Chapter 9

That trip back to the North farm had reminded me how much I hated the Comanches, so I wanted to start back to hunting them right away. My wives (that sure sounds good to me) were happy when I said that I would be gone all day. They had a lot of things to do on the house to turn it into their idea of home, and I would have just been in the way. We kissed goodbye as I left to go hunting: Comanches or outlaws, I really did not care which one came up first.

I headed for the Comanche camp and was about an hour on the trail when I heard a lot of shooting from more than one gun. This had to mean big trouble, so I hurried to find out what was going on. I topped a little ridge and saw what was causing the trouble: a wagon was under attack by a dozen or so Comanches. There were two men and a woman in the wagon, and, as I watched, one of the men was hit by an arrow in the back. From even my distance, I could tell that it was a fatal wound, but the man was going to need some time to die.

The Comanches let out a cheer at the sight of the wounded man and started pressing harder on the remaining man. The woman was trying to help the wounded man, and the drop in fire coming from the wagon was making the Indians even bolder as they pressed their attack. That was all I needed to see!

I pulled out my shotgun and rode toward the ring of Comanches. I do not know if they saw me or not, but they certainly ignored me as I rode closer. I did not slow down as I rode into the ring of horsemen circling the wagon. As soon as I reached the Comanches, I fired one barrel of my shotgun, and that brought down two horses and the associated riders. As soon as I had the shotgun under control, I fired again and took down two more horses and riders.

Four men down in that short an interval got the attention of the Comanches real fast. They turned away from the wagon and toward me. I was guiding my horse with my knees so that I was able to reload my shotgun while I rode away from the wagon. As soon as I had reloaded, I turned back toward the Comanches who were chasing me and rode directly toward them. Foolishly, they put aside their bows and took up their lances. They now were sure of victory over me, and were trying to be the first to reach me so that the first man to me could claim victory.

Well, I had a surprise for them: I returned to guiding my horse with my knees and aimed the shotgun at the approaching Indians. By now, they were only about 30 yards away, and I fired one barrel. Only one man when down this time, and his horse seemed to have escaped injury. The horse stopped as soon as its rider fell to the ground, and that broke up the cohesiveness of the charge. In a way, that made as much trouble for me as for the Indians because it made my selected target move in an unexpected direction.

I tried for him anyway, and that was a mistake: this time, my shot accomplished nothing to help me, and my shotgun was now empty. I was now in trouble as I picked up the reins with my left hand while I hung my shotgun over the saddle horn. I drew the revolver from my right-side holster and aimed at the closest Comanche. I guess that my luck had returned because I hit what I was aiming at when I fired. The Comanche fell to the ground and distracted a couple of his fellows.

I now saw that I was facing eight Comanches, and that was a ratio that was going to cause me trouble if I did not pay close attention to what was all around me. I did not dare to allow them to surround me, but that was going to be very hard to do with eight men trying to head my way. All I could do was dodge whenever an enemy got close and hope that my horse held out. Without him, I was certainly dead!

I still had five shots left in my current revolver. Thank God, I had managed to pick up the newly converted Starr DA before making this venture to look for trouble, so I had another six shots available before I had to switch to the single-action Colts with five cartridges per gun. My next shot was forced, and I missed the Indian; dammit, I could not afford to waste shots!

I did plug the next Indian that I fired at, and that did make me feel a little better. I now had "only" seven opponents trying to kill me. Somehow, I did get separated from the Comanches long enough for me to holster my revolver and to reload my shotgun. Now, I felt more confident because of the added effectiveness of the shotgun over the revolver in a mounted fight.

The swirl of running horses in the chaos of the battle suddenly presented me with a chance that I could not refuse. Three Comanches charged at me in a sort of V formation. I raised the shotgun to my shoulder and aimed at the lead rider. When the range looked right, I fired both barrels at the same time. That meant that 24 pellets of .32 caliber were flying at three Comanches and three horses. They were close enough to me that there was no perceptible delay between the shots and the impacts. All three horses when down, and all three riders were killed as a result.

The shock of this calamity among the Comanches gave me time to reload my shotgun, and I was now back on the hunt. I was still holding the shotgun in my right hand as I turned toward the rest of the Comanches who happened to be collected close together. In a fit of foolish (childish?) bravado, I charged the remaining Comanches and actually yelled out a war cry. I had never done that before, and I cannot imagine what came over me at that time, but the result was effective: all of the remaining Comanches turned tail and rode away as fast as their horses would carry them.

I paused long enough to reload my revolver and to attach a lead rope to two of the Comanche horses that were not wounded. I did cut the throats of those horses that were wounded, but not yet dead. I was still pretty excited at this time, but I managed to remember to ride back toward the wagon where all of this had started.

By the time I got back to the wagon, the wounded man had died. The woman was very distraught, and the man was not very far behind. The wounded man had been their teenaged son. They had lost their ranch because they could not pay their taxes: all they had was paper money, and the taxes had to be paid in hard cash. The family had been headed toward New Orleans where the woman had relatives. They had little choice, and they would continue in that direction as soon as they could arrange a funeral in Oak Junction.

I picked up the loose Indian horse and added it to my lead rope. I then offered to ride in to Oak Junction with them in case they ran into any more Comanches. I had about all of the excitement that I could stand for one day, so I was ready to go home.

Back in Oak Junction, I sold the horses and headed home. Neither wife was there when I got home, so I headed to my favorite saloon. I spent a couple of hours there talking to the bartender and some of the customers. I managed to nurse through only one bottle of Mexican beer, and nobody noticed as far as I could tell.

As I rode home, I passed a vacant lot, and there was an altercation going on there. Two very large and tough looking galoots were giving a much smaller man a hard time. They were pushing him around and shouting crude epithets at him, but it looked like no physical blows had been exchanged as yet. The obvious imbalance between the two sides was more than I could stomach, so I trotted over to find out what was going on.

"Hey, what is the problem? You two guys have a legitimate beef, or are you just picking on somebody who is smaller than you?" The fact that I was pretty much the same size as the smaller guy was the main reason I had stuck my nose into somebody else's business.

"Beat it, Shorty. This ain't none of your business. Get lost before you get hurt."

"Oh, come, now, is that the way to treat someone who asked a civil question? I know that this is probably none of my business, but I hate to see somebody being picked on because he is too small to stand up for himself. It has happened to me too many times, and I really don't like it."