Hell on the Prairie Read online

  Western Fictioneers Presents:

  WOLF CREEK: Hell on the Prairie

  By Ford Fargo

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Western Fictioneers

  Cover design by L. J. Washburn and Troy D. Smith

  Cover painting: The Flight by Frederic Remington (public domain)

  Western Fictioneers logo design by

  Jennifer Smith-Mayo

  Smashwords Licensing Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this ebook without purchasing it and it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Wolf Creek: Showdown at Demon’s Drop is a work of fiction. Though actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author except for the inclusion of actual historical facts. Similarities of characters or names used within to any person – past, present, or future – are coincidental except where actual historical characters are purposely interwoven.

  Visit our website at www.westernfictioneers.com

  Beneath the mask, Ford Fargo is not one but a posse of America's leading western authors who have pooled their talents to create a series of rip-snortin', old fashioned sagebrush sagas. Saddle up. Read ‘em Cowboy! These are the legends of Wolf Creek.

  THE WRITERS OF WOLF CREEK, AND THEIR CHARACTERS

  Bill Crider - Cora Sloane, schoolmarm

  Phil Dunlap - Rattlesnake Jake, bounty hunter

  Wayne Dundee – Seamus O’Connor, deputy marshal

  James J. Griffin - Bill Torrance, owner of the livery stable

  Jerry Guin - Deputy Marshal Quint Croy

  Douglas Hirt - Marcus Sublette, schoolteacher and headmaster

  L. J. Martin - Angus “Spike” Sweeney, blacksmith

  Matthew P. Mayo - Rupert "Rupe" Tingley, town drunk

  Kerry Newcomb - James Reginald de Courcey, artist with a secret

  Cheryl Pierson - Derrick McCain, farmer

  Robert J. Randisi - Dave Benteen, gunsmith

  James Reasoner - G.W. Satterlee, county sheriff

  Frank Roderus - John Hix, barber

  Troy D. Smith - Charley Blackfeather, scout; Sam Gardner, town marshal

  Clay More - Logan Munro, town doctor

  Chuck Tyrell - Billy Below, young cowboy; Sam Jones, gambler

  Jackson Lowry - Wilson “Wil” Marsh, photographer

  L. J. Washburn - Ira Breedlove, owner of the Wolf’s Den Saloon

  Matthew Pizzolato - Wesley Quaid, drifter

  THE WOLF CREEK SERIES:

  Book 1 Bloody Trail

  Book 2 Kiowa Vengeance

  Book 3 Murder in Dogleg City

  Book 4 The Taylor County War

  Book 5 Showdown at Demon’s Drop

  Book 6 Hell on the Prairie

  Book 7 The Quick and the Dying

  Appearing as Ford Fargo in this episode:

  HELL ON THE PRAIRIE…………Troy D. Smith

  DRAG RIDER……………………..Chuck Tyrell

  THE OATH………………………...Clay More

  IT TAKES A MAN………………...Cheryl Pierson

  ASA PEPPER’S PLACE…………..Jerry Guin

  MULESKINNERS: JUDGE NOT…Jacquie Rogers

  NEW BEGINNINGS ………...……James J. Griffin

  INTRODUCTION

  In Wolf Creek, everyone has a secret.

  That includes our author, Ford Fargo—but we have decided to make his identity an open secret. Ford Fargo is the “house name” of Western Fictioneers—the only professional writers’ organization devoted exclusively to the traditional western, and which includes many of the top names working in the genre today.

  Wolf Creek is our playground.

  It is a fictional town in 1871 Kansas. Each WF member participating in our project has created his or her own “main character,” and each chapter in every volume of our series will be primarily written by a different writer, with their own townsperson serving as the principal point-of-view character for that chapter (or two, sometimes.) It will be sort of like a television series with a large ensemble cast; it will be like one of those Massive Multi-player Role-playing Games you can immerse yourself in online. And it is like nothing that has ever been done in the western genre before.

