Chapter 1

Author’s note:[ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

I was from a small New England city, Leominster, Massachusetts, and was taking a vacation from my job as a state trooper. I had always wanted to visit Texas and some of the places well known from the Indian Wars of the 1870s. The country had finally calmed down from the sudden arrival of the replicators that had made all non-service jobs obsolete, so I had been able to take my accumulated vacation time in one lump.

I had teleported to Dallas and had my replicator produce a convertible car for me to drive west toward El Paso. I had a map with all of the interesting places of the war with the Comanches marked, and I planned to visit every one that I had time for. I had been on the road about a week and was well into Comancheria, the area claimed by the Comanches before they were finally pushed to the reservation.

I had spent the night in a motel in Dry Wells, a place aptly named. There were a couple of sites close by, so I headed out to visit the first one right after breakfast. The place I was looking for was just a wide spot in the trail back in 1872, and did not exist in 2116. All that was left were some hills leading to a cliff where a small detail of Army soldiers was attacked by an overwhelming band of Comanches.

I parked my car about 150 yards away from the spot I wanted to see because it was impossible to drive any closer. I was not bothered by the heat or the bright sun because I was wearing my body armor supplied by my replicator. As usual, when I was off duty, I wore nothing over the body armor because I could have it range anywhere from opaque to fully transparent, and it automatically blocked penetration by anything but air, food, and water.

I was wearing my replicator in a fanny-pack, so I had no worry about running out of food or water, or anything else I might want to drink. My body armor was set for opaque out of modesty just in case I happened to meet some other humans, and I did not want to embarrass them.

Anyway, I found the deep arroyo that had been so important in the defense put up by the soldiers, and I walked to the rim. I don’t understand exactly how it happened, but my foot slipped, and I wound up falling head first about 18 feet to the bottom of the arroyo. I was knocked out, probably from a mild concussion, but my body armor protected me from any other injury.

When I came to, I could hear gunfire and a lot of yelling and screaming coming from up at normal ground level. Shit, what was that all about? Had I stumbled into a movie scene?

I managed to climb out of the arroyo on the side near the cliff, but that was purely accidental. When I stuck my head up far enough to see, I was so surprised that I nearly fell back to the bottom of the arroyo. What I saw was seven soldiers with their backs to the cliff and shooting at a bunch of Indians who were shooting guns and arrows at them.

I immediately knew that something was wrong, both because I had been the only person around only minutes earlier, and because those arrows looked dangerous with their sharp points. Just at that moment, one of the soldiers was hit in the shoulder by an arrow, and I could see it penetrate. There was no question that this was a real fight!

I could see that the soldiers were using Henry rifles, and about half of the Indians were using Spencer rifles. The rest of the Indians were using bows and arrows. Those Spencer rifles had probably been gathered from former battlefields and were really worn out, mostly from lack of proper maintenance.

Well, it didn’t take me long to decide what to do. [Replicator, I need my shotgun and plenty of ammunition. Please notch the ammunition for buck and ball. Also, I need my target grade .45 with hollowpoint bullets.] In an instant, my .45 was in its holster at my waist, and I was holding my shotgun in my left hand.

Since I was wearing my body armor, I had no fear of the Indian bullets or arrows. In a show of foolish bravado, I sat on the lip of the arroyo and began firing my shotgun at the Comanches. Well, actually, I shot at their horses. I knew from my research that killing humans would only incense the Comanches’ desire to win the battle, but they might retire if they began to lose their horses. After all, it was every brave’s desire to be killed in honorable battle, but it was stupid to endanger a valuable horse.

The buck and ball resulted in a “ball” of buckshot, usually six pellets, striking the target. At that point, the wrapping was destroyed and the buckshot flew off in random directions as if that many .31 caliber pistols had been fired at the same time. I figured that nothing short of an elephant could withstand that kind of hit.

Meanwhile, the three pellets not a part of the ball spread out just like a regular shotgun load and stood a good chance of wounding a Comanche. Eventually such a wound would be fatal because the Comanches had no medical service. He would probably die in one to three weeks of an agonizing case of gangrene.

I yelled to the soldiers, “SHOOT AT THE HORSES, NOT AT THE MEN!” The soldiers started doing that, and the Comanches became less enthusiastic about attacking when a significant number of horses were killed. I don’t know how many horses I killed, but it was at least seven, and I noticed that the Comanches stayed as far away from me as they could manage during the rest of the fight.

Eventually, the Comanches got tired of losing horses and abandoned the fight. When we saw that they were no longer shooting at us but concentrating on picking up their dead and wounded, we let them do that without being shot at. That took nearly an hour to accomplish, but the battle was over by noon.

The surviving soldiers consisted of a corporal and six privates. I talked to them and was thanked for assisting them in the fight. I gave my name, but I knew that I would be mentioned in the action report only as a civilian who had a repeating shotgun. That was alright with me, mostly because I had no idea how to explain how I had gotten where I was.

I left the soldiers and walked back toward where I had left my car. I found what I expected—nothing! There was no car and no tire tracks. Hell, I had to face the fact that I had somehow been transported back to 1872 Texas in the midst of an Indian war.

I had no idea of how I got here and certainly no idea of how to return to my own time. For practical purposes, I was stuck in the Wild West and had to make my place in that time. As long as I had my replicator, I was in reasonably good shape. The replicator could provide sustenance and shelter, so that was no problem. It could even provide money, especially in the preferred form of gold and silver coins and bars.

Come to think of it. [Replicator, please supply me with about $15 worth of various coins, ranging from pennies to an eagle ($10).]

I sat on a convenient rock and thought about my situation. I had to assume that I was stuck here, so what was I going to do to avoid dying of boredom? For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a lawman. In my former life, I had satisfied that ambition by becoming a Mass. State Trooper. There was no equivalent job at this time, so I needed to make a job for myself.

It seemed to me that I could assume the guise of a bounty hunter, and I would get as close to what I wanted as was possible. Becoming a town marshal would mean that I did very little beyond rousting drunks. Becoming a US deputy marshal would depend on some political clout that I did not have. Becoming a Texas ranger might do what I wanted, but I really needed more information before I committed to that. Therefore, all I was really left with was becoming a bounty hunter. One big advantage of that was that I could quit at any time.