Chapter 9

Oh, my God! I had so much paperwork to fill out that it took me nearly the whole day to get it all done. At least, the shooting had taken place in Bollard County so I was saved another stack of forms I would have had to fill with mind-numbing drivel. This was almost enough to make me quit the job, but I found that I liked being a deputy sheriff enough to stick with it.

Mary was supportive, and that made a big difference. My salary of $30 per month would have been a problem in other circumstances, but Allgood Meat & Co. was still carrying me on the books as an employee, so we had plenty of money.

Harlow and his brother Emit were bringing in enough hogs to keep our customers happy, so that was not a problem. Mary and I talked it over and decided to promote Harlow to the rank of "hunter" and to increase his salary to $50 per month. Ed also got a raise, and everybody was happy. Actually, Harlow's raise was partly based on the fact that he wanted to get married as soon as he was making enough money. Mary and I saw to that as soon as we heard about it. We would do the same for Ed and Emit when the time came. Of course, they all were going to receive an end-of-year bonus, too.

On top of everything else, the young dogs were now getting to be old enough to include in the hunting party. And "party" was the right word for it whenever a new dog was introduced to the hunting pack. Some dogs caught on fast and some dogs never learned, but all of them gave Sam a real workout as they were learning the job. The new dogs that never learned our way of hunting were dumped at $1 to the first person who would take it, but our reputation for successful hunting let us sell the other dogs for $10 each. That was an unheard of price for a young dog, but that shows you the value of a good reputation.

We kept two dogs, Calvin and George, and sold the rest rather quickly. Sam was still the undisputed leader of the pack, but Calvin and George proved to be very valuable. Henry Folsom was kind of pissed at us at first, but he changed his mind when we started sending people to him if they wanted untrained dogs. I continued to use Sarah as my partner whenever I was doing appropriate deputy sheriff business; otherwise, she was one of the hunters except when she had to look after her puppies.

Our business did grow a little when one of the restaurants in Baker put in a cold room and started buying directly from us. We sold them three carcasses per week delivered on our regular run to Baker. Dammit, we needed another driver to take some of the non-hunting workload off of Harlow's back. He kept Emit as his helper and hired John Jenson as the new driver at 50¢ per day.

Meanwhile, I was getting more of a workload as a deputy sheriff. Sheriff Williams was using me more and more for his duties outside the office in Baker. That meant that I was spending more time traveling around the county. Sheriff Williams promised me that he would start pushing on the County Board to buy an automobile for the necessary extended travel. Some of my trips were involving as much as 100 miles, and that could not be done in one day by buckboard.

After the third such assignment, I rebelled! I said that they either had to by me an automobile or I was going to quit. For one reason or another, I was the only deputy sheriff in Bollard County, and Sheriff Williams said that if I quit, he was going to retire immediately. That shook up the establishment, and I had a Ford Model T pickup inside of a week.

Okay, my stake was called, and I gave in. I took the Ford and quickly learned to drive it. No driver's license was needed in 1912—if you could drive a car, you were allowed to with no argument. The pickup had a 10-gallon tank, so I had to carry an extra can with me for emergencies. I also quickly became something of a mechanic to give first aid when the pickup refused to run, which was not often, but did happen. At least I could now travel on decent roads at up to 40 MPH (Miles per Hour), so I could handle long trips fairly easily and get home before dark.

Mary was thrilled at my new found prestige with one of the first automobiles in the county. I did point out that the pickup belonged to the county and not to me, but that was beside the point, since I was the one driving it. As a concession to the powers that be, I had painted on the doors "Bollard County Sheriff Dept." In Mary's eyes, that only added to my importance. Go figure.

Now that I had the transportation for it, I was assigned an office in the courthouse and Sheriff Williams expected me there whenever I was not working on a case. The result was that we both significantly improved our checker skills. I usually spent at least two days a week in my office, and that got to be a pain. After a while, I convinced Sheriff Williams to let me patrol the county looking for trouble. That turned out to be a hit with the populace. They now gave us credit for being concerned about their welfare.

