Chapter 12

Running Bull led us off the trail a little ways and up the side of a small ridge. This was a gentle slope, but there was a sharp drop on the other side, and down there, the party was still going on. How in the hell can they carry that much whiskey?

Several of the drunks were lying in the meager shade of the ridge and trying to sleep. The rest of the gang was sitting so that they were leaning back against the ridge to get as much shade as possible. None of them were keeping watch, or were even the slightest bit alert. We could have killed them all right then if we had wanted to, but Running Bull had other plans for them.

He outlined what he had in mind for revenge, and, frankly, it made me cringe. But I had to agree that the punishment was deserved, especially when I thought of the children with the slashed bellies. Now that we could see all of them, we counted 13 of possibly the most miserable looking specimens of the human race ever to congregate in one place.

We discussed the situation and decided that the gang was so drunk that they were in no condition to put up a fight, so we would have no trouble capturing every one of them. Running Bull ordered Janet and me to stand guard over the men while Running Bull prepared for his revenge. We agreed that, if we had to shoot someone, we would go for an arm or a leg shot, since that would not be immediately fatal. If there was too much bleeding, we could always slap a tourniquet on the limb.

We rode down and around the ridge to come up on the gang from two sides so that none could escape. I came in one way and Janet and Running Bull came in the other. We rode up rather briskly so that the members of the gang would not have time to react, but most of them were so drunk by now that our precaution made no real difference.

We already had our guns out as we rode up. Some of the men were so drunk that they were incapable of obeying our orders, so we just left them alone. The others were forced to give up their guns and to sit back down on their hands so that they could not make any sudden moves.

Our mule had a small load of firewood which we had collected so that we could have a fire for coffee no matter how far we were away from fuel. Running Bull used this wood to make some stakes that he drove into the ground in a pattern that could be used to tie the men to the ground in a spread-eagle fashion.

Running Bull started with the most sober, or at least the most alert men, tyeing them down so that they could not move. One did try to run, but Janet shot him in the knee. Her .38 made quite a mess, but it did not blow his leg completely in two as my .44 would have done. Running Bull tied him down just like the rest, even though he screamed in pain almost constantly.

It took over an hour to get all of the gang tied down to Running Bull's satisfaction, but, finally, that job was done. Then, Running Bull went to each man and cut away his clothes until he was absolutely naked. It wouldn't take long in the direct sun for every one of them to turn the color of boiled lobster. Personally, I would have left them like that to die from sun stroke, but Running Bull had other ideas.

The sun was still high enough to do at least two hours of cooking on every man before it went down for the night. Running Bull planned to leave the men staked out like that over night so that they could sober up and really appreciate what was being done to them the next day.

We ate supper and turned in for the night; Running Bull wanted to get an early start tomorrow so that he would have plenty of time to work before dark. Frankly, Janet and I were not interested in watching Running Bull torture all 13 men to death, so we planned to move on in the morning.

The following morning, we made a serious mistake. We stayed around to see what Running Bull had in mind for the prisoners. We should have left before he got started. He put a small pile of wood and tender over each man's cock and balls. Now all of the men would know what was in store for them. This was something that would distract them from their hangovers, for whatever that was worth.

Running Bull worked on only one man at a time, so that the others could fully anticipate what was about to happen to them. He started the fire over a man's cock and balls and made sure that it was burning slowly, but steadily. He watched the fire closely to make sure that the flames, themselves, did not reach flesh until it was thoroughly cooked. We could hear the balls explode from the heat inside the sack; Running Bull used this as an indicator for when it was the time to relocate the fire so that the man's cock and scrotum were actually burned away. This whole sequence took a couple of hours for each man, so we could see that the full treatment for the gang was going to take more than one day.

Once the fire had burned away a man's cock and balls, Running Bull put out the fire and moved on to the next man. He left each victim to broil in the direct sun so some of the gang got a full dose of the sun before they ever felt the effects of the fire. We did manage to stay for the full treatment of the first man, but we could not stand the screams of pain nor the smell of the burning flesh, so we left Running Bull to his revenge and moved on. I honestly hoped that I never made Running Bull mad at me or Janet.

We were not leaving Running Bull in any trouble for supplies. He had access to everything the gang had left, which included 15 horses and a lot of food. There was also a lot of whiskey lying around, but Running Bull was only using that for lighter fluid if a fire was stubborn about getting started.

The rest of that day was pretty rough on both of us because we could not forget what we had seen Running Bull do to that gang. I couldn't help squirming in my saddle thinking about what I had seen. Janet felt the same way, even though she did not have a cock and balls.

We got to Clovis two days later, and we still had not forgotten what we had witnessed. Sensibly, we did not say anything about it, but I was tempted when I heard a crude remark about Indians in one of the saloons we visited. We only stayed in Clovis that one night, but there was nothing to the town to hold us, anyway, so we were happy to leave.

We almost felt a breath of relief as we finally were sure that we had crossed into Texas. Crude as it was, we still considered Texas to be home. We spent a week in Lubbock, trying to forget what we had seen on the other side of Clovis. Well, we never forgot it, but we finally got so that we could live with it.

We were sitting in a Lubbock saloon one day when it finally occurred to us that we couldn't just vegetate our lives away. If nothing else, we should get back on the road hunting for wanted men. We picked up fresh wanted posters and set out on the hunt. We did find a couple of wanted men, but the small rewards would not pay the bills. We weren't hurting for money, but $40 was not adequate compensation for six weeks of searching or for the danger incurred when we finally found somebody.

It became obvious to us that we were going to have to return to Oklahoma if we were going to make a steady living off of bounty hunting. Crooks ran to Oklahoma to escape the law in Texas and Kansas. We still had a couple of months before the weather got bad enough to drive me south, so we decided to visit the Territory again. This time, since it was a lot closer, we decided to visit the Indian Territory, aiming for Chickasaw country just over the Red River. We had no special reason for the choice, we just had never been there, before.