asked no quarter in a fight and never gave it. Jim had been leader of the Taylor clan since his daddy Pitkin’s murder. George and Manning had agreed that Wes should do the talking for our side.
“I wanted to stay out of this fight,” Wes told the Taylors. “But those sonbitches laid hand to my wife. They frightened my child. They tore up my house and bulldozed my friend. I didn’t tread on them, but they surely did on me, and I aim to see they pay for it—Cox, Helm, Bill Sutton, the lot of them. But they got an army on their side, so we need one too. It’s nothing but good sense for us to side with you against those sorry bastards.”
Jim Taylor said they were damn proud to have us with them, and he swore the Taylor Party would henceforth protect all Hardin, Clements, Tenelle, and Duderstadt families and properties against intrusions by Sutton forces. The only condition Jim imposed was that he be the one to kill Bill Sutton and Jack Helm. “I made my ma a promise about Old Bill I intend to keep,” he said. “And I owe Jack Helm for killing my sisters’ husbands.” Wes said all right, but he claimed the same privilege for himself with regard to Jim Cox. “He was the one dared to touch my wife and made my daughter cry in fear.” Jim Taylor nodded somberly and said, “He ought be yours, all right.” They shook hands and the alliance was sealed.
Three weeks later a small party of us ambushed Jim Cox and eight of his pistoleros one night on the river road near the county line. They were returning from a dance at a Sutton ranch just north of Cuero, and since we’d been lying low for three weeks, their guard was down. We set ourselves in the trees on the high ground flanking both sides of the road where it curved toward the Guadalupe Bridge. Bill Watkins and I were the two youngest, and Wes said our job was to shoot all the horses. “It’s up to you boys,” he said, “to make sure not one of them Suttons leaves here on anything but a pair of wings.”
We had a clear full moon to shoot by, and we were armed with repeaters. We waited till they all came into view around the wide bend in the road and got to within forty feet of us. Jim Cox was in the lead and Wes’s first shot took off the top of his head. In the next instant our volley cut through them like a scythe of fire. I’d been excited and eager for the shooting to start, but the sudden screaming of so many dying men and animals drew a rush of hot vomit up to my throat. It surprised hell out of me, but I swallowed it down and kept shooting like everyone else. Our crossfire allowed for no escape. They fired wildly into the trees and ran into each other. They tried to worm themselves into the ground and out of the firestorm. They tried to hide behind blades of grass. I kept shooting at the horses, even after they’d all gone down. I wanted to stop their hellish screaming. I’d had no idea.
When none of the Sutton men was returning fire anymore, we finally eased off. It seemed like we’d been shooting for hours but it was probably no more than a minute. One of the horses was still kicking and bellowing and I had to shoot it twice more before it stopped. Manning and Jim took careful aim and put another round in each of the fallen Suttons just in case anybody was playing possum. Then we came out from behind our cover and went down to them. The air was full of the itchy scent of powder and the sharp metal smell of fresh blood.
There were nine dead horses and we counted eight dead men—and then we found the last one, halfway between the road and the river, crawling for the water. He was wounded badly, and he begged us not to kill him. Manning said, “Sorry, bubba, way too late for that.” And dispatched him.
Not long afterward we got a report that Jack Helm was secretly on his way to Wilson County, just west of us, to try to recruit some old State Police pals of his into the Regulators. Wes and Jim figured he’d have some men with him but probably not many, as he wouldn’t expect a Taylor ambush in territory so friendly to Suttons. They decided to see if they could hunt him down. George and I went with them. Manning and Huck stayed back to keep rounding up a herd and to ramrod the guards watching over our homes. According to our spies, a couple of Helm’s old State Police pals lived in Floresville, so that’s where we headed.
Shortly after we crossed into Wilson County, Wes’s horse threw a shoe, so we detoured about a mile over to a town called Albuquerque, where there was a blacksmith’s. It was a little two-dog town with one street and about eight buildings. The only people on the street were a knot of men sitting on their heels in the shade of an oak by the blacksmith shop, and a handful of boys about to drop a mean-looking black tomcat into a burlap sack already holding another cat. “I got five dollars says that black comes up winners,” Wes said to Jim. A redhead boy was clutching the cat by its scruff and back paws, and it hissed at us as we went by. “What’s the other one like?” Jim asked the boys. “One-eyed calico,” a boy said. “Won the most sack fights of any of them.” Jim grinned at Wes and said, “You got a bet.”
