Chapter 3

Mary's pregnancy had progressed far enough now that she had a noticeable bulge. Jed teased her by saying that she now had a bulge in front to match her cute ass's bulge in back; Mary didn't think that it was all that funny.

Jed's routine stroll through town one morning was interrupted by a cowboy riding into town riddled with bullets. He was dead, and it was a miracle that he was still on his horse. The undertaker reported to Jed that at least 6 of the bullets in him would have been fatal, but he was hit with 11 separate bullets. When asked, the undertaker couldn't identify what type of gun had fired the bullet, but they were all the same kind. It was almost as if all the bullets had come from the same gun!

Jed really got concerned when the Tuesday morning stage didn't show up. It normally arrived well before the train was due, but didn't leave until after the train left. Maybe it had suffered a broken wheel or had been in some other serious accident. Well, it was outside his jurisdiction, so he was not supposed to worry over it, but he couldn't help wondering if it was a bad omen.

The train had a somewhat "flexible" schedule. It was due in at 1:13 PM, but often was a much as 30 minutes late. However, here it was, nearly 3:00 PM and the train still hadn't shown up. The coincidences were beginning to pile up! Jed smelled a rat, but he didn't know where to look for it. He didn't think that it was Apache trouble—none of them had been around for months. Nowadays, the Comanche didn't get this far west, so they weren't the likely culprit. Besides, the stage coach and the train came from different directions and that implied more Indians than had ever gathered around Saddlers Gulch before. Jed was baffled.

The train never showed up that day, and, that evening, the saloons didn't have nearly as many customers as usual. Granted, the middle of the week was always quieter than the weekend, but there just were no cowboys in from the surrounding ranches. What the hell was going on? Jed began to wonder what was keeping people from coming to Saddlers Gulch. Maybe he should ride out in the morning and take a look.

Jed didn't sleep well that night, and Mary wanted to know what was bothering him. He told her of his vague unease, but he couldn't put his finger on the cause of the problem. Of course, she knew about the missing stage coach and train, everybody in Saddlers Gulch knew about things like that as soon as they happened, or didn't happen, as in this case. Mary tried everything she could think of to relax Jed, but not even sex could break through his vague dread.

They were both up earlier than usual the next morning. Jed was still too restless to sleep, and this woke up Mary, so she went ahead to fix breakfast. After breakfast, Jed made his rounds earlier than usual so that he would have plenty of time to ride out looking for the cause of the changes in routine.

He picked up a horse at his favorite livery stable and rode south to follow the railroad track. He got less than a mile when he was met by a rain of bullets. What the hell!?! The crest of a low line of hills was covered in powder smoke, indicating at least 30 riflemen. He was not hit because the range was too long, but Jed didn't wait around to debate the issue.

Jed wheeled his horse around and raced back to town to report the ambush and rally support for whatever was about to happen. The obvious place to start was with the saloons, so he stopped at the cantina. He ran to the door and found it locked. At this point, he calmed down and looked around. Not a soul was to be seen! The entire "Mexican" population of Saddlers Gulch had disappeared!

With no time to waste, Jed rode to the first of the Anglo saloons. He ran in and ordered everybody to spread the word that they were under attack. He didn't know by whom, but whoever it was, there were plenty of them! He jumped back on his horse and rode to the other saloon to repeat his order.

Now that he had the warning going out, Jed had time to organize his defense. He sent riders east, north, and west, with orders not to be heroes, to see if there were attackers there. In less than an hour, his suspicions were verified: they were surrounded.

Sharpshooters were posted in the church steeples at either end of town, and others were posted on various roofs. The women and children were gathered in the Catholic church, which was the largest adobe structure in town. The adobe walls made the best fort because they wouldn't burn and were good at stopping bullets. The nearly flat roof was also a convenient fighting platform, and the coping had crenelations which could be used during the fighting. Bill Hanscomb, the undertaker, had the most military experience, so he was placed in command of the defense of the church building.

