Bill Haskell
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2018 by aubie56

The sun was setting behind me as I inspected the burned remains of the house. Eddy was doing the same for the barn. Those damned Navajos had made a real mess of things. The man and woman who once lived here were now buried in shallow graves; it was all I could do with the hardpan so near the surface. I hoped that they were at peace, now, considering the torment they went through while they were dying.

The evidence I have found shows that there were two kids here, also, but the Navajos must have taken them, since they are nowhere to be seen. Well, if they are young enough, the Navajos will adopt them into the tribe, so they will be reasonably safe until they can be rescued. Of course, by then, they may not want to be rescued. Oh, well, I can only do the best I can.

Normally, I’m a Deputy US Federal Marshal, but this damned Indian war has played hell with my normal duties. Right now, I’m hunting for the two nephews, one 3 and other 5, of the Federal Judge I report to. They were taken by Navajos in a situation very much like this one only two months ago, and he has asked me to find them if I can. Right now, I don’t even know where to look for the two boys, so I am just wandering around, doing what I can.

My name is Bill Haskell, and I’m a native Texan, though I have spent the last five years in the Arizona Territory, mostly around Prescott. I’m 6’-1” tall in my bare feet, and I weigh 176 pounds. My hair is dark brown and my eyes are a gray color that women have told me is “fascinating.” I think that I am pretty ordinary looking, but several women have called me handsome, and I admit to wishing that it were true.

I have a dog, Eddy, to whom I owe my life on several occasions. He is mostly mutt, but he is a big mutt. He must have a lot of Great Dane in him because of his size. He hates Indians of all breeds, so he does a good job of watching my back. He is big enough and strong enough to tear the throat out of a man, and I have seen him do it several times. Shit, I love that dog!

Well, it looks like we will be spending the night here, since it is getting too late to travel. There’s enough of the adobe wall of the barn standing to put my back against, so that’s where I’ll put my bedroll. At least, with Eddy around, there ain’t nobody what can sneak up on us unawares.


Dammit, that sun is bright, this morning. Even with my hat pulled low over my eyes, it’s still hard to see with all the glare. The trouble is, I still have to keep a sharp lookout if I expect to keep my hair, and I have become kind of attached to it over the years.

Oh, shit, I can hear gunshots, but I can’t see where they are coming from. Uh-oh, there’s some smoke over near those hills, I guess I had better take a look. “Come on, Eddy, it looks like trouble over west of here.”

Eddy can run pretty damned fast when he wants to, but I don’t want to wear him out. I keep the speed of my horse down to where Eddy can keep up, but not be too tired when we finally do come up on the trouble. It takes us 10 minutes to get close enough to see what’s going on. Shit, it looks like a dozen or so Navajos are attacking that house. The smoke is coming from inside the barn, so the people in the house may still be in pretty good shape. At least, I hope so.

Now, what’s going to be my best plan? Hmm, not all of the Indians have guns, some are still using bows and arrows. That’s good and that’s bad. The ones with guns are more likely to sit back and shoot, but the ones without guns are more likely to attack so that they can get guns. Why can’t life be easy once in a while?

Oh, damn! The roof of the house is now burning. The people can’t stay in there much longer, so I better get my ass into action. It looks like it’s time to dismount and start slinging lead. I pull my .44-40 Winchester from its saddle scabbard and fill my pockets with extra ammunition. Since both my revolvers, S&W top-break jobs, use the same .44-40 ammunition, I should be in good shape for something to shoot, at least for a while.

Eddy comes with me as we run for a little hillock to hide behind while I shoot. As soon as I get there, I drop to a prone position and line up my first shot. The guns are more dangerous to the people in the house at this point, so that’s where I start shooting.

I’m able to put down two of the Indians before they can figure out where the shooting is coming from. However, it doesn’t take long for them to find me, what with all of the powder smoke. One brave gets smart and tries to lob an arrow up high so that it can drop almost straight down on me, even though I am behind my hill. I didn’t see him launch his arrow, but I know enough to move around after firing a couple of shots. The result is that the falling arrow misses me by about a foot!

