Chapter 10

I didn't enjoy hauling two dozen corpses across 17 miles of countryside until we could find a marshal that we could get to take the dead gunslingers and give us receipts. As it was, we had to pay for the funerals. Fortunately, we were able to collect that much when we sold the horses, tack, and guns. Oh, well, the $965 in bounties we collected paid for the aggravation.

Hell, between the adventures at Laredo, River Bend, and Cotton Boll, we had enough money to quit for the summer and we both did miss our wives, so we decided to call it a summer and head home. If we got too bored, we could help John with the farm work.

Everybody was surprised and pleased to see us, at least I found out real quick how glad Helen was to see me. I hardly had time to put up my horse and greet everybody before Helen had me dragged off to bed. I later found out that Martha had done the same with Jeff.

I was right hungry when it came time for breakfast the next day, since Helen had kept me busy right through supper time. Both of us were a mite chaffed by the experience, but neither one of us cared that much. However, I do think that what kept me from being fucked to death that summer was that Helen wanted to learn to use a revolver as well as I did.

I had no idea why she was so fixed on the idea of learning to shoot, but I knew by now that once that woman got an idea in her head, there was no way to blast it out. As a result, she and I spent at least two hours a day, every day, with her learning how to work a pistol.

The funny thing was, I had been working with Helen for only two days when Martha showed up, wanting instruction. Well, what the hell, I could teach two as easy as I could teach one. A few days later, Ma, Ann, and Rose showed up. I had a regular class, so I stopped them long enough to build a shooting range. We got back to classes as soon as the range was finished. With all the help I got from Jeff and the five women, it only took three days to build a workable setup.

We stuck with it, and the women got to be right good with the modified S&W and Starr DA pistols. At the insistence of the women, I had sent a telegram to the gunsmith in Amarillo to ask him to modify five more S&Ws to double action. A couple of days later, he sent me a telegram that he could have the pistols ready in five weeks. Damn! That was good service. I could go to Amarillo to pick them up and be back home before the weather got too cold.

I got ready to travel to Amarillo to pick up the guns, and Helen insisted that she wanted to go, too. Well, the only practical way to go was by horseback, so she had to dress like a man to make that trip with any kind of convenience. I hardly had myself wrapped around the details of taking Helen with me when Jeff and Martha decided to go with us. Dammit, this was turning into a royal progress march. Jeff agreed to take the responsibility of looking after Martha, so I agreed to go along with the joke.

We finally got ourselves together and made up our company of travelers. This time, I insisted on taking a pack mule, since the women had so damned much they wanted to take along. The mule was a special present I bought for myself—it was trained to follow without a lead rope.

The women couldn't travel without arms, so I gave each one a modified Starr DA to use. That reduced me to only two revolvers, but I was reasonably sure that would be enough for this trip. All of us had Winchester .44-40 rifles, though the women hated to shoot them because of the heavy recoil.

I was kind of surprised when Jeff asked me to be the leader of the expedition, even though he was older than me. I said OK, so we were finally ready to go.

We headed north at a reasonably brisk pace that would save us some time, but would not be so fast that it unduly tired out the horses. I planned on making 40-50 miles per day, so our trip to Amarillo should take only about nine days, seven if we were lucky. Nevertheless, I had packed enough supplies to last us for two weeks—I was never one for taking chances with something like this, and we did have the women along.

The first couple of days were spent in shaking us down into traveling shape. The women were not used to spending so much time in the saddle, so we had to make a lot of rest stops those first two days. Jeff and I were a little out of practice, so the rest stops didn't hurt us either, though we would never have admitted it to the women. By the third day, though, we only had to make the stops necessary to rest the horses and mule.

We always stopped at restaurants for meals if there were any nearby, so we were able to preserve our rations very well. We stopped at hotels each night, and we found that sex was a good way to work out the kinks from sitting in the saddle all day. From that point of view, it was turning out to be a very pleasant trip!

At the end of the ninth day, we pulled into Amarillo in plenty of time to find ourselves suitable hotel rooms. We ate some supper and then the women wanted to see the sights of a town that claimed to have over a thousand inhabitants. They had their men's clothes on, and they were wearing guns they knew how to use, so Jeff and I figured that it would be safe enough for us to show them some of the wild night life of a big city.

The first place they wanted to go was to a saloon. They had heard of all of the things that went on in these dens of iniquity, so they wanted to see for themselves. Amarillo had so many saloons that there was no problem in finding one to visit, so we went, though Jeff and I were a little bit anxious.

We went in to a rather large establishment, and it was full of customers. It was also full of saloon whores, and the way they were flashing tits and pussies at potential customers made no secret of their job. The two women were embarrassed by the blatant sex, but declined when Jeff and I asked if they wanted to leave. Before we went in, we agreed that the women would answer to "Andy" and "Marty." We didn't dare let it be known that they were women, for fear of the embarrassment that such might cause them.

We sat in some chairs along one side of the barroom while Jeff went to the bar for four beers. The women had said that they wanted to try everything that they could, so they agreed to sample Mexican beer, which is what Jeff and I drank. He came back with four mugs of beer and passed them around. The women sipped as they were instructed, but both made a face when they tasted the brew. They both had drunk wine, but this was their first exposure to beer. Well, Jeff and I didn't have to worry about them drinking down their beer too quickly, so we relaxed over that.

Once the ladies had consumed about half of their beer, we took them on a little walk around the room to show them the various gambling possibilities offered. There was faro, blackjack, draw, and stud poker being played at various tables. I told them to watch the faro dealer, and they might be able to see him cheat. I knew that they would never catch him, but it added a little spice to the excitement of the evening. Everybody knew that faro dealers cheated, but they also knew that in an honest house, they only cheated enough to make sure that the house did not lose money. I suspect that part of the fun was in trying to catch the dealer cheating.

We spent a total of over three hours in the saloon, so it was inevitable that we would spot a face from a wanted poster. I pointed the man out to Helen, and she wanted to try for an arrest right then. I dissuaded her with the argument that we were not working on this night, so we should let the identification slide. I didn't tell her that such an attempted arrest would probably have resulted in a major gunfight, which I didn't want to get involved in with her around.