Chapter 7

Our luck was sure running deep this night. While we was still fooling around with that stupid gambler, who should walk into the saloon but "Kansas Jack" Mullins? Kansas Jack was one of the few on the wanted list from Kansas what was really worth going after. He was worth $2,500, mostly because he had once killed a federal judge.

Killing a federal judge wasn't that big a deal, I suppose, except that it was in the middle of a court session where the judge had sentenced Kansas Jack to hang for stealing an Army payroll. Kansas Jack had managed to keep his hideout derringer all this time, and he used it to shoot the judge. During all the confusion, Kansas Jack jumped through an open window and managed to escape.

Well, we were sure going to try for that reward. Each one of us moseyed up to the bar where Kansas Jack was standing with his shot of whiskey. We waited for him to finish the whiskey before we each stuck a gun muzzle into his back over a kidney. Bob said, "OK, Kansas Jack, we got ya covered. Surrender easy-like, and ya won't git shot. Just raise yer hands an' back away from the bar."

"Don't shoot! Y'all got me. I surrender." I was a little surprised that he gave up that easy, but I figured that was what two guns pressing on the kidneys with do to a person. I almost discovered my mistake the hard way! Kansas Jack raised his hands, but he pulled a bowie knife from a sheath he had hanging so that he could git to the knife by pulling it out from his shirt collar. Anyway, he spun around toward Bob and slashed with the knife about eye-high, apparently hoping to blind Bob, if not kill him.

Luckily, Bob saw the knife coming and jumped back, but that pulled his gun away from Kansas Jack's back. By some miracle, Bob didn't pull his trigger and shoot me or a bystander, but I sure did pull my trigger. Kansas Jack had twisted enough so that my gun muzzle was pointing right at his backbone when I fired.

Well, that bullet just played hell with his backbone. I think it must of cut it in two because of the way he fell. In any case, I didn't wait to be sure, I shot him again, this time between the shoulder blades. If the first bullet hadn't killed him, the second sure must of, because of the big hole it left behind before it buried itself in the floor.

Kansas Jack didn't have no friends in town, but the gunplay still attracted a lot of attention. I took the time for a quick reload while Bob gave an explanation of the goings on. Bob asked the swamper to help us git Kansas Jack dragged to the nearest livery stable and tipped him two-bits for his trouble.

Once we got the corpse to the livery stable, we realized that we didn't dare leave it for fear that it would be stolen. After all, it was worth $2,500, which was good for at least five years of high living! One, or both, of us was going to have to stay with it through the night, or it would probably be gone when we came back in the morning. Oh, well, there's a lot worse things than sleeping on a pile of hay.

We had our shotguns with us as we stood guard over the body of Kansas Jack Mullins. One of us slept while the other stayed awake and kept an eye on things. We had put lit lanterns by each of the two doors, but we were pretty much sitting in the dark where we were. That made it easier to sleep and harder for anybody to sneak up on us.

It was along about 3:00 AM when one of the doors creaked open. Bob happened to be the one keeping watch at that time, so he punched me with his finger in the side, and I woke up immediately. Three men were slipping into the stable, and they wasn't all that skilled at it. They was wearing guns, but they was carrying clubs, so it was obvious what they had in mind.

I had picked up my shotgun and thumbed back the hammer by the time Bob said, "Just what do y'all yahoos have in mind?" He wasn't going to shoot until they made a hostile move, but the three charged at him as soon as he said the first word. That was enough of a threat for us, so we both fired at almost exactly the same time. As it happened, we both aimed at the one in the lead, and we both scored hits judging from the way his body flew around as his muscles contracted.

We didn't pause before firing at the other two. Bob shot the one on the right, and I took out the one on the left. That was our usual pattern we had agreed on from way back when we first started out as bounty hunters. It's a big help to have that sort of thing decided before you needed to use it. It saved a lot of time, which could mean the time you could catch a bullet.

