HARD MEN, FAST GUNS, AND LOOSE WOMEN, Chapter 1, 1st Draft, Book 3 of THE BOUNTY HUNTER Series

The number of words in the 1st draft of HARD MEN, FAST GUNS, AND LOOSE WOMEN is   86,457

Chapter 1

     The moon and stars and the blackness of the night are what Garrett rode into and as he did, three women were on his mind.  The images were all mixing together, memories of his first wife, longing to hold Moon In Her Eyes again and make love to her, and thoughts of the beautiful woman he had seen at the sheriff’s office were going through his mind and heart too.  He had seen her in his vision and he now knew who she was.  He didn’t know her name, he didn’t know anything about her, but he would never be able to forget her face.  He felt guilty thinking about her but after all, it wasn’t his fault.  He had seen her first in his vision and now he had seen her in flesh and blood.  The words of the medicine man kept going through him.  “You will be torn between different worlds, the worlds of the Indian and the white man, between the spiritual and the physical, and perhaps most difficult of all between different women and you must learn to walk between all of these; this is your future.”  There was no woman though, not tonight, he was alone with the moon and stars and the mystery of it all in the desert that had forever changed his life. 

     When he was a good ten miles or so from town he decided to stop and rest for the night.  He dismounted and built a fire.  He gazed into the flames as he tried to figure out what he was going to do next.  He had finally killed the men that had taken the lives of his family, the men that had raped his wife, and it felt good to him, he felt as though he had avenged their deaths.  He couldn’t bring them back to life but it gave him some sense of justice.  He also felt good knowing they would never have the chance to hurt anyone else ever again.  No other man would suffer what he had suffered, not from them anyways.

     Part of him wanted to ride north and reunite with Moon In Her Eyes as fast as he could; the other part of him wanted to ride back into town tomorrow to visit the graves of his family.  He was also trying to figure out if he should return to moon in her eyes first, or if he should pursue and outlaw or two first and then return to Moon In Her Eyes.  He had no idea.  He had been away from moon in the eyes for more than a month now………..

If he continued north he still had no money on him.  He wanted to bring some presents back with him and if he were to ride back now there was no way to do that.  His vision was about more than avenging the deaths of his family.  If were to return now he would lack the money and he would not have fulfilled his vision in any way.  Though he missed her terribly it didn’t feel right to go back yet.  He had unfinished business still.  He didn’t want to leave her and become a bounty hunter, he doesn’t want fight in battle after battle, but if his vision was true then there was no avoiding it.  Though he doubted his vision, though he questioned it, and though he didn’t want to follow it, he had seen that woman that appeared in his vision.  If it was just a superstition and nothing more, than how was that possible?  The vision had not clarified his life or made it easier.  What it had done was make it next to impossible.  He felt lucky to have received it, according to the Medicine man what he experienced was a very sacred thing and yet he didn’t understand it.  How could he serve justice and live in the white world and be with moon in her eyes too?  What kind of vision is that?  He had no idea how to walk in one world.  How would he ever learn to walk back and forth between different worlds? 

     He would have to tell Moon in her eyes and the others about what had happened in town.  It was unavoidable.  They will all want to know about his journey, about his time away from them and what he did.  They would applaud his bravery and award him honors, more eagle feathers to account for his courage and his status as a warrior would increase even more.  Though none of them witnessed it, they knew his word to be straight as an arrow’s flight.  He would also have to tell her about the woman he had seen at the sheriff’s office, the woman from his vision?  If he withheld it from her there would no longer be honesty and trust between them.  No one would know but him but there would be a secret between them, one that had the power to destroy her heart.  He loved her too much to withhold anything from her.  The last thing he wanted to do was cause her pain in any way.  

     He looked up at the moon and stars.  There were no answers.  It was his vision that was supposed to guide him and yet he had no idea what to do.  He loved moon in her eyes with all his heart.  She would always be his wife and he missed her terribly but he couldn’t help what he felt for the other woman.  He didn’t know anything about her.  Was she married?  Does she have children?  He had seen the deputy grab her on the street and then pursue her into the sheriff’s office but that was all he knew.  She was a complete mystery, one that wouldn’t leave him alone.  She is something, he thought, or I would not have seen her in my vision; I would not have seen her in town.  but what is she to me?  What am I to her?  What will transpire between us?  Will she be a friend or something more?  He didn’t know if she watched what happened in the street or not, but he did know that she was in the sheriff’s office.  The whole town would soon know what happened and she would too if she didn’t already. 

