Chapter 10

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

By late in 1874, it was getting difficult to find groups of Comanches that Ranger and I thought were worth attacking. Finally, the Comanches seemed to get the idea that attacking Whites with large war parties was a losing proposition. I don’t know how much our demon image was contributing to that, but we were getting the result we wanted, so I didn’t worry about it.

Susan was now 8 years old and JJ was about 6 months old—an ideal spoilable age. I was jumping on that bandwagon when Julia landed on me with both feet. “Jeff, you are making Jeff, Jr. impossible to get along with when it comes to important things. Please back off before we have serious problems.”

Okay, I am smart enough to know when I have received an ultimatum. I did back off, but I was having trouble living up to that. I simply had to get out of the house, but there were no Comanches to chase. What was I going to do? James was feeling pretty much the same way, so we commiserated with each other over the way fate was treating us. Finally, he made an intelligent suggestion. “Let us make some minor changes in our outfits and chase outlaws.

“If Replicator made us two robot horses to replace the motorcycles and we wore common clothes over our body armor, we could take up bounty hunting. We could go back to our regular .45 pistols, and we would look like ordinary people. What do you say we give that a try?”

“That is a brilliant idea. Replicator, have you heard our conversation?”

“Yes, I have. I can do that easily enough, and I can use the drones to help you find the people you are looking for. That should get you out of the women’s hair. Your horses will be ready by tomorrow morning.”

“Wonderful! Thank you.”

You should have seen the relieved expression on Julia’s face when I told her of our new plans. The next morning, James and I dressed as bounty hunters and went to the barn for our horses. We were teleported to just outside of the county seat, and we went to the courthouse for a set of wanted posters. We didn’t need the money, but we were going to use the collected rewards as a way to keep score.

We picked up the posters and returned to our barn to await word from Replicator that he had found a target for us. It was not long before he reported a road agent working the main road south of Clear Wells. Currently, he was three miles out of town, so James knew that area quite well.

We teleported to the road about 100 yards from the bandit. Since this was James’ idea, I let him lead the way. This galoot was a real hard case. He shot at James the moment he came into sight. The bullet did James no harm when it bounced off his chest, except that it did make him mad. James drew and fired. His bullet struck the bandit exactly where James had intended—right in the gut.

The point was that was a very painful wound, and James figured that the road agent deserved the pain if he had always shot his victims without warning like that. The man fell from the saddle and lay on the ground. He was no danger because he had lost his gun in the fall. James checked the posters, and this man was not on one, so there was no advantage to hauling him into town.

There was no doubt that the wound was fatal, so we dragged the bastard back into the woods, searched him, and left him for the scavengers. With no laudanum, the wounded man was going to be in constant pain until he died, which might take as much as three or four days. James felt that was sufficient punishment, and I didn’t argue with him.

We did collect $97.25 from him, and we would get around $50 for the gun, horse, and tack, so this was a good first effort. We sold everything at the next livery stable and saw a total of $149.25, a good return for our first effort. We had Replicator recycle the money and keep the tally for us. We planned to use the money for some sort of charitable donation when we found a deserving place for it.

Once that was done, we asked Replicator if there were any more candidates we could take care of. There was a short pause, the Replicator said [There are four men holding up a bank in Springdale, about 60 miles from here. Do you want to go that far afield.]

[Sure, the women don’t want us underfoot, so we might as well.]

A few seconds later, we were on the edge of Springdale and could hear the gunfire coming from the middle of town. We galloped toward the noise and arrived just moments after the bandits ran from the bank. It turned out that we were not needed. Several citizens with shotguns took care of the bandits, so we just turned around and headed out of town.

[Jeff, James, I am sorry about that. I did not realize how well the citizens of Springdale were handling the situation. I just hope we have better luck next time.]

[That is okay, Replicator. We cannot win them all.]

We made contact with two more road agents that day and came away with a total of $187.33. That included a bounty of $10. That seemed like a very successful day, so we went home for supper feeling good about our efforts. The women congratulated us on our success, but they also looked very relieved that we had not been around getting in the way.

The next day started out with four bandits attacking a stagecoach. The bandits were using rifles, so we switched to lever-action shotguns loaded with buck and ball. That was shells loaded with buckshot and scored with a knife so that the business end of the shell would break off and keep the shot together until impact with the target.

There would be a few buckshot that would separate from the “ball” and act as normal buckshot from a shotgun. The result was devastating to the person hit. If the ball missed, there was still the chance that the separated shot would cause a serious wound.

This buck and ball was accurate enough up to about 75 yards, so it was about as reliable as a Henry rifle and much more deadly. We dismounted and crept up to about 60 yards from the bandits before we started shooting. We had managed to make our approach without the bandits knowing we were there, so we had a few free shots before we were discovered. Those were enough. All four bandits were hit in the back with the ball of buckshot, and none of them survived.

We waved our hats at the stage and shouted that we were friends. James asked the driver how much the stage line paid for dead bandits, and the answer was $35. Wow, we were going to make over $200 from this episode by selling the horses, etc., and we did not yet know if any of the bandits were wanted men.

James continued to talk to the stage crew while I checked to see if any of the bandits were wanted by the law. Two were, to the tune of $45, so we might clear $250 by the time everything was sold. We helped move the tree limb that was blocking the road, and the stage moved on while we found the bandits’ horses and tied them to the saddles.

We stopped at the next relay station and picked up receipts for the four bandits and dumped the two bodies we had no use for after stripping them of their guns and boots. The next town had a marshal, so we got receipts for the two wanted men. We had to go a bit farther to collect from the stagecoach company, but that was easily done. This was also the county seat, so we collected the two rewards and sold the horses and other stuff we didn’t want.

With Replicator to find bad guys for us and to transport us to the proper location, we were becoming very competent bounty hunters with only a minimum of effort. Of course, as far as we were concerned, we were helping out by ridding the area of dangerous criminals.

Dammit, the bottom seemed to fall out of the supply of bandits around Clear Wells. Did that mean that the word was getting around about us? I doubted it because we made a point of not leaving any living bandits after we caught up to them. James and I were becoming nuisances to the women again, so we had to do something pretty soon.