I had a regular schedule for my patrol and I tried to spend a few minutes at a fixed time in each town so that I would be available to hear complaints. At first, I heard a lot of trivial nonsense, but the situation settled down after about three weeks. I started getting only serious complaints that I was able to cover fairly well in only a few minutes.

However, one day, I happened to pull into Jayville just as a bank robbery was occurring. I drove toward the sound of gunshots and jumped out of my truck almost before the last shot had sounded. I had my shotgun and my automatic, so I figured that I had most situations covered.

At least one bullet had broken a bank window onto the street, so I knew exactly where the problem was centered. I rushed to the door, but I did not barge in for fear of being shot by both friend and foe. I stood to one side and pushed the door open with the muzzle of my shotgun. As soon as I did, a fusillade of shots rained down on the doorway. Fortunately, I was prepared for that, and I was not hit.

I looked around the edge of the door and saw a man with a shotgun leaning over another man lying on the floor. The man on the floor was wearing a security guard's uniform, so I figured that I had at least one bandit pegged. My shotgun was loaded with #00 buckshot, and the range was only about 20 feet. The guy with the shotgun was going through the guard's pockets, so I figured that now was the time to shoot him while he was distracted. I snapped off two shots in slam fire mode and wiped out the man with the shotgun.

That caused me to draw some more fire, but I had jumped back in time, so I was not hit this time, either. Okay, I figured that there had to be one more robber, and there might be more. The problem was that I could not see the second robber from outside the bank. Dammit, I had no choice, I was going to have to enter the bank and probably draw more fire.

Before doing that, though, I shouted, "I'M A DEPUTY SHERIFF! THROW OUT YOUR GUN AND I WON'T SHOOT YOU!" Ha! That produced another shot in my direction. Okay, at least I knew that I was facing at least one more robber, and he was well hidden from me at this point. Taking that into consideration told me that he could not see me, either, and I had a chance if I were careful.

I laid my shotgun on the sidewalk and drew my automatic. What I had in mind was going to make the shotgun an impediment instead of an aid. I lay on the sidewalk and rolled through the doorway into the bank. Since I knew where to look, I caught sight of the other robber before he had a chance to react. I snapped off a shot at him, but I kept rolling because I could not be sure that my shot had hit the man.

Well, I had hit him alright; I had hit him in the chest. He was flopped back on the floor bleeding like a stuck pig. I stood up to walk toward him, but I still was holding my pistol ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. The damned fool tried to use one arm to swing the shotgun around toward me, and that was when I put a .45 caliber bullet through his head. There was a moderate entry wound, but the rear of his head exploded as the bullet exited. My God, somebody was going to have a real mess to clean up!

The next thing I knew, a heavy force slammed me in the back and knocked me down. It was Sarah protecting me from a third gunman. He was just coming out of the back room where the vault was, and he had a shotgun in one hand and a sack full of what had to be money in the other hand. He was swinging the shotgun toward me when Sarah knocked me down.

The man fired the shotgun and missed me, but he nearly cut Sarah in two with his shot from only about 15 feet away. At least she died immediately and didn't suffer. I was not so considerate. I swung around at the sound of the shot and plugged the man in his crotch. This was one time when I had no intention of killing a bad man if I could avoid it. I wanted him to suffer because he had shot such a faithful dog.

When he fell, the shotgun went flying one way and the money went another. I admit to crying as I went through the wounded man's pockets looking for additional weapons and identification.

This was when the bank manager showed up and thanked me profusely for stopping the bank robbery. Those three men were the entire gang according to the manager and a teller. Two customers agreed, so I took statements from them before I looked at the wounded man again.

The wounded man had stopped bleeding externally, but I hoped that he was bleeding internally. He was moaning and carrying on something fierce, and I was very happy to hear it. At the time, Jayville was between doctors and between marshals, so there was no one to leave the wounded man with. I was sufficiently irate that I was going to take the wounded man to Baker before I looked for medical aid for him.

The bank guard was dead, and I left it to the bank manager to take care of his body. The teller helped me to load the two dead robbers and Sarah into the pickup bed. We forced the wounded man into the seat beside me in the truck cab, and I used handcuffs to make sure that he could not escape. This action produced many screams of pain, and I enjoyed every one of them.