  This particular volume is the first of our Wolf Creek books to be an anthology, rather than a collaborative novel- we’ll do this from time to time in order to bring more depth to our characters.

  You can explore our town and its citizens at our website if you wish:

  http://wolfcreekkansas.yolasite.com/

  Or you can simply turn this page, and step into the dusty streets of Wolf Creek.

  Just be careful. It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to die there.

  Troy D. Smith

  President, Western Fictioneers

  Wolf Creek series editor

  HELL ON THE PRAIRIE

  By

  Troy D. Smith

  “Hell on the Prairie!” Marshal Sam Gardner slammed the newspaper onto his desk in disgust.

  “Did you read this trash?” he asked his deputies.

  Quint Croy shrugged. “I seen it, yeah. When that drummer coming in on the train from Wichita brought it in here, and said you might like to have it. I never picked it up and read it, though.”

  “How about you?” Sam asked the other deputy, Seamus O’Connor.

  The huge Irishman shrugged as well. “I skimmed over it some.”

  Sam grunted. “Well, I guess you’re too damn tall to read anything too close.”

  Sam and Quint were both puzzled over that comment, but their boss’s comments often puzzled them, so they let it go.

  “Listen to this,” he said, picking the paper back up. “ ‘Sodom and Gomorrah would blush, we are told, at the vice and iniquity that run rampant in the southern end of Wolf Creek, the area that locals have given the appellation ‘Dogleg City.’ It is said that Negroes, Mexicans, and Celestials have the run of that neighborhood, making it into a heathen Empire where white Christian lives are as cheap as they were in Nero’s Rome.’ ”

  “Well, that’s malarkey, right there,” Seamus said. “We ain’t even got that many Mexicans this time of year.”

  The marshal ignored him. “But this!” he thundered, jabbing the page with his forefinger. “This is what really chaps my hide. Listen!”

  Quint stifled a yawn. He had the graveyard shift, which had ended two hours before, and was having trouble concentrating on anything other than his awaiting cot.

  “‘Nor is the so-called reputable part of town much better,’” Sam read aloud, “as corpses are stacking up like cordwood in the town square. Wolf Creek is developing a reputation as one of the most ‘wide-open’ towns on the frontier, its legacy being written in the blood of its hapless denizens. It has truly earned the sobriquet so aptly bestowed upon it –Hell on the Prairie.’”

  “What does it mean by ‘hatless denizens’?” Quint asked, his voice a little slurred by fatigue.

  “Sobriquet is Mexican for hat, I think,” Seamus said with a sly grin.

  Sam spared them an annoyed glance, then continued.

  “‘Much of the blame for the town’s unfettered lawlessness can be laid at the feet of the itinerant pistolero the town fathers have employed to organize Wolf Creek’s constabulary, one Samuel Horace Gardner.’”

  Seamus braced himself for the wave of fury that
would surely be flowing from the marshal at that accusation. Quint yawned again.

  “‘Marshal Gardner,’” Sam continued, “‘son of a prominent Illinois attorney who often crossed paths in the courtroom with Honest Abe Lincoln himself, by all accounts acquitted himself with considerable gallantry in the recent War of Rebellion.’”

  Seamus brightened. “Here, now, Sam,” he said. “That sounds nice enough.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Sam said. “Listen to what comes next.”

  Sam rattled the paper, then read on.

  “‘Tragically, Mssr. Gardner has squandered his great promise, and his noble bloodline, descending into a veritable maelstrom of immorality and vice; a profligate gambler with his lecherous fingers in sundry licentious pies, Gardner is widely considered to be a puffed, preening popinjay. Of late he has adopted the affectation of never being seen in public without a silver-headed cane, to draw attention and sympathy to a wound he received whilst failing to protect his town from a horde of leftover Secessionists.’”

  “Mess yer Gardner?” Quint asked, puzzled.

