Chapter 1

I will never forget my first experience at riding my new mule, Ada. I had just picked her up from the trainer, and I was a little dubious of just how much I could depend on her to keep me alive. Oh, I had been through the training routine with Ada, and I knew all of the signals and commands that I could give her, but I was still a little nervous the first time I had her out in the real world.

I know that you first question is why am I riding a mule? Yeah, they do have a mixed reputation, but most of that is hogwash. The thing about mules is that they are a whole lot smarter than horses, and they will not put up with a lot of ill treatment that a horse will. The reason is that the mule knows its limits, and will not push itself beyond those limits just to satisfy a human. But, if you treat a mule with the respect that it deserves, it will be a whole lot more loyal and accommodating than a horse.

Well, I had paid a lot of money for a riding mule to replace my horse because I am a bounty hunter, and I spend a lot of my time riding down roads and trails looking for trouble and troublemakers. I had been shot at from ambush too many times to want to go through that again—bullets hurt when they puncture skin, and the puncture can be fatal.

Ada, my mule, was trained to warn me of a horse or a man hiding in the bushes. A man doing that sort of thing was always up to no good, and probably ready to pop off a shot at me with no provocation. I planned to use that warning to shoot first, before I was shot. You may call it murder, but I call it self preservation.

This morning, I was riding along minding my own business, which was looking for road agents hiding in the brush and up to no good. I could figure on finding such an individual two or three times a week. Even if there were no reward for the scoundrel, I could still figure on picking up $50-150 for every one I took down. That meant that I could figure on earning an average of at least $200 per week, and that was a damned high income for Texas in 1870.

Of course, the bad guys were just as intent on shooting me as I was on shooting them, and they usually had an advantage. I have been bounty hunting for two years, and I figure that I have to attribute that longevity to outstandingly good luck. Most bounty hunters have not lasted that long in this part of Texas, and I want to keep my record going for as long as possible. That was why I invested in Ada.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I had been riding along this trail for about an hour. I picked this place to test Ada because I was almost certain to run into a road agent. This was a section of the road between Dallas and Ft. Worth, and it saw a lot of well-healed gentlemen (if that is the right word) riding along here. Therefore, it was a likely place for a road agent to make his money, especially if he could catch a professional gambler.

There were a lot of places for a road agent to set his ambush, and I was looking for any that I could find. We were ambling along at about 3 MPH (Miles per Hour), which was Ada’s favorite speed. She could go faster than that, but this was not the time for it. We had already passed six places that could have been an ambush site, but Ada never slowed down. Suddenly, she came to a halt and shook her head to indicate that there was a horse and/or a human lurking in the brush.

We were about 100 feet from where I would expect the bandit to be hiding, so I pulled Ada to the side of the road and dismounted. I preferred to do my work with a pistol because I was not likely to mess up the chance for identification of the dead man as could happen when a shotgun was used. A rifle was not practical for this kind of operation.

I normally wore two Starr DAs in .44 caliber in a crossdraw arrangement at my waist, and I drew one of them with my right hand while I kept my left hand free to part the branches of the brush and small trees. The “DA” in the name of my pistol stood for double-action. That meant that I did not have to cock the hammer of my revolver as a separate action before shooting, and that was a great safety feature in this sort of endeavor. There were a lot of ways to make a single-action pistol fire accidentally if the hammer were pulled back, but only one way to fire the Starr DA—pull the trigger.

I worked my way close enough to get a glimpse of the supposed bandit. The man was holding a shotgun at the ready with both hammers pulled back. There was no doubt in my mind that he was planning to shoot the next person who came along the trail. Well, I did not give him that chance. My mama did not raise Bob Harris to be a dead fool.

I fired into his left rear quarter at about the position of his kidney on that side. That was always a fatal wound, no matter how long it took the man to die. It also was a debilitating wound as evidenced by the fact that my bullet’s impact caused him to drop his shotgun to the ground. Dammit, both barrels fired, but no harm was done because the shotgun was pointing away from both me and his horse when the gun let loose.

The bandit fell to the ground and did not twitch, so I figured that my bullet must of deflected into his heart. Nevertheless, I still waited a couple of minutes to be sure that he was not faking death. This was no time to get careless. Yes, he was dead.

