Chapter 9: "Armageddon in Tucson"

I hoped that no one else showed up to volunteer because any more people would have just gotten in the way. Felix was a good sign of what could happen to the attitude of the other Jews in Tucson once they had the time to consider the situation. Hopefully, more would show up after tonight's fight, but three of us were enough for tonight. Even if 50 of the KKK showed up, and that I strongly doubted, there was no room for them to attack us all at once unless they split up into several groups. I was sure that would not happen because a strong point of KKK psychology was the mob presence. Together, they could be dangerous, but they would probably run away if they were split up.

We ate an early supper, and the women left for the Hammers' house where they would spend the night. Aaron and I put on black clothes and blackened our skin with soot. Fixed like that, we were damned hard to see, and I hoped that would give us an even further advantage.

My plan was to wait for the KKK across the street between two abandoned adobe buildings. I figured that opposition would shake them up, especially opposition from an unexpected direction. The only thing that I was really worried about was fire. If they threw torches into the house, it was sure to burn. Even torches thrown onto the veranda could start a fire before we could do anything about it, but we did have a chance of fighting that kind of fire. Anyway, we closed all of the shutters so that the mob would have an almost impossible time of throwing their torches through the windows.

Felix showed up about 9:00 o'clock, and we went across the street to the alley between the two empty buildings. I wanted Aaron and Felix to handle the flanks while I concentrated on the middle of the mob where my more rapid fire would do the most good. Felix was left handed, so I put him on our right and Aaron covered our left.

We sat down well back in the alley, and the two older men told stories about their experiences in Europe. Dammit, I was amazed at their ability to absorb so much unreasoning hate without reacting or going crazy. There was one damned thing for sure: I was not going to stand still for any of my kids to have to go through that! I told them so, and their reaction was one of absolute approval.

The mob was late. Naturally, none of these characters had any sense of meeting a schedule, so I was not surprised. What did surprise me was the size of the mob. There was a total of 19 men in the mob, including the leader or leaders. It was hard to tell just who was in overall charge. It seemed like every decision required a committee meeting before action was taken. That convinced me even more that we would have no trouble in dispersing the mob.

Finally, they got around to why they had come. One of the leaders fired a pistol into the front door, and that was our signal to pour buckshot into the mob. I emptied the 10-round clip into the mob with it set on automatic. Meanwhile, Aaron and Felix fired their double barrel shotguns at the fringes of the mob. That one volley was enough! The crowd started to run away, but I jammed in another magazine and switched to semi-automatic fire. I picked off the last of the KKK leaders and four of the remaining six rioters with my 10 shots. The last two had gotten out of range by the time I got around to them, so they escaped being killed, but I would not be surprised if they did carry some buckshot with them.

We left the men lying in the street while we waited for the marshal and his deputy to show up. There certainly was enough noise from all of those shotgun shells going off to let them know that their attention was needed down our way.

It was about 20 minutes before any law enforcement people showed up, but that did not surprise us. No sensible lawman was going to dash into a firefight until he knew what was going on. Apparently, our lawmen were that smart and were giving time for things to calm down before they ventured too close.

There was a lot of Oh-ing and Ah-ing when they finally did show up. A total of 17 bodies were lying in the street, all clad in KKK robes and hoods. That was enough identification to satisfy the marshal when we explained that we had been defending our home against a mob. He was not a fan of the KKK, but he also did not want to antagonize them too much, so he had not stood in the way of some of their other atrocities. However, he was happy to see that our ambush had worked so well. The marshal remarked that he hoped that we had seen the end of KKK trouble for a while. We all agreed with him. The marshal got downright friendly when Aaron offered to pay two-bits toward the burial of any of the KKK men who did not have any way to pay for his own burial.

It took three wagon loads to haul all of the bodies to the undertaker. He was in hog heaven. The undertaker had never had so much business at one time in his history of being in business in Tucson. Daylight was breaking out as the last dead man was hauled to the funeral parlor. Felix went home with our thanks, and Aaron and I opened up the house and went to bed. Like it or not, the shop was going to be closed on Wednesday.