Final Battle

© Copyright 2011 Duncan L. Dieterly.

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Purchase only authorized editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-9627-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-9625-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-9626-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011916821

Trafford rev. 09/19/2011

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North America & international

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Contents

Prologue April 8, 1865

Chapter One Hankswash, Wyoming

Chapter Two The Town Sheriff

Chapter Three The Awakening

Chapter Four Call To Arms

Chapter Five Buggy Brigade

Chapter Six Tumultuous Friday

Chapter Seven The Boys Return

Chapter Eight The Sheriff Returns

Chapter Nine Preparation: The Plan

Chapter Ten Saturday In Hankswash

Chapter Eleven War Party

Chapter Twelve Opening Volley

Chapter Thirteen Aftermath

Chapter Fourteen Girding Their Loins

Chapter Fifteen Retreat

Chapter Sixteen The Shooter

Chapter Seventeen Dawn Duel

Chapter Eighteen The Indian Campaign

Chapter Nineteen Vanishing Americans

Chapter Twenty Recovery

Chapter Twenty-One Retiring Warriors

Chapter Twenty-Two The Myth Of Truth

AUTHORS BOOKS

Short Stories One (2008)

Short Stories Two (2008)

Cover Design by

Katie Dieterly

Graphic Artist

kdieterly@gmail.com

PROLOGUE

April 8, 1865

T he moon crawled behind the clouds ashamed to witness the raging massacre below. In the blackness of night, a solitary soldier pushed his weary starved mount forward over unfamiliar forest ground. The stench of the relentless yank cannon fire behind him still lingered in his nostrils. As he moved away, heading back toward their camp, the sounds of the battle were diminishing.

The cannon’s thunder fading, it ceased. Now he only heard the occasional sharp reports of rifle shots, as the union boys systematically searched the scarecrow bodies of the fallen Rebs. They were methodically killing the confederate soldiers still moving or moaning. The Union Army had ample supplies, but would not waste anything on a worthless Johnny Reb. Better off dead. He had seen it all before, too many times. It was not a pleasant sight. To the Victor goes the killing power.

He had reluctantly left the battle scene as directly ordered by Colonel Baltimore. He was not sure why the colonel was so adamant, but the night before the battle, he had sternly ordered him three times,

When our cannon fall silent you get on back here boy, and pronto.

He caught the gurgling sound of the stream up ahead. Once he reached it, he only needed to track it west to hit their camp in a matter of minutes. Locating the stream bank edge he turned to follow it moving upward.

Suddenly, there was a crash of bushes! An eruption of men! Desperate hands crawled at his clothes! Yelling, Damn Reb, give us your food!

They half dragged him off his horse. Spinning the frightened horse, he knocked some attackers down. Ripping his Bowie from his left leg scabbard, he slashed out at the other flaying arms. With shrieks of pain they fell away. One last desperate attempt was made to unhorse him.

A snarling face flashed up at him. He smacked it with the butt of his knife. He heard the snap of bone and crush of cartilage. Free from the marauders, he sped away. Their futile curses faded as he surged forward toward the camp.

Reaching the camp, it was not what he expected. It was an explosion of activity. It was a loud moving and shifting mass. The noises of desperation were all about him. Tents were being broken down. Animals hitched to wagons, dashing off into the night. Orders snapped, curses hurled and frightened voices questioned. The myriad of camp fires were untended… dying.

Searching, he located the colonel’s staff tent and flag, pulled up in front and dismounted. A bearded sergeant loomed up at him bellowing,

Get inside… the colonel needs to see you, boy!

He entered the scarred ten. In the harsh lantern light, he saw that his shirt sleeve was ripped off his left arm, and his right showed the wounds of his desperate attackers gashing finger nails.

The colonel, who was bent over checking a map, stopped to look up at him. This colonel was his commander now. Who would be his tomorrow? There had been so many, so many.

Well boy, we both know that our boys with General Parkman are dead. By damn! They did a fantastic job of holding off the blue-belly bastards. I mean to have to ask my men who haven’t eaten in three days to fight hard is bad enough, but when they can’t even return fire because they are out of ammunition it is a blaspheme. God dammit!

His thin haggard face was smoke streaked. His tired eyes squinted at the bearded young soldier. They had seen far too much. The once fine uniform he wore was stained and tattered. The colonel was on his last legs. He continued,

Well son it is all over.