His horse had not moved a step from where he had been standing, so he was well trained. The reins had fallen to the ground so that he was “ground hitched” and not likely to move. Therefore, I reloaded my pistol and left the dead man and his horse to retrieve Ada. The horse was where I had left him, so I was not worried about him wandering off while I worked on his owner.

I checked my stack of wanted posters and found one for him that claimed that he was worth $15. That certainly was worth collecting, so I planned to haul him to the nearest marshal for a receipt for his body.

It was kind of early in the morning, so I was not expecting much in the way of money in his pockets, and I was right. All I found was 72¢ there, but I came up with $68 in gold and silver coins in his moneybelt. However, I also expected to make at least $35 when I sold the horse, tack, and weapons he had.

I decided to keep the 10-gauge sawed-off shotgun, since this was one of the new style breech-loading guns that used metallic cartridges. My shotgun was of the old style that was muzzle-loading and not really very practical for my line of business, so I was planning to swap. I found 16 shotgun shells in his pouch on his belt, so I was well ahead of the game.

I tied the bandit across his saddle and led his horse to the marshal’s office in Dallas. I had no trouble collecting the receipt for the body once I pointed out the proper wanted poster to the deputy marshal. That done, I headed to the courthouse to collect the reward and any new posters. Dammit, that stack of wanted posters kept getting thicker and thicker as the economy got worse and worse.

I rode to my usual hotel for a room. The reason I liked this hotel was the quality of the stable attached to it for residents to keep their horses, or mule in my case. I got the expected number of catcalls and derisive laughter from galoots along the street as I rode by on a mule instead of a horse, but I did not let that bother me. Knowing that this mule had just made more money for me than most of those fools made in a year was enough to keep my temper in check.

That evening, I visited my usual round of saloons to hear the latest gossip. That gossip was very valuable because it kept me up on the local news and often tipped me off on the best place to look for my next bounty. This time I got what I was looking for—while I was gone acquiring Ada, there had been three bank robberies in Dallas, and the indications were that the robberies were all done by the same gang.

The reward is rumored to have grown to $750 with $75 offered for each robber. There were six men in the gang, so the entire reward amounts to $1,200. That is enough to have attracted most of the bounty hunters in this part of Texas, but nobody has come up with the loot or the robbers yet. Oh, well, I figure that I might as well look into that. However, before I start gallivanting all over Texas, I want more information. That I will go after tomorrow morning.

The next morning, I visited each of the banks that had been robbed and got a written statement signed by the bank manager which stated the amount of the reward for return of the money and the amount that would be paid for dead robbers. No mention was made of live robbers.

All three of the banks were located on the northeast side of the business district. It was obvious from that that the thieves must have come from that section of the city, and that was where all of the other bounty hunters were searching. Well, I got a wild idea that the robbers had deliberately tried to mislead the law by striking as far as possible from their real headquarters. Therefore, I concentrated my search on the southwest side of Dallas.

I started out searching the flophouses that were masquerading as boarding houses. Most of them were sharing a building with a brothel. Whores generally knew exactly what was going on with their customers, so I figured that they should be the centerpiece of my investigation. There was nothing half-assed about my search—I paid the madam and any whore I talked to twice the going rate for a session with them, and I made a lot of friends doing that.

That generally meant that I spent $1 for every whore I talked to, but I could afford the investment. I also promised the whore if her information proved useful, I would be back with a $5 tip for her help. I am not sure how many believed me, but it did get me a lot of interesting information, including information on some other wanted men.

I spent a week seemingly wandering around the neighborhood and spent $21 before I got the solid lead that I was looking for. A whore told me that she had a regular customer who had suddenly come into a lot of money and was spending it freely, both at brothels and saloons. I promised her $10 if the two men she told me about were two of the robbers I was looking for. From the look on her face, I could tell that she was excited about earning so much money for so little effort.

She gave me very good descriptions of the two men and where they were living. They must of been flush with money because they were not sharing a room. Okay, that just made things easier for me.

I figured to go after one of the men that evening when I could expect to find him sleeping in his bed. This was in the middle of the summer, so the afternoons were always hot, so I used that time to visit saloons looking for more of the men. By damn, but my luck must have been running in bunches.