     Perhaps she will know what to say, what to do and he could ask for the guidance of the medicine man too. part of him wanted to ride back to moon in her eyes as fast as he could, the other part of him wanted to find that beautiful, mysterious woman he had seen in town.  The stars and moon moved across the sky as he sat by the fire thinking about it all.  But if there would be something between them, he would have to let moon in her eyes know first.  If he were to ride back to town and something happened without him telling moon in her eyes first, that would seem wrong, really wrong.     

     As he sat there gazing at the fire thinking about it all     Emmy Lou was thinking about him too.  After she put her girls to bed and kissed them goodnight she stood by the window and looked out at the night and wondered where he had gone.  The brutality she had seen in town was something she would never forget.  No one would.  People would forever talk about the day a bare-chested painted man in buckskin leggings and beaded moccasins killed the sheriff and the deputy in the street.  They would talk about the knife and the hatchet.  It was such a dramatic, gruesome spectacle the likes of which no one had ever seen.  They would forever talk about the shootout in the saloon.  Garrett James, the man with blue eyes and long blonde hair, the man with two revolvers, would be impossible to not talk about.  The news would spread far and wide.  It would spread like wildfire.  It would become the stuff of legend.  After she had watched him ride off, the people that had seen what happened filled the street.  It was then that she realized as people talked and talked that it had been the sheriff and deputy that had killed his family.  Her heart was breaking for him and for them.  She was still having a hard time coming to terms with it all.  She had no idea that the sheriff and deputy were such sinister men.  To think that they had been the ones attacking the stagecoaches and were trying to make it look like Apaches did it so that they could start a war was too much to comprehend.  To think that they had raped and killed not only his wife but his two sons as well.  How could he go on living she wondered?  Losing her husband was hard enough but if someone were to kill her girls she couldn’t imagine how she would be able to handle that much tragedy.  She was a kind woman and her heart was sensitive, even so, she was glad to see them die and get what was coming to them.  Had her husband known who they really were and had he not associated with them he would still be alive too.  Those sinister men were responsible for all of the death and the misery that had taken place.  It was overwhelming to think about but it gave her a good feeling to know that it was over.  The deputy would never bother her again and that thought made her happy.  The town/county would some day get a new sheriff.  We’ve all learned a tragic lesson, she thought, we need an honest man, a good man.  This can’t ever happen again.  With all that had happened, she felt selfish and guilty for thinking about him, thinking about how it would feel for him to make love to her, but she couldn’t shake the image of when she first saw him, how fierce he was, how bold, how strong and honest, how handsome.  There were too many different emotions to process it all.

     As Garrett was dreaming ruthless outlaws known as the Gatlin gang were also sitting around firelight.  They were the men that he had seen on one of the wanted posters at the sheriff’s office.  Three days ago they had robbed a bank in a little town not far from El Paso.  They didn’t just rob the bank and take the money; they had splattered blood everywhere in the process.  They were there to reek havoc as much as they could.  Money was power and greed filled their souls, every one of them, but killing was power too.  Taking life was even more enjoyable than taking money.  The combination of the two gave them what they needed as they sat around the firelight planning their next robbery. 

     They weren’t typical outlaws.  They didn’t ride into a town and splatter blood everywhere.  They weren’t men given to careless drunken rage.  They were professionals.  They scouted out each town and bank thoroughly before every job.  They knew exactly when the bank opened and closed.  They knew every person that worked at the bank.  They knew exactly where the sheriff’s office was in relation to the bank and they knew where their escape route was after the robbery.  Everything was meticulously planned and thought out.  Their leader, Captain Emerson Gatlin was a very intelligent and disciplined man.  As you might expect by his name, he was also a large man.  He stood over six feet tall and he had bulky shoulders and the girth of his body was rather sizeable.  He was a man in his early fifties.  He liked his whiskey and he liked a good game of cards too but most of all he liked…..  His eyes were as blue as the sky and they were very shrewd and his hair that had been dark in his youth was now as gray as the uniforms of the men that he once fought against.  He had been a Captain on the side of the South during the war.  The four men that followed him were all former soldiers as well.  They had all been under his command.  Like many former soldiers, there was nothing for them to return to when the war was over.  They had been an elite fighting unit and now they were elite outlaws.  He had been a slave owner.  His family had been slave owners for generations.  Sherman destroyed his house and plantation on his march through Georgia.  They had killed his wife.  He hated the Yankees with every fiber of his being.  He would never be able to stop fighting, never be able to put down the gun.  Robert E.  Lee may have surrendered at Appomattox but he didn’t and never would.