What?

"The God damn bloody war boy! It is only a matter of days, maybe hours, before Lee will be surrendering. I have it on good authority that we is plum worn out. But we can’t do nothing about that now son.

"Listen to me. The Yanks have put out a ten thousand dollar reward on your head boy. You are the notorious ‘ghost shooter’ who is wanted dead or alive for that price. Every man and boy with a gun will be looking for you come sun up. You need to get the hell out of here! Go far away and build yourself a new life.

You did more for the Confederacy than anyone could ask, son. You are a damn fine sniper, but now you need to make yourself scarce. Here is two hundred in gold coin. Take it son. The colonel handed him the heavy leather pouch.

It is a damn sight less than you deserve. If I had it… I would give you a hundred times that much.

The wide shouldered boy, in the ragged Confederate uniform, loaded with weapons, looked at the pouch with vacant eyes. Exhausted, he was uncertain as to all this. Things were running out too fast. The colonel spoke with intense concern,

"Now look HW, they don’t know your name. They don’t have a decent description of you so if you high-tail it out of here you will be fine, jus fine. I am the highest ranking officer in the Brigade to know who you are. Most of the men you fought with are long dead, so there will be no one to tell them who to look for.

The rest of my able-bodied men will be following shortly but do not, I repeat, do not ride with other Rebs tonight… go your separate way fast and silent. You were a loner as a sniper, and now you have to be a loner on the road home boy.

The colonel limped forward, smiled weakly up at him and slapped Henry Webster Williams hard on the shoulder and called out to his sergeant,

"Is my horse Midnight ready for young HW?

Yes Sir.

"Ok, boy you best load your stuff on old Midnight and make tracks. Don’t look back. Try to forget the horror we endured over the past five years of hell. The South had the spunk by God, but not the wherewithal to beat the damn northern industrialists… not one God damn gentleman in the lot.

By God we gave them a hell of run boy, but… well… that is that. Best of luck to you. Head for distant places where you are unknown. Understand? Henry stared down at the colonel trying to comprehend the chaos of the lost battle and the unexpected disbanding of the confederate army he had served for so long.

The colonel pushed him out of the tent and strode past him over to a group of the grumbling mule skinners.

The sergeant said, I loaded your stuff from your old horse. You is ready to fly son. Henry reluctantly took the horse from the sergeant and mounted. Henry heard the colonel solemnly address the group of rag-tag men.

Boys, sorry to say, we is done for. You take the wagons on home; they are yours to keep along with the animals. You served our beloved Confederacy well and honorably. Now go home and hug your wives and children. Good luck men! I am mighty proud to have served with you’al.

He wheeled smartly about and went back into his tent. The dumbfounded crowd was silent. Then they erupted in a torrent of words and curses. The group suddenly broke. Scattering to their teams; preparing to skedaddle. No one had to tell them twice to cut for home.

Henry was beyond hungry. He was starving; his stomach a continual ache. But he knew there was no food in camp, not a crumb. The rats had deserted them, days ago. In a haze of disrupting activity, Henry located his ragged bed roll and personal goods stashed under a fallen tree. There were so few things left, other than weapons and ammunition, that they only filled one half of a saddle bag.

Henry looked about at the remaining bits and pieces of the soldier’s scattered belongings and shook his head in disbelief. The once orderly camp was a trash barrel of forgotten gear and lost memories. He remounted the magnificent horse. Stroking his black neck slowly, he moved toward the north.

Hearing running feet and the angry voices all about him. Passing the fleeting shadows of men and horses all hastily preparing to depart, he heard his name called out,

"Henry! Henry! What happed to Jason?

Don’t know. He mumbled.

"What! Where is he?

He hain’t come back! Henry bellowed. None of em is!

But he said he would.

Well he ain’t likely too! he called out.

What will I do?

Get the hell away from here. Take your gear and hitch a ride with one of them wagoners a going south. Go home. We is done for now. It’s over… at last.

The man he spoke to fell silent behind him. Henry pivoted around in his saddle and saw the silhouette of the one legged man leaning on his crooked crutch. It was Struthers McCoy, Jason’s partner and tent mate. Poor crippled son of a bitch.