That’s enough of that shit! I send Eddy on an Indian hunt while I give him as much covering fire as I can manage. It works, because I soon hear a scream of pain from an Indian, and then a gurgle of air and blood escaping from a torn throat. I reload my rifle as fast as I can and resume pumping bullets into the area where I know the Indians must be. I have to keep an eye out for Eddy, but he knows enough to keep low when the bullets are flying.

Indians don’t like war dogs—they think of them as some kind of evil demon, so Eddy’s presence is often enough to break a siege of this sort. Whatever the reason, the Indians decide to leave for better pickings somewhere else. I do get a few final shots at them as they run away, and I even wing one. Even though I didn’t kill him outright, I would bet on his eminent death from gangrene.

I only managed to knock off three and Eddy got one, so that leaves about eight warriors who will be back as soon as they can get their good-luck charms recertified by the shaman. At least, that gives me a few hours to see what I can do to help whoever is left in the house.

“DON’T SHOOT! I’M A FRIEND! CAN I COME IN?”

I hear an answering shout from inside, so I fetch my horse and approach the house. Just as I get off my horse, I am grabbed from behind! Momentarily, that scares the shit out of me, but Eddy didn’t react, so I know that it’s OK, whatever it is that’s holding me.

I hear crying, so I assume that whatever is holding me is a human female, probably White, and certainly scared to death. As gently as I can, I free myself enough to turn around. As soon as I am facing her, the woman grabs me again in what seems like a death-grip. Meanwhile, tears are pouring down her face in what looks like an unstoppable torrent.

I do the only thing I reasonably can and wrap her in a close embrace. I have no trouble feeling her large breasts pushing against my chest, and her nipples are so hard that they seem to be drilling two holes right through me. We stand like that for about 15 minutes until she can finally get hold of her emotions. All this time, she has not said a word, and says nothing now as she suddenly steps back and grabs my hand to pull me into the house.

The main room is full of smoke, but she pulls me to a window where a man is slumped against the wall. He is obviously dead, with a bullet through his skull. There is a lot of blood and brains scattered about, proving that he died quickly and probably without pain. That’s something to be happy about when your are attacked by Indians.

The woman starts crying again, and I hold her as she gets it out of her system. This lasts 15 or 20 minutes, but I am starting to worry about a return of the Indians, probably with more help. Finally, the woman runs dry and I am able to get loose so that I can survey the situation.

The main room is starting to show flames in the ceiling, so we will not be able to stay there much longer. I quickly look into the other two rooms, one of which is a bedroom and the other is a kitchen. There is nothing in either room that makes me think that we could withstand a major Indian attack more than a few minutes.

“Ma’am, my name is Bill Haskell. What is your name?”

“Oh, I’m Mrs. Albert Jones. My first name is Ann. That’s my husband sitting against the wall by the window.” With that statement, she looked like she was about to cry, again, but we had to get past that real quick.

“Mrs. Jones, please call me Bill. We have to get out of here before the Indians come back. You gather some clothes. Make them all men’s clothes, because we won’t have time to fool with lady’s stuff. Change into trousers that you can use when riding a horse. Gather what food and weapons you have. While you are doing that, I will bury you husband in the front yard.”

“OK, Bill. You must call me Ann. It is getting through to me that I am no longer Mrs. Jones. There is a shovel in the corner of the kitchen. I will rush as fast as I can. And thank you for your help. I know I owe my life to you.”

Ann left for the bedroom, and I left to dig my third grave in two days. Once Albert Jones was buried, I went into the barn to see what useful I could find. The fire in the barn that had originally attracted my attention had gone out of its own accord. A near miracle was waiting for me in the barn: there were two horses in there, along with a saddle and related tack. Not only that, there was a pack-saddle and halter, so the second horse could be used as a pack animal.

I prepared the two horses and led them to the front door where my horse was ground hitched, and Eddy was waiting with the patience only a dog can exhibit. I tied the two new horses to the hitching post and went back into the house. By this time the sod on the roof was falling through and the fire was getting to be dangerous. Ann was ready with her clothes, weapons, and a pack of food for us to take.

Ann picked up her clothes and I grabbed the food and weapons. We rushed out the door just as the whole damned roof fell in. We barely made it!

I loaded the packs onto the horse and distributed the guns and ammunition Ann had brought where I thought they could best be useful. We mounted our horses and started out away from the homestead when I happened to catch a glimpse of a gang of Indians running toward us. Fortunately, they were on foot, so we had an initial speed advantage which we immediately put to good use.

