Chapter 7

I had aimed us for the Kilgore ranch to return Mary Sue home first. I had some sort of idea that I should return her first because she had been the reason for my going after the rescue. We pulled into the front yard of the ranch about the middle of the afternoon, and Mary Sue jumped down and ran into the house screaming for her mother. Only moments later, the whole family showed up on the front veranda to meet the other girls and to thank me for the rescue.

Abe Kilgore said, "Mr. Jackson, I ain't got the money to pay you for rescuing my daughter, but you do have my undying gratitude. If there is ever anything that I can do for you, just let me know."

My answer was, "Mr. Kilgore, you do not owe me a thing beyond the thanks you just gave me. I now have enough money to get by, so I plan to see what I can do to kill all of the kidnappers what prey on young girls. You just look after that fine daughter of yours and make sure she marries a good man. That will be enough for you to do for me."

That night there was a welcome-home party for Mary Sue, and we were all invited. The sleeping arrangements were kind of crowded that night, but we got by. Jean and I even had some privacy in our own bedroom, so we were even able to indulge in our favorite recreation.

The next morning we left to deliver the rest of the girls to their homes. In some cases, the reception was not as nice as at the Kilgores', but it looked safe to leave the girl, so we did. Working as fast as we could, it still took nearly a month to get all of the girls delivered, and Jean and I were really tired when we finally got the last girl home. We decided to rest while we decided what to do next. The rainy season was coming on, so we were not going to be doing much traveling for about six weeks.

We headed to Austin and made it just before the rain started. Why Austin? My answer was "why not?" It was a nice town, and I had heard of a bank in the town that could be trusted with my money, so I put most of what I had left from my short meeting with Jesus Lopez into an account in the bank. I figured that the first thing to do after the rain let up was to pick up all of the rest of Lopez's stash and deposit it in the same place. Then I would start looking for other kidnappers.

Jean insisted that she wanted to come with me while I hunted kidnappers. She rather unnecessarily pointed out that she hated them more than I did because of what had happened to her. I did not argue with her. Instead, I pointed out that the life of a manhunter was not easy, and she did not know how to shoot. I did not get very far with that argument: Jean insisted that I could teach her to shoot, and she was anxious to learn. She met all of my arguments in that same manner, so I finally realized that I had the hunting partner that I so badly needed.

I found a reliable gunsmith by consulting that fount of all wisdom: a bartender. He sent me to a man who could convert my Star DA pistols the way I wanted them done, and could provide extra cylinders for them. Furthermore, he could supply me with the two additional guns I wanted Jean to have. She had tried out my current revolvers and found that she could handle the large gun without too much trouble.

I left my four current pistols with the gunsmith for conversion and took the two new guns to test out and to use for teaching Jean how to shoot. Let me tell you, that woman was determined to learn. It took her only three weeks to become completely competent with the pistols, though she was not yet a fast draw. That would take a lot more practice, but I was sure that she would make it the way she was so fixated on doing everything she needed to do to help me in my hunt for kidnappers.

One problem that we had to work around was the fact that she was a woman, and women's clothes did not lend themselves to gunfighting. We decided that she had to dress as a man: not only would it solve the gun problem, but it would make it easier for her to operate in the environment that men occupy. Jean was reluctant at first because she found men's pants to be very inconvenient when she had to piss, and they also rubbed uncomfortably on her pussy.

Jean practiced at it and found a way to piss standing up while still wearing her pants. I figured that she could fool most men if they could not see her lack of a cock. She fixed the rubbing problem on her pussy by sewing a soft cloth liner into the crotch of her pants. A loose flannel shirt fixed the problem of her obvious tits. She could not easily wear a shoulder holster because of the way her tits seemed to get in the way, so she compromised with crossdraw holsters at her waist. She carried a Bowie knife for show, but she never tried to learn to fight with it.

We were ready to go as soon as the rainy season ended. On top of everything else, Jean had learned to ride a horse, and she was quite adequate with that by the time we were ready to leave. She dressed in her men's clothes, and we rode off without any comments from anyone.

We headed for the little town of Felicita just across the Rio Grande where Jesus Lopez had hidden his cache of gold and silver in a strongbox under the floor of a cabin he owned. We had no trouble getting there, but there was some problem in identifying the cabin that we were looking for. There were three unoccupied cabins in the town, and we did not want to tear up the floor of all three of them in order to find the treasure unless there was no other way.

Jean's Spanish was a little better than mine, so she asked the questions. Her being smaller than me made her less intimidating, and people acted more friendly toward her, even if she was obviously a gringo. It took only a couple of hours to pin down the house we wanted, so we were doing pretty good with our quest. The information I had extracted from Jesus Lopez was accurate enough for us to find the strongbox on the first try. I had the key with me, and it was easy and quickly done to open the box.

Inside was more gold and silver than I had ever seen in my life. We did a quick estimate of something on the order of $35,000 in gold bars and coins. This was a heavy load for a horse that was already carrying a rider, so we were forced to buy a packhorse and rig to carry it. I did not like the fact that we were carrying the strong box like that, so I did cover it with a tarpaulin. However, that did little to hide the fact that a strongbox was under the tarp. Well, all we could do was to hope for the best as we headed back to the bank in Austin.

I guess we might as well of painted a sign on the side of the packhorse to the effect that we were carrying something valuable. We were still in Mexico when we had our first encounter with some people who thought that they were more deserving of what we were carrying than we were.

Three men rode up to us from behind a hill as we approached the river ford. I had warned Jean to watch for bandits from the minute we had left the livery stable with the packhorse. Probably, somebody at the livery stable had spread the word about us in hopes of getting a share of the money.

In any case, Jean and I saw them in time to react. The robbers must of been amateurs because of the mistakes they made. For one thing, they did not have their guns drawn as they rode toward us. Their body language said very clearly that they were after our treasure, and they were going to kill us as soon as it was practical. With that kind of attitude, neither one of us had any qualms about shooting first!

As expected, I had drawn first, but Jean was not far behind. The bandits were so close that we would have had to work on missing our shots so we went after the men instead of their horses. Our double-action pistols made it so easy to shoot quickly and accurately that we put bullets into all three bandits before they fully realized how foolish they had been. The men I shot at had one bullet hole in each chest, but Jean had fired twice.

Jean had not needed that second bullet, but it was fired out of the excitement of her first encounter with somebody planning to shoot her. She was somewhat embarrassed by that second bullet, but I insisted that she should not be bothered by "wasting" a bullet. I pointed out that it was better to be certain of the kill than to be sorry. She recognized that I was correct, but she still was embarrassed. Oh, well, it does take a while to learn all of the things one has to know about being a gunfighter.