Classic tales of the Old West...that never forget the power of love.
Written Fireside: “Be Mine, Marshal,” Part 8
Part One – Lori Connelly
Part Two – Paty Jager
Part Three – Julie Lence
Part Four – Susan Horsnell
Part Five – Aileen Harkwood
Part Six – AJ Nuest
Part Seven – Mandy Baggot
Uneven footsteps shuffled across the street behind Daniel, scuffing up puffs of dust when they stopped at his right side. “Give the child to me, Marshal.” The voice, pitched low and even, carried a request, not a demand. “I won’t hurt her. I swear.” Daniel canted his gaze toward the claw-thin hands reaching for Marigold. Sadness muddled with guilt stared back from Virgil’s eyes. “She’s my flesh and blood.”
At Daniel’s other shoulder, Fannie gasped. The shotgun never wavered. “Your—”
“Annabelle was my sister.” Virgil lifted the whimpering girl from Daniel’s arms with a tenderness he’d seldom seen…and never from a derelict.
Anderson’s grating rumble kicked up more dust. “Gimme the girl and get on outta here, you old gimp. You ain’t been worth spit since the war crippled your leg and half your mind.”
Virgil stiffened and returned the viper’s glare. “I thought the kids would be better off with anybody but me. I was wrong.” Hugging Marigold tight to his chest, he turned a sharp, clear gaze on Fannie. “Sorry about your barn, ma’am.” His voice wound down to a worn-out whisper. “I got it into my head General Custer…”
Daniel locked Anderson’s glower at the same instant he snagged Virgil’s elbow. Fingertips met thumb around an arm frail enough to snap in a firm grip. “Do as the man said. Take Will with you. Help Doc see to the girl.”
A threat shot from Anderson’s lips with the force of a bullet. “Move one inch, and it’ll be the last movement you make.”
“And yours, Montgomery.” Fannie adjusted the shotgun against her shoulder.
Taking control of his breath, if not his galloping pulse, Daniel eased a hand toward the Colt on his hip.
Anderson snorted. “You ain’t about to shoot me, teacher.” The muzzle of his Remington took aim at Virgil while he tossed a command at Will. “Boy, don’t make me tell you twice. Get your sister and plant both of your asses over here by me.”
Trembling and pale, Will nonetheless stepped between Anderson and his mark and dug his heels into the dust. Virgil oozed backward.
Anderson flicked the revolver’s muzzle skyward, and then dead-centered a bead on Will. The boy raised his chin and held his ground.
Fannie shifted; steadied the gun. Virgil’s limping, backward slide quickened. Daniel’s fingertips slipped onto the cool surface of a walnut pistol grip.
“You ungrateful little polecat.” The words hissed between Anderson’s bared teeth. “I done right by you kids, but you ain’t never been no good. Just like your ma.”
As hard as he shook, the boy’s innards had to be rattling. He didn’t back down, though. “Did you beat her, too?”
“Lester’s the only one of you heathens got a lick of sense. Must've got that from me. Sure as hell didn’t get it from your faithless whore of a mother.”
Will launched himself at Anderson’s sneer. “Take that back.”
Daniel yanked his hand from his Colt and caught the boy by the collar. Jerking and twisting at the end of Daniel’s reach, Will nearly ripped the thin fabric from his grasp. The boy had sand to spare.
And he was about to get himself killed.
Rapid, limping thuds and delicate taps hit the boardwalk and disappeared behind a slamming door. Daniel hauled Will against him and clamped an arm around the boy’s waist, widening his stance to shore up his balance.
Will’s heart thumped hard enough to pound a hole through Daniel’s chest, but the youngster continued to squirm. “He’s a goldurn liar. My mama wasn’t no whore. He’s a thief, though…or would be if he had the guts.”
Anderson took a half step forward on a snarl. “Shut your mouth, boy.”
Fannie tracked Anderson with the shotgun. She shot Daniel a tense glance.
Will froze. Stiff as a fencepost, flush against Daniel’s chest with his feet dangling six inches above the ground, the kid pinned Anderson with a poisonous glare. “Said if we didn’t bring back something worthwhile this time, Marigold could pay him and his friends another way.” He jammed a hand into a pants pocket. When he opened his fist, sunlight glittered on multicolored stones set in gold. “I took it. I didn’t have no choice.”
