Chapter 11

Janet and I followed the bank robber and his hostage for about two miles out of town. There we found a dress and bonnet lying be the side of the road. Dammit, I saw that we had been hornswoggled! The dress and bonnet had been used as a disguise. There must be an extra horse along here for the second bandit to ride. I had to admire the creativity, though, of the bank robbers.

We continued to follow the road for another mile. There we found where the men on the horse had cut cross country; the grass was trampled down enough for us to follow the trail when it wasn't marked in the sand and dirt. That horse was very heavily laden, and it had to have some relief pretty soon. We followed for another mile and found where one of the men had gotten off and was walking beside the horse. This continued for half a mile until we came to a stream. The trail turned down stream and we saw a cabin in the distance. There were a number of horses in the rope corral, it looked like eight or nine, it was hard to tell from this distance.

We stayed back from the cabin until it got dark. I asked Janet to stay with the horses and mule while I had a look at the cabin. I guess this was where there was an advantage to being a New Englander, because I didn't mind walking. I left my horse with Janet and took off at a jog toward the cabin. I slowed to a walk when I got close and moved carefully so as not to be spotted.

There was one window in the side of the cabin that I could see, so I went up to peek in. Two men were inside, and they were counting gold coins. Yep, it must be as I figured, the "hostage" had actually been one of the robbers. I'll bet that the rest of the robbers surrendered after the two had escaped and expected to be rescued from jail either tonight or tomorrow night. I wondered if the two in the cabin actually intended to go through with the rescue—I tended to doubt it.

I had seen all that I needed to see at the moment, so I jogged back to fill Janet in on the situation. We made a plan and hurried back to the cabin to capture the two bank robbers before they disappeared.

Janet stood at the window where I had peeked in and waited for me to come bursting in through the door. I rushed in, and she used her pistol barrel to break a window pane so that the crooks knew that they were covered from two sides. The crooks meekly surrendered, so we tied them up to two chairs before Janet fixed some supper. I put the money back in the sack and tended the stock while she was doing that.

We ate a supper of beef and beans and coffee. After we had eaten, we untied the crooks hands so that they could eat. After supper, we retied them to the chairs while we debated what to do. We finally decided to spend the night at the cabin and return to town the next morning. We left the bandits tied to the chairs overnight. I rigged an alarm from some cans so they would wake us if they tried to escape, and I promised to shoot the one who woke me up. Janet and I lay down on a couple of the bunks and went to sleep.

The next morning, Janet fixed breakfast while I got the horses and mule ready to travel. Once all four of us had eaten, I hoisted the prisoners on horses bareback, not even a horse blanket. I tied their feet under the horse's belly so they couldn't fall off. I ran a loose rope from their tied hands to around the horse's neck. There was no way the prisoners were going to ride fast while mounted on horses this way.

We rode slowly into town. Janet and I were in no hurry, and the prisoners were not interested in sampling the sensations of riding fast. We got into Tucumcari just before noon and rode directly to the jail. The marshal happened to be there and we gave him our story. I had picked up the dress and bonnet the crook had used in his escape, so that verified my story. I let the marshal see the loot before I returned it to the bank where they were delighted to get it back.

My guess had been right about the rest of the gang surrendering after the two crooks had escaped, and they were right pissed to see the two escapees show up. There was no official reward posted for the capture of the bandits or the return of the loot, but I reminded the bank manager that we could have shot the two crooks and ridden off with the loot. We could have gotten away with it, too. He had to agree, so he gave us a total of $100 for our bother. Sheesh! Some people are really cheap!

We didn't hang around Tucumcari, but pressed on to Las Vegas. It's about 150 miles if you follow the trails, so we took it easy and used up a week getting there. I hope Janet was not as disappointed as I was when we say the place. It was a typical Western town: dusty, dirty, and smelly. The hotel room wasn't so bad, but the prices were ridiculously high. Those prices were the only concession to the gold the place was rich with.

Well, I guess that's not quite true. There were more saloons and gambling dens than you would see in most places, and the noise was atrocious at night. With the yelling, loud music, and gunfire, it was hard for a body to get any sleep. Our second night in Las Vegas was enough to convince us that this was not our kind of town!

There was a court house in town, so we were able to pick up some NMT wanted posters. We did pay a courtesy call on Marshal Clay Anderson, and he wanted us to hang around town for a while as his unofficial deputies; unofficial so that we could still collect the bounties. He was worn to a frazzle with all of the stress and such he ran into every night. He was a nice fellow and looked like he did need some help, so we agreed to stay for a few days, but we were going to have to find another place to stay. He sent us to the boarding house where he stayed, and we took a room. It was quieter than the hotel.

We spent our first evening "on duty" by visiting the saloons that were most likely to have trouble. Other than breaking up fights between drunks, it was a quiet night, though Marshal Anderson did say that it saved him a lot of aggravation. All we had to show for it was a black eye I collected when I didn't duck fast enough.

The next night was a little different. We walked into a saloon and saw at the bar a man wanted for bank robbery in Santa Fe. Janet stood at the door to cover me, and I walked up behind the robber. He saw me in the mirror behind the bar, but didn't react since he had never seen me before, and I was not wearing a badge. I got close to him and stuck a pistol muzzle into his back just over his right kidney. "You, Sir, are under arrest for bank robbery. Finish your beer and come quietly with me to the jail."

The fool must have panicked, because he tried to twist away from my gun and simultaneously throw the remnants of his beer into my eyes. Well, I just reacted automatically and pulled the trigger. That .44 bullet tore into his kidney and guts like a raging bull. It did so much damage to his insides that it never came out his front. He and I both knew that he was dead, but he still tried to pull his gun on me as he lay on the floor. I had no choice, and I think that I was doing him a favor when I shot him a second time, this time in the chest and killed him on the spot. I didn't want to shoot him in the head and make identification difficult.

I gave the swamper four bits to clean up the mess, and I dragged the crook to the jail so that Marshal Anderson could write up a receipt for me. This guy was worth $250, so that alone paid for our trip to Las Vegas. I dumped his body on a waterproof slicker in the back of one of the cells, and we went back on patrol. Things were quiet that night after that event, so we figured that the word had gotten around pretty fast.

It was three nights later that we had more trouble. Some new galoots were in town, so they had not heard about the marshal having help. They started "celebrating" by shooting up a saloon that was normally a quiet place reserved for drinking beer and quiet conversation. The place did have a couple of poker games going, but that was normal for any saloon.

Anyway, we heard the gunshots, so we hurried to the saloon in question to see what was going on. Four men were standing around the bar with their pistols drawn and all three of the saloon whores were dancing naked on the bar. Every once in a while, one of the whores would slow down her gyrations as she got tired, but one of the men would shoot off his gun near her feet, and she would start bouncing around again with vigor, if not with enthusiasm. It seemed that mostly what the toughs wanted to see was bouncing tits and splayed pussy lips as the women jumped around and spread their legs.