Chapter 7

The second body was that of Shorty Johnson. He had a bullet hole in his chest that had killed him immediately. That noise I had heard was the sound made by a crate falling over as Johnson fell against it. There was not much to do here so we went to where the third muzzle flash had come from. As expected, there was no body here, but there was a significant puddle of blood. Whoever was here was the recipient of a messy wound that may still be bleeding. I hoped that he got help soon.

Okay, that was enough for tonight. Josh and I went to bed and had a bit of our usual entertainment. The next morning, we went to Shorty Johnson’s shed and broke in to search the place. It didn’t take much effort to find a stash of gold coins and bars. It came to a total of $1145. This had to be what was left of Johnson’s share of the stolen money from the Parson County Financial Company robbery. We gathered it up after counting it and stashed it in Josh’s saddlebag.

Next, we went to the shack where Jake Evers had been living. This place was even easier to break into. It took a little over 20 minutes to find his stash which came to $1149. The question was, where was Jake Evers? He was not at home, so he must be around Pansy someplace. Well, he would show up eventually.

Our last stop was at the boarding house where Sam Autry lived. His room was easy to search. Almost without trying, we found what was commonly known as a “tin box” that was sold for keeping valuables. We didn’t have a key, but I was able to use my stiletto to push out the lock. The lid popped open to reveal a mass of gold coins and bars. This came to $1132.

This gave us $3426 of the $3,547.13 that was stolen. Our share was $342.60. That was a nice income for a weeks work. We gathered it all up and headed back to Willow Run. We turned in the money at the home office of Parson County Financial Company and received our payment. Those three galoots must have really worked at it to spend a total of $121.13 in a little more than a week in a town the size of Pansy.

By the way, the body of Jake Evers was found a couple of days later in an alley. He had bled to death from a bullet wound that had cut an artery in his upper arm.

Okay, it was now time to admit that the winter season was upon us, and we would be cooling our heels for a few months unless we could come up with some other way to spend our time. Josh suggested that we head to California. They were bound to have outlaws out there that we could chase, and we could always come back to Texas if it didn’t work out. That peeked my curiosity. I had been to California several times in my former life, as I now thought of it, and it would be fun to see how the place had changed in about 160 years.

We took our money out of the Parson County Financial Company and split it up between our saddlebags. That was a little more than 100 pounds of gold, so my horse had to carry more of it than Josh’s horse simply to try to balance the weights when we were riding. Neither horse was real happy with the added weight, but they were out voted.

We figured that later on in our trip, we would need a pack horse to get through the Arizona and California deserts, but New Mexico Territory was reasonably green for most of the way. For added excitement, the Apaches and Yaquis were giving travelers an interesting time, so we were not going to be bored. We were warned about wind storms, but told not to expect much rain. We figured that we could live with that and set out with the fabled song in our hearts.

Dammit, we had rain in some form or another all the way to El Paso. Even Ajax was pissed off at the weather. As far as we could tell, we were the only people on the road at this time of the year. We stopped at those combination places to spend the night, but I got sick and tired of beef and beans stew at every meal. Man, what I would have given for an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat), even without Tabasco sauce.

El Paso was a real shock to me. I was not expecting the modern El Paso of my old life, but this was a real hell hole. A person had to be ready to shoot at every step in public and to be robbed at night in the hotel. I guess that we were intimidating enough with Ajax along that we did not have much of a problem on the street, but we did shoot one idiot who came to rob us after we had gone to sleep.

The hotel management was used to this sort of thing and took care of disposing of the body for the two-bits required for the burial. Of course, we made it back by selling the loot we took from his body. Our horses really needed a rest, but we got out of El Paso as quickly as we could.

As we had heard, New Mexico Territory (NMT) was not very bad, but we were glad to reach Las Cruces. Here we joined a wagon train carrying freight to Yuma. They needed a scout because they had lost their original scout to Apaches. We signed on for that job figuring on the safety in numbers while going through the Chiricahua Apache territory.

This job turned out to be a real aggravation because the wagons were pulled by oxen, and we were lucky to make as much as 15 miles per day. However, we had signed on to do a job, and we were too honest to back out over this complaint. At least, the Indians did give us some occasional excitement. We had to be ready for them every day, but we could go over a week without seeing any sign of an Indian. They were staying pretty close to home because of the sand storms that could show up at the most inconvenient times and places. When a sand storm got rough, all we could do was to stop wherever we were and wait it out. No wonder most people could hardly wait for the railroad to come through! The railroad was going to put these wagon trains out of business, but they were all there was to carry freight until the railroad finally did arrive.

