Old Haunts Excerpt

Honest westerns. Full of dishonest characters.

 

Readers are giving Old Haunts great ratings. After two months, the new Steve Dancy Tale has nearly a hundred Amazon ratings for a score of 4.5 and a Goodreads ratings of 4.7. 

Here is an excerpt.

What happened next surprised me. The marshal cold-cocked him from behind with his pistol. The supposed Cutler offspring crumbled like a scarecrow cut from his supporting stick. He had been knocked out twice in as many hours. I bet this confrontation wasn’t how he had envisioned it in his imagination.

The marshal gave me a sideways glance. “What’s your beef with this man?”

“None. He seems to think he has a beef with me, but I never saw him before he accosted me on the train. I told him he was mistaken and asked him to return to his seat. This was the first I saw of him since.”

The marshal shook his head, “Well, I guess I gotta sort this out. I’ll hold him for a day or so. Damn, this morning started out nice and quiet.”

Sharp asked. “Ya need help with ‘em, marshal?”

“Ah do,” the marshal replied.

“Give ‘em a hand, Steve,” Sharp ordered.

“Jeff, I thought you were offering.”

“Me? Hell, it was you he wanted to kill. ’Sides, I’ll get our bags and have them sent over to the hotel. Meet ya at the marshal’s office.” He threw this last over his shoulder as he sauntered down the platform toward the baggage car.

I laughed and grabbed my assailant’s legs while the marshal lifted from the armpits.

“What’s your name?” the marshal asked as we stutter-stepped down the platform steps.

“Steve Dancy.”

“Staying?”

“The General Palmer … unless you can suggest better accommodations.”

“None better except Mrs. Prescott’s, but she full up. You say you never saw this man before?”

“Never. He claims I killed his father in a street fight in Nevada, but I live in California.”

“You the writer?”

“I am,” I was suddenly wary. My novels didn’t sell that well. “How did you know?”

“Not that common of a name. Read all your books. Good yarns. Unrealistic, but that’s to be expected.” He walked a couple more steps before adding, “Several of your stories take place in Nevada.”

This man was smarter than he appeared. “Yes, I lived in Nevada one summer. Many, many years ago.”

“Happen to kill anyone?”

I smiled. “Marshal, my books are all in fun.”

The marshal nodded toward the man we were carrying. “This man looked serious.” The marshal remained quiet for a few steps. “Many, many years ago there was a gunman named Dancy. Like I said, uncommon name hereabouts. That be you?”

 There was no question that this marshal was savvy enough to get the complete story out of the Cutler offspring. I decided to quit concealing my past.

“I am that Dancy … and twenty years ago I did kill the man he claims to be his father. Cutler had raped a woman and was trying to kill my friend. I approached him with my gun holstered. Things got out of hand and we both pulled. I was not charged … nor have I ever been charged for any crime. I didn’t deserve my reputation as a gunfighter, but stories grew. Get exaggerated. I do it myself in my books.” When the marshal didn’t say anything, I added, “Brian Cutler was a bad man. Worse, he did his criminal deeds for hire.”

“I see,” he finally said. “Nothing I can do about it anyway.” He smiled at me. “However, some of your exploits were in Colorado.”

An uncomfortable observation. “Passed through Denver many times and lived in Durango for a while. Used to own a house here. I gave it to Maggie McAllen as a wedding present.”

“That’s quite a wedding present. You must be nicely fixed.”

“I am,” I answered without elaboration.

“Hmmm,” was all he said.

We arrived at the marshal’s office and plopped our burden onto a narrow cot in a big empty cell. There was a cot against each wall, so this must have been a communal holding pen.

After locking the cell, the marshal asked, “Know Maggie’s pa?”

“Joseph?” He nodded. “On our way to visit him and Maggie’s family. We ride out tomorrow.” I paused. “I assume you know him?”

“You might say. He’s the one who got me started on your books. Also told me some yarns not in your books.”

“Joseph’s not talkative.”

“You sure got that right, but he can get downright chatty in the right circumstances.”

“What might those be? I’ve never seen that man chatty.”

“Late at night around a campfire with family and good sipping whiskey.”

That stopped me. “Are you related to Joseph McAllen?”

He hung the cell key on a peg behind his desk. “My uncle.”

A town named after Kit Carson should have a story.

 

A couple Steve Dancy Tales take place in Carson City. I like the town. I like it today and I like historic Carson City. Since statehood, it has always been the capital of Nevada which made it a political town with pretensions of civility. Virginia City, however, was twenty miles away and it rightly deserves its reputation as one of the rowdiest mining towns of the Old West. Until the mines played out in the 1880s, the Comstock Lode made Virginia City and Carson City very wealthy.

