Tom Sheehan

A troop of Union Mounted Rifles, almost full strength with 73 men, came along a rocky and wooded ridge in Arkansas, the lay of the land about to change again, the War Between the States nearing two years of battle. Captain Franz Ludwig, troop commander, rode at the front with one of his two lieutenants. Ludwig, born in Germany into a military family, immigrated to America in 1847 with his family when he was 12 years old.

Tom Sheehan

Tracker Meglin, part mountain man, part villager, came into Forbes Village in a mad rush, hat gone, shirt flying, no weapons on his belt and no rifle in the saddle scabbard, and he was yelling for the sheriff, Duly Loften. His Paint stallion was in a lather as well.

Tom Sheehan

In the middle of the 19th century lived a widowed teacher in Independence, Missouri where trails to the rest of the country opened up. He was a dedicated teacher, a man of his own black cloth, and once in a while in his schoolroom he’d find a gleam in a student’s eye, or a formulation in an answer that totally and joyfully surprised him with its great promise. In a time like that he felt he was a hungry man sitting at a table suddenly set with a banquet meal.

Tom Sheehan

Wedge Holland could shoot as quickly as any man in all of Jingo Valley, which had a whole arsenal of gunmen who were both fast on the draw and excellent rifle marksmen. If the rough road didn’t keep passing stage coach riders awake, the many practice ranges along the road through the valley would, for each ranch kept up its own shooting range.

Tom Sheehan

The common factor with the guns-for-hire gang in Hatchet Falls, other than their love for Hatchet Falls on its own, was their contact man, their hiring agent, Quick’n’Dirty Harry Spillwater. Artful, cute as a kitten in the back of one’s mind, he sat in the Quarter Horse Saloon in Hatchet Falls every night for seven long and busy years running the most notorious guns-for-hire agency known in the west. Into his greasy palm on each settlement would go a percentage of the pay-off. S

Tom Sheehan

They were as diverse as flowers on a spring prairie, the ladies of Hatchet Falls, and they had been whisked there by gentlemen friends who otherwise were not so gentle but earned their living as hired gunmen. The ladies came in all sizes, shapes and personalities, as may be evident here, but they did manage to rule the hearth in their new homes … or else there’d be murder to pay.

Tom Sheehan

In the middle of turmoil and gunfire, the barkeep and owner of Land’s End Saloon, Palmer Brooksby, saw the familiar silhouette fall from outside against the large window of the saloon, and knew it was The Roadman, the way his odd hat was worn tipped at an angle, the broadness of the shoulders like the backside of an ox, and the twin holsters sitting at his beltline as custodians in the dark.

Tom Sheehan

A few Blackfoot tribal members said, joking or not but in all awareness of numbers, that Speedwing was half Indian, half white and half bird. The elders of the tribe laughed at this description, but held off on their decision on accepting his name as his final name, “to carry into history.”

Tom Sheehan

A note must be inserted here to testify that most of the information appearing in this chronicle was delivered to me in one hand-written, unbound document found in the attic of an old home in Crown Point, Indiana, through an intermediary, a former comrade in the 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, Korea, 1951, Sgt. Stan Kujawski, of “Automatic Wrist” and Chicago industrial league softball fame.

Tom Sheehan

His father was a jokester, Fisher MacKerell’d say, because the last thing he ever heard from him was a long and deep laugh, the echo of which followed him out of Gloucester harbor not far from Boston all the way to the town of Bush Hill on the Pecos River on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico.