Chapter 9

Jeff and I figured that we had spent enough time in Laredo, so we headed south, or as near as we could and still be on our side of the river. It was a pleasure to be traveling through verdant countryside, instead of the windswept plains of southern NMT. I guess I'm just a Texas-boy, and quite the chauvinist. Oh, well, I like it, and that's what's important to me.

We rode into the town of River Bend, Texas, just in time for dinner, so we found a restaurant. Luckily, this one offered more than just beef and beans. I was able to enjoy a platter of the miscellaneous Mexican goodies that I had developed a taste for during my stay in Mexico a few years ago. I was trying to get Jeff to like it, too, but he seemed to be stuck on beef and beans.

We had just finished, paid our bill, and stepped out onto the sidewalk when there arose the clatter of gunfire from up the street. A few moments later, four men came tearing by us, firing their guns behind them and riding as fast as their horses would take them.

Bullets were flying this way, too, so Jeff and I ducked behind a watering trough and waited it out. Then we heard shouts of "bank robbery" and "don't let them get away." The marshal came charging up the street on his horse, calling for a posse to help him chase the robbers. I started to jump up, but Jeff grabbed my arm. "Hold on, Tom. The most ya kin git from joinin' the posse is four-bits and a bunch of saddle sores. Let's play it smart, instead."

I had to agree that he had a point, so we walked down to the bank to see what we might work up. There was one dead man dressed in the traditional duster worn by so many bank robbers to hide their shotguns. A man dressed like a bank employee was slightly wounded and being tended to by the local doctor. We went to the manager's office and asked to speak with him.

After some negotiation by Jeff, we came away with a paper holding a written promise of $50 for every robber we caught and $250 for returning the loot. That was $450 if we were completely successful, which was certainly worth going for.

We went to fetch our horses and set out after the robbers and the posse. They were all tearing away hell bent for leather, so we weren't going to catch up real soon, but our fresh horses moving at a reasonable pace would let us catch them eventually. We rode along, watching the sides of the trail to be sure the robbers didn't cut away from the trail without the posse noticing.

Aha, I spotted where some horses, moving fast, had turned off the well traveled roadway across an open plain of tall grass. The grass was just beginning to straighten up, and it soon would hide the trail. The posse had missed the sign and had gone pounding ahead without taking time to investigate. The robbers had probably counted on this; they had not counted on someone else spotting the bent grass.

Jeff and I picked up our speed a little bit and set out in pursuit. We didn't want to go so fast that we tired out our horses, but we needed to go fast enough to keep up with the bent grass. If we moved too slowly, the grass would return to its normal position before we found the crooks, and that could result in us losing the trail.

At least, our horses would be fresher than theirs, so the bandits would have to stop to let their horses rest some time pretty soon. In fact, we were concerned about coming upon the robbers and surprising us as much as we surprised them.

After about an hour, we spotted four men ahead of us in the distance. We dropped back a little because we decided that the best time to try to capture them was after they had bedded down for the night. We guessed that, even if they had seen us when we saw them, they would forget about us if they didn't see us again.

We stayed back as far as we dared until the sun started to set. Surely, the robbers would take this as a hint that they should stop for the night. This would give us nearly two more hours of enough light to follow their trail, as obvious as it was.

We could tell from their trail that they had started to slow down and were looking for a good place to camp, so we did the same. We found a good place to shelter as soon as we saw the glow from their campfire. We did not plan to camp here, we were going to use the bandits' camp after we captured them.

We ate some pemmican and jerky to hold us for the evening, but we did feel the lack of coffee. Oh, well, we would get by on water. We watered the horses, but there was plenty of grass, so they were happy when we hobbled them. We took our rifles and sneaked up on the bandits' camp to watch them until we were ready to pounce.

They fixed some beef and beans, and we were jealous of their coffee. They didn't take long to bed down, and one man was detailed to be the guard. Probably, they were going to rotate that chore during the night.

We held a short whispered council of war and decided to wait a few hours before hitting them. Jeff took the first watch, and I lay down to get a couple of hours of sleep.

One man got up after he had been asleep only about an hour, so Jeff woke me at this unusual occurrence. We heard the man say to the guard, "Joey, I gotta go take a shit. Them beans done got to me. Don't shoot me when I come back." The guard nodded, and the man disappeared in the bushes.

This was a God-given opportunity! I went after the man relieving himself while Jeff attended to the guard. Both of us were able to subdue our victims without killing them, so we were ready to move on the other two men.

Bold as brass, we marched into the camp, and each one of us went up to a sleeping man and poked him with our rifle barrel. There were some grumpy objections, but the men did come awake. We tied up these men still wrapped in their blankets, but after we had taken their weapons. The other two were tied up the same way and we relaxed. They were not going anywhere the way they were wrapped tight in those blankets. Pa had taught me that. We arranged them so that their feet pointed away from us so that they could not shoot us, even if we had missed a gun during our search.

Jeff and I alternated guard duty until daylight. We had one of the bandits fix breakfast while under guard. The beef and beans were OK, but we were lucky that we had not sampled any of that terrible coffee the night before. We untied the prisoners one at a time and let them relieve themselves and eat breakfast. After that, we tied them back up and checked them again for weapons, just to be safe. We also checked their tack and found several hidden knives.

The horses were saddled and we looked for the bank loot. We found it divided among some of the saddle bags. There was supposed to be $5,347, and a quick count verified that it was all there. The men were tied to their horses by looping a rope under the horse's belly and tying a man's feet to it while they were not in the stirrups. This made it impossible for a man to dismount unaided, and it made it damned painful to ride fast because of pinched balls.

Jeff and I made a final cleanup of the campsite and we started back to River Bend to turn in the crooks and to collect our rewards. Our first stop was at the jail to turn over the bank robbers to the marshal. I showed him the written agreement between the bank manager and us about the rewards and we counted the recovered loot. We found $5,348, so, as a joke, with the marshal looking on, I pocketed a dollar.

The marshal went with us to collect our reward, and, as expected, the banker didn't want to pay us the rewards he had promised. The marshal insisted that we had a legal contract, so the banker grudgingly paid up. That's when I tossed the extra dollar on the banker's desk and told him that it was a bonus. He looked shocked at our laughs, but I would not tell him the story of that dollar. He could get it from the marshal later if he really wanted it. As we left the bank, I tipped the marshal a double eagle. He was grateful, and we parted as friends.

We didn't think that there was much point in remaining in River Bend, so we moved on. We visited five more towns without finding any business, so, by the time we got to Cotton Boll, Texas, we were getting kind of antsy. This was not what you would call much of a town, even for Texas. For one thing, there were only two saloons—now, that was a small town.