Henry tried to contemplate what he should do. The grinning seventeen-year old youngster from Ohio had joined the glorious Confederate army over five years ago priming with hope and courage. He hadn’t grinned in some time. Abruptly he was now adrift. Henry was a wanted man; with a big bounty on his head… directionless.

He no longer was going to kill the despised enemy. He was free to go home. But he no longer had a home. Fatigued, his body was drained. His mind was numb. Uncertainty paralyzed his brain. Sleep and biscuits filled his mind. Intuitively he recognized that he must put distance between himself and the advancing marauding blue bellies.

They had lost their last battle and the whole damn war! How had that happened? All the dead? All the widows and orphans? For what?

My God the war is over. How could that be? He could only remember war; disease, dying and death. It had been so long . . . so long. Maybe he would go home. What home? No, probably best not. I will head up toward Ohio but cut west somewhere in Kintucky.

Overhead a bolt of lightning ripped open the night sky. Seconds later there was a crash of thunder. His nervous horse shied. He reined him in tight. More flashes with the following thunder rumbling in anger. After an hour he cut across a dirt road that headed North West, so he followed it.

Christ what would the morning bring?

The unholy noise of the disbanding army camp was no longer heard. He leaned forward closed his eyes and trusted his horse to delivery him to safety.

Slumbering on horseback, he was dreaming of mountainous meals of steaming victuals when he was snapped awake by the low grinding sound of an approaching wagon. Quickly, he moved to the side of the road hiding in the thick foliage of a great tree. The sound grew louder. It was moving in the opposite direction at a slow pace. He heard nervous voices.

Well… I hear tell the son of britches eat their babies and rape all them slaves, by crackie.

Oh, don’t be silly ass, Carter. You don’t know nothing.

No way. I read it in the newspapers, and they don’t lie, no sir-ree.

Yeah, and they is going to be waiting for us when we hit dawn. Hundreds of them, to come firing down on us.

Oh for Christ sake, Sergeant Kelly stop all the bull shit. There ain’t one live Reb between us and the damn battlefront up yonder. We have killed all them dumb-ass corn-shuckers.

Yeah, ole Billy Sherman showed them how we do it.

Bang, bang and they are dead. Another voice interjected.

Well I hope there’s enough left so I can kill me a few. I aim to head for home with a passel of fine souvenirs.

Who the hell have you ever killed, Jethro?

Well… nobody yet. I will, given the chance, dammit!

The restless men all laughed low. A gruff voice demanded,

Pass that corn over here boy. Let a real man have a swig.

The wagon load of Yankee soldiers rolled past him. Unnoticed in the deep shadows, Henry felt a cold shiver run up his back. He damn well would be far more careful from now on. Apparently, the countryside is crawling with a damn sight more than cows and porkers. When he no longer could hear their sounds of bravado he rode forward, alert and ready.

It started to drizzle, then rain steady. The icy rain water poured from his hat brim. Freezing, Henry rode into the unknown darkness of his future.

CHAPTER ONE

Hankswash, Wyoming

T he small town of Hankswash, Wyoming consisted of one mile and a half long crooked rutted road that ran into it from the north and out of it to the southwest, languorously headed towards Cheyenne. It had experienced a brief boom in the livestock trade during the War Between the States. However, after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia, on April 9, 1865 the monstrous civil war abruptly ceased along with their short surge of prosperity.

Life settled back into its previous indolent tempo, while the townspeople begrudgingly settled for less and less. Even the news of old Abe Lincoln’s assassination did not rile them up much. It took several days for the news of his death even to reach them. And some of the townsfolk felt Old Abe had only himself to blame, since he should have been at home not gallivanting around town at a lascivious play. The citizens preferred their quieter, saner life while pursuing peacefully their local commonplace self-absorbing concerns.

The little town which had awkwardly grown, slowly sunk into a silent unrelenting decay. Although the vast Wyoming territory had become the forty-fourth state of the Union on July 10, 1890, it caused little flourish of pride in Hankswash. Cheyenne, about eighty miles distant was the largest city in the new state and now the state capital which the unimpressed Hankswash citizens ignored. They felt this intrusion by the federal government on their territory was inappropriate.

The advent of statehood did not stimulate the town. The town was located in the southeastern corner of the state in the High Plains area but like an isolated, haughty, reclusive dowager, it grew older and shabbier every year. The High Plains no longer resounding with the thundering hoofs of the vital buffalo herds, all now but a glorious past dream. Only lone aging hunters camping on the vast prairie might wake in the middle of the night having imagined they once more had heard the pounding hoofs of the mighty herds in their alcoholic musings of previous hunts. Hankswash was content in its location with the surrounding hills full of tall waving grass.

Twelve old established families controlled the township while the other residents were considered ‘new’ arrivals. A family was considered established when it attained at least two-generations toil of the land under it’s belt.

This created a two level social order. The righteous landed and the new pushy interlopers. Fresh high-spirited arrivals habitually drifted into town in the bright light of the day and generally would quickly slink out, sullen and ashamed under the cloak of night’s darkness. Of course, then, there were those who had drifted so far in their dreary lives, they could go no farther, who remained trapped.

Like the brittle dry tumbleweed, hopelessly entangled on a barbed wire fence, they dangled, waiting for death’s hand to pull them free. It took spunk and hard work to make a go of it in this country. Most youngsters were not interested in investing the effort. They preferred to gamble, race horses, carouse aimlessly and migrate toward the larger cites in search of excitement, opportunities and quick riches.

The town fathers frequently commiserated about the failure of their youth to embrace the proper Christian virtues of hard work and long hours. They blamed it all on the coming of the railroad, trashy dime novels, the tawdry Police Gazette and federal government’s ceaseless interference with state and individual property rights.

The abrupt disruption of the western cattle industry following the Civil War and the disastrous harsh winter of ninety-three was just now being overcome. While cattle ranching was being reestablished, only half dozen prosperous ranches and farms remained. That was the extent of the local industry. The town economy hinged on the going price of beeves. To succeed in ranching operations required not only a strong back but grim determination and a pioneer founder certificate of heritage.

Another half dozen struggling and fading bare rag-tag subsistence outfits rounded out the area, founded on continuously leased land that frequently changed tenants. Every year brought yet another bunch of bright-faced eager new Eastern entrepreneurs who had come West to seek their fame and fortune as advised by the great Mr. Horace Greeley’s popularized proposition.

The harsh land, bitter winters, and ravaging illnesses broke their spirit, draining their meager resources. If they were Grangers, they also suffered the animosity of the ranchers who rode rough shod over them, in desperation driving them farther West, since they generally no longer had any binding ties to the East. Presumably, they ventured further West, still with hope in their hearts, but most had lost their shining dreams long ago in the bitter dust and were only seeking release… perhaps peace.

The nearest railroad stopped within fifteen miles of the town as the crow flies at the larger flourishing city of Mill’s Crossing that was twenty-one north by road. The proximity of the steam engines brought them a false hope of future commerce and prosperity. It just seemed a few miles out of their grasp. You could ship beeves and horses from Mill’s Crossing’s railroad siding; and also pick up your long awaited catalog orders of extraordinary Eastern merchandise that were delivered to the station platform.

The town population was about two hundred people all told, if you included the surrounding ranchers, roustabouts, hermits, hunters, homesteaders, outlaws and vagabonds. One person for every five hundred acres; not all usable land, but what composed the area of the general township. The town itself consisted of eighty-five men, woman and children engaged in daily commerce. It boasted a fine whitewashed Methodist church complete with a majestic three-story steeple and a brass bell hauled by wagon all the way from York, Pennsylvania in 1873.

The church was currently without a preacher’s firm hand, nor acerbic tongue due to the premature death, from the flu, that carried old Reverend Horace T. McNally to the promise land in late March of this year. Reverend McNally was only forty-one years old, having served the town faithfully for well over fifteen years. His bereaving widow, Mary Ann McNally, a quiet rather plain, sullen faced woman, skedaddled back to the East to live with her father in Cincinnati, Ohio, immediately after the good preacher’s funeral. She easily slipped from the town’s collective memory while the reverend’s head stone always reminded them of his sterling stewardship.

The old town cemetery which was on the hill crest about half mile to the East of the town was filling up slowly, but relentlessly with the deceased loved ones of those who continued to toil. The town bone orchard even boasted the grave of one colorful local desperado known far and wide as ‘Harry the Heeler.’ An attempted play on the words ‘healer’ and ‘heeled,’ meaning to be armed. Harry Birdwhistle Littleton, a surly, sinister gunslinger, who liked to kill people that struck him as being weak or sickly. So goes the local tale, that, he supposedly drifted into town from Roanoke, Virginia in 1869 and like the flu lingered on. Harry Birdwhistle Littleton was not a very colorful handle for a rooting, tooting western leather slapping fast gun, thus he preferred the moniker, spawned from his own creative imagination; ‘Harry the Heeler.’

