Chapter 3

Most of my time as a deputy federal marshal was spent escorting prisoners or serving papers. There was a shortage of marshals and such, soz we had to do a lot of jobs that would normally be assigned to very low level flunkies. I was even once assigned the job of carrying the judges books and papers to and from court.

One adventure I had was being assigned the job of guarding a female prisoner. Now, a prisoner is a prisoner most of the time, but a female prisoner is kind of different. She had been arrested fer robbin' a post office. It seems that she had accidentally mailed a love letter to her husband when it should have gone to her lover. In a panic to git the letter back, she pulled a gun on the postal clerk and demanded that he give her the letter.

When she found out that the letter had already been sent out of the post office, she tried to shoot herself, but missed and superficially wounded the clerk instead. In a fit of sumpthin' or other, she fainted, and that's how she was discovered by some people who rushed to investigate the sound of the gunshot.

The clerk's wound was so minor that he didn't want to prosecute, but somebody decided that the case should come to trial as a matter of principle. Anyhow, the woman was arrested and "thrown" into jail. Well, we didn't have no jails segregated by gender, so she had to reside in a cell next to some men prisoners.

The jailer's wife was incensed at this, so she demanded that her husband pin up blankets to hide the woman from the prying eyes of the male prisoners. He was kinda henpecked, so he did what she demanded. That mollified his wife fer a little while, then she realized that the poor woman prisoner was forced to use the same privy as the men. Well, the marshal who ran the jail refused to let the jailer construct a separate privy fer just the woman to use, so she had to resort to using a chamber pot fer all her needs.

This raised another problem: who was gonna empty the chamber pot? The jailer was a man, so he obviously was not the appropriate person to handle the woman's chamber pot, but there were no women employees who could be assigned the job. What to do? The women of the town finally got together and hired a Mexican woman whose sole job was to empty the woman prisoner's chamber pot twice a day!

Anyway, I had to escort the woman from the jail to the courtroom and back again. The rules say that all prisoners under those circumstances had to be handcuffed and to wear leg restraints. We didn't have no trouble with the handcuffs, she was a real lady about lettin' me put them on. But she balked at me raising her skirt to attach the leg restraints around her ankles.

The leg restraints consisted of two iron rings what locked around the ankles and were fastened together by a short length of chain. The result was a restraint that would let a body walk pretty normally, but it was impossible to run. I thought I was gonna be in trouble, but the lady was pretty nice about the whole thing, and we compromised. She put on the leg restraints, and I put on the handcuffs.

The trial was kind of interesting. Her defense lawyer was her husband, and he did a pretty good job of playin' off the jury's sense of humor. She confessed to the attempted robbery—there wasn't no question about her guilt fer that. She was found guilty and the judge sentenced her to the time served awaiting trial, which was about three weeks. The woman and her husband left town after the trial and went to live with her lover, who was a woman in Austin who ran a whore house. As far as I know, the three of them got along right well.

There was one job what got kind of tense, though. For lack of anybody else to send on the job, I was dispatched to try to track down a gang of bandits what was robbin' stage coaches and takin' the strong boxes. The reason they interested the federals was that they was also takin' the mail bag. Ifen the damn fools had left the mail alone, they never would have gotten the government after them.

The crimes seemed to be centered around Eagle Pass, so I was sent there to see what I could do. I didn't have no descriptions nor anything else to go on, soz I felt like I was kinda hung out on the line to dry. I thought that the whole thing was kind of pissy, since everybody knew how much I hated to ride in stage coaches. But the only way that I could see to solve the case was to be on one of the coaches when it was robbed.

That meant that I had to ride around inside a hell of a lot of coaches 'til one was hit. It took three weeks of pure hell fer me afore the coach I was in was stopped. Fortunately, I was the only passenger that day, soz I was able to slip out of the coach when the bandits stopped it. I was already out when one of the bandits got around to checking inside for passengers, so they didn't know about me. I had my Winchester and my shotgun "pistol" as my weapons, so I was pretty well fixed for shootin' irons.

I slipped around behind the coach and got a good look at the bandit gang. There was three men, all on one side of the coach, soz I had a pretty easy time. I didn't waste no time trying to arrest them, I just got myself set up soz that I could blaze away at them.

I fired one barrel of my shotgun at the bandit in the middle, and sure killed him with that shot. The second barrel was fired at the nearer of the two remaining men, and he fell out of the saddle, too. This happened so fast that there wasn't no time fer them to escape. The third man was still trying to figure out where the shots were coming from when I covered him with my Winchester.

The damned fool tried to get a shot in at me, but I let him have it with a shot from my .44-40 rifle. That took all of the fight right out of him as he fell dead to the ground. The crew helped me to throw the bodies into the boot and tie their horses to the back of the coach.

We were nearly to Eagle Pass, soz I just hauled the bodies to the jail and let the local authorities take over the trouble of buryin' them. I did give them the robbers horses fer their trouble. That was my last trip in a stage coach fer a long time. I took the train back home and went to see the judge. I did write a report on the way back, so I did all of my job afore I resigned. I told him that I just could not abide ridin' in a stage coach, and it looked like the job was gonna require a lot of that, soz I had to quit. He took it kinda hard, but he did see my point. He wished me well, and I turned in my badge.

I heard that there was a range war goin' on in Wyoming, soz I figured that I might look up there for some employment. I figured that there might be some rich rancher interested in hiring an independent health contractor. To be truthful, I plumb forgot about the horrible winter weather they had, but it was now late spring, soz it didn't make no difference, no how.

Jack, my mule, and I hopped a train headed fer Wyoming the next day. Jack had a right cushy berth in a special horse car, but I had to make do with a ride in a coach. It wasn't too bad, I guess, but them seats were mighty hard after 12 hours, so I can't help complainin'.

On the way, some Cheyennes took exception to our train runnin' through their territory, soz we had some fun shootin' at each other fer a while. One did get a little too pushy and rode too close to my window, soz I did give him a blast with my shotgun. I hated to do it, but the angle I had to shoot from made me kill his horse, too. Well, I guess a little rain will fall into every life.

We pulled into the town of Cheyenne, and I took care of Jack's needs afore I did anythin' else. Once he was comfortable in a livery stable, I went into a saloon fer a beer and some information. God! That beer was awful! I had gotten used to the quality of Mexican beer, so I was disgusted by the taste of most local beer. One of the patrons heard my complaint and asked me ifen I had ever tried German beer. I answered that I hadn't, soz he directed me to another saloon what featured German beer. I thanked him, and left to give it a try.