Chapter 1

I woke up to the rattle of gunfire. Dammit, I thought I left that when I was rotated home from Iraq. Wait ... a ... minute! What's going on? Where are my clothes? How did I wind up here at the bottom of a grass-covered slope? Where's my car?

The last thing I remember was driving into that fog bank that should never have been there. Fog doesn't form around here! The last I remember, I was tooling along I-10 at around 75 MPH with the sky as clear as you could ever hope to see. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a ring of fog that was so close to my car that I could not hope to slow to a stop before I ran into it. Well, I did manage to drop to about 40 MPH before I actually touched the fog, but that is the last thing that I remember.

Now I am naked, in Southern New Mexico, and hearing gunfire. I was headed for Las Cruces, for whatever that is worth. There was to be a big "cowboy shootout" meeting there, and I was hoping to join in on the fun. I was a Marine sniper in Iraq, but my love has always been handguns. I was particularly partial to the S&W Schofield; that .45 caliber slug would put a real dent in anything it hit, even with black powder as propellent. I liked the way it was designed for one-hand reloading, though the earlier version in .44-40 was just as good as a stopper, plus there was a Winchester also chambered for it.

Anyway, this was not getting me anywhere, and I could start to cook pretty soon in this damned sun if I didn't find some clothes or some shade. I started up the slope, hoping to see what the shooting was all about. If there was that much shooting then there should be a lot of people around. I finally reached the top of the slope and could see over it to where the shooting was coming from.

Ah, a movie is being shot. Certainly I should find help there once they finish with the filming. The action is about a mile away, so I can't see what is going on very well. I can't see a film crew, but I can sure see a bunch of Indians riding horses in a circle around a wagon train. They are shooting at the train, and those people are shooting back. Somebody, probably the director, is a stickler for accuracy because they are firing black powder instead of the standard smokeless powder of the average movie. There sure is a lot of powder smoke around the wagons; it's a wonder that they can see what they are shooting at. Oh, hell, it's just a movie—they're not shooting at anything, they're just shooting for scenic effect.

Somebody on a horse just took a serious tumble. It was a lot more true to life than the average shot horse in a movie. I wonder how they did that? The way the rider flopped when he hit the ground, I would swear that his neck was broken. It certainly was more realistic than I ever expected to see in a movie shoot.

I broke into a jog as I ran toward the movie set. I couldn't go too fast with my cock and balls flopping in the breeze the way they were. It was going to take me a good 20 minutes to get to the set, but I did want something to use for pants before I got there. There were bound to be women around, and I didn't like to flaunt my equipment before I even met a woman.

I noticed something else strange as I approached the movie set: I still could not see the camera crew. They're the ones I will have to look to for help, but I can't find them. Oh, well, they'll show up when I get close enough.

Hey, one of the riders has seen me. He's turned in my direction and is riding this way. I wonder if he thinks that I am one of the actors. If so, this must be an R-rated movie to have naked men running around. On the other hand, maybe he is riding to stop me before I get too close and ruin the shot. I guess the smart thing would be for me to halt here and let him come to me.

Boy, that is some makeup and costuming job. He looks like an authentic Comanche if I ever saw one. What the shit! "HEY, BUDDY! POINT THAT GUN SOMEWHERE ELSE! YOU COULD DO ME A SERIOUS INJURY, EVEN IF IT IS LOADED WITH BLANKS!" That son of a bitch fired at me! Hey, that was no blank! I've been shot at often enough to know when a bullet whizzes by me. Why is he shooting live ammunition?

The idiot cocked what looked like a Spencer carbine and aimed at me again. He was so close for that first shot that it was only the bouncing of the horse that kept him from hitting me, and this one was going to be at point blank range. Nobody could miss at this range, so I had only one chance—I leaped at the horse. That was something that caught the horse completely by surprise. Just as the fool pulled the trigger, the horse jumped to one side, and that put the shot far enough off so that I lived through the experience.

I was so pissed by now that my Marine training took over and my mind took a short vacation. As the sucker on the horse passed me, I jumped and grabbed his rifle barrel. God Damn! That barrel was hot, but I managed to hang on, anyway. The rider did not have stirrups, so he was easy to pull off the horse. He landed on the ground on his back in a very dazed condition. I dropped on him with all my weight on my knee right into his solar plexus. He was not going to be doing any fighting for a good five minutes or more.

The horse had stopped running as soon as the man was no longer on his back, so I had no trouble catching him. I was still pissed, so I pulled off the blanket that the man had been using as a cover for his riding pad and wrapped it around my waist.

I had dropped the Spencer when I went after the horse, and I was still tying the blanket around me when I heard a sound behind me. The bastard was trying to stick a knife in my kidney. OK, no longer Mr. Nice Guy! I knocked the knife aside with my left hand and hit the attacker in the throat with the edge of my right hand. The blow did just exactly what it was supposed to do; namely, it crushed his wind pipe. He was going to suffocate within a couple of minutes if I did nothing to help him, and I was so pissed that I just stood there and watched him die!

The guy had recovered a lot faster than I had expected from the knee in the solar plexus. Furthermore, I wonder why he tried to knife me instead of shooting me with the Spencer which was lying not far away from him. Who knows? But I sure as hell am glad that it played out the way it did.

Now that I had a little peace and quiet, I decided to use the knife to convert the blanket into a loin cloth, which would feel a lot more secure than the blanket. When that was done, it dawned on me to turn my attention to the Spencer. It seemed to contain four rounds, and there were some loose cartridges in a pouch at the dead attacker's waste. I brought the magazine up to the seven-round limit and took another look at the movie set.

Shit! This was no movie set! Now that I got a better look from closer in, I could see that real bullets were flying back and forth across the battlefield. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I was damned certain that these people were trying to kill each other!

Now what was I going to do? This was now apparently a case of Comanches attacking a wagon train. From the looks of the wagons, this was an all-freight operation, so there were no women and children to be concerned with. Well, from what I knew about old-time Comanches, the wagon train crew could not expect anything good from the Indians. Therefore, I decided to do what I could to help the Whites against the Indians.