Chapter 5

Like most anywhere else except way back East, you really can't tell when you go from one state to another, and the Indian Nations were the same way. Somewhere in there, I did cross from the Shawnee Nation to the Cherokee Nation, but it wasn't real obvious when it happened. The Cherokees were the only one of the Nations with a written form of their language, so all the others used English when they had to write something down. The fact that I could not make out hide nor hair of the signs I saw was what tipped me that I was officially among the Cherokees. Actually, the really important signs were also in English, so it wasn't too much of a hardship to tell what I needed to know.

I rode into a little town, the first one since I hit the Cherokee Nation, and looked around like any other gawking sightseer. Ah, there it was, the only saloon in town. The Cherokees, like most Indians, didn't go in much for public drinking, except at festivals, so these places were pretty well limited to White visitors, though there were already some permanent White settlers.

Anyway, I went into the saloon and ordered a beer after I took my customary look around for trouble. I didn't see anything that looked dangerous, so I drank my beer, not Mexican, unfortunately, while I talked to the bartender. I showed him the pictures of the men I was chasing, and he said that he had seen all four of them just two days previously. He said that he could not be sure, but he thought that he had heard them plan to head farther west. The next big town in that direction was River Junction, but it was three or four days away at a normal travel speed (whatever that was). My guess was that meant about 40 or so miles from here. I could easily cover that in two days, and there was plenty of daylight left, so I finished my beer and left in a hurry.

I pushed my horse and mule a little bit, and I rode into River Junction a day and a half later. Now, this was a much larger town than that last one. This town supported two saloons! I went into the first one I came to and looked around. It was pretty dim toward the back of the room, so I wandered back there before I headed for the bar. I had just turned back toward the bar when I recognized one of the bank robbers that I was chasing.

He was leaning against the bar, and I saw his face in the mirror. This one had a fancy scar running diagonally across his face, and you'd have to work hard to forget that face. I stopped where I was and took a second look around the saloon. That's when I saw the other three bank robbers sitting at a table near the bar. They had no idea that I was chasing them, so they had not reacted when I walked in. I just wondered how I had managed to miss them when I came in.

The man at the bar paid for four mugs of beer and picked them up to carry them back to the table. I figured that I could not have picked a better time to find them, since the saloon was practically empty, and they were going to be distracted by the arrival and distribution of the fresh beer.

The man carrying the beer leaned over the table to pass out the mugs, and that was when I made my move. "YOU FOUR GENTLEMEN ARE UNDER ARREST FOR BANK ROBBERY! PLEASE KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!" I had already drawn both my revolvers before I shouted out this command, so I had the drop on the crooks. Besides three of them were sitting down and the fourth was bent over the table in an awkward position.

For some strange reason, this did not keep the crooks from trying to draw. The one leaning over the table was the first one to die, simply because he was in the way of most bullets traveling in either direction. Jasper Hopwell did have a converted Colt Navy in a shoulder holster that he drew and got off one shot, but that shot hit his friend instead of me.

Everybody in the saloon hit the floor when the shooting started; that included me! The guy sitting with his back to me never made it completely out of his chair. He had a bullet hole between his shoulder blades and flopped to the floor before he could draw. That left two of the bank robbers to shoot at me, and they certainly did that little thing, in spades!

I turned over a table onto its side to make a breastwork, and the crooks did the same. Shit! These table tops were too thick to pass our bullets powered by black powder. We could shoot at each other all day and never do any good, so I needed to come up with a better plan. Besides, I would like to recover what bank money might be left, and I wasn't so sure that I could do that if I killed all four of the robbers before I talked to any of them.

Ideally, it would be nice if I could shoot the guy with Hopwell and let Hopwell escape to lead me to the money. That was probably dreaming, but why not? All I had to do, first, was to kill the other guy. It didn't look like that was going to be so easy, but I was committed to the gun fight, so I had best look to surviving that right now.

I figured that the only way for me to win this battle was to use some trickery. If I was lucky, they would not know that I had two guns. Maybe, I could get them to think I only had one gun if I acted like that was the case. Therefore, I holstered the gun for my left hand and concentrated on the one in my right hand. Any man in his right mind would have all six chambers loaded, so I couldn't fool them by firing only five shots, but I could stall after shooting six shots and seem to be slow to reload.

I could still swap cylinders to reload, but I could take a longer time, as if I were reloading a Colt through the loading gate. Perhaps that would fool them into doing something foolish that I could take advantage of. Well, that was my current plan until something else came along to change my mind.

It was a good thing that I had a pouch of loose ammunition at my belt, as well as the four extra cylinders in their special belt loops. I was going through ammunition fairly fast, and I wondered if my opponents were as well equipped as I was. The gun battle had been going on for over 20 minutes, and I, for one, was getting tired of the noise. I was about ready to try to devise another tactic when my luck finally remembered where I was hiding.

I knew that I could not hope to hit one of the men behind that table if I did not have some plan in mind; therefore, I had decided to shoot continually at one place on the table, hoping to chip a hole in it so that I could get a bullet through. It looked like I finally got my way. Not only did a bullet finally get through the table, but it hit Hopwell's companion in an especially tender place. He let out a scream of pain and fell to the floor. I wasn't sure where I hit him, but I hoped that it hurt as much as it sounded like it did.

This seemed to change the character of the battle from then on. As it happened, Hopwell's back was to the door, so he could escape that way, and I could do little to stop him. I hoped that was what he would try, and to encourage him to make that decision, I started trying to make another hole in the table. I picked a place to shoot that I figured lined up with Hopwell's chest, and I began to pour bullets into that same place as much as I could.

Hopwell must have recognized my plan. He cut out through the exit door after only a few more minutes of shooting. I shouted, "LEAVE EVERYTHING JUST WHERE IT IS! I'LL BE RIGHT BACK!" I didn't know if I would be obeyed, but I didn't have time at the moment to find out for sure.

I dashed toward the door behind the running Hopwell, but I did not go busting through the door, just in case he was waiting to ambush me. I carefully looked around the edge of the door jamb and saw Hopwell madly riding down the street. I ran out and grabbed what I figured to be a horse belonging to one of the dead gang members and followed right behind him.

We were separated by only about 60 yards, and the fool tried to snap off a shot at me. Dammit, he was the lucky one this time! I am amazed to this day by his luck in managing to hit my horse with his wildly fired bullet. The horse did not fall to the ground, but it was mortally wounded and stopped long enough for me to dismount before it fell dead. In the words of that well known sage, "SHIT!!!"

I trotted back to the saloon and arrived before anybody had worked up the nerve to defy my order to leave things alone. I went over the bodies of the three dead men and took what valuables they had. Since this was a Cherokee town, they had their own law, but I didn't know what it would do. The bartender said that the local Cherokee law man never bothered with what went on inside the two saloons, and I would have to visit him in his office if I wanted anything done about the bodies.