Once everything was ready, and I had what I needed for my paperwork, I drove as fast as I could toward home, trying to hit every bump that I could find on the way. I stopped at home long enough to remove Sarah's body from the pickup before continuing to Baker. Ed was there at the time, and he wanted to shoot the wounded man when he heard that he was the one who had shot Sarah. I stopped him and explained why. Ed nodded and walked away after punching the bastard in the wounded area.

I got to the courthouse and found Sheriff Williams to tell him what was going on and to ask his help in taking care of the necessary details. The sheriff was a fan of Sarah's, too, so he was in no hurry to find a doctor for the wounded man. However, that couldn't go on forever, so I drove the pickup to the Baker city jail. The wounded man was left in a cell, and the deputy marshal promised to find a doctor for the prisoner. I told him that I did not think that there was any great hurry, but not to let the prisoner die if he could help it.

We drove to the county morgue and dropped off the two bodies. That was when I was supposed to start on the paperwork, but I begged off until tomorrow. I drove home and waited for everybody to show up so that we could have a funeral for Sarah. Even the dogs attended.

I related what had happened in Jayville with emphasis on how Sarah had saved my life. There was not a dry eye in the group when I finished the story. The dogs all sniffed Sarah's body and convinced themselves that she was dead before wandering off the way dogs do. We buried her near the dog pen and put up a marker. I vowed to get a stone marker for her grave as soon as it could be arranged.

The next morning, I went to my office and attacked that mountain of paperwork that I had to fill out on the bank robbery and its aftermath. During our dinner break, the sheriff and I stopped by the city jail to see how the wounded man was progressing—not very well, we hoped. The doctor was using morphine to control his pain, but he was careful not to provide so much that the pain completely disappeared. There was some doubt that the man would ever go to trial because my bullet had penetrated his bladder, and he was expected to die from that in a few weeks. If anybody ever deserved it...

Dammit, it took me two days to complete everything with that paperwork. Part of the problem was that I had to explain why I was "interfering" with a situation that was supposed to be handled by the local law enforcement personnel. There was no block to check to point out that there were no local law enforcement personnel in Jayville at that time, so I had to write out the same explanation 10 times! Dammit, what wouldn't I give for some way to write once and make as many copies as I needed.

Well, I finally finished all of that paperwork and could go back to what I thought was really my job. I returned to canvassing the county to hear what the citizens had to say. Most of the complaints were for things like dogs barking too late at night and other such things that were not my concern, but I did hear very quickly about another case of road agents making life difficult for the citizens of Bollard County. I got 14 such complaints inside of three days, so I could see that this was something to be taken seriously.

I interviewed all of the victims that I could find and found out that there were three men who wore masks when they did the robberies. That made it hard to get a decent description from any one victim, but I put together the 14 descriptions that I received and got a pretty good picture of what the three looked like. It was obvious that all three of the crooks were Negros because they all flashed a shade of dark skin too dark to be simply suntan or Indian skin. That was some help because it eliminated about two-thirds of the male population of Bollard County. Furthermore, they all seemed to be fairly young. That eliminated another big section of the population. They were all taller than average and fairly muscular. This was enough to get me started.

I did check with the bartenders in the White saloons. No Negros were allowed into the saloons, but one of the White customers might have noticed something that would help me find the culprits. There were reports of three Negros seen walking along the road, and they were all carrying shotguns. Of course, they might be hunters, but the fact that the descriptions strongly suggested that these were all the same men made me lean in their direction.

Finally, I managed to get a name. This could have come from spite against an individual, but I had to check it out. I drove into the yard of a Negro sharecropper and stepped out of the pickup. I now had Calvin with me as my backup. He struck me as having the same kind of protective attitude that Sarah had shown, and that was what I needed. On this particular occasion, I had Calvin wait for me in the bed of the pickup. I did this because most Negros seemed to have an ingrained fear of dogs, and all I wanted to do at this point was talk.

I went to the door and knocked. On the third try, a large man came to the door and asked, "What do you want, Mr. Sheriff?" He must have seen the sign painted on my truck door.