“I said shut your mouth.” Anderson’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Daniel twisted toward Fannie, shoving his shoulder between Will and a rabid wolf. Her blue eyes fixed his for a fractional second before lancing back to her target.
Anderson slithered forward another step. “Think that’ll protect that city fop’s leavin’s, Marshal?” A cold chuckle wound through the words. “Think again. I can take you both with one shot.”
“And you’ll go with them.” Fannie’s tone bore an even deeper chill, made all the more wintry by a deadly calm.
“It’ll be worth it.” Anderson sucked a breath, lips twisting as his empty hand scratched the worn flannel covering his chest. “Only thing I wanted when I got outta that hellhole was mine by rights.” His eyes narrowed into black slits. “They got their comeuppance. Made damn sure Mr. Fancypants got a lesson in how a real man loves his woman.” He thumbed back the Remington’s hammer.
Daniel shot Fannie a sidelong glance. She gave a quick nod.
Hand already in motion, he dropped the kid.
****
“Be Mine, Marshal” concludes March 31 with Kari Lemor’s Part Nine. Y’all stay tuned!
Travel by Horse
Horses are a
staple of western fiction. When writing or reading about them, it’s helpful to
understand common terms about the way they move. Whether or not an experienced
horseman can see the animal, he or she can tell how fast the critter is moving
by the distinctive sound of hooves striking the earth.
 |
| Walk |
Walk
A walk is a
four-beat gait, meaning three hooves remain on the ground while the fourth
moves. The walk is a very comfortable gait for riders. It’s smooth, producing
only a slight swaying motion. At a walk, riders have no trouble keeping their
butts in the saddle.
Horses can walk
all day, even under saddle, but they don’t move very far very fast. The average
horse will cover three to four miles an hour at a walk; some move as slowly as
two miles per hour.
Trot and jog
Technically, a
jog is slower than a trot, but practically—at least in western riding—both
gaits are referred to as jogging. Jogging is a two-beat gait in which diagonal
pairs of legs move together: left rear with right front; right rear with left
front.
 |
| Jog |
Trotting primarily
is associated with horse shows (during which judges want to see that a horse
can move at variety of speeds on command) and harness racing. Racing trotters
often cover as much ground as quickly as other horses gallop. Some harness
races require horses to pace, in which the legs on each side move together
while the legs on the other remain on the ground.
The jog is a
horse’s natural working gait. If left to his own devices (and not escaping a
threat), a horse will move at a jog when he wants to cover distance quickly. Horses
can jog for a long time without tiring, but many riders can’t take the pace.
With a few notable exceptions, a jog can be extremely jarring and puts
enormous strain on the muscles in a rider’s legs, back, and abdomen. Working
cowboys who spend a good deal of time in the saddle may move their horses at a
jog, but pleasure riders generally try to avoid the gait if they value their
butts, which slap the saddle with each step until the rider learns to “move
with the horse.”
At a jog, horses
cover an average of about eight miles an hour. So-called “gaited horses” like
the Tennessee Walking Horse and the American Saddlebred don’t jog or trot.
Instead, their natural middle gait, a “running walk,” can cover as many as
fifteen miles in an hour. Because all four hooves move independently, a running
walk is a comfortable gait for riders. Both breeds are primarily pleasure, not
working, horses.
 |
| Lope |
Lope or canter
Lope and canter
are essentially the same gait, a three-beat movement in which three hooves are
off the ground while a rear leg supports the horse’s weight. At a lope, horses
can cover about ten to fifteen miles in an hour; some can reach speeds of up to
twenty-seven miles per hour.
Note: Horses under western saddle lope.
Canter is an English-riding term, possibly derived from Canterbury.
Gallop
The gallop, a
four-beat gait, is the horsey equivalent of run and averages about thirty miles
per hour. Horses bred for speed, like Thoroughbreds and racing Quarter Horses,
can gallop as fast as fifty miles per hour.
