Chapter 1

When I got home from Crosley's Wells, I was shaken to my bones by what I saw. The Army had promised us that the Chiricahua Apaches had all moved to the reservations and we could expect no more trouble from them. That's why I had made the trip into town for seed without a worry for my family. Martha could shoot as well as any man, and she was no fool, so I was staggered when I saw that my homestead had been raided.

There was no question that Indians had done the monstrous deed. For no other reason, I would have known that it was Indians because my mule was butchered and there was evidence of a feast of about 20 men devouring most of the poor animal.

I didn't know whether to be relieved or not that there were no White bodies lying around. My two year old son Billy, Jr., and my nine month old daughter Mary were also missing. The Apaches must have decided to adopt the children and Martha was kept alive to care for them. Martha might well have been raped, but at least she was probably alive.

It only took me 15 minutes to unharness my horse and throw a saddle on him before I took off for Crosley's Wells to telegraph the nearest fort about the Apache raid. The sooner the Army got on the job, the sooner my family would be returned to me.

God Damn It!!! I wasted three telegrams and six hours before the Army finally told me that they couldn't do a thing for me. They did promise to notify the Indian Agent to start an investigation, but that was a far as they were going. Shit, I thought that I could depend on help. Here it was 1893, and the Army was going to let some renegade Indians run around loose. Well, it looked like it was up to me to get my family back.

Fortunately, I had my favorite weapons with me: a brand new Winchester rifle and a S&W New Model 3 top-break pistol, both in .44-40 caliber. I had switched weapons because I had wanted to use the new smokeless powder, and the increased pressure inside the barrel made it a good idea to have guns especially designed for the load.

I had to go home anyway to pick up the trail, so there I found enough supplies to keep me going for two weeks. The Indians had tried to burn the house, but the adobe structure had resisted that, and most of the interior was in good shape. I dumped the supplies in a cloth sack and tied that to my saddle. I had plenty of ammunition, so I was ready to leave at dawn when I could finally see the trail.

The Indians had a one-day head start on me, but I figured that the kids would slow them down and give me a chance to catch up. The one thing I had to worry about was that the Indians would panic and kill my family. I was not worried by the 20:1 ratio of fighters; I was an ex-scout, and I could take care of myself.

I was able to move fast enough that I found their first camp along about mid-afternoon. That's when I turned from a distressed man into a killing machine! It looked like the Indians had gotten tired of fooling around with the captives and decided to get rid of them. I found the bodies of my two children with their throats slit and their scalps cut away. What kind of monster would want the scalp of a nine month old infant!?!

My wife had been raped to death, I just hoped that it did not take her long to die. The rest of the day was spent in digging graves with little more than my bare hands and piling rocks on top of them to keep the scavengers away. I put up wooden markers, but I knew that they wouldn't last more than one season before they disappeared from the actions of the weather. I think that I must have cried for six or eight hours before I collapsed from exhaustion. The next morning, I was a changed man!

I suppose the Apaches thought that they were just reliving the great days of the Indian wars with the invading White man. What they didn't know was they had attracted the attention of a dedicated soul who was determined that each one of them would die in as much pain as possible.

Apparently, the Apaches did not expect to be followed, or they did not care, because they did not make more than a token effort to hide their trail. I caught sight of the band just as they were about to cross from NMT (New Mexico Territory) into Mexico. They may have thought that moving into Mexico would mean that any pursuit would stop, but I was having no part of that.

This was a section of rolling hills of sand with occasional brush or cactus sprouting from the most surprising places. I presume that water had been trapped by a layer of hardpan just below the surface. Once I determined the direction they were headed in, I rode ahead to try to set an ambush.

I found a clump of brush suitable for hiding my horse and hitched him there. Taking my rifle, I climbed up a small ridge and waited. I had time for a light lunch and a drink of water before the Indians hove into sight. They were riding horses, and they were in no hurry. I counted 22 riders by the time the last one came into sight.

I came to my senses at this point and realized that there was no way that I could defeat 22 warriors all by myself in a straight up battle. I could kill three or four, I was sure, but they were bound to kill me before I could take care of all of them, and I was not ready to settle for that. I wanted them all dead, as painfully as possible!

I was using smokeless powder, so there was a good chance that I could get off one or two shots before they knew where I was hiding. Smokeless powder was not really smokeless, there was just much less smoke than that produced by black powder. Under these circumstances, I figured that I would try for a serious wound, rather than an outright killing shot. If the wounded man died of gangrene, I would be satisfied, but I did not want a head or heart shot, because that would be too easy a death for these bastards.

I couldn't be sure of the leader, but he was certainly likely to be the first man in line, so he was the one I wanted to shoot first. I decided to settle for a gut shot, so I carefully lined up on his belly-button, figuring that the bullet would miss low if I didn't score a bull's eye. Dammit, just as I fired, the horse jerked his head and I hit the horse in the head rather than the man who was riding. The horse fell immediately, and I didn't get another shot at my primary target.

However, the man right behind him straightened up to try to see what had happened, and that gave me the kind of target I wanted. This bullet hit about an inch below his navel and knocked him off of his horse when his muscles tensed up and relaxed. Well, nothing more that I could do right now, but I had reduced the opposing force by one.

I really wished that I could have found a more painful place to shoot the man that I did hit, but I settled for what I could get. Some of the Apaches rode in my general direction, so I ran from my hiding place to my horse and got the hell out of there as soon as possible.

My annoyance at where I had shot the man was due to the fact that he would not suffer for very long. Once I had a chance to think about it, I realized that the unwounded men would decide that there was no way to help their fallen comrade, so they would slit his throat to keep him from suffering any more. I needed to find a better way to exact my vengeance, but I couldn't think of anything else at the moment.

When I came back later to pick up their trail, I found that the Apaches had done as I expected and killed the wounded man. His body was laid out to one side of the trail with his weapons and enough food to hold him until he reached the after-life. Well, fuck him! I couldn't do everything I wanted while he was alive, so, maybe, I could get a little more revenge while he was dead—I cut off his cock and balls! I hoped that would slow down his sex life in the after-life. I also took his war club, not knowing what I would do with it, but one never knew.

I now had 21 Apaches on my list, but I had better get my ass on the move if I was going to catch them all. They were not difficult for me to follow, though they were a little less sloppy about covering their tracks. The gang was still headed south, so I kept after them. On the second day, they must have figured that they had escaped me, because they started getting lazy again.