Chapter 9

There was no question about it when they started shooting at us—we either had to run or to fight, and neither one of us was the running type! However, a plan suddenly occurred to me. "JANE, FOLLOW ME! I HAVE AN IDEA I WANT TO TRY!" We turned and raced away from the gunmen. I hoped to build up a little space between us and the wagons in order to keep from wounding the captive women.

Once I thought we were far enough away, about 300 yards, we whirled around and brought our large shotguns to bear. By this time, most of the men chasing us had wasted the shots in their pistols and needed to reload. We were not going to give them a chance to do that. "COME ON, JANE!" We charged the men who had been chasing us and fired the first time from about 60-70 feet. That was enough room to allow a decent spread in our buckshot, so that I was confident of hitting at least one of the men from each of our guns. If we were lucky, we might get even more than that.

Our second round was at a range of about 40 feet, and that was too close to expect for more than one man to be hit; however, we could hope for better luck. As it was, five of the eight men chasing us were down, though I doubt that they were all dead. We rode past the remaining men and turned around. We switched shotguns and rode back at the remaining three, who were more intent on escape than in anything else. Apparently, they had never faced shotguns before.

We fired at the last of the men and knocked down two of them. One man managed to ride away, but Jane snatched up her Henry, and her third shot killed the horse (she had stopped to do this shooting). The man went flying over the horse's head and broke his back when he landed. I cut his throat, as I did not want to see him suffer, now that he was no longer a threat.

Meanwhile, the wagons were trying to escape and were going much too fast for their top-heavy loads. For some reason, a bump, a rock, who knows, the lead wagon broke a wheel and toppled over. The wagon tongue broke free and the mules were uninjured, but everybody on the wagon was killed in the crash. It was unfortunate that innocent women were killed, but that's life, sometimes.

The other two wagons were forced to stop because of the blocked road. The fools who were driving started to shoot at us, but they were in such a panic that they could not have hit a barrel if they were standing in it! I dispatched one with a pistol shot, and Jane took care of the other with her 16-gauge shotgun.

That was the end of the male opposition, but we now had nine women we were responsible for. Each wagon had been pulled by a pair of mules, so that was not a difficult team to drive, even I could do that. Jane worked to release the women from the cages while I went back to the scene of our fight with the guards. I wanted to make sure that they were all dead, and I wanted to pick up what I could find of value. Also, there were several horses that could be salvaged from the debacle.

One of the men was on a wanted poster, but only for $10, so I left him. I did bring back five horses and eight sets of tack, as well as eight sets of weapons. With the gold and silver I picked up, it looked like the total value I had accumulated was on the order of $200. Not a bad morning's work!

By now, Jane had gotten the women out of the cages and on the ground. They were all hungry and thirsty, so that was the first order of business. The women found the supply hoard and fixed dinner. We even had enough water for coffee, so all of the women were happy for that.

We were told the women's story. They were all kidnap victims who were headed for Mexican brothels. All of them were virgins, and insisted that they could prove it, if necessary. It seemed that virgins brought a considerable bonus when they were sold as sex slaves. Anyway, this should make them acceptable when they were returned home. The idiocy of society was established again when I learned that they would be shunned by their families if they had been raped—they would have been "damaged goods!" Oh, well, that was not a problem this time.

We buried the four women from the lead wagon, but did nothing for the men who had been killed. The scavenging animals would take care of them and the dead horses. We dragged the wrecked wagon off of the road and dismantled the cages. All of the women could drive the mule teams, so we hitched the two unused mules to the rear of one of the wagons and headed for the nearest town we knew of.

In town, we sold the mules, horses, wagons, and weapons. This produced enough money to buy stagecoach tickets home for each woman, and to give her a little spending money for food, etc. while she was traveling. I didn't know why at the time, but I wrote down the names and addresses of all of the women we rescued. Maybe, I had an inkling of some further use for the list.

Anyway, the women left, and Jane and I resumed our trek to Eagle Pass. When it was all said and done, we did not make much profit from the rescues, but we did gain considerable satisfaction from the adventure.

We finally made it to Eagle Pass without further ado, which we were happy about. Eagle Pass was a nice place, but it did not have much to offer bounty hunters, so we stayed only three days. It took us that long to make our way through all of the saloons, so it was not exactly wasted time.

We left Eagle Pass headed north, since we saw no reason to return to El Paso at this time. Frankly, though, I was hoping to make some big scores pretty soon, because I knew that Jane was eventually going to become pregnant, and we needed a large nest egg in order to settle down and live like the rich. I guessed that we would need at least $100,000 in the bank to live exclusively off the interest, and that did not seem likely. It looked like I was going to have to take up farming or ranching in the not to distant future. I wanted to have as much as we could obtain before that time.

The only option I could see was for us to try our luck in the Neutral Territory, and that was approximately due north of Eagle Pass. By now, it was late enough in the year for us to consider where we would spend the winter. Neither one of us wanted to brave the wind, sand, and snow that we had heard of in the Texas Panhandle, so we decided to make our way north and stop where we thought we could stand the winter weather. We would push on to the Neutral Territory as soon as the winter weather broke.

We headed north in no particular hurry, since we knew that we would not reach Oklahoma Territories until late in the spring. Therefore, we were prepared to do a little sightseeing along the way. As it turned out, there was not much to see except mile after mile of cotton fields. The trip was mostly pleasant during the day and very pleasant during the night as Jane and I enjoyed the marriage bed.

We did meet an occasional road agent, but Jane dispatched him while he was concentrating on me. I still can't figure out why those men could not take seriously the thought that a woman might be carrying a gun and not be afraid to use it. As it was, we made a nice little profit on our trip north. We even had one man who was featured on a wanted poster. We made $40 off of him!

We wound up spending the worst of the winter in a boarding house in Harpers Forks. Jane got very friendly with Mrs. Casey who ran the place, and Jane even went back to wearing dresses while we stayed there. OK, I'll admit that it was fun on occasion to reach under Jane's dress and petticoats to feel a bare pussy. I did have to be prepared to follow through whenever I did that!

I spent my spare time in one of several saloons, trying to perfect my poker skills. I did get better at the game, but it did look like I would never be good enough at the game to make a living at it. On one occasion, I did catch a cheater. He was a pro who was fleecing the local male population. He was not very good at it, but he was good enough to get away with cheating for a while.