In the wild, horses gallop in order to escape a threat. Most horses can gallop for only a mile or two without risking serious injury or death. (Yes, some horses will run themselves to death at the urging of a rider.)
 |
| Gallop |
In the wild, horses gallop in order to escape a threat. Most horses can gallop for only a mile or two without risking serious injury or death. (Yes, some horses will run themselves to death at the urging of a rider.)
How far can a horse travel?
How far a horse
can travel in a day depends on the horse’s condition, the availability of food
and water, and the terrain he is asked to cover. At a combination of lope and
walk, a young horse in optimal condition can travel fifty to sixty miles a day in
good weather over flat terrain, as long as he is allowed to drink and graze
every couple of hours. The faster a horse moves, the more often he will need to
rest, eat, and drink.
Though it may
seem counter-intuitive, the longer a horse moves fast, the shorter the distance
it can cover in a day. Pony Express riders galloped about 10 miles (or about
half an hour) before changing horses and usually covered 60-70 miles a day, but
that was an exceptionally grueling pace for the rider. A good average pace is about
40 miles per day, which is the speed the U.S. Cavalry aimed for during the
nineteenth century. Over uneven terrain or in bad weather, a horse and rider
would do well to cover twenty miles per day. In the mountains, ten miles per
day would be a good pace.
Many cowboys
carried grain—usually corn or oats—in order to get more out of their horses. Grain
provides increased carbohydrate-based energy. Sweet feed, which contains
molasses, was not as common unless a horse was stabled. Horses love sweet feed,
but it’s not good for them except as a treat.
Remember, too, that most working cowboys preferred—and still prefer—to ride geldings over mares or stallions. As a rule, geldings are much more tractable than either stallions (which can be a handful at best and a nightmare if a mare anywhere in the vicinity is in season) or mares (who naturally establish a pecking order within a herd and can be cranky). In the wild, a mare runs the herd; stallions are tolerated only for breeding and protection.
Four Authors, Four Stories, Four Challenges
Regardless
how easy some authors make fiction-writing look, all of us struggle with something
in every story.
Take “Making
Peace,” my contribution to the Prairie Rose Publications anthology Cowboy Cravings, for example. The hero,
Bennett Collier, is the elder brother of Amon Collier, the hero from “The Big
Uneasy” in Lassoing a Mail-Order Bride.
The brothers’ relationship composed a significant subplot in “The Big Uneasy,”
and “Making Peace” puts a period on the end of that relationship’s sentence. My
challenge lay in ensuring both stories could a) stand alone as complete,
satisfying reads in their own right, and b) be read in any order without one
giving away too many of the other’s secrets. That second point was particularly
vexing, since “The Big Uneasy” provided backstory for “Making Peace.” In
situations like that, there’s a delicate balance between revealing too much and
leaving readers confused by revealing too little.
I understand
it’s common among authors to know their characters and stories so well that they think they’ve
made things clear when they haven’t. Readers will have to let me know whether I
accomplished my goal with “Making Peace.”
Turns out,
all four of the authors who contributed to Cowboy
Cravings faced at least one issue that proved challenging, but in the end
each of us became stronger for having faced her demon head-on.
Here are the
problems each author faced, along with her solution:
‘Hearts and Diamonds,’ by Cheryl Pierson
Revenge sets Nick Diamond after a bride, and nothing will
stand in his way. But when that bride happens to be outspoken firebrand Liberty
Blankenship, all bets are off. Anything can happen when Hearts and Diamonds
collide!
I think for “Hearts
and Diamonds,” the hardest thing was the love scene. In a short story, it’s
really tough to create a love scene that “moves along” rapidly with people who
don’t really know one another. So I gave Nick and Libby a “sort of” shared
background—they remember one another, but he’s several years older than she is,
and they’ve lost track of one another.
Something
else that helped the love scene was the fact that she was marrying someone she
wasn’t in love with—and Nick reminds her of that. She lets him know, even
though she might not have been in love with [villain] Carlton Ridgeway, at
least she could have hoped for respectability. That plants a seed in his
mind...this might just work. Because, Nick had planned to give her that, too,
all along—unless she wanted an annulment.