  “M’sieur,” Seamus said, no longer wishing to toy with his exhausted comrade. “It’s a fancy way of sayin’ mister.”

  Quint shook his head. “There’s an awful lot of foreign words in this newspaper. I don’t understand half of what this jasper is sayin’.”

  “Well,” Seamus replied, “it is a St. Louis paper, after all.”

  “What this jasper is saying,” Sam declared, “is that every misdeed since Cain struck down Abel can be laid at my door, and I am unfit for my position.”

  “I’d like to see him try to keep a lid on this kettle,” Quint said, indignant on his boss’s behalf. “I doubt if there’s a man alive who could do half as good a job as you do, Marshal.”

  “Hear, hear,” Seamus said. “A hearty amen to that.”

  Sam sighed. “I appreciate your loyalty, boys. But if this keeps up, I may be out of a job.”

  “What are we gonna do about it?” Quint asked.

  “Go over to the Wolf Creek Expositor,” Sam said, “and fetch David Appleford over here, the grinning weasel.”

  Seamus was puzzled. “The Expositor’s a local paper,” he said. “Appleford has no hand in what’s being printed in St. Louis.”

  “He has no direct hand,” Sam said. “But the Wichita papers picked up on the foolishness he’s been printing here in Wolf Creek, and now the St. Louis rags are picking it up from them. Before you know it the whole country will be printing this horseshit. Our town fathers are a herd of asses, but I don’t think they want their city known as ‘Hell on the Prairie’.”

  “I don’t know,” Seamus said. “I think it has sort of a ring to it, if you ask me.”

  “No one did. Just get Appleford in here. And wake up Quint and tell the poor boy to find a better place to snooze than my office chair.”

  A few minutes later, Seamus herded David Appleford through the door, a rough hand on his shoulder.

  “Hello, Marshal,” Appleford said, smiling uncomfortably. “Can I do something for you?”

  Sam shoved the paper at him. “Read this.”

  Appleford bent over the desk. His smile broadened, and became sincere.

  “Hell on the Prairie!” he said. “The St. Louis Dispatch has picked up my nickname for Dogleg City. Look, they even mention my name near the end, as a ‘voice of civilization crying out in the wilderness’.”

  “You’ll be crying out in the wilderness, all right,” Sam said. “It’s bad enough you make these wild claims here in town, now they’re blowing around the damned countryside like tumbleweeds.”

  “Why, Marshal,” Appleford said. “Sometimes your profanity verges on poetry.”

  “And sometimes,” Seamus said, bending over the wiry editor, “my foot verges on your arse. It’s vergin’ right now, as a matter of fact.”

  Appleford did his best to ignore the large Irishman.

  “Marshal,” Appleford said. “Nothing sells newspapers quite as well as a truth no one else is willing to articulate.”

  Sam’s right eyebrow arched. “By God, sir, you do have some brass,” he said.

  “Put yourself in my place,” Appleford said. “Consider what has happened in the past few months. Children and schoolteachers shot and trampled in the street. The whole town barricaded up to defend against an attack by Kiowa Indians. An old-fashioned duel. Bounty hunters and gamblers shooting it out in saloons. A range war outside town. More schoolchildren shot. An old lady gets her brains blown all over the front door of the Methodist Church, and the preacher’s wife gets kidnapped right from under your deputy’s nose. If that’s not going to hell, I’d sure like to know how you’d have me describe it.”

  Sam grimaced. “I don’t deny,” he said, “we’ve been having an active spell. But criticizing this office doesn’t make things any better. It just contributes to more disrespect and more disregard for the law.”

  “I report the news, marshal, and I call it like I see it.”

  Sam nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a lot to be said for that,” he said at length. “I call it like I see it, too. Fact is, some things have come to my attention lately. One or two little secrets about our esteemed newspaperman that I’m sure the good folks of Wolf Creek would find quite newsworthy. My biggest decision would be which one to start with.”

