Fiction: Gunsmoke in Mesa View Gulch

The lean, scruffy outlaw had plenty of space at the bar, and the conversations swirling around him in the saloon carefully omitted any reference to him.

He heard a feminine voice behind him, and the voice was saying his name: “Barker Krebs.” He swiveled on his barstool and caught a small fist with his nose. He bellowed briefly and began bleeding into his bushy moustache. He stared hatefully in the direction from which the offending hand had come.

There he saw a woman. She was built along the lines an Amazon if the designer had been instructed to bring the project in under budget. That made her five feet tall, counting the boots and hat.

“Barker Krebs,” she said, “you killed my daddy, burned our home…”

“I’ve never seen you before, girl!”

“And had unnatural relations with what would have been a prize-winning watermelon.”

Krebs’s eyes went wide, and he brought his hand down from his bleeding nostrils. “Sarah Jane Buonarroti. I thought…”

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Fiction: The Last Reunion of the Capper Gang

As the day wore on and the chloroform wore off, Silas Capper regained consciousness. He wanted to rub the bump on his head but found he couldn’t move his hands. He shook his head to clear it and felt something around his neck that brought him fully awake.

He opened his eyes and looked down to see three former associates standing near the horse he sat atop. This forced a great bellow of laughter from Silas.

“Well, now! Haven’t the three of you gone to some kind of trouble for this reunion. I’d been thinking just last month that it’d been too long since I’d seen any of you. And now, here we are, with me on my horse, hands tied behind my back, the guest of honor at a necktie party. You sure gone and arranged quite a meeting, I’ll say!”

Capper’s former associates – Juan, Luther, and Beak – stared up at him silently.

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