He was an unwavering one-man euthanasia practitioner. Unfortunately, for him the mythical memory of Jack Slade’s[1] gunplay exploits still dominated the territory so no shootest could hope to better his deeds. Harry was cornered, caught and hanged in 1874, by a vigilante party that was incensed by the increasing horse stealing in the area, which created a general indignation throughout the countryside. Surprisingly, the crime Harry was convicted of was not back shooting but hoss thieving. One crime that people all agreed demanded to be rewarded with a good necktie party.

Mrs. Teresa Lofton Harvey a very proper war-widowed woman, who had arrived well over twenty years ago from St. Louis, Missouri, immediately had appropriated the old church to serve as the school house during the week and left it for God on the weekend. When the new church was constructed it included a large side room to accommodate her school.

Mrs. Harvey was a slender, crisp woman who applied the rod liberally. By now, she had taught and whipped half of the current population of the township into learning their ‘three R’s’. They had learned well, so they all paid her the appropriate respect due their prim and proper schoolmarm.

The town also boasted two long-established saloons… Rosaria’s Cantina at the north end of town for the working class stiffs and low life drifters and the Old Hunter Saloon, located in the center of town, for the town fathers, ranchers and upstanding citizens. The small Post Office and Telegraph Office combined along with a large old log Jailhouse with two small cells were the oldest buildings in town. Both the Post Office and the Telegraph Office were run by Clark Martin Granger, the youngest son of old man, Horace Kinkaid Granger, an angry bearded Swede who had emigrated from his home town of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Horace Kinkaid had spent twenty years toiling to build a substantial dairy farm out to the north of town before dropping dead from a burst heart in ninety-two. His older two sons Matt and Renfrew, continued to successfully run the farm while Clark, a small mousy man drifted into the town’s communication business. He was an inconsequential, slight man with large store bought spectacles who read a lot and quietly minded everyone’s business.

The jailhouse was a mite lopsided. It sat at the far southwest end of the street; the last building on the left on the road leading out of town for Cheyenne. It had actually been the first permanent building in the area; hand constructed out of pine logs by old Calvin Hernandez Becao, a fierce mustachioed Mexican from Durango, who had selected the spot due to the abundance of flowing stream water, to establish his sheep ranch.

Calvin inadvertently founded the town, so to speak. He was not planning on establishing a town. He only wanted to be free of onerous corrupt Mexican government’s interference in his life and start a prosperous sheep ranch. However, like unwanted weeds, the town rather sprouted up around him while he tried to ply his trade of sheep rancher. Wanderers and homesteaders were attracted to his location to obtain fresh water, buy lambs and fresh butchered meat; not to mention the delicious goat cheese his three attractive daughters churned out. The more he worked, the more he prospered but the more difficulty he had retaining privacy for his sheep and himself.

Every year more squatters drifted in; built tent camps, shacks, shanties, and finally, reasonably respectable buildings to provide additional services to those who visited the now famous Becao Sheep Ranch. Senor Becao was a gracious, polite man. The interlopers were relentless in elbowing him out with their new ways and ceaseless chattering. After twenty years of struggling, he eventually gave up in exasperated defeat and sold his ranch and stock to the new nesters and businesspersons.

Incidentally, he was shrewdly able to acquire a large and significant profit. He reluctantly returned to Mexico with most of his family a wealthy man. He had died there over thirty-five years ago and there no longer was any trace of his ranch nor sheep in the town or the surrounding area.

Not one living soul could actually say why the town was named Hankswash; other than perhaps to speculate humorously that some grizzled mountain man named Hank may have taken his annual bath in the stream in the long distant past. During the period of the departure of Senor Becao, and right after the start of the Civil War folks dropped the title sheep ranch and started calling the place Hankswash… it stuck.

It was now all cattle country and only cattle country. Becao’s great grandson, Ortega Emilio Becao, a rotund, jovial man who always found something to laugh about owned Rosaria’s Cantina.

Rosaria’s Cantina was a warm, grimy saloon that served cheap rot gut, homemade cervaza and a limited menu of spicy Tex-Mex food. It was a bulky, dark cavernous room that had a large rough stone fireplace running across one end. A low fire was always banked and burning. It served as the cook stove… even during the suffocating heat of summer. The bar was a small handmade affair of raw wood that was dull, battered and worn. Ten rough-hewn tables with a variety of frequently repaired chairs were scattered about the room. The wall behind the bar was covered in mounted sets of longhorns. However, one massive elk head dominated the center of the wall. Supposedly, it was the last elk killed in these parts in 1877.

The local story was that a visiting Austrian priince, whose hunting party grandly swept into the area, camping for over a month, had brought it down one frosty morning. Earl Nathanial Marcel Hecklindberg III, a magnificent sportsman and prodigious drinker, departed one day in a swirl of splendor, leaving it behind to be mounted with several other of his lesser trophies. Dashing off on an energetic burst of testosterone carnage, he apparently forgot to pay his bills nor leave his European forwarding address.

It was usually very dim and smoky in the saloon even at high noon. Several kerosene lanterns hung from the ceiling. On the rare occasions when a breeze blew, they swayed, splashing there light around into usually unseen areas. They remained lit all day and night. The bartender filled them every morning around nine when he came in to open up the saloon. The floor was compacted dry sand and dirt tramped hard tight by numerous boots and bare feet. It was spotted here and there from recent spills and accidents. The ceiling was open, showing the massive warped timber rafters.

A corpulent, mustachioed bartender named Bartholomew Jesus Santino and a large old woman named Conchitta, were the main help. Conchitta did the cooking. She hid in a back room until she was called out to prepare food. Bartholomew Jesus, known to all as Bart, was a middle-aged man who had a huge full mustache that he was endlessly cultivating and stroking. While Bart was quite vain he was well liked by all the patrons for his wit and the ample shots that he poured for all comers when his boss was not around. He enjoyed gossiping and telling stories about his exploits in the gold mines on the frozen slopes of Alaska.

A mystery in dirty clothes, no one knew Conchitta’s full name. She was a very full-bodied older woman starting to show gray with an increasingly ample set of hips. Most everyone just called her ‘cook woman’. A wide variety of part time help came and went but these two were an institution at Rosaria’s Cantina. The saloon had a murky reputation but nothing serious could be ascribed to it.

Becao’s original log ranch building had been sold to the town about twelve years ago by Ortega. It was then converted into the town jailhouse. He had hoped his reasonable price would buy him a seat on the town council but that was not to be a reality. Western cowboy prejudice was a powerful lingering force in the state.

The town was blessed with three major emporiums, that sold general dry goods and one black smithy shop with an adjoining livery stable. Lem’s General Store below the Apothecary which was next to the large outcropping of rock that separated it from the Cantina was the largest, owned by Lem Patrick Appleworth, also the current town mayor. The second largest, The Feed and Grain Emporium was owed by Berry Carmichael. It was located next to the Barber Shop across from the livery stable. Mark Harold Clausin owned the third, Clausin’s Dry Goods. It sat directly across from the Old Hunter Saloon.

A small nondescript dilapidated laundry lurked across from the Apothecary. It was run by a very old wrinkle-faced Chinese woman. Her name was Madam Mong Tsang Woo but she was known simply as ‘Old Woo.’ It was said, she was a widow of a dead Chinaman who was in the Sacramento gold rush of forty-nine. She lost all her family in the Chinese massacre at Rock Springs, Wyoming in eighty-five except for seven children of various sizes who now lived with her. Everyone assumed they were all her children… but they were not.

The youngsters were all pressed into service at the laundry to work long hours. They all labored hard in the stifling hot laundry back rooms while chattering away constantly in their singsong foreign tongue. Surprisingly, most of the children could also speak English. They had to attend the school and work late hours. Old Woo could actually read and write English, a secret that she never allowed her customers to discover.

Her standard reply to any question was a big smile and sing-song reply,

No spkeee anglish, please. If that did not end the conversation abruptly, she would call over one of her children to act as an interpreter for her. Over their evening rice bowls, the children and old Woo laughed loudly at their simpleton customers and what they went through to try and talk with her.

A one chair Barbershop directly across from the Manor House Hotel was a popular place to hang out. Terrell James Wiggins had been the town barber now for well over twelve years. He had arrived one day from Wisteria, West Virginia and stayed on for his health. He was a frail man. Medium sized with a sharp tongue and razor. He was always quick to make a joke and find the humor in the daily town events.

Everyone called him Terry since like a terrier, he would not let something go. He had a tendency to drive his jokes into the ground. He was well liked and had risen to become a member of the town council. His wife, an older woman, he courted for over five years, was a local farmer’s last daughter, of four, to wed. Her maiden name was Freda Harriet Belcher. She stayed at home on the old farm they inherited from her father, David Kevin Belcher. He died of natural causes a year and half after she wed Terry. She was an unadorned, jovial, friendly woman of some substantial girth if a little slow in mind, at times. Beaming, the happy couple both sang out loudly in the church choir every Sunday.

The small dusty Apothecary Shop next to Lem’s General Store, across from the Laundry did a thriving business. James Seton Miller the druggist did a lively back room trade helping the wranglers to get patched up. JS as they called him always wore an old army surgeon white coat. JS although only thirty-nine years old walked with a stoop shouldered gate and seemed to be brittle. His narrow and lined face seldom smiled. He had come walking into town dragging a small cart behind him with his potions and drugs one day in seventy-one and just set up shop. He supposedly walked all the way from Portland, Maine looking for a quiet place to settle.

He was a loner who lived in the back of his shop and seldom was seen far from it during day light hours. JS was forever busy mixing up some potion or medication. The lantern in his shop burned late into the night. It was rumored that strange shadowy figures appeared at his rear door to sell him herbs, roots and dried animal parts under the cloak of night.

JS also dispensed his own extraordinary home brewed elixir for ‘special’ medical purposes to his night visitors. Many of the church going citizens believed he was a black Satanist, who had acquired an unusual Indian skull collection that he used for unspeakable bizarre and evil purposes. The accusation existed as a whispered reality, but never was stated openly to him.

At the far end of the street above the jailhouse were seven small clean frame houses all in two rows facing each other; five owned by each of the town council members who enjoyed their own conversation in the evening. The other two surprisingly belonged to Old Woo who rented them out through her agent, Herbert Jamison Blanding, an elderly man who lived in a modest house about a half mile out of town to the southeast. He had been a cowpuncher up from Waco, Texas who worked the Longhorn spread for ten years before suffering a serious back injury during a night stampede. He never fully recovered and moved close to town.

On the north end of town, sitting a hundred yards back across from the Cantina was a rambling one-story red boarding house. It was now known as Brown’s Boarding House. The name was derived from the past when the building was first erected and was originally painted brown. It was initially referred to as ‘the brown boarding house’ when giving strangers directions but was refined to the present name.

When constructed, it had been a modest four-room building with three rooms for rent but at the last count had over twenty due to a continual renovation process. The current owner, one Malacca Ferrell Trevino, was an ugly, greasy corpulent man who poked into every lodger’s personal affairs. He had arrived in town only three years back and paid in cash for the boarding house. No questions asked. No answers given.

The owner and seller, Salmon Gertermander, a small German, who spoke with a heavy accent, left the following day and had not been heard of since. It now resembled a beehive maze of tiny rooms with paper-thin walls. You could rent one for three dollars a month. Although the house rules were only two per room, frequently occupants had long-term guests and crowded as many as six people in a room with several dogs and a chicken to boot.

An odd variety of tents and lean-tos had sprung up behind the building that were used for God knows what? Malacca sat like a toad on the boarding house’s small front porch all day watching and listening to all that was going on within his castle.

The crowning star of the town was the Manor House Hotel; the only full two-story building in town. It was situated in the approximate center of the town. It boasted a porch and balcony running all around its exterior and four stately fired red brick chimneys. A large restaurant was on the main floor and hotel rooms of sorts on the second. The Buffalo Bell Café restaurant was the vital center for the towns citizen’s evening dining gatherings. Anyone who didn’t cook or who craved company came there for a home cooked meal at ten cents a plate or fifteen cents for the ‘extra special plate’ of the day. The owner, cook and manager of the Buffalo Bell Café, was one Mrs. Ivory Lorry McGinty.

She was a large heavy-set, scarlet haired Irish woman who bullied her clients but made sure they—Was well fed. She came into town from Scranton, Pennsylvania about fifteen years ago, put up her tent and just started to cook good solid meals. She arrived with three