  Appleford blanched.

  “Are you –are you threatening me, Marshal?”

  Sam grinned, “Why, I’m not sure, old hoss. Depends on whether you think your little secrets are threatening or not.”

  They were interrupted by the front door slamming open. Mason Wright, the baker, rushed through it, red-cheeked and breathless.

  “Marshal Gardner!” he exclaimed. “Thank God you’re here!”

  “Hello, Mason,” Sam said. “I don’t recall ordering any pies, but I’m never averse to one.”

  “I ain’t here about pies, Marshal! There’s a fella in front of the Lucky Break says he’s looking for you. Says if you don’t come quick he’s gonna go inside and start shootin’ whoever strikes his fancy.”

  “That’s odd,” Sam said. “On a normal day, there’d be a good five or six men at the Lucky Break who’d shoot anybody who threatened to break up one of their card games.”

  “This fella says his name is Lane Downing,” Mason said.

  “That explains it, I guess,” Sam said. “No one wants to get on his bad side.”

  “Lane Downing?” Seamus asked.

  “I forget you haven’t been out west long, Seamus,” Sam said.

  “Lane Downing,” Appleford explained, “is one of the most famous gunslingers in the west. He’s left a trail of corpses in his wake from here to San Francisco. They say his speed with that Colt of his is unnatural.”

  “I suppose I’d better go see what he wants,” Sam said, standing up.

  “I’ll get the shotgun,” Seamus said.

  “No need for that,” Sam said. “I can handle him.”

  David Appleford gasped audibly. “Marshal!” he said. “You can’t be serious –you need to get a posse together. You can’t go out there alone!”

  “Well, Mr. Appleford –not to be impolite, but he didn’t invite everybody, just me.”

  Appleford wasn’t convinced. “Look, you don’t have to do this to prove anything, because of what I’ve been writing. No one would expect you to do that. Any sensible man would take reinforcements to face Lane Downing.”

  Sam took his hat from the rack. “I’ll be back directly, Seamus. And Mason –you have set my mind on pies, can you run fetch me one of those rhubarbs?”

  “Um, yes sir, marshal,” the baker said.

  Sam passed through the open door. He did not take his cane.

  While walking westward toward the Lucky Break, he was joined by Samuel Jones, that establishment’s house gambler and an accomplished gunfighter in his own right.

  “Hello, Marshal,” Jones said.

  “Hello there, other Sam,” the
marshal replied. “What brings you out this time of day?”

  “I was just on my way to work, and someone told me Lane Downing is causing a ruckus over at the Lucky Break. I thought maybe you could use an extra gun.”

  “That’s real decent of you, Samuel,” the marshal said. “But you just go on to work, I don’t need an army to deal with one malcontent.”

  Jones nodded knowingly. “I’ll stay close by, just in case,” he said.

  “Whatever suits you.”

  Suddenly, Sam Gardner stopped in his tracks. He slowly looked back over his shoulder.

  Seamus was following him at a discreet distance, lugging the shotgun. David Appleford walked beside the deputy, notepad in hand. Seamus tipped his hat at his boss.

  “I feel like I’m leading a wagon train,” the marshal said.

  He finished the trek to the Lucky Break. Jones dropped back, to walk beside the deputy and the newspaperman.

  There was no mistaking Lane Downing. He stood in the middle of the street, smiling wickedly from under a broad sombrero.

  “I hear you were looking for me,” Sam Gardner said.

  “You heard right,” Downing responded. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up.”

  “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.”

  “You’re right again,” Downing said. “But you met Galan Hagney, up in Denver, a couple of years back. You shot him dead, in fact.”

  “Seems like I shot several people up in Denver, a couple of years back, I didn’t bother keeping them straight. What was this one to you?”

  “Well, to be honest, Marshal, I never met him, neither. But his brother’s a friend of mine, and I offered to even the score for him.”