Chapter 13

When spring came, Jeff and I headed out, leaving the mothers behind. There had been a lot of good things I could say about having Helen along with me, but I was still relieved that she was staying home this time. She had children to concern her, now, so she would not be fretting so much about me and my safety.

Jeff and I thought that we would take a close look at Central Texas this time. Something had always happened to keep me from making a full sweep, so I was sure that there were wanted men there that I had missed. We hoped this time we could get all the way through without having to cut our trip short.

This time, we headed toward Austin instead of Laredo. It really didn't make that much difference, but we had never taken the Austin road before, so we might as well give it a try.

The second day into the trip, we hit paydirt, we just didn't know it at first. We rode into a small town, and the first thing we noticed was that the street was empty. That seemed odd for the middle of the afternoon; normally, only siesta time would empty streets this thoroughly, but there did not seem to be enough Mexicans in this part of Texas to warrant that. Still wondering what the story was, we hitched our horses to the rail and went into a saloon to ask what was going on, or wasn't going on, as the case may be.

The bartender informed us that there had been a bank robbery that morning and nearly every man in town was out chasing the crooks. The marshal had formed a posse and they were chasing the galoots somewhere southeast of town. Jeff and I ordered a beer and sat down to discuss the possibilities offered by this occurrence.

We finished our beers and headed down to the bank to ask if a reward had been posted. When we got to the bank, the manager brushed us off, assuring us that the marshal would take care of everything. Well, that manager was such an ass that we wanted nothing to do with his troubles—he wouldn't even tell us how much money had been taken in the loot.

We decided "to hell with it" and got back on our horses. If that was the way the bank manager was going to act, he could hunt for the loot all by himself, as far as we were concerned. We rode out of town in a generally northeasterly direction toward Austin. We passed through a couple of towns without finding anything of interest and were beginning to wonder if we were on a wild goose chase.

On our third day, we happened upon a horse lying on the ground suffering from a broken leg that must have come from stepping in a hole in the ground. The dead rider was lying close by; he had a broken neck and a compound fracture of his right leg. We shot the horse in the head, since there was nothing else we could do for it.

Apparently, when the horse fell, he had thrown the rider, and that resulted in the broken bones. We searched the rider and found absolutely no means of identification, so there was no way we could contact relatives. We did the only thing reasonable and searched the man for any valuables we might be able to use. Dammit, this galoot was a walking arsenal: he had four revolvers, a derringer, and three knives. On top of that, he had two Winchesters carried in scabbards on his saddle. The only people we knew of who went around that well armed were gunslingers and bandits, and there was often very little difference between the two.

He was not wearing a money belt, so we carefully checked his saddlebags. That's when we struck the paydirt I mentioned. He had $2,357 in gold and silver in a bag in among his other stuff. We guessed that it must be part of the loot from that bank robbery a few days earlier, but we had no way to know for sure. The man was not on one of our wanted posters, so he could have a legitimate reason to carry that much money. That banker had been such an ass when we talked to him that we were not going to ride all the way back to his bank just to be insulted again. Therefore, we pocketed the money and took the guns, etc. to sell in the next town.

By the time we were through with selling our loot, we were ahead nearly $2,500, so that was a good way to start the summer of 1877. We were not nearly so annoyed with our luck as we had been when we started the morning!

We never did travel all the way to Austin. We figured that there were so many lawmen in Austin that no wanted man would be stupid enough to hang around that town. Instead, when we came to a likely looking trail headed south, we turned toward San Antonio. We'd gone about five miles when we came to a nice looking little town; it must have had about 50 people living in and around it. It was still large enough to have two saloons, so we stopped off to hear any local gossip.

We were talking to the bartender when we heard a commotion in the back of the barroom. The bartender groaned and said, "Shit! That asshole is at it again. My swamper ain't too bright, and Jasper likes to devil him whenever he has too much to drink."

We turned to look, and Jeff said, "That's Jasper Swaggert. He's worth $75. Let's get him." I nodded agreement, and we walked to the other side of the barroom, me on one side and Jeff on the other so that we would not present too tempting a target.

I let Jeff handle the arrest since he was the one who spotted Swaggert. "Jasper Swaggert, I'm a bounty hunter. Ya are under arrest fer robbery. Surrender now, and nobody will git hurt."

Swaggert let out a roar and swung at Jeff's belly with a bowie knife he had been using to threaten the swamper. I didn't even have time to think, I just reacted automatically. I drew and put a bullet through Swaggert's chest and was aiming to fire again when the bully fell to the floor. Well, that was the end of that confrontation.

Jeff called to the bartender to send somebody to fetch the marshal, but the bartender said that the town didn't have one. However, he did thank us for ridding the town of the troublemaker. The swamper did help move Swaggert's body to his horse after we had looted it. Jeff tipped the swamper a dollar out of pity for the torment Swaggert had put him through the last year or so. The swamper was very happy at this, so we left for the nearest town with a marshal where we could turn in the body and get a receipt.

The weather sure was acting crazy. We had not had any rain for a month, and now it was pouring rain like it was water out of a bucket. We were miserable and our horses were miserable. The wind was blowing hard enough to make the rain that much worse, and the trees were shedding leaves like winter was coming on.

CRACK! It sounded like a big limb fell, or maybe even a whole tree, the noise was so loud. Following on the heels of that was the sound of a woman screaming. Jeff and I hurried up to see if there was something that we could do to help, because the woman was obviously in some sort of bad trouble.

SHIT! What a tragic mess! A covered wagon had been passing under a tree when the whole thing fell, and a broken stub of a limb struck the driver. From 100 feet away, we could see that the man was dead. The stub of limb had hit the man in the top of his head as the tree fell and had stabbed right through his head and into his body. The tree had continued to fall even farther and had crushed his body into the driver's seat and the bed of the wagon.

A woman was standing right behind the driver, as close as the fallen tree would let her get. She was beating her fists in futility against the tree trunk and screaming as if she was announcing the end of the world. I guess she probably was if she had been married to the man. If so, she was a widow, now!

We rode up to the wagon, and I climbed up and into the wagon bed. As gently as I could, I pulled and urged the woman to move back into the shelter of the canvas top. She fought me at first, but she finally collapsed against me and buried her face in my shoulder. She cried so hard that I began to worry about her, but she eventually calmed down enough that I was able to get her to lie down on some blankets that were laid out on the wagon bed. I persuaded her to try to sleep while Jeff and I worked on getting the wagon from under the tree.