[October 2011]

Word Count: 1126   

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Chapters: 1

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FALL

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by

Eleanor Ward

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Heyes reminisces

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“It was 22nd September, officially the first day of fall, and it turned out to be somewhat ironic. Kid and I had just arrived in White Rock, a small town north west of Santa Fe, after spending several days running around on one of Big Mac McCreedy’s wild goose chases and having the usual tussle in trying to get him to pay us what we were owed.  I never knew a wealthy man so unwilling to part with his money! But then I guess that’s how he got wealthy, taking care of the cents and letting the dollars take care of themselves.  Takes a lot of discipline to do that.  Me, I’d have probably just spent it all if I’d had his kind of money.

 

Anyhow, Kid and I arrived in White Rock mid morning. I recall it was a particularly beautiful day, albeit chilly, a cloudless sky, blue as the sea, a perfect backdrop against the vivid orange and gold of the leaves of the trees, the grey craggy mountains in the distance looking silvery white under the bright fall sunshine.

 

We checked the Sheriff’s office and found we didn’t know him, so we headed up to the hotel and booked ourselves a room, planning to spend a day or two there, maybe play a little poker, before heading out.

 

After freshening up and stopping off at the saloon for a drink and to check if the poker was going to be worthwhile, we headed across to the telegraph office to wire Lom our whereabouts.

 

As we came out of the Telegraph office, I somehow managed to put my foot on a rotting plank on the steps and the next thing I knew I was pitching head first into the street. Not being prepared for it, I landed pretty heavily on my arm and felt my wrist kind of crunch into my rib cage as the rest of my body landed on it. I felt pretty foolish, I can tell you, ending up flat on my face in the middle of Main Street. After Kid had quit laughing, he picked me up and took me up to the doc’s office, where he told me I’d only sprained the wrist. I think it would have hurt less if it had been broken but, anyhow, he bandaged it up and told me to rest it for a few days. So, that was my poker playing evening finished, since I couldn’t handle the cards.

 

Kid tried to sooth my wounded pride by offering to buy dinner at the local restaurant. I agreed, and we headed across to the restaurant.  We chose a table near the window, so we could keep an eye on the street, and sat down.  It was a pretty place, chequered table cloths and fancy frilled curtains at the windows, and the waitress was equally as pretty;  petite, with long blonde hair and baby blue eyes.  Chloe, she said her name was.  As soon as Kid laid eyes on her, I knew he was in love, it was an instant thing between the two of them.  If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it would happen to him like that. He’d dallied with a lot of women over the years, and some of them he’d gotten pretty attached to, but this was different.

 

I teased him a bit about it, and he got all shy and embarrassed which was pretty out of character for him.  He tried to play it down, make out that it was nothing serious, but over the next few days, while I waited for my wrist to heal, I watched him and I knew it was.

 

It was when my wrist was healed and I suggested it was time we were moving on that he admitted the truth and told me he wanted to stay in White Rock and be with her.  I tried to talk him out of it. After all, even though it had been well over a year since we’d made our deal with the governor - closer to two in fact - and nobody seemed much interested in finding and arresting us these days since we’d gone straight for so long, we were still wanted and it didn’t seem right to tie himself to someone when one of these days he might get hauled off to jail, or worse.  But he was adamant and he decided to tell Chloe who we were. I think he thought she would run a mile when she knew, but she didn’t.  She accepted him for who he was, and who he was trying to become.  And she accepted me too.

 

They got married three months later, and settled down in a nice little house just outside town.  I felt a bit like a fifth wheel around them, and also I was kinda bored being in one place, so I took off for a while and left them to it. I visited Lom and took a trip to San Francisco so see Soapy and later I went to do a few jobs for Big Mac, but I missed Kid and so I headed back to White Rock a few months later to visit them.  I discovered Chloe was expecting, which was kind of a shock and a pleasant surprise all rolled into one.  I don’t think either one of us had ever given much thought to settling down and having a family.  I guess, at the outset, when we were kids, we thought we’d be outlaws forever, and then later we never thought we’d be able to have a proper relationship what with being on the run an’ all.

 

I moved in with them to help out with getting everything ready for the forthcoming birth.

When the time came, one of their neighbours came to help out with Chloe’s labour. Her name was Hannah, and she was a year or two older than Chloe and was pretty experienced with birthing having helped out with the births of her three older sisters’ children.  She had me running about fetching this and that, and boiling water, and by the time baby Zachary was born, she and I were in love.  We were married six months later.

 

It’s 22nd September today, twenty years since we rode into White Rock on the first day of fall, when Kid fell in love and I, well, I just fell.  Between us, Kid and I raised four children, a boy and a girl for him and two boys for me.  We never did get the amnesty, but in the end it didn’t matter.  After a few years everyone had forgotten about Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes, and that suited us just fine.”

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-ooOOoo-

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