Because a short
story is so limited on word count, the love scene I wrote was one that got the
point across heatedly, without going into the details of how each part of the
sex they had was accomplished. And, because they share this wedding night, when
the next crisis happens, they’re already emotionally closer than they’ve been
when we left them the night before in their ...ahem...passion. So it was
finding the right way to move the relationship along without having it seem
unrealistic that was the most difficult thing for me with this story.
‘Starr Bright,’ by Celia Yeary
A stubborn rancher, a Spanish beauty...and the Texas summer
heats up.
Any time we take a character—or characters—from previous
stories, we try to keep them as true to their original personality and looks as
possible. This shouldn’t be too difficult, unless, in my case, I used two
characters who were not in the same story. In “Starr Bright,” I used
Starr Hidalgo in all her glory, but I paired her with Conrad Taylor who was a
character in another novel, another decade. In my mind, these two should
be paired, no matter what. Since dates aren’t generally added to novels, I
knew no one would ever figure that out...or care.
‘Lily and Mesquite Joe,’ by Kristy McCaffrey
Lily Kingston has long loved Mesquite Joe Riordan. Facing
the truth of his past will test her resolve, but only her stubbornness can win
his heart.
I wrote “Lily and Mesquite Joe” well over two years ago as a
submission for Harlequin Historicals Undone, the online short-story branch of
this popular series of books. It was rejected due to lack of
characterization. Besides being bummed about the reject, I was completely
stumped. I honestly couldn't figure out how to fix the story because I wasn’t really
sure where the problem lay. So, I set it aside and let it collect cyber-dust.
When the submission call for Cowboy Cravings came,
that story started waving its hand at me—pick me, pick me. Prairie Rose
Publications welcomed it into the family, and kind-hearted editor Cheryl
Pierson gave it a once-over, then a twice-over, and, I believe, a thrice-over.
My hero, Joe Riordan, needed work, and with Cheryl’s guidance I began to see the
issues that plagued the tale.
In the end, Cheryl helped me redeem Joe, and when that
finally happened I had that “aha” moment of why the story was denied so long
ago. So, while rejection naturally makes all of us writers run crying to
our beds with a box of doughnuts, it helps to remember that finding the right
home for a story is important for the health and well-being of that creation.
We want to find a place where our writing can flourish. Lily and Mesquite Joe
found their way into the world at last.
So… Here are my questions:
Authors, have you
ever encountered a challenge that dogged you all the way through a story? How
did you resolve the issue?
Readers, have you
ever encountered a story in which you recognized an author’s struggle? Maybe
something just didn’t seem quite “right.” How did that affect your relationship
with the story?
Love in the Time of Miscegenation
She’s the sweetest rose of color this darky ever knew.
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew.
You may talk about your Dearest May, and sing of Rosa Lee,
But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee.
In its original form, the song tells the story of a black
man (“darky”) who has been separated from his sweetheart and longs to reunite
with her. The lyrics indicate the sweetheart was a free mulatto woman—a person
of mixed black and white heritage. In those days, “person of color” was
considered a polite way to refer to black people who were not slaves. “Yellow”
was a common term for people of mixed race.
During the Civil War, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” became a
popular marching tune for troops all over the Confederacy; consequently, the
lyrics changed. White Confederates were not eager to refer to themselves as
darkies, so “darky” became “soldier.” In addition, “rose of color” became “little
flower.”
Aside from the obvious racist reasons for the modifications,
legal doctrine played into the picture as well. Until the U.S. Supreme Court
declared the practice unconstitutional in 1967, all eleven former Confederate
states plus Delaware, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia outlawed marriage
and sexual relations between whites and blacks. In four of the former Confederate
states—Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—marriage or sexual
relations between whites and any
non-white was labeled a felony. Such laws were called anti-miscegenation laws,
or simply miscegenation laws. In order to draw what attorneys term a “bright
line” between legal and illegal behavior, many states codified the “single-drop
rule,” which held that a person with a single drop of Negro blood was black, regardless
the color of his or her skin.
 |
| "New Orleans' Voodoo Queen" Marie Laveau (1774-1881) was a free Creole of mixed race. |
The first American miscegenation laws arose in the colonies
in the 1600s. The laws breathed their last gasp in 2001, when Alabama finally
removed the anti-miscegenation clause from its state constitution after a referendum
passed with only sixty percent of the popular vote.
Time Enough for Locks
For as long as there have been haves and wanna-haves, the
haves have sought ways to secure their valuables from thieving wanna-haves. History no longer remembers
the inventor of the first lock, but it is said the key was invented by Theodore
of Samos in the sixth century B.C., which leads to the suspicion locks have been around
much longer. In fact, crude locking mechanisms dating to the early Pharaonic period have
been found in Egyptian ruins.
The first devices resembling what we know today as door
locks were discovered in the palace of Persian king Sargon II, who reigned from
722 to 705 B.C. They were large, clumsy devices made of wood; nevertheless,
they served as prototypes for contemporary security devices.
 | ||
| Bodie [California] Bank's vault, mid-1870s.
Dick Rowan, photographer (National Archives and Records Administration) |
No great advancements in lock technology occurred until
about the fourteenth century A.D., when locks small enough to carry
appeared. Traveling tradesmen used the “convenient locks” to secure their money
and other valuables.
Although padlocks were known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, the first combination lock didn’t appear until the eighteenth century. Until
1873, most banks used combination locks of some kind to secure their vault. The
secret to effective combination locks was creating a complex series of letters and numbers
that would frustrate anyone who tried to disarm the mechanism. The code for the
combination lock securing the mid-nineteenth-century safe in the U.S. Treasury in Washington
D.C., for example, could not be opened without a lengthy series of letters and
numbers that provided 1,073,741,824 possible combinations. Because determining
the code by organized guesswork would require 2,042 years, 324 days, and one hour to crack,
the lock was considered burglar-proof.
Combination locks had one big Achilles heel, though: It didn’t
take long for criminals to figure out they could kidnap a bank employee and
require him or her to dial in the correct code.
In 1873, James Sargent invented what he called a theft-proof
lock. Theft-proof locks combined a combination lock with a timer that prevented the safe from opening until a certain number of hours had passed, even if
one knew the combination.
 | |
| Ruins of the 1906 Nye & Ormsby County Bank in Manhattan, Nevada. The bank crumbled, but the vault survived. |
Outlaw Lawmen
Life on the open
range could be a discomforting experience, what with outlaws popping out of the
woodwork with the slightest provocation, nesters “accidentally” mistaking some
cattleman’s range for the quarter section they’d purchased, steers stampeding
wherever they pleased, and wild animals running amok in settlers’ vegetable
gardens—not to mention all those Indians to keep track of.
Things weren’t
much easier for townies. For one thing, outlaws didn’t confine themselves to
the countryside. Drunks stumbled out of saloons with reckless abandon, ladies
of questionable virtue roamed the streets at will, and barbers pulled teeth or
performed surgery like they knew what they were doing. Even church socials
sometimes got out of hand.
At least folks in
town could count on the law to keep things somewhat under control, right?
Not always.
Finding a reliable
lawman was anything but easy. El Paso, Texas, discovered that when it hired Dallas
Stoudenmire as city marshal. Stoudenmire, a deadly gunman with a mean
temper and a fondness for strong drink, insisted on starting fights and
shooting people—some of them criminals. As a young man, famed lawman Wyatt Earp
stole horses. Between gigs as a county sheriff, town marshal, and city policeman,
Earp gambled, owned brothels, got arrested for a number of crimes, broke out of
jail, led a vigilante group, and otherwise made a nuisance of himself. Pat
Garrett may have been a straight arrow legally speaking, but he was unpleasant
to be around. Even his fellow officers objected to his disposition: a
refreshing mixture of arrogance and surliness.
Some men found a
badge to be an excellent disguise for nefarious activities. Take these guys,
for example:
Henry Plummer
 |
| Henry Plummer |
In 1856, at the
age of 24, Plummer became the marshal of Nevada City, Calif., the third-largest
settlement in the state. In 1859, the marshal killed the husband of a woman
with whom he was having an affair. Sentenced to ten years in San Quentin, he received
parole in six months and immediately joined a gang of stagecoach robbers.
