Chapter 1

Harmony Junction was a nice little town pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, if you can call Central Texas "nowhere." The town was big enough to have a marshal, and that marshal was my husband, John McCall. John was a stickler for being able to protect yourself, so he made sure that I could handle a revolver, a rifle, or a shotgun as well as any man.

Now, I have to admit that I have a larger than normal bosom and I did wear a dress most of the time, so some compromises did have to be made. John fixed me up with a holster that I could wear on my left side under my bodice. I came up with a clever design so that the opening to my gun was hidden by a fold in the cloth. I practiced with that gun until I could draw it about as fast as any man could draw his gun from a holster tied to his hip.

I had a little extra edge, too. I used a reworked Smith & Wesson Schofield top-break revolver in .45 caliber. The reworked part was that a real sharp gunsmith in town, Mr. Schmidt, had converted it into a self-cocking action, also known as double-action. That way, I could pull the gun and fire it without having to cock the hammer. On top of all that, it had a special pin device rigged so that the hammer couldn't fall on the cartridge unless the gun was held in my hand. That meant that the gun wouldn't fire even if it fell to the floor and landed on the hammer. In other words, I had a true six-shooter.

I am a rather large woman, so I have no trouble handling a .45 caliber pistol. Likewise, I am quite comfortable with my Henry "Yellow Boy" .45 caliber rifle and my Winchester lever-action 12-gauge shotgun. In my riding boots, I am 5'-10" tall, so that I tower over any other women I am around. In fact, I am as tall as most of the men in the neighborhood, and taller than some. In fact, in our more intimate moments, John has been known to tease me that he could mistake me for a man if he didn't know what I carried on my chest and hid between my legs. I find that a little embarrassing, but I don't mind it coming from John, whom I love beyond all understanding.

We have no children, yet, even though we work on the problem very diligently. I simply don't know what could be wrong with me, since I have my monthlies as regular as clockwork. I guess that all we can do is keep working on it, but I would like to start a family before I hit 20 years old.

It was a bright summer day in June, and John had asked me to come into town. It was my 19^th birthday, and John had suggested that we celebrate the occasion by having supper in the hotel restaurant. I thought that was an excellent idea, and I was looking forward to the opportunity to eat a meal cooked by someone else. Their food was good, though it was definitely not inspired, but I appreciated John's thoughtfulness so much that I would have eaten in a saloon if he had asked me to join him there.

I had gone to his office at the jail, but he wasn't there. I had just sat down to wait for him when I heard the sound of shots coming from somewhere toward the middle of town. I knew that if there was shooting in town, John would feel honor-bound to look into it, so I decided to meet him there. I had assumed that the noise was from some shooting by one of the drunken cowboys that frequent the saloons on Saturday night.

The town fathers of Harmony Junction had recently passed an ordinance preventing people from openly wearing guns within the city limits. The purpose was to prevent just the sort of disturbance that I was sure John was currently quelling. The usual procedure was for a cowboy or other person to ride into town and head for the nearest saloon. When he walked in, before he was served his first drink, he had to surrender his gun and gunbelt to the bartender. The bartender would hang the belt and gun on a series of pegs behind the bar and keep the gun until the owner was ready to leave town. The saloons never closed, so this was no hardship on either side.

Anyway, I headed toward the center of town to meet my husband, but I heard two more shots, slightly muffled. That was really odd, since it was difficult to muffle the sound of a gunshot. Several people were rushing toward the Golden Nugget saloon, so I hurried in that direction, too.

As I got close, I heard gasps of surprise and dismay from the people looking through the windows and the open doorway. When I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the saloon, people looked at me and moved away from the door. I don't know why, I suppose it was simple curiosity, but I looked through the door and, to my horror, saw John lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He was obviously dead!

Strangely, I did not faint, nay, I did not feel the slightest tinge of giddiness. Instead, I felt a sharp and overriding anger! There was a man, a cowboy, standing near John's body and brandishing a revolver at the people in the saloon.

For some reason I could never explain, I boldly stepped into the saloon. Now, that was something a lady of culture and refinement would never do. I knew that the only women in the saloon would be prostitutes, and I never had any dealings with them. Nevertheless, I walked into the saloon and asked in a calm, but commanding voice, "Who shot my husband?"

The bartender, a man of stature in the community with no reason to lie, pointed to the man with the gun and said, "He did. He shot the marshal in cold blood without giving him a chance."

Everybody in the saloon reported later that my eyes flashed fire and my face turned nearly that red as I turned to the gunman as said, "You are under arrest for murder. Surrender now, or you will regret it."

The man turned to me and even pointed the gun in my direction. I could see that his thumb was on the hammer, but the pistol was not cocked. He said, "Shut up, you whore, or I'll blow your fucking head off!"

I am not sure just what triggered my next action, whether it was his crude remark or the gun pointing in my direction, but I acted without any real thought. In perhaps the fastest draw of my life, I pulled my .45 from under my bodice and shot the fool in the chest. He had not even had time to collapse before I put another bullet between his eyes.

The gunman collapsed and intense applause rang throughout the saloon. I even heard some cheering from the people outside on the sidewalk. I replaced the two spent cartridges from the ammunition I carried in my reticule and holstered my gun. The next thing I did surprised everybody—I gently rolled over my husband's body and almost reverently removed his badge from his shirt. I pinned it to the collar of my bodice and said, "I will wear this until the new marshal is appointed. In the meantime, I am assuming my husband's duties."

There was a general gasp of surprise, but there were no objections. My next action was to ask, "Was anyone else injured?"

At that question, the crowd parted, and I saw a dead woman and a dead man lying a few feet apart on the floor. That would account for the several shots that I heard at first. I turned to the bartender an asked what had happened. He answered, "Elspeth was talking to a new possible customer when this galoot (pointing to the man I had shot) said that he wanted her first. That other man (pointing to the dead man near the woman) objected that he would have to wait his turn.

"The man you shot said that he didn't wait on nobody, and shot the other man afore anybody knew what was going on. Elspeth started screaming and the galoot shot her, too.

"That's when the marshal came in and demanded the galoot's gun. The galoot gave the gun to him and the marshal turned to put it on the bar. When the marshal turned away, the galoot shot him twice with a double-barrel derringer hideout gun.

"That's when he snatched his gun off the bar and started threatening all of us. None of us was armed, so there wasn't nothing that we could do. You came in right after that, and I, for one, am very glad that you did. No telling who else that galoot would have shot!"

I think that was when it hit me that John was lying dead on the floor. I started to cry and cradled his head in my arms. I don't know how long I was there, but I was finally pulled away by some kind souls when John was carried to the funeral parlor. The other bodies had already been removed; I suppose out of respect for me, they had left John's body for last. The undertaker said for me to wait until tomorrow to come by to see him about the funeral. I thanked him and walked slowly back to John's office in the jail.

The next morning, I woke up, and I was still sitting in John's chair behind his desk. What woke me was five men coming into the office. It was the mayor and the four city councilmen. The mayor said, "Miz. McCall, we are all right sorry about what happened to your husband. Is there anything we can do for you?"