Chapter 9

Word had it that the bank robbers were last seen headed north. That was not much of a guarantee on finding them, but it was the best I had at the moment. I did head north at a deliberate pace because this was rough country, and I was afraid of passing by them without ever knowing it or of being ambushed. Neither one of those possibilities was very attractive, so I stayed on the trail, but carefully watched to both sides to make sure that I did not miss anything.

That practice cut significantly into my speed, but I finally left the worst of the bad country and was able to pick up my rate of travel. I stopped for the night at one of those lodging places found at crossroads and had supper. After that, I went into the saloon to see what the bartender might have to say to help me along in my hunt. I walked through the connecting door and spotted three men at a table drinking beer and generally relaxing.

My God! Those were the men that I was hunting! I jumped back through the doorway, but I was too late to keep one of them from seeing me. As it happened, it was Shorty Schmidt, and he recognized me. By now, the word was all over Colfax county that I was hunting Shorty Schmidt and Jess McFarland, so he had no trouble recognizing that he was in for a fight. Either that, or he had to start running right away.

I ran to my room and grabbed my sawed-off shotgun and a bandolier of straight buckshot. If necessary, I could convert the shells on the spot to buck and ball, but I wanted the flexibility of choosing either type of shell. I guess that I should have expected it of Shorty Schmidt, but he was already thinking of ambushing me. He saw me run up the stairs and had to assume that I was headed for my room; he just did not know what I went after.

I was on the way back down the stairs when one of the three fired at me too soon. I guess that my reputation had been working on his nerves. For whatever the reason, I had the necessary warning and flopped down on the stairs before another shot could be fired at me. As long as I stayed close to the steps I was a very difficult target, so I lay on my back and slid down the steps. I had both hands tied up with the shotgun so there was no way that I was going to use my pistol.

I reached the bottom step without drawing fire, but I knew that I was going no farther without a fight. Both barrels of my shotgun were loaded with straight buckshot, nothing fancy, but the range inside the building was so short that it might well not make any difference. At this point, 30 feet was the maximum range for a shot, and that was nothing for either a pistol or a sawed-off shotgun.

As far as I could tell, all three men were still in the saloon. I rolled off the steps and practically jumped for the far wall where I could not be seen from the saloon. I did draw a couple of shots by doing that, but neither were close enough to be worth commenting on. There were three doors into the saloon, so I had to carefully consider my next move.

Considering the time of day, the horses belonging to the three men must by now be put away in the stable. To get to them most conveniently, they either had to come through the door that I was near or go through the door normally used for a trip to the jakes. The other choice was to go out the front door, but that would make for a long walk for a man in high-heel boots, so no normal Texan would even consider that as a viable alternative. Only a man as smart as Shorty Schmidt would think of that route. Therefore, I had to consider the front door as a remote, but possible, escape route.

After giving the whole situation some seconds of consideration, I figured that the three men would not use any of the three doors. Instead, they would wait for me to come after them through the door we were both guarding. No matter how one considered the problem, using this door was just plain stupid!

I decided to take a chance and pulled off my boots. I had to sit down on the floor and use both hands for that job, so I was completely vulnerable during that time. However, I was sure that none of my enemies would think of me doing that, so I could probably get away with it. Anyway, once I had my shoes off, I stood up and ran down the hallway to the front veranda. I ran quietly enough without my boots that I was sure that none of the men had heard me leave.

On the veranda, I ran to the main entrance to the saloon and ducked under the swinging butterfly doors to try to see what I was facing in the saloon. I could see two of the men squatting down behind an overturned table facing the door, but I could not see the third man, whom I was certain must be Schmidt. He would try to get his cronies to take the more dangerous positions while he sought as much safety as he could find.

Okay, it looked like the range was ideal for buck and ball, so I quickly converted six shells with my knife. I loaded two into the shotgun and kept the other four handy for quickly reloading as the opportunity arose. As soon as I was ready, I crawled into the saloon under the butterfly doors and aimed my shotgun at the farthermost bandit. In order to preserve his features, I aimed at his waist and fired one barrel. If I hit the man, only one shot would be sufficient, and I had the other shell ready for his companion. If I missed, well I would then be in serious trouble, so I damned well better not miss.

The "ball" of buckshot hit where I had aimed and tore the man's insides into something a doctor would have trouble recognizing. The moment I had recovered from the recoil, I fired at the other man, and hit him in nearly the same place. Okay, that was two down, but I still did not know where to find the third man.

My question was answered a moment later when a bullet was fired from behind the bar toward my powder smoke. As usual, I had been fortunate in my choice of firing positions: the room was poorly lit and my powder smoke was a good smoke screen. When that was added to the fact that I moved several feet to my left immediately after firing that second shot, the man who shot at me would have had to have the eyesight of a hawk or to have been a piss-poor shot so that he missed his obvious aiming point. Neither was the case, and the return bullet missed me by about six feet.

My opponent was hiding behind the bar, and he had quite a large area to get lost in. However, he apparently did not realize that I could see him in the mirror behind the bar before he had risen enough to take a shot at me over the bar. I reloaded with two shells of buck and ball and waited patiently for him to make the next move. No matter what he did, I could catch a glimpse of him as he tried to shoot at me.

There was a delay of about three minutes before the other man's nerves betrayed him. He raised his hand to extend the pistol barrel over the bar. That gave me my target. Despite the fact that the bar had been specifically constructed to stop pistol bullets, there was no way that it could withstand two charges of 10-gauge buck and ball hurled at it in such a short range. As soon as I saw the hand come up toward the bar surface, I fired both barrels of my shotgun at what I imagined to be chest-high on the man behind the bar.

Both charges of shot plowed into the bar and blew out a section of wood about the size of a dinner plate. Splinters went flying everywhere, and I was glad that I was not within range of those shards of wood. There was a scream of pain following my shots that might have been heard back in Bolivar. Shorty Schmidt was a pincushion of large and small splinters of wood all over the front of his body, including his arms and as far down as his crotch. Of course, some of the buckshot had also penetrated his skin, so he was not going anywhere even with expert medical help, and none of that was available for miles.