Carson City acted as a freight center and supply depot for the mines. Extensive flumes carried pine logs down the eastern slope of the Sierras to Carson City. Sawmills to finish these raw logs were a major city industry and the finished lumber shored up mine tunnels and provided boards for building above ground. The short run Virginia & Truckee Railroad transported timber, people, and foodstuffs from Carson City to Virginia City. At its peak, thirty-six trains a day passed between the two cities. The pair of towns were bustling, with the best housing, food, liquor, and entertainment that money could buy.

Here’s a description of Carson City excepted from The Shopkeeper. Steve Dancy and Jeff Sharp are just riding into town.

Carson City had been settled as a trading post less than thirty years earlier, so I should not have expected the sophistication of Denver or St. Louis. I had visited both cities, and neither was the primitive hinterland a New Yorker might expect. Carson City, on the other hand, lived up to the image of a new-made town populated by people who had nothing but wanted everything.

After we passed the railroad station and approached the statehouse, the town began to look a bit more established. The main thoroughfare was crowded with wagons, horses, and people bustling about with purpose. Although the commercial district had the same disheveled look as most of the other towns in the West, the residences along the side avenues set Carson City apart. Radiating off the central artery were numerous tree-lined lanes with houses substantial enough to indicate that people intended to stay awhile. In fact, some of these homes were large and well designed.

I glanced up another side lane with nice homes set back from the street. “Looks like there’s some money in Carson City. Settled money.”

“For a mine to prosper, you need two things: lumber to shore up the shafts an’ a way to transport your bullion to market. Trees an’ trains. Carson City has a lock on both. Sometimes I think we miners just toil for a bunch of shysters in starched collars.”

“Which reminds me, I want to buy some clothes while we’re here.”

Sharp pointed ahead. “That’s the new state capitol building. Wherever ya find politicians, ya’ll find haberdasheries.”

The stately capitol building looked sturdy and permanent, as befitted the only pretense to law and order in a society struggling against anarchy. The structure sat in the center of a city block, surrounded by a pleasant park with footpaths, trees, and neatly groomed grass. A white cupola with a silver roof capped the two-story sandstone building, giving it a Federal-style appearance that I had seldom seen west of the Continental Divide.

“Looks impressive.”

“Looks deceive.” Sharp spit. “A more corrupt state government you will not find.”

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Return to The Scene of My Crime

What happens when a relentless downpour, politics, and street gangs attack California?

I recently arrived back in California, a state that my latest book makes soggier than a wet biscuit. Deluge is my first disaster story. Usually I kill off a villain or two, but not an entire state. Without disclosing a spoiler, Deluge fits nicely in the disaster story genre, which means that the powers-that-be eventually listen to the smarty pants who keep proposing a wild scheme to save the day, or in this case, the state. Not having previously written in the genre, I had to do wide-ranging research. To my wife’s chagrin, I watched every disaster film produced in Tinsel Town.  Well, maybe not all of them, but the ones I watched ran the gamut from the still entertaining Twister, to the classic Andromeda Strain, to the recklessly realistic Sharknado. Needless to say, I had trouble sleeping for months.

Why a disaster story? Steve Dancy and his new wife insisted on being left alone for their honeymoon, so I needed to document other happenings. I always intended to do a follow-up to The Shut Mouth Society, but the sequel I have in mind requires my characters to age a bit, so they needed a transitional adventure. Now that I’ve given them one, they may not speak to me again. It should be okay. Since I’ve returned to Steve, Virginia, et al., they have time to get over being peeved.

I’m staying at my San Diego condo for three weeks. I going to do a little surfing and a lot of writing on the next Steve Dancy Tale. I plan to have the seventh in the series available by Christmas. So far, so good. I like the storyline and it has bad guys—and gals—aplenty. In the meantime, try Deluge. It’s the most adrenaline you’ll can experience while reclining in a Barcalounger.

Here’s a snippet:

Evarts did a quick reverse K-turn to get going in the opposite direction. As he accelerated down the slight incline, a rush of brown water came blowing across the road in front of him. It looked like a dozen fire hoses all sprayed in unison. If he tried to stop, he’d slide into the torrent, maybe sideways because of the slick pavement, so he pushed the gas pedal to the floorboard. Everyone except Evarts yelled as they hit the water. He gritted his teeth as he focused on timing a hard turn into the horizontal waterfall. When the water hit the truck, he had already turned into it as they blasted through the gush, emerging on the other side, the truck’s rear end swinging back and forth. Then he lost control. The truck spun around two full turns and righted itself, pointed down the road in the direction they had been heading. Lucky. He looked at his speedometer. He was rolling downhill at fifteen miles an hour. To hell with that. He punched it and they sped toward town.

The Shut Mouth Society

Deluge