Chapter 4

Most of the country between Cheyenne and Denver is what I call rolling plains with a few elevated hills thrown in to add spice to the scenery. As a result, as long as there were no trees or brush in the way, it was possible to see in all directions for at least a mile. That meant that there were few places for bandits to lurk, and you had to be pretty dumb or complacent, as I had been, to be caught by one.

This country was just not made for simple holdups, and traffic, such as it was, could flow fairly freely and unbothered by road agents. Be that as it may, there were still places where road agents could catch even the most observant traveler with his pants down. Come to think of it, why didn’t road agents lurk near where travelers were likely to stop long enough to piss or crap? That looked to me to be a good idea, and I filed it away in my memory bank for later consideration.

What prompted that thought was that I needed to piss, and I was coming up upon a likely place to do that in relative privacy. I couldn’t help wondering if a road agent wasn’t just waiting for me to take myself in hand. I rode into the bushes and dismounted. I carefully looked around before unbuttoning my fly, but the area looked clear. Nevertheless, I still had trouble relaxing enough to let the water flow. I just couldn’t get over the idea that I might be covered by the wrong end of a gun. Finally I finished pissing, buttoned my pants, and got the hell out of there. Dammit, sometimes my imagination runs away with me!

I left the bushes by a slightly different route, and I spotted a human skeleton lying in the bushes. Hell, maybe my imagination had not been so over the top after all. I resolved from then on to make sure that I looked around carefully before I relieved myself. One couldn’t be too careful in this era.

The distance between Cheyenne and Denver is about 100 miles, and that made it about 160 miles by road. At 30 miles per day, and that was pushing it in the heat of summer, it was going to take nearly six days to make the trip. I hoped to stay in hotels and eat in restaurants, but I was prepared to camp out as necessary.

My first night was spent camping out, but I managed to make it to Fort Collins for the second night. I had to push a little harder than I really wanted to to get to the town before dark. Both of the horses were very tired, and I was not much better, so I decided to spend a day in Fort Collins so that we could all rest.

Fort Collins is a nice place to visit, both in 1881 and in my original time. I spent most of my resting time in a saloon slowly drinking beer and playing low-stakes poker. I was determined to improve my skill at poker. It seemed that poker was the only recreation besides visiting whore houses that was available and socially acceptable for a man during that time. Frankly, most women in whore houses smelled so bad that I was hard pressed to enjoy my visits, so I wanted to do what I could to improve my poker playing ability.

The next day, I was back on my horse headed south. I must say that I found the advice of the hotel clerk that I treat the bedbug bites with horse liniment to be right on the mark. It stopped the itching and minor pain right away, and was about as safe as any medical treatment could be at that time. I guess that it was the alcohol in the horse liniment that did the job, but whatever it was, it did work. From then on, I never went anywhere without a bottle of horse liniment in my pack.

The rest of the way into Denver was uneventful, and the trip was not as uncomfortable as one might expect. My remaining nights were spent camped near the road, and I was beginning to reacquire my taste for such adventure. As a youth, I had always enjoyed camping, but I had lost touch with it when I went to college. The time I spent camping while in the Rangers was not fun because there was too much chance of being shot, so I no longer looked forward to the experience. Sure, I could get shot at now, but it did not seem the same.

I spent my first day in Denver just looking around, mostly in the saloons, and there were plenty of those to keep me occupied. I noticed right away that the bartenders were not as glib with local gossip as I was used to encountering, and I finally worked out that it was because they were afraid of spies from the local crime bosses. At the very minimum, a bartender who talked too much could find himself with a broken mirror the next day. That was too much money to take a chance for no good reason.

There was one newspaper in town, a weekly, as most were, that was not afraid to name names, times, and places, but most of the other local news people were very bland in what they reported. Out of curiosity, I visited the office of the newspaper that was not timid, and I found the place a wreck. The owner/editor had not had time to clean up since his last visit by some unhappy readers or their employees. He said that he did not expect to make much real difference in the politics of Denver, but he was going to keep trying. At least, it did sell newspapers.

He also advised me to leave town when I told him why I was there. He said that any thugs who were in Denver were employed by the local politicians, and the marshal’s office also employed them. Therefore, I would not get a fair deal when putting in a claim for a receipt. More likely, I would get a bullet in the back. The next day, I talked to some other people and got the same advice, so I said to hell with Denver and planned to move on. Upon reflection, I decided to head back to Cheyenne. At least, the marshal there was honest.

The next day, I headed north toward Cheyenne and made the trip in eight days. My trip to Denver had been educational in many respects, but I sure liked it better in Cheyenne. I was welcomed by the management and ladies of The Cheyenne Social Club, and I was happy to be “home.” Not a one of these women smelled bad!

I dropped in to see Marshal Brady to tell him that I was back in town and to ask what I might have missed in those two weeks that I was gone. It turned out that I had not missed anything of a professional interest, but the remaining two Fletcher boys were bragging about how they had run me out of town. The marshal warned me that those two idiots were bound to take a shot at me at the first opportunity. Their brother was deathly ill from buckshot wounds, and was not expected to live. The Fletchers were blaming that on me, but they had not said how I might have caused his problem.

Okay, I had not forgotten the Fletchers, but I figured that none of them were smart enough to give me any real trouble. That was another case of arrogance getting in the way of good sense. You didn’t have to be very intelligent to shoot well enough to put a bullet into somebody’s back, so I might well be headed for trouble. I did follow the advice of Marshal Brady and keep my shotgun handy at all times. It did get heavy, but it was a comfort to have it across my back whenever I was walking around. It was hanging from my saddle horn at all other times.

The next day was a prime example of the kind of thing I was going to have to put up with until I eliminated the Fletcher boys. I was walking from my hotel to a saloon for a little poker when a shot rang out. This time, the shooter was smarter than last time. The bullet grazed my ribs as it traveled from back to front and lodged in the wall of a store front.

Dammit, that hurt as the bullet burrowed under my skin and ran for an inch or so along a rib before it came out the front. Yes, I had been shot in the back. My saving grace was that the shooter was just not very good, and he missed his mark.

I dove to the ground and crawled behind a watering trough next to the sidewalk. I managed to see where the shot had come from because of the tell-tale plume of powder smoke. At this point, something kicked in, and I no longer felt the pain of the bullet hole, though I certainly would feel it again latter. I unlimbered my shotgun and prepared to fight. I was really pissed off, and I was about to put to use some of that training in urban warfare that I had received while with the Rangers.