Chapter 6

I holstered my weapons and rode up close to the buckboard. The woman, still frightened out of her wits, began jabbering at me in a language that I had no hope of understanding. After a minute or two of this, one of the little girls jerked on the woman's arm and jabbered something to her in the same language. The woman kind of ran down into silence, and the girl spoke to me in English.

"Thank you, kind Sir, for saving us from those evil men. Can you do anything to help my father. The men beat him with their gun barrels when he refused to sell my sister and me to them for sex. I don't know what is wrong with him, but he does seem to be hurt pretty bad."

"Certainly! I'll do whatever I can to help. I'm no doctor, but I may be able to help him some. By the way, my name is Hannibal Walker. What's your name?"

I was making this inane conversation to try to keep the girl from panicking. She looked to be about eight years old, and she was obviously having trouble not exploding into hysterical tears. I climbed into the buckboard and did what I could to check the Indian for broken bones. At least, he was breathing what sounded like normally to me, so he did not have a punctured lung. However, I would bet that he had more than one broken rib.

The skin of his face and head had innumerable cuts and bruises, but a modern revolver doesn't have enough metal in the barrel to cause broken bones. There are a lot of things that can tear flesh, but that's about it. However, when he wakes up, he is going to have one hell of a headache. I have a little laudanum with me, so we can help that, but I'm afraid of giving him too much.

It did seem to me that he did have a broken bone in his left forearm, but we could fix that with a splint. The girl, whose name was Rainbow, translated for me as I got her mother to help me set the broken bone. Fortunately, we finished before Soaring Eagle woke up. Thank God, that seemed to be the extent of his injuries. His wife drove them home while I rode my horse along behind to make sure that they were not bothered by any more fools. Before leaving the site of the attack, I did loot the corpses, and I came up with about $27 in gold and silver, which I gave to Rainbow to hold for her father. I figured that he deserved anything good that came from this stupid attack, if anybody did. The guns, the horses, and the tack should bring in another $150 or so, and I was sure that would be welcome.

When we reached their house, I carried Soaring Eagle into the house and laid him in the bed. His wife and daughters began to take care of him, so I left quietly, as I did not want to burden them with entertaining me as a guest. I hope I didn't hurt their feelings, and I did explain to Rainbow what I was doing. She kissed me on the cheek, and I felt fully repaid for what little that I had done.

I wandered around the Choctaw Nation and made a few friends, but I headed south as soon as the fall winds began to blow in earnest. I had no other destination in mind, so I headed for San Antonio. Everybody assured me that it never snowed that far south.

I could tell the difference in the people as soon as I crossed the Red River. Texans seemed just a bit more belligerent than their northern neighbors—I'm not sure why, but the difference was there. I was about 10 miles south of the Red River when I ran into some of that belligerency. I was accosted by three road agents who appeared out of the brush and trees beside the road.

I was probably a bit on the belligerent side myself, because they had almost no time to react before I was blasting away at them with both my pistols. One of them didn't even have his gun drawn when he died, but the other two were holding cocked pistols which went off when they died. That was just a bad day for me, I suppose, because I felt better after the short fire-fight was over. Part of the reason that I quickly got over being mad at them was because of the money I picked up from them. I picked up $523 from the three men in gold and silver, and that didn't count what I was going to get for their horses, tack, and guns. Hell, my winter was paid for, and I had hardly entered Texas!

I rode on about 100 yards and came to wagon tracks leading off the road and into the woods. Something told me to investigate, and I was soon glad that I did. I found four wagons parked around a campfire pit and 16 mules in a crude rope corral. I looked into the wagons, all of which were covered with a canvas top, and found three girls bound hand and foot and gagged. The girls, all in their early teens, were naked and had obviously been raped many times.

Naturally, they were all frightened when they first saw me, but I calmed them down as I cut them loose. All three girls had been held in one wagon, and the other wagons were fitted out as bedrooms. Sarah had been there the longest, two weeks, June had been held for six days, and Alice was new, having been captured only the day before. They had all been raped every night that they had been held captive, and the men were never gentle while they did it. Alice was the only one who had not been passed around, and that was only because she was newly captured.

In every case, each girl's family had been killed after being forced to dig their own graves. The girls were scheduled to be sold as sex slaves in Mexico, assuming that they lived that long.

We searched the "bedroom" wagons and found dresses and boots for the girls. We also found a lot of household items that the thieves had probably intended to sell, possibly to Comancheros, for eventual sale to Indians. The family of each girl had been Texans who were headed to the Indian Territories to settle, in hopes of escaping the miserable economic conditions still prevalent in Texas following the War of Yankee Aggression.

I had now inherited three girls, aged 14-17, and I was responsible for them, whether I wanted to be or not. Naturally, I had nothing against the female sex as soon as I had escaped the influence of my sisters, but I really didn't know what to do with my new dependents. The girls figured that out real soon. They decided that they were now my wives, and I had nothing to say about it. When I objected, June asked me what else were they going to do?

June was the oldest, at 17, and was the spokeswoman for the trio. I said that a man could have only one wife, but June pointed out that though that could be true of the East, it certainly was not true of the West. Here, a man could have as many wives as he could support and the women would tolerate. I fit both criteria, so there was no reason for me not to take them on those counts. June said that the girls figured that the only reason that I would not want them for wives was because I didn't like the looks of them.

Well, that was no problem, which I quickly assured June of. All three girls may not have been raving beauties, but they were certainly pretty enough to satisfy me. They all had the requisite number of tits and pussies, so they could be counted upon to bear and raise children, which they conceded was one of the primary responsibilities of the wife. Hell, I certainly couldn't argue with that reasoning, so I gave in and accepted them as my wives. However, I did say that it was going to be up to them to decide who slept with me each night. I had no intention of getting into that turmoil.

June practically attacked me with hugs and kisses when I finally gave in, and the other two girls did exactly the same thing when they were informed of my decision. I knew that I was married immediately when all three of the girls started bossing me around, sometimes with conflicting orders. I put a stop to that right away when I informed them that all major decisions were mine to make, though I would accept, even solicit, advice and constructive criticism before any major decisions were made. My new wives backed down when I made that announcement, but I knew that I was in for a life-long running battle on this subject.