Chapter 5

Marshal Brady recommended that I see a woman who had the reputation of working miracles with bullet wounds. Well, I don’t know exactly what she did, except she had me drink enough laudanum and whiskey to knock me completely unconscious. When I woke up, she had slit the skin over the wound and completely cleaned out the tunnel dug by the bullet. Following that, she had sewn the gash back up and promised me that there would be only a minor scar.

The problem was that I was going to be in considerable pain for a few days. She warned me not to take too much laudanum and to rest as much as possible in bed. At least, I had a reasonably pleasant place to recuperate: The Cheyenne Social Club. I stayed in one room and took my meals there. The ladies of the establishment made a point of looking after me, but I was much too sore for sex during that time. Oh, well, my “doctor” did keep me from any sort of infection from the wound, and I recovered after two weeks in bed.

Well, I recovered enough to move around inside the building, but it was three more weeks before I could move my arm well enough to handle a gun. My current situation with the assassin after me was that I had to stay out of sight until I could recover the use of my shooting ability. I never lost my skill with either the shotgun or the pistol, but I did loose a lot of speed in drawing my revolver. I spent an ungodly amount of time practicing in my room until I could get my drawing speed back to a semblance of where it had been. Frankly, up until then, I was afraid to go out on the street.

I did get word that the first Fletcher boy that I had shot had died, and I had killed the second one in that fight that resulted from my wounding, so I had only the third one to worry about. He had disappeared, and nobody could guess where he had gone. All I knew for certain was that he was no longer in the Cheyenne area. However, that did not mean that he could not return at any time and take a shot at me.

It was another month before I was back in condition to do much riding, and that had meant a noticeable drop in my ready cash. I needed to find some more fugitives pretty damned quick if I expected to stay on the good side of my creditors. The hills west of Cheyenne were still the best bet for me to investigate, so I planned a trip out there for the following week.

I packed my usual kit and set out on Monday morning. I had hardly gone three miles before I saw sign of a major cattle drive crossing my path. That was very puzzling because there were no cattle ranches on this side of town except for a couple of very small outfits that would be hard pressed to muster 25 head. My curiosity got the better of me, and I followed the trail.

Cattle never move very fast this side of a stampede, so I caught up to them within 90 minutes. I used my binoculars to look for the brand. Shit, there were at least three different brands represented in the herd of what looked to be at least 150 head. That just did not seem reasonable, so I rode a little closer to the herd.

It must have been the dust I raised as I rode in their direction that resulted in them spotting me. Four men rode in my direction very fast, and somehow they did not look very friendly. When they got fairly close, they started shooting at me, and that disturbed me no end. Only rustlers were that unfriendly, and rustling was the most likely reason for all of those brands.

Well, I like to pretend that I am not a fool, so I turned around and rode away as fast as my horse and packhorse could move. The four men gained on me and kept up their shooting. I was afraid that they might shoot one of the horses, so I headed for a small dry trench that I had seen. I hesitate to call it an arroyo, but that’s what it resembled.

The trench was only about four feet deep, so there was nothing that could be done to protect my horses. However, I figured that if I dismounted, they would shoot at me and not the horses. I rode up to the ditch and dismounted while grabbing my shotgun and water canteen. I scurried down into the trench and ran for about 50 feet.

The riders rode along the edge of the trench and kept shooting at me. Of course, by now, they were operating with the second or third cylinder in their revolvers, and were being a little more conservative with their bullets. This gave me time to raise my shotgun and fire at the nearest rider. I had to hurry my shot, so I hit his horse instead of the rider. That ball from my buck and ball shot plowed into the chest of the horse and killed him on the spot. The horse went down and rolled before the rider could jump clear. The result was one badly broken rider.

The other three riders had to turn away to avoid the fallen horse, and that gave me the opportunity to shoot at them in profile. Again, I felt that I was too pressed to consider an alternative, so I shot again at a horse. This time, the ball entered through the saddle just behind the leg of the rider. I expect that at least one of the buckshot also hit the rider. The result was essentially the same—the horse and rider went down immediately.

I swung my shotgun a little to the right and fired at another horse. This time I did not score an immediate kill, but the horse went down too quickly for the rider to escape. The horse rolled over on him and must have broken his back. Within seconds, the horse died too.

That left one man who was frantically trying to escape. I fired at him and missed, which did not surprise me all that much. The problem was that he was madly riding toward the herd. I could only assume that he would soon be back with more men to try to kill me, either out of revenge or the fear that I could identify him. Either reason was enough to demand my death.

While that rider was gone, I considered the situation and decided that it was useless to try to escape. Instead, I would use the trench as my breastworks and defend myself from where I was. However, that did nothing to keep them from stealing my horses, so I had to do what I could to protect them.

I ran back to them and quickly looked for a place where I could lead them down into the trench. That would not do much to keep them from being shot if the battle came to that, but it would make it very difficult for the rustlers to grab them and ride off, leaving me to die if I could not walk back to Cheyenne.

I also had a brainstorm. I figured that I could block the trench with the horses and keep the rustlers from charging me by riding down the length of the trench. Shooting a horse in the trench would do nothing to let another horse pass, so they were not likely to do that on purpose. Therefore, I placed one horse to my left and the other horse to my right, spaced about 50 feet apart. That should be far enough to keep them from being shot accidentally, but close enough to me to let me do something to protect them.

I could do nothing if I was attacked from both sides of the trench at the same time, but I didn’t think that the rustlers could manage that in a short time. I figured that they would be impatient and not want a long fight. At least, I hoped so.

It took nearly 40 minutes for the rustler to return with his friends, and there were nine of them in total. They must have left only one or two men to watch the herd. That was not enough to handle such a large herd, so I figured that they were not going very far with it during the coming battle.

While I’d had time, I had reloaded my magazine with shells and had one in the chamber to give me 11 shots before I had to reload. That should be close to enough if I could live up to my reputation back in my former time. I had two more full magazines handy if I needed them, but I doubted that I would. Either I could kill or drive off the rustlers with the ammunition I had, or I would be dead. Either way, I would not need any more magazines.

The rustlers rode up and started shooting. They were all using revolvers, and they were spraying a lot of lead around. They kept their horses moving, why I don’t know, but it kept them from making very accurate shots. Probably, none of them had practiced enough with their pistols to be a real danger to me if I were facing only one of them, but nine men shooting was statistically against me. All I could do was hope that I managed to eliminate them before one of them got lucky.