Chapter 10

The Army trooper led me to the site of the payroll robbery. The site was left as it was found except that the troopers, both dead and wounded had been removed. The horses and mules were still there, and that completely ruled out the Comanches. The Comanches were so unlikely as to be laughable, but they had to be officially ruled out. Had the attack been by Comanches, there would have been nothing left of the mule meat, but it was still there. Besides, the Comanches had nothing but contempt for the White man's money.

The next possibility was Comancheros, but there was nothing to indicate one way or the other whether or not they were involved. I would have to talk to the surviving wounded to clarify that. Likewise, I would have to talk to the survivors about the possibility of a White gang attack, which I felt was the most likely.

There were a lot of human footprints around the wagons and dead animals, but few horse footprints. I did not know what to make of that at the moment, but I did make a mental note of it. It might not mean anything or it might be important; I just could not tell at this point.

The next step was to look for the tracks of the gang's horses as they rode away. That could be the most telling evidence, and it could lead me directly to the gang if the tracks were not disturbed too much. The trooper was able to show me the tracks that had been found, and that did save me some time.

From what I could see, there were seven horses belonging to the gang, and one of the horses was carrying a lighter load than the rest. That was enough to indicate that there were six men in the gang, and one horse was loaded only with the strong box of gold. The tracks led almost due south, and that was away from Comancheria. Therefore, the gang was probably not Comancheros, as they would have been welcomed by the Comanches.

Okay, my working guess was that this was a gang of six White bandits, and they had planned to haul away a strong box after the raid. That was not much to go on, but it did establish that this was a planned attack and not a case of a happy accident for the gang.

The trooper showed me two places where the ambushers had fired on the soldiers guarding the strong box in the wagon. He also told me that there had been nine soldiers with the money. They had consisted of a driver and an assistant driver, a sergeant, and six troopers. As usual, the soldiers had been armed with single-shot rifles, a part of the economy measures following the War. The bandits had all been using Henry repeaters. No wonder they had easily blasted away the opposition. I was willing to bet that not a single bandit had been wounded because the soldiers had been caught completely by surprise.

As far as I was concerned, I had all of the information that I was going to get, and there was no point in wasting the time it would take to interview the three survivors. I had the trooper come with me as I followed the trail left by the bandits. The bandits headed in very nearly a straight line away from the ambush and obviously knew exactly where they were headed. We spent the afternoon following the tracks, and they led to a fairly large stand of cottonwoods along a moderately wide stream. Had it been deeper, the stream could have been called a river, but this was probably its maximum size.

As we approached, both of us could smell smoke, so there had to be some people close by with a fire. The trick was to find them without being seen ourselves. We rode up to the trees and dismounted. I had the trooper follow me as we searched the woods. Ah, there it was—a cabin, hardly more than a shack, in among the trees. Next to the cabin was a rope corral with seven horses inside. This had to be the robbers!

I had the trooper wait while I sneaked up to the cabin and looked for a suitable window so that I could spy on the inside of the cabin. Dammit, there were four windows and a door, but all four windows were shuttered so that I could not see inside, and the door was closed. This was where my unusual hearing came into its own. I listened carefully and identified six voices inside the cabin, and they were talking about the difficulty of getting the strongbox open.

That was enough. I did not hang around any longer, but went back to send the trooper to collect a military detail to help me attack the cabin. My plan was to keep an eye on the place while he was gone and to try to keep the bandits from leaving before he got back with the additional troopers. I had already qualified for a part of the reward by finding the bandits, and that was all I was going to get from the looks of things. I was willing to bet that only a blacksmith would be able to open the strongbox without the key, so I told the trooper to hurry before the bandits left to find a cooperative blacksmith.

The trooper was conscientious, so he took off at a good speed to follow my instructions. All I could do now was to keep an eye on the cabin and wait for the Army to show up. By the nature of things, I would be lucky to see them before tomorrow afternoon. With that in mind, I found a suitable place and made a simple camp. I always traveled with my camping equipment tied behind my saddle, so this was no great hardship, especially in light of the fact that I was going to get at least $250 from this episode.

I had an absolutely boring time waiting for the Army to show up. Finally they did along about mid-afternoon. I was very happy to see that this was a squad of Black dragoons. I knew that I could depend on them to follow orders and to do a good job of it. My only complaint was that they were armed with those damned single-shot rifles, but I still expected that they would do well when it came to a firefight.

I had two men take a stand to guard each window while the sergeant and I guarded the door. I expected that there would be a firefight because there was too much money in that strongbox for the bandits to abandon it. I expected that some of the bandits would try to escape through the windows when it became certain that they were going to lose this battle. That would make the bandits ideal targets for the dragoons even if they did have those single-shot rifles.

Once the men were in place, the sergeant and I went up to the door. I winked at the sergeant and shouted, "COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND WILL BE SHOT IF YOU TRY TO RESIST!"

That got the kind of response that I expected; namely, several gunshots at the door. We could see the effects of the bullets hitting the door, but no bullets came through because the wood was too thick to let pistol bullets propelled by black powder get through. "YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES TO MAKE UP YOUR MINDS! AFTER THAT, I AM GOING TO SET THE CABIN ON FIRE! THERE IS NO WAY THAT YOU CAN ESCAPE!"

The sergeant grinned at me and pulled out his Remington .44 pistol. I drew one of my Starr DAs. Both of us had six bullets at the ready, plus I had another pistol if I needed it. That was 12 bullets and only six bandits, so I figured that we were well enough armed without my second Starr DA.

I was in no hurry to set the fire, but I would if the bandits did not surrender. After a couple of minutes, there was a single gunshot inside the cabin. I guessed that there was one man who would not go along with what the rest wanted to do, and he was now a dead man.

I yelled, "OKAY, I AM STARTING THE FIRE IF YOU DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR."