Border Trouble

The troops at Fort Clark were becoming a little on the testy side. Not receiving any pay in almost two months will make a person pretty irritable. Now, the pay wagon with this months and the one month's back pay is overdue which only made their disposition worse. Major Thurston, Clark's Post Commander, dispatched his Chief of Scouts, Tye Watkins, to find the wagon, its escort, and get both to the fort promptly. This would be one of Tye's easier assignments. He figured he would find the wagon with a broken wheel or axel somewhere on The Old Mail Road between Clark and Fort Inge, forty-give miles to the east of Clark. He had never been so wrong. His search led him to many hardships and a lot of misery. He would encounter the most ruthless gang of cutthroats along the Border; have his long time friends massacred and their grandchildren taken captive; and several bloody fights with a band of renegade Apaches. He should have known that out here, along the Texas/Mexico Border, nothing is ever as simple as it appears.