Chapter 8

Brotmore told me where to find some laudanum in his house, so I got it and gave him a big swig. It wasn't long before he passed out, so I was able to drag Brotmore into the house and onto his bed. It was a cinch that we wasn't going anywhere that day.

Bob went out to look after the stock while I rustled up some supper for the three of us. I fixed Brotmore some broth, but I fixed us two a regular supper, or at least as close to one as I could from the meager fixings in Bortmore's kitchen. Why don't men learn how to fix decent meals? I just can't understand it.

I went in to check on Brotmore and to feed him his broth. He managed to get most of it down his gullet, but I could tell that he was in a lot of pain. I put the laudanum where he could reach it and left him for the night. A little later, Bob went in to help him piss into the slop jar.

Bob opened the door and started in. He hadn't got through the door good when there was a pistol shot, and a bullet buried itself in the wall beside Bob's head. Without thinking, Bob pulled his own gun and fired. He put a bullet right between Brotmore's eyes, killing him on the spot.

I went rushing to help and found Bob looking at Brotmore and shaking his head. He said to me, "I'll bet he never meant to shoot me. He was too good a shot to miss at that distance. I'll bet he wanted me to shoot him. He was a dead man, anyway, either from a hangman's rope or from gangrene. This way, he doesn't have to face the pain of a ride back to Texas."

I said, "Ya're probably right. At least, ya didn't mess up his face so that he is still easily recognizable. After all this trouble, I'd hate to mess up our chances at the reward."

We spent the night in the other bedroom, and had a right nice time coming off our high of excitement from that day. As usual, I hoped I didn't git pregnant right away, because we still had some more money to raise before we retired.

We thoroughly searched the house and as much of the barn as was still standing. We found almost $1,000 in gold and silver, so this was going to be a right profitable venture for us. Brotmore had two horses and a mule, plus a passel of guns and knives. We took all of that, plus whatever else we thought we could sell real easy and left the rest. We didn't know what he had in the way of cattle, but we abandoned them to whoever wanted to gather them in from the open range. All told, we made $3,712 from this little trip. It was worth while making a trip back to Wilsonville to deposit $3,500 of it in our savings account. That gave us $10,500 in the account, and we figured that we was just getting warmed up!

We didn't have any place else to go where we'd rather be, so we rode over to Eagle Pass to see what they might know of going on there or in Mexico. Eagle Pass was getting to be a big place—I'll bet there was 1,000 people living in and around the town. Bob knew the marshal there from the time he was in the Rangers, so we stopped by to say hello.

That marshal was a right nice fellow, so we spent a good bit of time with him in his office and in one of the local saloons. The marshal was keeping an eye on the saloon because of a threat of trouble from one of the larger ranchers. It seems that the bartender had to shoot one of the ranch hands a week ago for threatening one of the saloon whores because she wouldn't give him a free toss. You couldn't blame the bartender, since he got a percentage of whatever the whore made; of course, she got to keep her tips for herself, but a whore rarely got tipped.

Anyway, this was the night the crew from that ranch usually came to town, so the marshal felt that it behooved him to be on hand if trouble started. That ranch crew was an unruly bunch, so he couldn't be sure but what there would be trouble tonight.

The expected troublemakers showed up a little after 7:30 PM. They just lined up at the bar and placed an order. Every one but one ordered a beer, and the one exception ordered a whiskey. The normal routine was throw the whiskey down your throat in one gulp so that you did not have to endure the god-awful taste of the rotgut usually served at four-bits per shot. But, this time, the whiskey drinker, whom the marshal advised us was the foreman, just stood with the glass in his hand until all of the ranch hands had finished their beer. At that time, he threw down his drink.

Instead of setting his shot glass on the bar, he threw it as hard as he could into the mirror behind the bar. This was bad enough, but all of the hands threw their beer mugs into the racks of whiskey bottles behind the bar. Of course, this made one hell of a mess with spilled whiskey all over the floor behind the bar. The foreman then grabbed a beer mug from a bystander and threw it at a kerosene lantern in a fixture behind the bar.

The fixture broke and dropped the kerosene lantern where the burning wick ignited the spilled whiskey on the floor. This was no longer a joke or a prank—the whole town was suddenly in danger from the fire! Several men yelled "FIRE!" and ran for the door. They got out all right, but there was such a packing of people at the door that nobody could get through.

Some unsung genius threw a chair through one of the windows leading to the sidewalk, and many people went out that way. The rest of the windows were broken out, and more people escaped that way. There was enough warning that even the saloon whores plying their trade in the "bedrooms" over the bar had time to escape, along with their customers, though there was an array of poorly donned clothes out in the street. Luckily, the whores all had time to pick up their cache of money before escaping.

The fire brigade arrived with their pumper and water tank in time to get ahead of the fire, so only three buildings were severely damaged. Unfortunately, the saloon was a total loss. The arsonists had plenty of time to escape because everybody else was busy with fighting the fire. The situation was not under control until almost 4:00 AM, which was when most people got out of bed.

It was still pretty dark, but the false dawn had begun to show, and most folks went to get some breakfast. The whole town was exhausted from fighting the fire, but there was no time for sleep. Most people lived "from hand to mouth," so they couldn't afford to take any time off to rest, that would be done when the work-day was finished.

Before the crowd had a chance to disappear, the marshal called for a posse to be formed to go after the arsonists out at the Bar B Bar ranch. Anybody who could make it was asked to meet at the jail in one hour to be sworn in. Any posse member would be paid four-bits (50 cents) for the day. That was more money than most laborers were paid for a day's work, so the marshal was almost certain to have a crowd. He would need a big posse, since there were 12 men to be arrested, including the owner of the Bar B Bar ranch. Since it was his men that did the arson, everybody figured that he had ordered it to be done.

The marshal asked us to join the posse—he wanted to have some people he could depend on to do the right thing. We agreed to help, so we grabbed a quick breakfast and headed to the jail.

There was already some people there waiting to be sworn in, so the prospects looked good for a large posse. The marshal swore us all in at 5:30 AM on the dot, and we mounted up to go for our quarry. The Bar B Bar ranch was about seven miles out of town, so it took us only about an hour to get there. The sun was up, and the day was already getting warm by the time the posse arrived.