Chapter 1

I got the nickname of Shotgun Jack from my habit of carrying a sawed-off 10-gauge shotgun instead of a pistol. It's one of them new-fangled cartridge guns. I can fire off two cartridges and reload, ready to fire again in about the time it takes another man to fire off five shots from his Colt, and he still hasn't reloaded. Five shots to two doesn't sound like much of an advantage, but my cartridges are loaded with 10 balls of .36 caliber lead. That means that I can get off 20 lead balls of killing size all at one time ifen I wants to. That's four times as many balls as him, and the spread from my sawed-off barrels means that I don't have to be as accurate as the other guy. On top of that, the simple fact that I'm still alive has to prove sumpthin'.

I guess I should tell ya a little bit about me. I'm Jack Green, 6'-4" tall and weigh 243 pounds. That makes it kind of hard fer me to hide in a crowd, but my size does help me on occasion. Fer one thing, I kin fire my shotgun with one hand ifen I have to, though I have to admit that it ain't all that easy. It has a pistol grip and no shoulder stock, so that it's easier to swing around and handle. Of course, it's no use over about 40 yards, so that's why I carry a saddle gun, a Winchester '73, fer when I need a little range.

My hair is nearly black and my eyes are kind of a funny color green. My features are what I would call regular, but I've heard that women call me handsome. I don't know ifen I would agree with them completely, but I admit that I do like the description.

I have an unusual education. I went to school all the way to the sixth grade, so I've got more learnin' than most folks, but I try not to let it go to my head. I guess that's why I talk a little funny—my accent ain't as strong as some, but most folks don't have no trouble understandin' me.

I got kind of a funny job, too. I like to call myself an independent health contractor, though most folks would call me a body guard. The thing is, I don't work cheap, so I don't work very often. I fill in with odd jobs like bounty huntin' and such as that when I ain't looking out fer sombody's hide. I gits paid $20 a day or $100 a week, in advance, so I don't need to work very often. I gots a first class reputation, which is my best advertisement. I ain't never lost a customer, though sometimes they do git bent or dented a little.

Right now, I gots a job protecting the lieutenant governor of Texas. Normally, that would be a job for the Texas Rangers, but he's afraid that one of the Rangers might try to collect that $500 price that a rancher over near Laredo put on his head. It seams that the rancher thinks that the lieutenant governor knocked up his daughter, at least that's what she claims. I don't know how long this job will run, but I'm on the payroll until the Rangers find out who the real father is. I don't know how they're gonna do that, but, hell, the money is good and the work is easy, so I ain't complainin'.

So far, we've stayed around Austin, but my client is scheduled to visit some sort of shindig for politicians, and we have to leave next week. The kicker is it's in Laredo. I ain't looking forward to a trip what runs that long, but I will be happy to git the money, soz I guess I kin put up with it. The lieutenant governor plans to travel by his private carriage, since the railroad don't run all the way there, yet. Well, I'm making the trip on my own mule, since I'm too big to ride a horse. I gots a real nice mule, also named Jack, and he's the biggest damned mule anybody ever saw. It takes that size, too, to carry me very far, since I'm so big and heavy. I joke about Jack being built for comfort, not for speed, but that mule is plenty fast enough for me.

We left kinda late in the mornin', it was 8:00 o'clock, but I ain't running this here show, soz I just went along without complainin'. There were two men in the carriage with the lieutenant governor, a driver and his relief. I didn't know either one of them, but my man was happy with them, so I guess I couldn't complain.

We'd been on the road about two hours when it happened. The driver stopped to switch off with his relief, and they both stepped down from the carriage. I was watchin' them kinda close, since I still felt like there was sumpthin' wrong. All of a sudden, the galoot what was drivin' pulled out a pistol and pointed it at me. Now, I ain't one who cottons to havin' a pistol pointed his way, so I jerked up my shotgun and let him have one barrel. That was when he lost interest in livin'.

The other galoot had also pulled a pistol and had pointed it at the lieutenant governor. Well, that's when I stopped playin' nice. I gave him the other barrel and blew him into the next county. I reloaded afore I did anything else, but then I did step down to check on the lieutenant governor. He was right pale, let me tell you.

That was it fer the trip to the convention, or whatever it was. He asked me to drive him home, and that's what I did. We pulled up to his portecochere and he got out of the carriage. I drove to the shed and put the carriage up. I took care of my mule and went into the kitchen for my lunch.

A little bit later, the boss called me into his office and thanked me for saving his life. He asked how I had known that the two men, who had worked for him for the last five years, were going to try to kill him. My answer was that I didn't know exactly, but I had a good instinct for that sort of thing, and that's what has kept me alive for the last 10 years.

He pulled a $100 bill from his pocket and said, "Well, here's a bonus for having such good instincts." I thanked him graciously and pocketed the money. I planned to go by a bank tomorrow and convert the paper to gold. I figured I should git about $75 for it.

Things went along quietly after that for about a month, then the rancher's daughter had the baby. To quote the word from Laredo, the baby was half-nigger! Shit, what was she tryin' to pull!?! When he got the word, the lieutenant governor fainted dead away. I can't say that I blame him. The rancher was so upset that he shot his daughter and then himself. I don't know what happened to the kid.

Well, that was the end of that job, but I had made almost $2,000 dollars off it, so I couldn't complain. Even with my spendin' habits, this was enough money to carry me fer nearly two years, so I wasn't in no big hurry to find another job. Since I had insisted on being paid in gold, I was in good shape. I bid the lieutenant governor goodbye and went on my way. Dammit, a week after I was fired, somebody shot him! His Ranger bodyguard shot the attempted assassin, and the lieutenant governor pulled through, but it was a close thing.

Other than the money, I got a lot of free beer by tellin' this story in one saloon and another. In fact, one whore thought the story was so funny that I got a free fuck out of it.

After about six months of no more jobs, I got kind of bored, so I figured on a round or two of bounty hunting just to have sumpthin' to do. I checked out the wanted posters and saw one that looked promising. It was fer a galoot what was wanted fer bank robbery. The reward was $1,250, so I figured that he was worth runnin' down. The report was that he was last seen up near the Red River, so I figured that he had run to Indian Territory to escape the law.

I wasn't doin' nothin' else, soz I figured I'd take a little trip to Indian Territory to see what I might find. Spring had come, soz the weather was middlin' decent. I figured that it would be warm enough up there by now, but the wind and rain might still be a nuisance. Well, I was right! Ifen I could find Arkansas Bill and collect the reward, I guess I couldn't complain, though.