Chapter 7

Well, the night finally came for the raid, and we were all dressed for the occasion. Yes, the women were wearing hoods and theirs were long enough to hide their hair. Nevertheless, I was pretty sure that a careful observer could tell that Mary was a woman simply because it was impossible to completely hide her breasts, though she made an honest effort to do so. I just hoped that there would be no careful observers around tonight.

We drove the 11 miles into Albany at a brisk trot. The mules didn’t like that, but constant reminders with the whip making gentle taps on their rear ends were enough to keep up the pace. It took us nearly two hours to get to town, so we were going to have only three hours for the actual raid. Surely that would be enough!

We pulled around to the rear of the store and parked at the door to the general storeroom. This door was locked on the inside, so we opened it the easy way: we used a piece of chain attached to the rear of the wagon to pull the door out by the proverbial roots. This did not make as much noise as I feared, and we entered, all except one person temporarily left to keep an eye on the mules and wagons.

When we got inside, we were met by a watchman. He demanded, “What the hell are you bozos doing here. We’re closed, and I’m the only one here.” Ah, that was information that we needed and was very important for us.

I said, “We are here to relieve this store of some of its contents. We have a shopping list that some of us will look into, but mainly we want the Enfield rifles that you have.”

“Say, don’t I know you? Well, that ain’t important. But I ain’t about to tell you that the gun room is locked, and the key is hanging right there beside your left shoulder.”

It was a good thing that our informant could not see the laugh on my face; otherwise, he might have gotten huffy about the whole thing.

“I can see that y’all got guns and have threatened me with them. Shit, old Master Beauregard is sure going to be upset with me when I am found tied up tomorrow morning.”

Okay, there was no question now that the night watchman was on our side. We just had to remember to tie him securely, but not painfully, when we left after the raid.

I directed everybody to follow me, including the watchman. There was no point in giving him a chance to change his mind, although I did not expect him to do so. We went to the gun room and opened it. There were several cases of rifles stacked in the corner. The watchman informed us that each case contained eight rifles, and there were four cases. Hell, that was exactly what I wanted, so we found the dolly and started moving the crates to the wagons.

Meanwhile, the women started moving through the store collecting the things that they wanted. I have no idea how many trips they made to the wagons with loot, but they even commandeered two men to help them carry stuff. Even the watchman helped them!

We found two boxes of minie ball bullets that fit the Enfields and we took them. I think that came to 2,000 rounds, but I was not sure at the time. We also picked up four barrels of powder, though I was thinking more on the lines of using that for hand grenades, so we picked up some fuse while we were about it.

It took just over 90 minutes for us to finish the raid, and most of that was because the women kept finding things that they had forgotten to put on the list. Eventually, we were ready to leave. We let the watchman make a quick trip to the privy before tying him up. He actually suggested that we make the bonds a little tighter so that he could be a little safer. We had no trouble accommodating his request. Finally, we bid him good night and we drove off.

Our wagons were so heavily loaded that the two mules pulling each wagon had a hard time getting us back to Maudville. They certainly could not do it at a trot! We still pulled in about an hour earlier than we were expected, but that was not a problem. We moved the guns, etc. into my workshop, but we left the rest of the stuff under a tarpaulin on each wagon until we had daylight to unload the stuff tomorrow.

I spent the next five weeks converting the guns to the rifles and pistols that we used. I went ahead and converted all of the guns we had on hand because I was hoping for more recruits to join us. Maudville was currently too small to survive, and I wanted to do whatever I could to keep us going.

Well, it was a good thing that I had converted enough guns to give every one of us a rifle and a pistol. Beauregard had naturally complained to the sheriff about the raid on his store, and this was too big a deal to be ignored. It took a few weeks for the sheriff to collect the number of men that he figured to need before he came looking for us.

Henry heard about this upon one of his regular visits to Albany, and he was planning our defense as he came home. It was his opinion that we should ambush the posse at some distance from Maudville so that we would not be giving away our location in case the Army was called in. That was likely to happen if the governor was frightened by our defeat of the sheriff and his men, as Henry was certain that we could do. Most of the posse would be armed with the muzzle-loading Enfields that could get off no more than three or four shots per minute; whereas, our guns could be fired at the rate of about 30 rounds per minute if we had to. Also, we could reload so quickly that the other side might not even notice that we were reloading.

His proposal was that the men ambush the sheriff and his men somewhere else while the women maintain a guard over Maudville in case of unexpected developments. That sounded good to everybody, and that was our plan. The only problem that I could see was that Martha was due to deliver her baby very soon, and I might not be able to be with her. She said that she understood, but I was still not happy about the whole thing. Dammit, why couldn’t the sheriff have waited a few more weeks?

We got word that the sheriff was on his way with a 20-man posse and should get to Albany in about four days. On the day that Henry was in town to hear about the posse, he “let slip” the news that someone had seen two wagons head northeast from Albany at about 4:00 AM on the night of the robbery. That was directly opposite of our actual route, and there was no way to tell if the sheriff would fall for the ruse.

Well, we had to plan for any possibility. Henry suggested that we load all of our fighting men into a wagon and park ourselves near Albany on the day that the sheriff was due to leave on the last stage of his punitive expedition. Henry would go into town with some rabbit furs that he had not previously traded and act as a spy on the sheriff’s intentions. As soon as he knew the direction the sheriff was traveling, he would rush to us and lead us to a place where we could ambush the posse. That was a better plan that anyone else could come up with, so that was what we decided to do.

We had a two-hour wait before Henry returned. He said that about half of the posse had gotten drunk the night before, and were carrying terrible hangovers. That was good news, and it explained why it took so long for the posse to leave Albany. Yes, the posse was headed northeast, and that had been a good choice of directions because there was a well known outlaw gang located about 20 miles northeast of Albany.

Now, we had a choice. We could stick to our original plan of ambushing the posse or we could wait for them to attack the outlaw band before we rode to the rescue. He wanted to know what I thought of the two plans.

Frankly, I was afraid to let a fairly large outlaw band know of our existence. They just might decide that we would be easy pickings and decide to attack us just because they might get away with it. On the other hand, if we knocked off the posse before it got very far from Albany, nobody would know who had done it, and our secret would be safe for a while longer. Henry agreed that was a reasonable argument for the ambush, so that was what we were going to do.