We waited a minute to see if there was another galoot trying to sneak up on us, but I guess not. Nobody else showed himself, so we figured that we had seen them all. We went over to look at them and see if any of them were on a poster. No, nobody we could use, but we did see that the leader of the would be body snatchers was the swamper from the saloon. Well, that shows how he knew where to find us.

We pulled the three newly dead bodies over to the wall farthest from us and went back to our routine. I still had half an hour of sleep due me, and I wasn't going to let some fool thief cheat me out of it!

The next morning, we headed to Kansas to turn the corpse in for our reward. It took us a week to find somebody to take him, and he was really beginning to smell bad by then. Even Bob could smell him by that time! Finally, we got our money and headed back to the Pan Handle. We now had over $3,600 in new money in our money belts and were feeling pretty cocky about it.

Between the two of us, we were carrying about $7,200 in gold coins and bars in our money belts. Thats a shade over 25 pounds and too much to be carrying around like that. We had to find a bank where it would be safe. We both had heard of a bank in Wilsonville, Texas, that had the reputation of being reliable, so we decided to take a chance on it. We figured to make one more swing into the Panhandle afore we headed to Wilsonville.

Pickings were pretty slim this time around, so we settled for a poor loser what brought in only $75 in Texas. I know you can't always hit it big, but that $75 was kind of a letdown. Anyway, once we had collected that $75, we headed to Wislonville to open an account. The trip was uneventful, and we opened a savings account with $7,000. We made it a joint account for Bob and Alice Newsome. Yeah, I know, women can't be trusted with money, but Bob insisted. Who am I to argue?

It was getting kind of late in the year, so we decided not to head back to Oklahoma. Neither one of us cared for that winter weather they had—too cold and windy! Instead, we thought of trying for Southern New Mexico Territory. We could go through El Paso and maybe pick up some tips from there.

We got to El Paso on a relatively quiet Wednesday, so we didn't expect much. However, we got an earful at our second saloon stop. It seems that a local bordello had been raided the night before and all of the working girls had been hijacked to Mexico. This assumption was based on the known fact that Mexicans had done the raiding.

The women who were kidnapped were all Anglos, which was a plus for a whore in Mexico. The women had been paid employees of the bordello, but it was assumed that they would be held as sex slaves in Mexico, which was the common practice there for Anglo whores.

Neither Bob nor I had anything against whores, there wasn't much other way for a single woman to make her way in the world. We were right perturbed that this would happen, because we were against slavery, too. Anyway, we resolved to do something about this outrage. We resolved to do our damnedest to rescue the women.

Fortunately, both of us spoke Spanish, though Bob's lingo was a bit better than mine. He had to be good with the language, since he had once been a Texas Ranger. That made it easier for us to get around in Mexico, so we figured to get after the kidnappers first thing in the morning. We wanted to dress a little more like the Mexicans did, so we had to wait for the stores to open; I was still going in looking like a man so I wouldn't draw so much attention.

We crossed over into Cuidad Juarez via one of the many fords. The river was quite low so our horses hardly got their feet wet. We figured our best bet was to visit cantinas until we heard something since there wasn't a better meeting place for lowlifes on this side of the river. Our usual tactic was to go into a cantina and buy a bottle of beer. Bob, who could mimic the country-boy accent perfectly, did the talking. He said that we were new in town and asked about the local gossip.

We heard a lot of stuff that would normally have drawn our immediate attention, but we stayed fixed on our main target. I lost the exact count, but I think that it must have been the 10^th or 12^th cantina we visited before we got some useful information. Bob was told a funny story about how some bandits had pulled a trick on the stupid Gringos. They had stolen a whole whore house full of women and brought them across the river. They were headed to the hacienda of the biggest dealer in such women in this part of Mexico. Bob and I laughed along with the bartender over such a joke being pulled on the stupid Gringos, and Bob was able to extract the information about where this fabulous hacienda was to be found. Bob even bought a beer for the bartender in exchange for the funny story and the great laugh.