Chapter 9

We discussed the subject thoroughly over the winter and we all agreed that I would give up the farming side of my work load and take to bounty hunting exclusively. I had already demonstrated that I could bring in more money as a bounty hunter than I could hope to do as a farmer. The garden could be worked by the women to produce enough vegetables for all of us, and there were enough wild hogs and longhorns around to supply our meat requirements.

It turned out that Alice was the best shot of the women when it came to a rifle, though Mary was still best with a pistol. Anyway, I showed Alice how to used a shotgun to hunt meat with the special slugs that we made. Enough wild hogs visited our garden so that she never had to leave the house to keep the family in meat. That, combined with her skill with the chickens, gave us all of the meat and eggs that we needed.

We now had nine Henry rifles and eight .44 caliber pistols of various kinds. With the fence that I made a point of keeping in first class condition, we no longer had a problem with Comanche attacks. Actually, the only worry I had for the women was an attack by a gang of Whites. The false assumption that women could not protect themselves kept the chance of such an attack in my mind. The women assured me that they could take care of themselves, and I intellectually believed them, but I still worried. Go figure.

Anyway, as soon as the weather moved into spring-like conditions so that my leg did not hurt so much, I set out to resume my bounty hunting. I figured that I had around $50-60 to be used in the property tax relief role without hurting our food supply, so I was going to be able to help three or four people, widows mostly, but there were more people who needed help.

We had figured out that all I had to do was to leave a pouch of money on the front porch or veranda in front of the front door and it would be found. Based on what I was able to learn, everybody was being hit with that same $16 tax, so that was what I was leaving at a house in the middle of the night. I figured that it would be found the next morning, and I would not be connected with the gift. Anybody too stupid to figure out what the $16 was for was beyond help, and I did not worry about it. There were three widows with children I knew of who needed the help, so they were taken care of first.

What we had not figured on was what the crooked Carpetbaggers would do. They would try to steal the tax cash from the widows. I found that out quite by accident. My route one day took me past one of the widows' home when I heard some shooting due to my improved hearing. I raced toward the sound to see what I could do to help solve the problem—that much shooting certainly indicated a problem.

Dammit, this was almost exactly a duplicate of what I had seen when I had rescued Alice last fall. Five men were laying siege to the house belonging to Widow Martin. However, there was no fooling around with this attack. All five men were dismounted and firing rifles at the loopholes where two people were shooting back with Henry rifles. Widow Martin had a son who was old enough to shoot, so he must be the one with the other rifle. This was an adobe house with a sod roof, and the only openings were in the front where there was a door and two windows. The return fire was coming from the two windows.

The attackers were crouched behind various things in the front yard, and I was going to advise Widow Martin to get rid of them as quickly as possible. There was no point in providing shooting stations for attackers. However, this made the backs of all five shooters readily visible and perfect targets for me. I figured to use my Henry rifle against the attackers since they were not moving from their current positions.

I dismounted about 100 yards from the rear of the attackers and took my rifle with me as I sneaked up to within about 100 feet of the enemy. I lay down on the ground in the prone position to steady me and to make me hard to hit when they finally did recognize that I was shooting at them. My first shot caught a shooter in the perfect place between his shoulder blades. My bullet must have nicked his back bone because he dropped his rifle and kind of flowed onto the ground. The other shooters never even noticed that he had been shot.

My next shot was not so elegant, but I did hit my target at about the left kidney. That was not immediately fatal, but it would be in a few weeks because we did not have the medical knowledge available locally to do anything for him unless he could get help from an Army surgeon. However, he was no longer shooting, and that was my main interest.

This guy did shout with the pain of his wound, and another of the shooters looked at him. That was a fatal mistake because he exposed enough of the side of his head to have one of the shooters from inside the house remove the back of his skull. Ah, that left enough of his face to identify him in case he was on a wanted poster.

Three down and two to go was not the kind of odds the attackers were happy with, so those two tried to escape. I got one of them, and a shooter from inside the house got the other. A welcome silence fell over the battlefield. I shouted, "I AM JOSH HUSTON! DO NOT SHOOT ME!" I waved my hat and stood up. Nobody fired from the house, so I figured that it was safe for me to venture toward the house. "I WILL BE THERE AS SOON AS I GET MY HORSE!" A shout from inside okayed that, so that was what I did.

As I dismounted in front of the door, Widow Martin stepped out and said, "Thank goodness you showed up, Mr. Huston. We were running low on Henry ammunition, and would have been reduced to using Colt Navys before long."

"I am glad that I was able to help. Is everybody all right?"

"Yes, everybody is fine. What brought you to our rescue? It sure was timely!"

"I am now working as a bounty hunter, and I was making a sweep of the neighborhood when I heard the shooting. I am glad that I was in the area."

"Well, you are welcome to these galoots. I hope that you can find something worth while for your trouble. I will offer you some coffee when you finish."

"Thank you. I will do just that." I looked at all of the attackers, and damned if I did not recognize one of them as being a bodyguard for the head tax collector for the county. The very man I had visited back last fall. He was the one I had shot in the kidney, and he was obviously in considerable pain.

"Mister, please do me a favor and put a bullet into my head. This pain is more than I can stand, and I know that I am a dead man from this wound."

"Okay, I will do that, but answer some questions first. Do you work for the head tax collector for the county? Why are you here?"

"Yeah, he is my boss, and he is the one what sent me here to steal what cash this woman had. We were also told to fuck her and to rough up her family while we were about it. Mr. Wilson got word that she was going to be able to pay her taxes, and we were sent here to make sure that she did not do that. He and some friends wanted her property because of the water she had."

"Okay, here is the bullet you wanted. I will be visiting Wilson shortly with the same kind of gift." With that, I shot him between the eyes. His pain stopped.

It turned out that one of the men was on a wanted poster to the tune of $20. That was going to help another widow pay her taxes. I also collected $17.61 from the pockets of the dead men. I gave that to Widow Martin and kept the horses, guns, and other stuff to sell to add to my tax fund. I figured that we did not have to invite Widow Martin to join our family because her son was big enough and old enough to take over the farming. I drank the coffee that she offered and dragged the unwanted four dead men to a convenient arroyo for the scavengers to remove.