We didn’t stand a chance of escaping the Indians if we stayed on the plain where we would be easy to track and easy to attack. It seemed to me that we needed to head for those hills. There, we might be able to escape, but, failing that, we would surely have a better chance of fighting off the Indians when they finally caught up to us. For there was no question that they would eventually catch up to us if they did not lose the trail—a man can out last a horse in a protracted chase simply because a men has greater stamina than a horse could ever hope to have.

We rode for two hours before we reached the hills. We climbed the first hill, still on our horses. However, once we reached the crest, I had us stop to rest the horses and Eddy. He was in better shape than I expected, but the dog did need to rest. The Indians were no longer in sight, so we had a little time to get to know each other.

The first thing I asked Ann was, “How well can you shoot a rifle? And can you shoot a pistol?”

“Oh, yes, I am a pretty good shot with my rifle, up to about 80-100 yards. Beyond that, I am not so good. I have a pistol, a Colt Navy, modified to shoot .38 caliber bullets. I can do fairly well with that up to about 10 or 12 yards. Beyond that, I can’t hit much of anything.”

“That sounds reasonable. How much ammunition were you able to salvage?”

“I have about 120 rounds of .38-40 cartridges for my Winchester rifle and maybe 50 rounds for my pistol. That’s about it.”

“I saw a second rifle. What about it?”

“That was my husband’s .44-40 Winchester. I wasn’t able to salvage much ammunition for it, but, truthfully, I hate to shoot it because of the kick. I can shoot it if I have to, but I sure don’t like to.”

“Well, I hope you don’t have to. How much ammunition do you have for it. My rifle and both pistols are .44-40, so we are in pretty good shape there, but I still need to know what we have to work with.”

“My guess is that I was able to grab about 30 rounds, plus what was in the rifle when my husband quit using it. Oh, damn it all! I still can’t say ‘when my husband was ... ki ... ki ... killed.’”

“Just relax, Ann. I know how hard all this is on you. Don’t push yourself, and I’m sure that you’ll be alright. Just give yourself some time.” We continued to talk for a while until I figured that Eddy and the horses had rested enough for us to move on. It was still early, but I wanted us to find a good place to camp before dark set in. We had to have a place that we could defend—that was the number one priority. We could get by with little or no water for the night, and no fire for a cooked supper. We could eat jerky and cold beans if we had too, and Eddy could catch his own supper, as he usually did. There would be grass for the horses, though it might not be very good grass.

About an hour and a half later, I saw an ideal place. There was a cliff with a slight overhang, so that our backs would be protected. There was not quite what you would call a cave, but there was a kind of recess in the cliff, and, best of all, there was a little stream of water.

If we hurried, we could even warm the beans and make some coffee before it got too dark for a fire to be safe. We couldn’t do anything about the odor, but we could keep the smoke to a minimum and the flames down so that they would not show in daylight.

Ann started working on supper while I looked to our defense and taking care of the horses. I moved all of the rifles and extra ammunition up close to the recess, so they would be handy if we needed them during the night or before we left tomorrow.

While I had the chance, I counted the loose ammunition. With all of my weapons loaded, including the spare .44-40 rifle, we had 243 rounds of spare .44-40 cartridges. Ann had a box of 50.38 cartridges for her pistol, and she had 127 rounds of .38-40 cartridges for her rifle. That should be plenty to get us to a town where we could stock up. We were really lucky to have that much.

As for food, I asked Ann what she thought, and she estimated that we could get by for about 10 days on what we had. That was surely enough to get us safely through this ordeal.

All we had to do was to keep our heads and not panic. The Navajos chasing us were certainly very dangerous, but we could run away from them for short distances as long as we had our horses. If they started getting too close, Eddy and I would loop around behind them and give them a very nasty surprise. I didn’t want to have to do that if it could be avoided because it was more dangerous for Ann than it was for us. Nevertheless, we could do it if we had too.

The source of this story is Storiesonline

To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account (Why register?)

Get No-Registration Temporary Access*

* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.

Close
 

WARNING! ADULT CONTENT...

Storiesonline is for adult entertainment only. By accessing this site you declare that you are of legal age and that you agree with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.