Chapter 5

Breakfast was ready soon enough and I dug in. It was good and I ate plenty and then sat around on my ass drinking a last cup of coffee. Sally asked what I was going to do next and I told them about forgetting to rob the bodies of the last men I'd killed.

After I'd finished I left the women cleaning up, saddled a horse and headed back for the scene of last night's executions. It was good enough I did it because I found twenty double eagles in all their pockets except for the last one. He had the best clothes on and he had eighty double eagles on him in all. I gathered their horses and saddled them up and then started looking around for anything else, which might be worth anything.

They each had an Army Colt conversion and two of them had a pair of them. I took their gun belts and revolvers but left their clothes alone since I could already smell shit from their relaxing bowels. I did take their boots and hats, but once again none of the hats would fit my head. I mounted the best horse they'd had and lead the others back to where the women were parked.

I tied the horses onto the back wagon when I made it back and then removed the tack and put it inside the back wagon. We were on our way within an hour and even though I kept one horse saddled I still tied him onto the back wagon and rode in the front one.

We didn't make it far until we had to turn off the road again and see about the wagon Argus had told me they were going to work on. It was right where I'd left it. I started a fire and put on a pot of water to boil for more coffee.

This wagon now had a loop on the back like the others they had provided and there was a hook hanging from the loop for attaching to a wagon tongue. The coffee was ready in a little bit and while Sally, Mary, and I were downing a couple of cups Jan, Jen, and Jean were going through the wagon. They found a wooden box inside it, but it was nailed together all around. They brought it out to me and I took a prybar to it and removed the top. Damnation, it was the biggest haul yet. I let the three girls count the money and they came up with three hundred and seventy-six double eagles. Now we were talking about real money.

As soon as we finished our coffee and polished off the bearsign to keep them from going stale I started getting the wagons in shape to get them moving. We made it about five miles before four men coming from the other direction waved us down. They were all wearing cheap shit imitation tin badges and the leader told me he was going to have us take us back into town.

"Well, you've got it to do," I said, and let him see the Greener I'd pointed his way.

"Hell, mister, you can't scare me with that Greener, I'm the sheriff of Clarkston, the next town on down the road," he said, and I nearly laughed at him.

"Well, Mr. Sheriff. I'm just wondering how you got to be sheriff of a town and not of a county. I may look stupid but I just ain't that dumb. I guess you'd thought you should call yourself a sheriff since it's what's wrote on the badge you stole somewhere," I said, and then I did laugh at him.

I could see the others knew the bullshit was over now, and when one of them reached toward his pistol I cut loose with both barrels. They had been kind enough to be sitting their horses close together and so they were all hit, early and often. The faux sheriff caught the worst of it, but all of them were hit hard. He, and the one next to him were blown off their horses and the other two fell off after a few seconds. I got down out of the wagon seat and pulled a Ruger before doing anything else. After checking the bodies I found they were all dead, except for one who kept telling me he was dying, but didn't actually expire until I cut his throat.

Apparently they'd been doing well with this scheme since they all had at least fifty double eagles in their pockets. The faux sheriff had seventy-one of them, maybe it was because he was the smartest. They were all bequeathing me a double holster gun belt and two nice Army Colt conversions and they were well supplied with long guns too. All except the sheriff had a Henry in a saddle scabbard and also a Greener ten gauge in another saddle scabbard. I guess the sheriff didn't think he needed anything except his talking to get him by.

Oh well, I finally found a hat big enough to fit me on one of them and I took the time to try on their boots until I found two pair that fit me too. Thankfully they were low mileage models. I stripped everything off them even if I did leave their shitty britches in the ditch after I dragged the bodies off into the woods. I stripped the tack from their horses and put it in a wagon and after taking a look at their horses I decided I could do better farther along and I swatted their asses and sent them on down the road behind us.

We didn't have any more trouble for the rest of the day. We came into a little town about two hours before sunset and stopped to get a meal in a cafe there. It was nothing fancy, but the beef and beans were good and it would be easier to eat now and just go on out of town to set up camp.

As we were heading out of town Argus broke in to give me the lowdown on the wagon he'd fixed up. He wanted me to move our sleeping things into it for the night. He told me they had lined the wooden sides and front and back sections with light metal that would turn bullets.

I hadn't noticed the wagon being too heavy and so as soon as we pulled off the road I did as he asked. Well, the women did most of it, but they didn't complain. I did notice we went directly to sleep as soon as we lay down though.

I felt more confident when we woke the next morning since the dogs hadn't made a peep during the night. I still took a good look around outside before I bailed out to start a fire for cooking breakfast though. Everything was ok and soon enough the coffee was on and the cooking was too. We ate up and there was plenty and then I was hitching the teams and we took off on down the road again.

We pulled into a little town just before noon and had a meal in a cafe. It was thankfully uneventful. About six miles out of town we came up on a wagon stopped in the road. As we passed them I could see one of their mules was down and a man and woman were trying to get it out of its harness and get the wagon loose and ready to go again. I stopped to help.

John and Clara Jenkins were headed west too, but first we had to get the mule pulled out of the way. I helped with removing the harness and then put a little on one of our spare mules and we used it to pull the dying one out of the way.

"I don't know what happened to it. It just started walking a little funny and then fell down," John said.

Since we were all headed the same way I loaned him a mule and we hitched it in with his others. We made about six more miles and then pulled off into the woods and set up a camp. Clara joined my women in cooking a nice supper. After it was eaten we sat around and drank coffee and then got in the wagons to sleep for the night.

John and Clara traveled along with us for the next two days until we came to Memphis. John bought another mules in town, but they stayed around town saying they were going to spend a few days shopping for things they needed. I figured we had all we needed and so I headed us north along the river road and when we came to a ferry we crossed and I was glad enough to pay our way over. There was a town on the other side of the river where the ferry let us off. The town had been a small one and even though it had two saloons we didn't see a cafe and so we pulled off into the woods out of town to camp.

The women cooked supper as soon as I had a fire going and then we cleaned up the dishes and went to bed. We woke with the sunrise the next morning and were out of the wagons and eating breakfast soon enough. I didn't have any idea why, but I felt a little uneasy this morning. I was especially watchful along the sides of the road here. After all, we weren't far from Missouri's southern border and there had been a lot of raider activity along it during the civil war.

Barely two miles after we'd started it looked like, to me, there was going to be some similar to raiding activity this morning. I saw an axe head flashing as an asshole was chopping on a tree right beside the road. I pulled our wagon to a stop at my best guess at five hundred yards from the axe work and I picked up the Barrett and took a look at what I could see. The scope I'd bought for it paid for itself then.

There were four other mounted men looking our way and apparently they realized they'd fucked up their attack somehow. I think they must have assumed I was just having other troubles since the mounted men started toward us while staying in the woods. I didn't have the heart to laugh at them but they were pulling a stupid stunt for real.

The smart thing for me would have been to start shooting the horses, but who said I was smart. I'd still end up having to kill the men and the horses weren't to blame. Hell, one of two of them might be worth having.

When they came within two hundred yards I showed them I had a rifle that could reach out and touch them. I shot the first in line, thinking he was probably the leader and got the one right behind him next. That left two of them still coming, albeit much more slowly, and the one was still chopping on the tree. The men moved even farther into the woods but kept coming and I got a good chance and shot one more of them. It left one man coming my way and he quit that shit right away and turned back heading toward the tree chopper again.