Chapter 12

I pulled my gun and made the luckiest shot of my life! I hit the stick of dynamite with my bullet and drove it away from the cave entrance. The bullet broke the dynamite into little pieces, so when the cap went off, there wasn't enough dynamite left around it to make any difference.

This all happened so fast that all Archie knew was that I had knocked the stick of dynamite away from the cave opening and something had blown up. I guess that it's not so strange that he had another seizure and fell to the ground, twitching. Anyway, by the time I was able to crawl out of the cave, he was lying on the ground in a physical and mental mess. He had shit and pissed on himself during his seizure and he was writhing about on the ground.

I brushed myself off and said, "Archie, you have really screwed up! I was not going to take any of your money, I was just being helpful. Your own stupidity and greed have caused your problems, so I am going to let it play itself out. I am so disgusted with you that I'm going to leave you here when I go back to town. If you can recover enough on your own, you might make it back to town, but I doubt it. As far as I am concerned, I'm leaving you here to die.

"I'll leave you a double-eagle, just in case somebody finds you and rescues you, but rest assured that I will shoot you if I ever see you again. I'm taking your satchel of gold with me, since I figure that I have earned it. So long, you fool!" With that, I rode away from him, taking the horses and the camping supplies, as well as the satchel. Don't talk to me about human compassion, I figured that Archie had used up all that he had coming from me.

I rode back to our former camp and fixed myself some breakfast. When I had eaten, I headed for Hancock at a fast lope. I wanted to get as far away from Archie Hancock as I could! I wasn't worried about anybody saying anything when I got back to town—after all, who were they going to complain to, the marshal? I did take the time to count the money when I got back to my office; it came to exactly $5,000. I kept out $500 and had the local bank wire a draft to my bank in New York City for the rest, after they had taken out their fee.

The life of a marshal in a town in the Colorado boondocks is usually pretty quiet. There are exciting moments, but I had a lot of time to recover quietly from the loss of Barbara and our child. I stayed in Hancock for 13 months, but I finally got restless and had to move on. I had made a lot of good friends in the town, so I hated to leave from that standpoint, but I felt it was time for me to try someplace else. Besides, It was just too damned cold for me to be comfortable in the winter, so I headed south to New Mexico Territory. I headed toward Las Vegas, NMT, for no other reason than that was where the best road went. There were a lot of stories about Las Vegas, so I wanted to see the place.

Since I was in no hurry, I took a couple of weeks getting there. No sooner had I arrived than I heard about the big gold robbery at a mine back in the hills, and there was a big reward posted for the bandits. I must have been the only man in town who wasn't out chasing after the robbers, since I sure didn't need the money.

I had been in Las Vegas a couple of days before anything interesting happened. I was sitting in the back of one of the many saloons nursing a beer and relaxing in the cool shadows of the barroom. I was so relaxed that I was nearly asleep when there was a clatter on the sidewalk as a couple of men came stomping into the saloon.

They bellied up to the bar, and one of them slapped the top of the bar with his bare hand. The bartender had been half dozing in a chair behind the bar and roused himself with a start. When he got to them, the two customers ordered whiskey. They dropped their silver coins on the counter and downed their shots. One of them dropped a gold coin on the bar and said, "Leave the bottle." The bartender nodded and went back to his chair after picking up the coins.

The two new men stood there at the bar and downed the whole bottle before they noticed me sitting back there in the rear of the room. One of the men said to me, "Have a drink on us, Pardner."

"I thank you kindly, but I can only drink beer. Whiskey makes me throw up everything I've had to eat for the last week. If you'd offer me a beer, friend, I'd be happy to join you."

The bartender shook himself awake at the sound of the louder voices and stood up down at the far end of the bar. The man who made the offer of the drink must have been feeling the effects of the whiskey that he had already drunk, because he got a belligerent look on his face. He demanded, "Look her, ya galoot, ya drinks whiskey when I offers it ta ya."

"Thank you, but no, I can't accommodate you. I have already told you why."

The drunk pulled his gun and shouted, "YA DRINK A SHOT OF MY WHISKEY, OR I'LL BLOW YOU FOOL HEAD OFF!" The idiot then fired a shot at me. The bullet seemed to whiz past my ear, and I could not ignore the threat. The drunk's gun was still pointed toward me, but it was not cocked. This gave me the edge I needed. I drew my pistol and shot him in the chest; as he fell, I shot him again in the head.

The fool he was standing with tried to draw his gun, so I shot him, too. The two shots I fired left me seriously low on bullets in my gun, so I quickly reloaded. It was well I did because a man ran into the saloon brandishing a shotgun. He shouted, "YOU BASTARD!" and started to bring the shotgun to bear on me. I shot him in the chest, and he reacted by jerking the trigger of his shotgun. That man also fell to the floor and didn't move, so I ignored him.

Two more men ran into the saloon and started to draw their guns. I did not wait around for a formal introduction; I shot both of them in the head. I quickly reloaded; thank God for the quick reloading of the Smith&Wesson top-break pistol.

The whole sequence of events started out with me seated, but I was standing by now. I walked over to the door and cautiously look outside to see if there were going to be others joining in the fight. Luckily for somebody, there was nobody else outside. I relaxed and said to the bartender, who had ducked down behind the bar, "Do you recognize any of these galoots?"

"Yeah, Mister, I do now. That's the Harris gang. Either ya're damned good or damned lucky. I ain't never seen such shootin'. Ifen ya don't mind, I'd like ta drag 'em out on to the sidewalk soz they don't stain my floor."

I helped the bartender move the corpses and then went back inside where the bartender presented me with a beer to celebrate my success. I went back to my old place in the shadows and dozed away the afternoon. Just before supper time, the marshal came busting into the saloon demanding to know why the bodies were lying on the sidewalk.

The bartender said, "Ifen ya look close, ya'll see that them bodies belong to the Harris gang. Ain't they the ones what y'all wuz searchin' the country fer?"

The marshal went back out and looked closely at the bodies. He came back in and said, "Damn it all, Sam, did ya do that all by yerself?"

"Naw, I didn't do any of it. That there jasper sittin' back there in the shadow wuz the one what shot all those galoots, an' it were a fair fight ifen I ever saw one. Some of 'em already had their guns out afore he saw 'em. The first one already had fired the first shot afore he even drew. I tell ya, it were a fantastic sight ta see!"

The marshal said to me, "Hey, Mister, ya better come with me. Ya'll be real interested in this." We went out the door to the hitching rail where there were five horses and two pack mules. The marshal examined the two packs and whistled. "It looks like every bit of the loot from the mine robbery is right here. Come with me ta the mine office, ifen ya please."