Chapter 4

I had brought in four draft mules and 10 Indian horses when I rescued Alice. Mr. Jackson told me that they were mine to do with as I wished, so I sold them and used the money to increase my arsenal. I bought three more of the S&W .44-40 top-break revolvers and had holsters made for them by our resident leather worker. He made up another crossdraw holster that I wore on my right side, plus two holsters that I wore at my hips in the conventional fashion. That gave me 20 shots before I had to reload, so I felt that I was now as well armed as it was possible to be in 1877. That 18 pounds of extra weight didn't bother me, and it gave me a great feeling of security, especially when I added in the tomahawk and bowie knife. When I was wearing all of this, my friends did tease me about looking like a Mexican bandit or a Bushwhacker, but I just grinned at them.

The first time this much armament became useful was on a scouting expedition. I was jumped by around 30 Apaches on horses, so I had no choice but to turn and run. I was lucky to survive the initial contact, but that was when my luck ran out for a while. I was pulling away from my advisories when my horse suddenly came up lame. I couldn't tell why he was limping, but I did know that I was in big trouble.

I saw a cave mouth not too far away to get to before I was overtaken, so we headed for it immediately. I dismounted and pulled my horse behind me into the cave. The opening was just wide enough for the horse to pass, and the cave was not very deep, but it did provide a way for me to keep from being surrounded in the next few minutes. The cave did have another opening to the outside, but I could not see it. I knew it was there because I could feel a steady gentle breeze blowing into the cave from the entrance that I had used. Undoubtedly, that meant that the opening was at a higher level, and I was feeling a chimney effect. It was so damned dark in that cave that I could only see a short distance courtesy of the light spilling in from the nearby opening. At least, any attacker would be silhouetted as he tried to enter, while I would be hidden by the gloom.

There was a sharp bend in the cave about 10 feet beyond the opening, and I pulled my horse around that. I planned to use the bend as a shield to hide behind as I shot. I pulled out my Winchester, one canteen, and the pouch of spare ammunition as I settled in to wait for the onslaught from the Chiricahua Apaches. I had a total of 147 rounds of .44-40 cartridges and 19 rounds for the Remington, so I would not be running out of ammunition in the near future. I had about two gallons of water in all my canteens, so my horse and I could get by for a couple of days—longer than was needed for a rescue by the wagon train. All I had to do was to make sure that they heard the gunfire; they could take care of the rest.

Hostilities opened when an Apache approached the cave and fired a shot into the entrance. That was all of the hint that I needed. I returned fire with a revolver, and was lucky to score the one shot, one kill standard. I was lucky in that the Apache was shooting blindly into the cave, but I could see his silhouette clearly. Of course, this brought on a hail of fire from the rest of the Indians, and I was concerned that I might be hit by a ricochet. Luckily, I wasn't, but that was a very scary few seconds.

I kept the party going by taking a shot at any Indian that I could see. The Indians figured out real quickly that I could see them if they got in front of the cave entrance, so they were trying to stay to one side or the other as they shot. Also, it didn't take them long to figure out that they were never going to hit me by shooting that way. After about 15 minutes, the Apaches stopped shooting while they tried to figure out what to do.

I took advantage of this lull to see to my horse. He had simply picked up a stone in a hoof, and I was able to pop it out rather easily. My horse immediately relaxed, and I was sure that he would be back to normal with a little rest. Unfortunately, I still had 29 Chiricahua Apaches to deal with. They still had not resumed shooting, so I crept up to the cave entrance to see if I could see what they were up to.

Well, I'll be damned! They were just standing around talking and chewing on jerky while the leaders figured out a course of action. That was too good an opportunity to pass up. I drew a revolver and started shooting at the leaders as fast as I could trigger off shots. As I said, I had been a competition shooter with this very type of gun for several years, so I could consistently empty the five rounds in a cylinder in 12 seconds and score very highly while I was doing it.

The upshot was that I emptied the first revolver and was working on the second before the Apaches recognized what was happening to them. They simply had never encountered pistol fire that was this rapid and this accurate at the same time. I managed to kill or wound all of the leaders and had started to work on those who were standing around before I got any return fire. I was using my third pistol before the return fire got so heavy that I had to pull back from the cave entrance. Part of what saved me was the tremendous cloud of smoke generated by my shooting. A smoke grenade could not have provided better cover. The smoke lasted long enough that I was back inside my hidey-hole before the Indians stopped shooting at the cloud.

I didn't get an accurate count during all of the excitement, but I was sure that, inside of one minute, I had killed at least 10 of the Indians and seriously wounded three more. That was the kind of shooting that kept me at the head of my division in the shooting clubs back in my hobby days. All that I got in return were some scratches from rock fragments that flew around when they were chipped off by bullets. Statistics said that I was going to be hit eventually if this fight kept up, but statistics didn't stand a chance against my legendary luck, at least I hoped so. I also had the advantage of training and experience that these poor bastards would never hear of. My biggest concern was not to throw that advantage away.

The situation had taken a big jump in my favor when I had killed the leaders. Most of the remaining warriors were just kids, well teenagers, who had little or no experience in fighting someone at my level of skill. Right now, there was a big confab going on to select new leaders, and the combat would not resume until that question had been settled. This was a great opportunity, I just hoped that I could make the best use of it.

Again, I crept to the cave entrance and carefully looked about. Son ... Of ... A ... Bitch!!! They were holding the meeting out in the open right in front of me! These kids really were green! I wished for an M4 (the short barrel version of the standard M16 assault rifle). A single long burst of automatic fire would have wiped out the whole bunch of them in short order. Oh, well, I would make do with what I had.

Naturally, I had reloaded all of my revolvers as soon as I had ducked away from the cave entrance the last time, so I was fully prepared to take advantage of this opportunity. I was already holding one of the revolvers, so I began firing. The result was the same this time as previously. I scored a high number of hits, but the Indians reacted faster than they had before and started running almost with the first sound of gunfire.

I emptied two guns this time, and I had eliminated the next round of potential leaders, so I expected a change in tactics by the Indians. What I didn't expect was that the entire gang of remaining Indians would run to their horses and ride away in an absolute panic. I wondered if they had been fooled into thinking that they had run into a demon? That was possible, considering the Indian mythology, and I could not account for their fright by any other theory. Oh, well, I didn't care as long as they did run away.

My horse was in good condition by now, so I used him to drag the corpses from the road. There was no point in impeding the oxen or the wagons, and they should be along soon. As it turned out, the wagon train caught up to me before I had the way completely cleared. I gave Mr. Jackson a quick rundown of what had happened, and several of the drivers overheard my story.

It was near enough to noon, so we just stopped there for lunch. I retold the story in more detail while Alice was fixing the food, and I told it where she could also hear, since I did not want to tell it again. Dammit, my reputation just ratcheted up another notch. I was becoming some sort of mythical hero at the rate it was growing. I figured that it couldn't hurt anything for my reputation to grow, but I still found it more than a little embarrassing. The final straw, though, was when the other men started tipping their hats to me, and they were not joking!