Article By Ayoob

On another night, Askins used the Remington autoloading shotgun, loaded with the 00 buckshot he called "blue whistlers." He recounted:

"They came out of the shadows and, as it was brightest moonlight, I could see every manjack had a long gun in his hands. We let them get up to within nine paces of us and I fired the first shot.

"I had the old Remington with its 9shot magazine and I knocked down the first two rannies in as many shots. I then switched my attention to the other three who did not like the heat. They ran back into Mexico, a distance of about 60 yards and opened fire.

"An interesting facet of this little exchange was that the lobo in the lead had an old Smith & Wesson .44 Russian. Despite the fact that he had a load of my 00 buckshot through his middle and one of the boys had hit him spang on the breastbone with a .351 slug, he dropped to his knees behind a cottonwood sapling and kept right on shooting.

"The .44 Russian is a single-action and this bravo had to thumb the hammer back for each shot. He got off three rounds before a second charge of my buckshot ended his career,

"Quite as interesting, really, was the second gunman who had a Westley Richards 10 gauge loaded with Winchester High Speed #5 shot. We had killed him before he could touch off either barrel. A most happy circumstance since the distance between both parties was only nine steps. I have the Westley Richards today, a memento of lively times long past." [2]

Today, Johnnie Cochran would be hired by the families of the deceased to sue Charlie and the whole Border Patrol for opening fire on the heavily armed gang without warning. Yet doing as they did undoubtedly saved multiple Patrolmen from being killed or maimed. As the saying goes, "Things were different then."


Last edited by jwp475; 11/14/10.

I got banned on another web site for a debate that happened on this site. That's a first