At one time, we were hit by about 30 Apaches. It was at supper time, and we had just sat down to eat. We were sure that the Indians had waited until this time to hit us, but it just made us more determined than ever to kill every one of the bastards! We were tired from a hard day’s work and hungry, so we were a surprise to the Indians because of the way we fought.

We had already formed our defensive box with the wagons so we had our fort ready if we needed it, and we did. The Apaches were not as foolish as the Comanches. The Apaches did not ride around and around our little fort on their horses the way the Comanches did, but they dismounted far enough away so that their horses were safe from rifle fire. They came at us on foot, hugging the ground, and aiming carefully before shooting. Ajax was assigned the job of watching our backs. Heaven help an Apache if he managed to get inside our fort—Ajax would rip him apart before he knew what hit him!

Thank God that they were not that good at shooting, probably because they had not spent enough time in practice, but they were good enough shots to wound a few of our men. Every man on the train had a rifle and so did I. That meant that the Indians were facing 42 riflemen who knew how to shoot effectively and knew what would happen to them if they were captured. The result, in all honesty, was that the Indians did not stand a chance as long as we didn’t panic.

The Indians quit when it got dark, and they disappeared during the night. The wagonmaster sent Josh and me out to see what the Indians were doing, and I was able to see that they were headed south at a good clip. They had picked up all of their dead and wounded, so we never did know how many we had put out of action, but we considered that the Indians had escaped. The battle would have been more even if we had not had repeating rifles and they had double their manpower.

That day, about mid-morning, the wind picked up, and there was a major sandstorm by just after noon. Was that the reason that the Indians had left? I guess that they had been living out here long enough to know when a big storm was coming up. We were stuck in place for two days before we could shake loose from the effects of that damned storm.

I don’t know why it was, but the Apaches left us alone all the way to Tucson, AT. However, that was where the situation changed. One day out of Tucson, we were hit by six Yaquis. I think that they were just fooling around because they skedaddled as soon as the whole wagon train started shooting back. The wagonmaster said that we had gotten off easy that time, and it was probably a bunch of kids on their first raiding party. Their war chief must have pulled them off us before any could get badly hurt.

They could always do that as far as I was concerned, but we were hit hard a week later by two Yaquis who must have been experienced warriors and knew what they were doing. They hit us at breakfast time, and some of us were not fully awake when the shooting started. Two drivers were killed and one was badly wounded. We were stuck there all day even after the Indians left because the loads had to be rearranged and a place in a wagon made for the wounded man.

The Indians undoubtedly won that encounter because the wounded man died two days later. The man was buried near the road, and we were now very pissed off. By this time, all of the train had confidence in me even though I was a woman, so there was no complaining when I was appointed to lead a squad of four men to ride around our train constantly to try to keep the Yaquis away. Josh took on the job of the scout alone, and I worried about him to some extent the whole time.

On two occasions, we came upon Indians who were waiting to ambush us as we passed by, and we took delight in killing them all. There was no doubt that the Yaquis were bedeviling us out of pure meanness because we were nowhere near the Yaqui home territory and obviously not heading that way. But that was the reputation the Yaquis had, and I could see the justification for it.

We finally made it to Yuma, and Josh and I were ecstatic over it. We left the wagon train with good feelings all around as far as the people were concerned, but we were very happy to be back on our own.

We crossed the Colorado River on the ferry run by the Yuma Indians, and were treated the way any customer should be. Well, it was good to know that there were some Indians who could be trusted. We were deposited on the California side of the river and were immediately in a woe-begone desert. The most horrifying part of the situation was that the desert was only going to get worse for many a mile. We would not run into a real break in the desert until we reached the hills just this side of San Diego. Oh, well, we had brought this on ourselves, so we had no one to blame but ourselves. That wasn’t much of a consolation, but there it was.

We had about a mile of a mass of discarded items from previous wagon trains of people headed west. Even after that first mile, we still encountered all kinds of discarded items—there was even a piano. I wondered if this stuff would remain here until it was eroded by the wind and sand, and, upon reflection, I figured that it would. The desert in this part of California was just not to be trifled with!