Chapter 7

Shit, I am in a tizzy! I’m just not sure what to do. Ann just told me that she is knocked up. She just found out and here we are ready to move out to resume the search for the two boys kidnapped by the Navajos. We talked about it, and she convinced me that she had a good five months before she would show much, so there was no reason why she couldn’t come with me. By then, we should either have found the boys or know that we would

never find them. To cut a long story short, Ann convinced me to go along with what she wanted, but, hell, I figured that she would be able to do that in any case.

We headed for where we had ended our search last fall, planning on picking up our spiral search pattern from there. We had only gone about five miles from our wintering place when Eddy started signaling that he found some Indians. I told him to search, and he took off at full speed, leaving Queenie to hold the fort. Eddy was only gone for about 15 minutes, which meant that the Indians were damned close, and he acted like there were a lot of them. For one thing, he gathered his family and headed back out with a veritable army following in his wake. By now, those puppies had grown to be nearly full size dogs, and they were a mean looking bunch as they followed after Eddy. My first thought was, “Heaven help any Indians they find!”

Ann had all of her guns ready, and she knew exactly what to do if and when we were attacked. We were going to use the buckboard as a fort. I was going to dive under it and Ann was going to use a space in the back we had prepared for her place during the defense. I had arranged boxes and bails of stuff around to form a little fort for her. It was only big enough for one person, such was the limitation of the space in a buckboard. That’s why I was going to fight from underneath.

I reminded Ann that if they were Comanches or Kiowas, then she should shoot at the horses when they charged at us. Anybody else, we would have to figure it out when we saw them. We had about 15 more minutes before a flock of Kiowas showed up—they were Comanche relatives and just as much trouble, so it really made no difference. At least we could depend on them fighting from their horses as long as they could.

Ann drove like a mad woman to the top of a little hill so that we would have a slight advantage over the attackers. She set the brake and tied off the reins before grabbing her rifle and jumping into her fighting hole. I scrambled under the buckboard as soon as she came to a stop, so we were ready before the Kiowas got within convenient range.

I started shooting at about 100 yards, but Ann held off until they had gotten to about 75 yards because of the lighter caliber of her .38-40 Winchester. We played hell with that Indian charge because we were both shooting at the horses. There were at least 20 Indians in that war party, and we knocked off six in the opening charge. We hit the horses, and that was just as good as shooting the riders, because they were charging full tilt and a horse that fell meant a rider was down with at least one broken bone, often in the neck or back.

They saw that they couldn’t break us with that first charge, so the war chief called them off for another try. Besides the chief, I counted 17 warriors, so I hoped that Eddy would hurry and show up.

Speaking of Eddy, six dogs came boiling up out of the tall grass and hit the Indians where they were milling around getting organized for the next charge. All of the dogs went for the horses, putting six out of action in that first attack. The dogs went for a rear leg or the horse’s belly, and their sharp teeth ruined six horses that quick. The Indians were caught completely off guard and could not react fast enough to defend against the dogs. The dogs ran off, and six Indians were left lying on the ground where their horses had dumped them.

The range was a little long, but both Ann and I opened fire on the remaining Indians and their horses the moment the dogs were far enough away. This was simply too much. The Indians on the ground jumped onto a horse with another Indian, and everybody rode away. At least, they were out of sight.

A few minutes later, Eddy brought his family in, and Ann and I made much over them. I could tell that Eddy was pleased with himself and very proud of his family, so I was very lavish in my praise of all concerned. They certainly deserved our praise and thanks, for we would have been in serious trouble if the dogs had not done such a good job.

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We came upon four more Navajo villages during the next seven weeks, and we never saw a sign of the boys we were hunting. By this time, we had covered the majority of Navajo territory and just didn’t expect to find any more villages in the time we had left. As far as I was concerned, we were never going to find the boys, and there was no point in continuing the hunt. I talked the situation over with Ann until we were both sick of it, and we just did not know of anything to do but just give up the chase.

I hated to do it, but I was going to have to give the judge the bad news pretty damned soon. By now, we were quite a ways away from Prescott, so we had to get started back before the weather turned on us. Ann didn’t want to admit it, but she was showing some signs of her pregnancy. She was getting tired a lot easier than she had before, and I was beginning to be concerned about her welfare.

I wanted to spend this fall and winter in reach of a midwife, especially if something started to go wrong. Neither one of us were real sure of her due date, but Ann figured that she still had at least five months to go. I hoped that she was right, as that would give us plenty of time to get set up with a place to spend the winter.

The logical place for us to spend the winter was Prescott, so that was what we decided. We got back to town, and I went to see the judge. Dammit, I was in for a big surprise! Judge Haverall had died of a heart attack two months ago, so it was just as well, I guess, that I had not found the boys. No new judge had yet been appointed to take his place, so I was kind of at loose ends. I was still drawing my salary as a Deputy Marshal, so I didn’t have that to worry about, but I had to find something to keep me busy until a new judge was appointed.

We found an empty house on the outskirts of Prescott that nobody else wanted, so we moved in. It was a good house with its own well, outhouse, and barn, so I wondered why it was empty. I never did find the answer to that, but that didn’t make any difference to us, anyway.

Ann had asked around and had found a midwife with a good reputation, so she settled on her. The babies (yes, she had twins) showed up mostly on time and in good shape, so that turned out very well. Bill, Jr. and Tom were a real trial for Ann, but she stood up well. She found a local Mexican woman to help her look after the boys, so she didn’t go crazy, though I wondered why on several occasions.

Unfortunately, something went wrong during the birth process, I never did understand what it was, and the midwife said that Ann couldn’t have any more kids. Ann was real upset about that, but I think I convinced her that two kids was certainly enough for me. She seemed to relax, but I think that she bore down and worked harder taking care of the two children she had, sort of as a way to compensate for not having any more.

It was spring before the new federal judge showed up. Judge Wilson was a reasonable sort of man, and he kept me on to do the things that a Deputy Marshal was supposed to do. That was pretty much exclusively serving legal papers and escorting prisoners for trials. The work was not demanding, in fact, it was a little boring, but the pay was good enough. The main thing was that I got to spend a lot of my time with my family.

In my spare time, and I had a lot of that, I went into the dog-raising business. The people around Prescott knew of Eddy and Queenie’s reputations, so I had no trouble selling their puppies off as guard dogs. One rancher even used some of them to guard his cattle. It was surprisingly easy to convince the dogs that the cattle were to be protected, and that was pretty much the end of his losses to wild animals and the occasional rustler. He was so pleased that he was my best advertisement, and I sold a lot of dogs for that job once the word got around.

Anyway, life was pretty much a quiet and pleasant time for six more years, but all good things seem to end sometime. The twins were eight years old, so they were not a real hassle for Ann, except that they wanted to wander out into the countryside a bit more than was really safe. I got to taking them with me whenever I served papers to the outlying ranches and homesteads, and Ann got bored, so she came along on most of the trips. We made a family outing from these trips, and we all enjoyed them.

By this time, Eddy and Queenie had died of old age. You know, most big dogs don’t live all that long. Nevertheless, we still had their offspring with us, so we were not without canine protection. This trip, we needed them!