Bobcat Rock

We hadn’t actually planned on robbing the wagon that morning. Sure, we’d spouted off some big talk about it the night before, but that’s just what whiskey will do to a couple of fellas – especially when one of those fellas has recently been rejected by a gal looking for a more “well off” man to court.

And sure, maybe that gal was the banker’s daughter, and maybe the rejected fella knew when that banker had money delivered to San Antonio. But we hadn’t really planned on robbing it. Until we did.

If Loretta hadn’t cut Pete loose the evening before the money left town, we may not have retrieved our revolvers as the horizon began to glow, dazed but somehow energized from sleeplessness and drink. We may not have dragged that log across the road and waited in that copse of cedar trees until the wagon came around the bend and was forced to stop.

We may not have drawn on the two men driving the wagon before they could draw on us, small-town fools. We may not have tied them up and taken the money straight from a trunk in the back, packed all tidy in two handy canvas bags. We may have just gone about our day on the ranch and kept drinking whiskey every evening until Pete felt better. Who’s to say?

But as they always do, things panned out as they did, and soon we were back at the cabin, sweaty and wild-eyed. We stood across from each other in the singular room that had been our home for the last year, clutching bags of fortune.

Pete, naturally, was the first to speak; he always had something to say, even if it made no sense. Folks on the ranch assumed I was quiet, when in reality Pete was just always talking.

“Abner…” he looked at me like I was his Pa and had any kind of clue what to do in this situation. “Abner, did we just do that?”

I glanced at the long-empty whiskey bottle in the corner, wishing we had left even a swig behind.

“Seems we did, Pete.”

“Abner...what are we gonna do?

“Well, it goes without saying we can’t stay put in a town this small; anyway, I think I recognized one of those fellas from the saloon.”

Pete continued to stare at me, helpless as a calf. No wonder Loretta left him; he wasn’t just destitute – he was a destitute fool. I sighed.

“I believe a train should be passing through within the hour.”

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Cowpokes don’t have much to pack to begin with, and we threw a sparse assortment of oddities into our satchels: hardtack, two tin plates, an empty flask that I hoped to fill up sooner rather than later.

I also made Pete bring a small black notebook that was a necessity in both of our lives. He was the forgetful type, always forgetting when it was his week to go into town for feed, or even the last time he took a bath. A few months back I had forced him to start carrying the notebook and a pencil in the hopes of perhaps not making him less forgetful, but at the very least making him more reliable. It worked. Occasionally.

We hopped the train just after seven as it inched its way through town. We’d never done so before, but it was easy enough: up went the bags, with us right behind them. In the privacy of the railroad car we counted the cash. Twenty thousand dollars. It would have been an unfathomable amount, had it not been sitting in front of us.

“Oh boy, Abner,” Pete almost seemed terrified by the sheer amount of cash. In truth, I was too. “What are we gonna do with all of this?”

“Make it north and figure it out there, I reckon.”

The first few days were easy enough. We hopped off the train in San Antonio and found our way onto an Austin-bound one soon after. But we were still greenhorns on the rails, and our fellow boxcar travelers knew it. The mean looks bestowed upon us were enough that Pete and I took shifts keeping watch at night. I’d even had to flash the pistol at a pair who had made a halfhearted attempt to rob us during a stop in Oklahoma City. We got off the train to avoid any trouble, and made camp just outside of town that night.

“Buy socks.”

Pete was sitting across the fire, using his notebook to log the numerous necessities he’d forgotten to pack. “And clean long johns.”

He looked up at me. “Did you remember to pack long johns, Abner?”

Of course I had. I ignored the question.

“We can’t be traveling up north with this much cash on us, Pete.” I took a swig from the flask, which we had managed to fill up earlier that day. “We’ve gotta put it somewhere and come back when the dust has settled.”

“Well I guess we could go to the bank here?”

“No, Pete. We’re wanted men, and still too close to Texas. I propose we bury it along our way to Montana. In different spots, so we don’t lose it all at once if someone stumbles upon it. Keep a good thousand for ourselves, get set up in Helena, and then retrieve it.”

“Abner, I do hate to say it: I know you’re more sure-minded than me, but are you certain you’ll be able to recall each place we bury the cash?”