The jail was the other main point of defense. It, too, had adobe walls and a nearly flat roof. Why, nobody knew, but its roof had even more crenelations than the Catholic church. Sam Hudson was in charge of defending the jail.

Jed was in overall command, and also led a detail of 6 men who made up a mobile force to cover wherever they were needed. They stationed themselves in the Catholic church, but expected to be most needed in defending the northern approaches to Saddlers Gulch.

All of the men on the roofs and other isolated defense points were warned to evacuate to the jail or to the Catholic church if they were pressed too hard, because there was no way to give them full support. Jed's mobile force would try to cover their retreat, but they wouldn't be much help if the defenders waited too long before dropping back. Jed really didn't expect much from these men, except to be an early warning signal of pressure coming from their quarters.

Hostilities formally opened with a delegation of riders coming to the Catholic church under a white flag and the national flag of Mexico. Everybody wondered if this was an invasion by the Mexican government, but they figured out that the troops were not official. In fact, they got the impression that the invaders were hardly more than a large bandit gang which wanted to overthrow the current government in Mexico City.

The bandits offered an opportunity to the town to surrender before anybody else was killed. The town's residents would be allowed to leave with the goods they could carry in a wagon, but nothing else. That would leave the people destitute, so they naturally refused the "offer." The residents of Saddlers Gulch were warned that the invaders had artillery, so they were in a precarious position. It took a lot of artillery shots to knock down a thick adobe wall, so the people of Saddlers Gulch declined to reconsider the offer.

The delegation from the invaders left with no disappointment, since they had hoped that the offer would be refused. Generalissimo Alvarez wanted an opportunity to test his troops and weapons. These gringos would regret their decision, he was certain.

The first real shooting of the conflict began shortly after the delegation had ridden off. The men in the outposts had been warned not to shoot off all their ammunition in the first few minutes of battle, so they didn't return fire at first. The attackers appeared to be shooting without any real targets, they were just laying down suppressing fire as their fellows crept closer to the town.

The men in the outposts kept their heads down and waited for decent targets to show up. Eventually, some of the invaders got close enough and exposed precious skin because they didn't really know where their enemies were hiding. This was when the defenders began to shoot. A number of the invaders were wounded and a few were killed before the return fire got too hot for the defenders. Unfortunately for the defenders, their powder smoke gave away their locations, making them prime targets for the invaders.

All of the men in the outposts had sense enough to abandon their exposed positions and to retreat to one of the two bastions. Nobody was seriously wounded, though a few did have scratches from near misses.

The Methodist church was the first to feel the wrath of the invaders; it began to show flames soon after it was abandoned. Why did they burn it? The Mexicans could have used the steeple as an observation point, if nothing else. On the other hand, the saloon across the street wasn't burned until after it had been looted of all alcoholic drinks: beer, wine, and whiskey. At least, the looters knew where their priorities lay!

Next on the looters' agenda was stripping the two general stores and the gun shop. However, they were out of luck at the gun shop. Hans Glueck had time and help to move all of his stock to safety in the church before the first bandit had shown up. He had even moved his reloading equipment to the church, so the defenders were unlikely to run out of ammunition as long as Hans could draw a breath.

Among the items Hans had moved were some of the new breach-loading shotguns with plenty of shells. He passed these out to the women who knew how to shoot and demonstrated how to use them. Woe unto the invader who got too close to one of these women!

There was a lull in the shooting while the looters were working on the two general stores. Jed thought that this would be a good time to get in a free lick at them, so he sneaked his mobile force out of the jail and up the street toward the stores.

Jed's people were all experienced Indian fighters, so they knew how to keep to cover. Thus, they weren't spotted until they opened fire on the looters standing around the wagons sampling some of the stock from the first saloon. At least 20 of the looters were killed or wounded in the action and Jed's men were able to get back to the jail without injury. Surprise was so complete that the war shut down for over an hour while the Generalissimo and the Colonel figured out what had happened. After that, the invaders kept guards posted during the looting. Nobody mentioned any penalties for drinking while on duty, they knew how much difference that would make.