George and I reined up and dismounted to watch the sack fight while Wes took his horse into the blacksmith shop a little farther down the street. “Y’all tell me how it turns out,” Jim said to us, and went to join the men in the shade of the oak.
Two boys held the sack up between them and a third dropped the black inside—then they quickly tied it off and hung it on a low tree limb. You’ve never heard shrieking till you’ve heard a sack fight between two big toms. George and I were so caught up in watching that howling sack tossing and twitching on the tree limb that neither of us paid any attention to the horsemen who rode into town behind us.
A minute later a shotgun blasted and we spun around and saw Wes standing in the doorway of the blacksmith shop with both barrels of the scattergun smoking. Jack Helm was sitting in the middle of the street with the whole front of his shirt bright red with blood and a coil of shiny blue intestine bulging out of his torn belly. His pistol lay a few feet from him. The three men who’d ridden in with him were reining in their spooked horses, and Jim Taylor was covering them with a pair of pistols, yelling something I couldn’t make out through the caterwauling still going on alongside me. The Sutton men dismounted and put their hands up high. Wes grabbed up their horses’ reins and swung up into a saddle.
Just then, Jack Helm got up on his feet and went at Jim Taylor with a skinning knife.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was trying to hold his guts in with his free hand as he staggered toward Jim, but they were slipping through his grip and hanging wetly against his thighs. His face was pale as pig fat. Jim shot him in the chest twice and Helm dropped to his knees and his guts rushed out into the dust. He threw the knife at Jim as awkwardly as a girl. Jim shot him again and Helm fell forward on his intestines. Then Jim went and stood over him and shot him three times in the head. I’d never before seen a man so thoroughly killed.
Helm had spotted Jim as soon as he and his men rode in—and he got the drop on him before Jim even looked over and recognized him. He’d dismounted and started walking toward him with his pistol aimed right in his face, cussing him as he came. He never knew Jim wasn’t alone until Wes stepped out of the shadows of the blacksmith shop and blew his belly wide open. To this day, every time I hear a cat screech I see Jack Helm lying dead with his guts in the dirt.
We galloped out of there trailing the Sutton horses on a rope, and a few hours later we sold them to a dealer in Smiley. That night we spent every nickel from the horse sale on whiskey in a Gonzales saloon. “Drinks are on the Sutton Party!” Wes announced with a loud laugh. The news had spread fast, and men kept coming to our table all evening to congratulate us for killing Jack Helm. I heard that for months afterward Wes received letters of gratitude from people who’d hated Helm. Many of the letters were from women Jack Helm had made widows.
And still the feud went on—until finally Wes and Jim met with Joe Tomlinson and his lieutenants and everybody at last agreed to the terms of a peace treaty. They had it drawn up in a law office in Clinton, the seat of DeWitt County, and everybody signed it, including Bill Sutton, who had it brought to his guarded home by a lawyer who witnessed his signature. He knew better than to show himself to Jim Taylor, who had signed the treaty with the stipulation that it did not apply to him and Bill Sutton. The treaty group agreed that henceforth the feud was a matter strictly between the two of them.
And so, with the State Police a thing of the past, and with the feud settled by treaty, life in the Sandies turned fairly peaceful for the first time in a long time. Sutton rarely showed himself anymore, conducting most of his cattle business from the safety of his home. Jim Taylor was eager as ever to kill him, but he’d pledged his word to keep the fight between the two of them and he meant it.
We turned our attention back to the cattle business and helped Manning finish rounding up a herd for Kansas, and then we helped Wes put a herd together for movement to the Cuero rail yard. All in all, it was a sweet and peaceful summer, and the peace carried over into the fall. When we weren’t working, we were racing horses and gambling and dancing down the barn roofs. Jim Taylor kept his ear cocked for news of Sutton, but Old Bill wasn’t relaxing his guard in the slightest, and the stalemate between them stretched out for month after month.
Shortly after the New Year, Wes took his wife and baby to visit Comanche, where his daddy and momma had gone to live near his brother Joe, who’d been practicing law there for a few years. I recall how truly excited Wes was about that family reunion. When he bid me and George good-bye, he looked as happy as I’d ever seen him.
