NEVER DIE TODAY
In His Arms She Was His to Discover. Would the War Forever Keep Them Apart?
As they careened to the left, to his surprise the wounded Iroquois was not in a spin. Though the pilot was dead, the co-pilot was flying. Once the olive green bird slapped the ground and the twin rotor-blades were still, maybe there was just enough room for the escort gunship to land and get them out if the blades were rotated. Unfortunately, while he turned the blades, no one would be shooting at Charlie.
THE LAST MUSTER
“Ain’t he the one killed Lee and Frank Lewis over some Mormon . . . a girl?” Joey was careful not to say what he was thinking. It was Judge that said all women were whores, and a lot of Mormon women were real pretty whores, especially Clara Williams, even if she was Jeremiah Beck’s! Joey certainly wasn’t afraid of Jeremiah Beck, even if his Uncle Jim had said Jeremiah Beck was dangerous! Nonetheless, unsure if Nate and Patrick would back him, Joey didn’t move.
“If I know Frank and Lee . . . they asked for it. Leave him to Clay . . . or Windel after Windel grows up . . .” Jim Davis turned to face Jeremiah. “That right . . . old friend . . . I mean about Frank and Lee asking for it?”
“You know me. I’d never kill a man ain’t tried me . . .” Jeremiah’s feet were set, and his open coat revealed his two pistols.
“Apart from Mexico . . . when we all had to kill without giving a man a chance . . . but even then you never liked it none . . .”
“Not like Judge. He always said killing’s . . . killing!”
“If he was here . . . you know he wouldn’t agree with me stopin’ the boys. He and Frank was real close . . . don’t matter none that Frank asked for what he got . . .”
A MEANDERING BROKEN ROAD
When Merlin Davis married Union Lieutenant David Lee — after Shiloh — the only thing she asked was he come home back from wherever the war took him and give her time to love him — though Bobby Lee and Stonewall Jackson were waiting where the Wilderness harbored mischief and friendly fire in Louis L’Amour’s old west.
From the Missouri Executive Order 44 — the infamous Extermination Order that was unrelenting against the Mormons — to the robbery of the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, Colorado, before Bob Parker became known as Butch Cassidy — though there were men who became legends, there were women just as legendary. In A Meandering Broken Road, there are some that were memorable like Constance Franklin who killed twice to save the man she loved — and Janis Little who abandoned the father of her unborn son to marry for money — but there was no one more unforgettable and original than Missy Gardet who when Michael Todd found her for sale on the Queen Isabell when the paddleboat docked in Memphis, she let him take her from what she had become — though he had no money and he had never been more than a horse trader and a drifter with a fast gun.