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When Heyes and the Kid asked me to take a couple of the boys to go to Harristown and have the boys pose as them while making a bit of a commotion, well that sounded a little dangerous to me. I mean, suppose them two boys got themselves arrested as Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. That would take a lot of explaining and, well to tell you the truth, I don't know that the three of us are up to a task like that. But when Heyes said there'd be a hundred dollars in it for each of us, well we might not be up to the task of explaining, but we're up to the task of making a commotion. And being as Heyes and the Kid put me in charge, well I figured it would be a good opportunity to show them two just what I was capable of doing.

So we went to Harristown on the date the Kid told us to, and I told the boys that they needed to cause enough commotion so as to get noticed, but to wait and identify themselves as Kid and Heyes just before we was going to be leaving town, cause I knew none of us wanted to spend none of our hundred dollars on bail. The sheriff might realize we weren't the real Heyes and Kid, but that don't mean we couldn't get arrested for disturbing the peace, and getting arrested would cost us bail.

The three of us spent the evening in the saloon and we managed to make quite a show of ourselves, just like Heyes and the Kid asked us to do. About an hour before we was planning on leaving, they other two paid a couple of the saloon girls and spent some time upstairs and that's when they started bragging about being Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. Then, just as we was leaving, they both fired a couple of shots into the ceiling and hollered something like 'here's to the Devil's Hole Gang. Long live Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes.'" Then we hightailed it outta town as fast as we could.

We rode as hard as we could for about thirty miles, then hopped a train for the rest of the trip, and we was back at the Hole by noon the next day, a hundred dollars richer for our troubles.

Heyes and the Kid never really told us just why they wanted us to go to Harristown or why they wanted the boys to pretend to be them, but I suspect they weren't just shakin' our chains. Heyes and the Kid was good leaders when the ran the gang and neither one of em would ever ask us to do somethin' dangerous without a good reason.

It ain't often that somebody leaves a gang while still in good measure, and one or both of em have even come back a time or two (sometimes a little more welcome than others). I s'pect it can't be too easy doing what they're doing while trying to go straight. It seems to me it would be a whole lot easier just hiding out in The Hole instead of roaming around like a couple of sitting ducks. But the Kid, and Heyes especially, are a whole lot smarter than me, so I guess they got their reasons.

Anyway, come Saturday, me and the boys are heading into town to spend what's left of our hundred dollars. Money don't seem to go as far as it use to, and we don't seem to have near as much money now that Wheat's in charge.

But I guess that's a story for another day.