In January 1862,
Plummer formed his own gang and began hijacking wagons transporting gold out of
mining camps. When that enterprise petered out in January 1863, Plummer
relocated to the newest gold rush in Bannack, Montana. There, he formed the
Innocents, a network of road agents that numbered more than 100 men within a
few short months.
In May 1863,
Plummer lost a sheriff election and subsequently threatened his rival until the
man high-tailed it, fearing for his life. Plummer took over the sheriff’s job
and right away appointed two of his Innocents cronies as deputies. Oddly, crime
dramatically increased. In about nine months, more than 100 murders occurred
and robberies, assaults, and assorted other crimes reached unprecedented
levels. All the while, Plummer—under the guise of cracking down on lawlessness—hanged
witnesses.
On January 10,
1864, having had enough law enforcement for a while, fifty to seventy-five
vigilantes rounded up Plummer and his two deputies and hanged them in the
basement of a local store.
Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles
 |
| Burt Alvord, Yuma Territorial Prison, 1904 |
In the 1890s,
Alvord and Stiles served as deputy sheriffs in Willcox, Arizona. Unsatisfied
with their salaries, the two began robbing Southern Pacific Railroad trains to
supplement their income. Emboldened by pulling a number of successful jobs, they
undertook their most daring escapade on September 9, 1899, in what came to be
known as the Cochise Train Robbery. Instead of cleaving to tradition and
stopping the train on a lonely stretch of track in the middle of nowhere,
Alvord and Stiles had five members of their gang blow up the safe while the
train was stopped in the town of Cochise. Alvord and Stiles, maintaining their
law-enforcement decorum, were part of the posse that unsuccessfully attempted
to apprehend the robbers in the Chiricahua Mountains.
About five months
later, on February 15, 1900, the gang struck again, in broad daylight in the
tiny town of Fairbank, Arizona. While the train was stopped at the station, the
Alvord-Stiles gang approached the express car, guns drawn, only to find the
messenger responsible for the safe unwilling to abide such rude behavior. During
the gunfight that erupted, two of the five gang members were wounded and one
ran away. The messenger, also wounded, hid the safe’s key before losing
consciousness. Unable to find the key and without a single stick of dynamite
between them, the rest of the gang scrammed.
 |
| Fairbank, Ariz., railroad depot, circa 1900 |
Once again,
Alvord and Stiles rode with a posse to track down the outlaws, one of whom was
injured so badly he had to be left behind about six miles outside town. Despite
Alvord’s and Stiles’s attempts to misdirect the pursuers, they stumbled across
the wounded man, who fingered Alvord as the ringleader before he died. Stiles
confessed and turned state’s evidence, allowing him to remain comfortably outside
the bars while Alvord cooled his heels inside. A short while later, Stiles
broke Alvord out of the pokey and the two of them lit out for Mexico.
The Arizona
Rangers invaded Mexico and, in 1904, engaged the two now-expatriates in a gun
battle. They captured Alvord, but Stiles got away. After a brief stint in the
Rangers under an assumed name, Stiles was killed a few years later while
working as a lawman in Nevada, also under an assumed name. Alvord did two years
in Yuma Territorial Prison and beat it for Panama upon his release.
H.D. Grunnels
 |
| Steam train, 1898 |
In 1898, Fort Worth, Texas, Assistant Police Chief Grunnels talked a gang of Oklahoma bank robbers out of robbing a local diamond merchant and into robbing a train in Saginaw, Texas, instead. Grunnels masterminded the operation, planning to apprehend the bandits after they made off with the money, then collect the reward and keep the loot.
The Apple Dumpling Gang might
have performed the train heist with more aplomb. While crawling across the top
of the coal tender to reach the engine, the gang’s leader slipped and
accidentally discharged his pistol. His minions mistook the misfire as their
signal to hop on the train and commence whatever mischief their roles required.
Chaos ensued.
Meanwhile,
Grunnels and a cadre of Fort Worth police officers not in on the plan raced to
the rescue of a train that had yet to be robbed. The discombobulated robbers
vamoosed. The Fort Worth Police Department became suspicious when it discovered
Grunnels reached the scene of the crime before the crime had been reported.
Grunnels was fired and indicted, but he disappeared before trial.
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