Chapter 11

We caught up to the Indians, Comanches, just past the burning cabin. The two kids were on horses riding in front of two braves. The children seemed to be in good shape, but the same could not be said for the naked woman walking behind the last Comanche in line. She had a rope tied around her neck, but her hands were not tied. Of course, they didn't need to be. The White woman was not going anywhere as long as that rope was around her neck.

Helen and Martha were all for riding fast to catch up to the Indians and start shooting right away, but Jeff pointed out that all the Indian had to do to kill the woman was to ride faster than she could run. That slowed our two women down, but did not quell their desire to kill all of the Comanches.

There were 15 Indians, so we had to be careful if we were going to keep the woman alive, and possibly the children, too. Jeff and I figured that our best bet would be to wait until the Comanches made camp and hit them then. Martha and Helen chaffed at the wait, but they finally agreed that we were probably right.

We had pulled back as soon as we saw the Indians, and they had given no sign that they had seen us, so we still had surprise on our side. The Indians rode slowly, limited by the speed that their captive could walk, so we had no trouble keeping up with them. Our main concern was the hope that we would not meet any people coming from the other direction, since we didn't want to spook the Comanches.

We had ridden for about four hours, and the White woman captive was staggering, she was so tired. I am sure that it was not out of concern for the captive, but the Indians decided to stop. Two Indians staked the woman out on the ground on her front, spread eagle, and with just enough slack to make rape most convenient.

The Indians ate some supper, pemmican and jerky, and drank water. They fed the children, but gave nothing to the woman. From the looks of the bottoms of the woman's feet, she was not going to walk anywhere tomorrow, so the Indians probably planned to kill her tonight, possibly by raping her to death. After supper, the Indians tied the children's hands behind them and a rope to an ankle. This rope was tied to a stake driven into the ground. The children were so young that they had no hope of escaping by themselves.

We dropped back out of sight and ate our own supper of pemmican and jerky. I had everybody pull their rifles and make sure that they were fully loaded. Furthermore, they were to load six rounds into their pistols and be ready to shoot after I had fired the first shot. I had considered letting the Indians tire themselves out with the effort of raping the woman, but I knew that Martha and Helen would not be able to stand still for that. I set the women and Jeff into position and pointed out which warriors I wanted shot first. I then let the first rapist drop his loin cloth and get into position before I fired my first shot.

The other Indians were standing around and watching the rapist as he lifted the woman's butt and moved between her legs to fuck her in the traditional Indian method of dogie fashion. Just before the rapist penetrated the woman, I shot him between the shoulder blades. I was close enough for a head shot, but I wanted to be absolutely certain of my hit.

As soon as I fired, all hell broke loose as the others fired and the Indians began to fall dead. We all fired as fast as we could lever in a new round and line up for our next shot. It all went so fast that only three Indians reached their rifles, but they never had a chance to do more than pick them up. All of the Indians were down, most of them dead, but a few were only severely wounded.

I waited a minute to be sure that it was safe before I stood up. As soon as I was on my feet, Helen and Martha rushed to the woman. There was not a bullet mark on her, but she was dead. The two women then turned to the children to see to their care, leaving Jeff and me to see about the Comanches. Those who were not dead were sure to be that way in a few minutes, so we just left them there, rather than spend the money for another bullet.

He and I reloaded, but we could see that the women were not thinking about anything but the children. Jeff and I looked around to make sure that there were no other Indians around to sneak up on us, and there was nothing but 23 horses worth taking from the camp.

We decided to move away from this spot and set up our own camp. We were too far from any hotel to spend the night in a bed, so we would just have to use our bedrolls. Jeff and I gathered up the horses and led them to where our own horses were picketed. I looked around and said that we would just spend the night where we were.

The next morning, we took the two children to the crossroads inn and asked if there was someplace that we could take them. Nobody had any ideas for that, so the wives decided to keep the kids, two boys, and raise them as their own. The boys appeared to be three and two, approximately, so, kind of arbitrarily, Martha took the older one and Helen took the younger one.

OK, now what? There was no way around it, the two boys were much too young to accompany us even as far as Amarillo. Jeff volunteered to take the women and the kids home while I went to Amarillo to pick up the guns that I had committed for. Jeff was also interested in breeding horses, so he took the Indians' horses with him back to the farm.

I didn't push, but I didn't dawdle either, so I got to Amarillo a couple of days before the guns were finished. I hung around until the guns were ready, paid for them, and headed home as fast as I could go without harming my horse.

When I got there, I found the two boys had settled in real quick to become the latest members of our extended family. The two boys, Joey, three years old, and Jimmy, two years old, were treating all of the adult women as a mother, or, in the case of Ma, as a grandmother. They appeared to be very happy and content where they were.

Now, the first problem came up. Jeff wanted to stay with his horses and get his business going, instead of going back out with me to hunt outlaws. This, of course, made Martha very happy, but it left me without a partner. I was not real happy with that, since I had gotten used to having one.

Oops! Now, the second problem came up. Helen was ready to resume the bounty hunting adventure with me. She had no interest or incentive to stay home, and plenty of incentive to go with me. Dammit, I was hooked! I had just been complaining about not having a partner, so how could I refuse to take Helen as my partner? Well, the partnership did have its compensations. Helen was a damned good shot with steady nerves, so my only legitimate concern was whether or not she would take orders. I bit the bullet and said OK to her joining me as long as she understood that I was the boss when it came to bounty hunting.

I wasn't sure how long this agreement was going to last, but I really had no choice. I had to give the partnership a try. We left a week later, headed south toward Laredo. Helen's Spanish would get her by, but it was nowhere as good as mine. We had to remedy that before we got to Laredo if we could. To do that, we agreed not to use anything but Spanish when we talked to each other.

Thank God, all Helen's Spanish really needed was practice, and the five days we took to get to Laredo appeared to be enough to bring it into shape. In that five days, Helen's Spanish got to be as good as mine and much better than Jeff's.

There was one other change we had to make: Helen had to have another name while we were on the road. We settled on "Andy" for her working name, so that was used when we were practicing our Spanish. I slipped a couple of times the first day, but we were doing fine by the time we got to Laredo.

We had picked up a new set of wanted posters, so we were ready to go into business as soon as we got to Laredo. We decided to skip the Anglo saloons and "disguised" ourselves as a couple of vaqueros. We went through the multitude of cantinas along the river front, but we didn't find anything; however, it was good practice, so we didn't feel like we had wasted our time.