     Jacob Reynolds was second in command.  He wasn’t anywhere near as intelligent as Gatlin, nor was he anywhere near as ambitious but he was very courageous.  He was also very good at following orders.  He didn’t over think things, he didn’t question things.  He looked at the Captain as somewhat of a father figure and like a loyal son he did as he was told.  He too was a large man that stood over six feet tall.  He was young and he was strong.  Still in his twenties women occupied his thoughts more than the acquisition of money or power.  Those were the concerns of old men; men too old to really be able to love a woman anymore.  They might still be able to satisfy their desires now and then but they could no longer love, not like the young can love.  Like all young men he was full of lust.  He was the best man on a horse.  He could outride anyone that he had ever met.  He had thick red hair and green eyes.  He didn’t care much for shaving; his beard and mustache were both long and unkempt.  He was a Pennsylvania farm boy that grew up tending to the livestock and fields of wheat and corn and barley.  The farm would never be his though; his older brother would inherit it when their father died.

     Ralph Henry Thorpe was next in the hierarchy.  His family had come to the new world several centuries ago.  For generations his ancestors had been trappers for the Hudson Bay Company.  Some of his family remained in Canada and became quite wealthy from the lucrative fur trade that flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  They settled in and around Montreal while others gradually made their way south and settled in Virginia.  His grandfather on his mother’s side had been one of the members of the Lewis And Clarke Expedition that President Thomas Jefferson sent out in 1803 to explore the newly acquired territory from Spain.  It was that expedition that opened the west.  He too was in his twenties and like Jeff it was women that occupied his thoughts more than anything else.  He was more ambitious though, shrewd and calculating.  He had an appetite for food and for getting drunk.  He wanted to become rich like some of his ancestors but he didn’t want to spend a lifetime in doing so.  He wanted it all and he wanted it while he was still young.  His blonde hair was dark at the roots and his mustache and beard were darker in color than his hair also.  He was the shortest man among them and was stocky of build.  He was powerful and he tended to be on the quiet side.  The others were far more affable.

     William Jenkins was the fourth man.  Though he was a young man in his twenties also he had no interest in getting married and starting a family.  Women were one thing to him only; they were sex.  He had never had any kind of a relationship with a girl other than sex.  His mother had died when he was young and he didn’t have any sisters, only two brothers.  He had no idea how to relate to women, how to talk to them, what things might concern or interest them.  He had no idea what he was going to do with his share of the money either.  He knew that he would spend some of it on drink and saloon women but he had no dreams; there was nothing that he wanted.  Of the five men he was the one that was most like a typical outlaw.  He was a lazy man, not only of body, but also of mind.  Working didn’t appeal to him much and thinking appealed to him even less.  His manners were rather vulgar and crude as was his speech.  He had never learned to read and had no desire to learn.  He depended on Big Jake to do his thinking for him.  He was quick of temper and was easily frustrated.  He was also easily distracted.  He had a short attention span.  

     The last man that comprised the Gatlin gang was a man by the name of Edgar Jones.  He was from a military family and had he been brighter and more industrious he would have been accepted at West Point, but studying never did interest him much.  His father made it known to him and everyone else that he was more than a disappointment to him; he was a disgrace.  He should have become an officer like his father had been and his father before him and his father before him.  His great grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary war and his grandfather had fought against the British in the war of 1812.  His father retired as a Colonel and was much admired and held in high esteem though he had never fought in a war.  And now, his son, his only son, was nothing but an embarrassment.  He had loved him too much and had spoiled him.  Though he grew up privileged, he had no ambition.  The girls thought him to be handsome with his dark hair and blue eyes.  The attention that he received from them only added to his vanity and he had a natural predilection towards it anyways.  He could be rather charming when he felt like it and his hair was always neatly combed and he made sure that he always dressed sharply.  He looked the part of a handsome young man from a respected family, one that was assured of a bright and prosperous future but he had a rebellious streak in him.  He didn’t want to be what his father wanted him to be.  He did everything he could to disappoint him.  Like Jeff, he didn’t care about the money.  He liked the thrill of it all.  He was a natural born killer and there was a mean streak in him.  He felt entitled to take whatever he wanted.  He was by far the most dangerous man among them.