I pointed to the black notebook in his hand. “There’s always a solution.”

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We buried a thousand dollars beneath an oak tree at our campsite in Oklahoma City. From there out we would bury a thousand wherever we stopped, sometimes at multiple places in one town.

In Enid we got creative: There was a cemetery near our campsite, with a freshly-dug grave that meant half our work had been done. “Enid: Luanne Johnson. Eternal Hope Cemetery. Northwest corner,” Pete diligently logged the spot in his notebook, as he had done with every location.

“Wichita. Walk north down main street and continue ten minutes outside of town. Right side of the road. Oak tree near an old barn.”

“Colorado Springs. Cave three miles northwest of town, next to river. Look for rock that resembles bobcat.”

I didn’t trust Pete to efficiently perform most basic tasks, but he was proving to be adept at logging these sites. And he was right: there was no way I would remember them all. But the instructions he was logging in that small black book were going to save us once we could travel without worry.

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We buried our last parcel in Cheyenne, which is where things truly began to sour. Really I should have known they would. You can’t mix two men with that much money and expect things to turn out just fine.

It was Pete’s forgetfulness that did us in; for as good as he was at logging where we were burying that money, he was absolutely rotten at everything else. I reckon that keeping track of the cash just took up too much space in his brain.

We had been camped out in Cheyenne for a week, and he was constantly losing food, utensils, even bits of clothing. On one occasion he almost left the cash just sitting next to a watering trough. Lucky for us only the horses were witness to it, but it was then I knew I couldn’t rely on him. I needed to cut ties. But I also needed that notebook.

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Once I had made up my mind as to my next course of action, I decided to treat Pete to a night in a proper room above a saloon. He was thrilled: The whiskey was flowing, and I even let him play a round of cards. This was the simple life he had hoped fortune would lead him to. I let him believe it was within his reach.

After Pete had lost the last of his betting money I followed him to his quarters, irritated that I had wasted cash on two rooms. I plied him with more whiskey; Pete was short, but ranch work had given him strength enough. Nonetheless, by the time he had finished the second glass, he could barely sit up or speak.

“Abner...maybe that rock looked more like a- a beaver. Not a bobcat.”

I wish I could say I felt bad when I walked behind him and wrapped my belt around his neck, but any bad feelings were long done and gone with, left behind when I made my decision. Pete struggled, boots scuffing the floor, and I worried that the noise would attract attention. But the scene downstairs was raucous enough for events to go my way.

It takes a long time to strangle a man. Longer than you might think. And I’m not just speaking of the reality of time, but of your perception of it as well. Eventually I could feel Pete going slack, and I relaxed just a bit. It was then he found a new thread of strength and flung himself back against me.

I held my grip but we stumbled right into a kerosene lamp on the bedside table, which shattered at our feet, the oil splashing against our trousers. It was only oil for a moment, however, as flames immediately took over, crawling across the floor and up both our legs.

I couldn’t let Pete go, but I couldn’t very well continue to burn. I fell back onto the bed, taking him with me, trying to put out my leg on the wool blanket. His torso atop me was actually what did the trick to smother the flames, but the fire on his own body was quickly moving upwards, already singing the blanket. He had stopped struggling, and I decided to take a risk and release the belt from his neck. I heaved the burning body off me and onto the bed in a surprisingly fluid movement.

Smoke was filling the room, and I could barely see the satchel that held our – my – cash. I somehow managed to retrieve it and made my way to the door before I remembered the notebook. I hadn’t made a sound while I was killing Pete, but I let out a cry as I looked back to the bed, where flames had already overtaken his body.

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I never did make it to Helena. Instead I’ve been hopping trains once more, this time in reverse. I had hoped I would remember the burial spots. It seems, however, that the flask I nursed while first traveling north did me a disservice. Or perhaps something else is clouding my memory. Here and there I can remember snippets of what Pete had written, and I repeat them like a prayer.

“Luanne...cemetery...northwest corner. Oak tree, old barn. Cave next to river. Beaver rock.”

The routes are familiar to me but somehow the stops never are. Not familiar enough to find my treasure, at least. But I’ll keep riding this well-tread path south to north, north back south until fortune – or perhaps even memory – strikes again.