Nicholson chuckled. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really that upset about it. I figure that sooner or later, Marty will decide between the two of them and then settle down to get married and have children, and she’ll let me buy her mine at a reasonable price. If you put the Argosy and the Golden Queen together, you know, it would be the biggest mining operation in this part of the country.”
“That thought crossed my mind,” Bo said, not mentioning that at the time he had been trying to decide whether or not Lawrence Nicholson was really the ringleader of the Deadwood Devils.
Nicholson nodded and bid them a good night. As the three men strolled on down the street, Scratch asked, “How would you feel about comin’ to Mexico with us, Chloride?”
“What, you mean you want to associate with an old-timer like me?” Chloride asked with a disgusted snort.
Scratch grinned. “I reckon we’ve sorta got used to havin’ you around.”
“Well, thanks but no thanks. I got a job drivin’ for Miss Sutton, and I intend to keep it.” Chloride grinned under his bushy mustache. “Besides, I got a feelin’ that bein’ around the Golden Queen’s gonna be pretty entertainin’ once those two young fellas are all healed up.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Bo said. He paused and looked across the street. The Red Top Café sat there, closed and dark. Bo couldn’t help but think about how nice it would have been to walk into the warmth of that place, to have a bowl of stew and a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, to look across the counter and see Sue Beth Pendleton with a friendly smile on her face . . .
“‘Smile and smile, and be a villain,’” he murmured.
“What’s that?” Scratch asked.
Bo shook his head. “Nothing.” He paused. “Wind’s turned around to the south. It feels a little warmer already. Won’t be long before the snow’s all gone, and we can light a shuck for Mexico.”
Built on dreams. Forged in blood. Defended with
bullets. The town called Fury is home to the bravest
pioneers to ever stake a claim in the harsh,
unforgiving land of Arizona Territory.
In William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone’s
blockbuster series, the settlers take in a
mysterious stranger with deadly secrets—
and deadlier enemies . . .
Turn the page for an exciting preview of
A Town Called Fury: Redemption
Coming in July 2011
Wherever Pinnacle Books are sold
PROLOGUE
29 October, 1928
Mr. J. Carlton Blander, Editor
Livermore and Beedle Publishing
New York, New York
Dear Carlton,
Thank you so much for pointing me toward this Fury story! I know you didn’t mean for me to get a “wild hare” (or is that “wild hair”?) and just go charging out to Arizona at the drop of your not-inconsequential hat, but that’s exactly what I did. The story runs deeper than you could have known—or the sketchy reference books say, for that matter—and I found a number of the participants still alive and kicking, and best of all, talking!
As you know, the story actually begins long before the events you provided me to spin into literary fodder. They begin in 1866, when famed wagon master Jedediah Fury was hired by a small troupe of travelers to lead them West, from Kansas City to California. Jedediah was accompanied on this mission by his twenty-year-old son, Jason, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, they being the last of his living family after the Civil War. Jedediah was no newcomer to leading pilgrims West. He’d been traveling those paths since after the War of 1812.
I have not been able to ascertain the names of all the folks who were in the train, but what records I could scrounge up (along with the memories of those still living) have provided me with the following partial roster: the “Reverend” Louis Milcher, his wife (Lavinia) and seven children, ages five through fifteen; Hamish MacDonald, widower, with two half-grown children—a boy and a girl, Matthew and Megan, roughly the ages of Jedediah’s children; Salmon and Cordelia Kendall, with two children (Sammy, Jr. and Peony, called Piney); Randall and Miranda Nordstrom, no children (went back East or on to California—there is some contention about this—in 1867); Ezekiel and Eliza Morton, single daughter Electa, twenty-seven (to be the schoolmarm) and elder daughter Europa Morton Greggs, married to Milton Griggs, blacksmith and wheelwright (no children); Zachary and Suzannah Morton (no children), Zachary being Ezekiel’s elder brother; a do-it-yourself doctor, Michael Morelli, wife Olympia, and their two young children (Constantine and Helen); Saul and Rachael Cohen and their three young sons. There were a few other families, but they were not listed and no one could recall their names, most likely because they later went back East or traveled farther West.
The train (which also contained livestock in the forms of a number of saddle horses and breeding stock, a greater deal of cattle, goats, and hogs—mostly that of Hamish MacDonald and the Morton families—and, of all things, a piano owned by the Milchers) left for the West in the spring of 1866. It was led by Fury, with the help of his three trusty hirelings. I could only dig up one of the names here: a Ward Wanamaker, who later became the town’s deputy until his murder several years later (which follows herein).
Most of the wagon train members survived Indian attacks (Jedediah Fury was himself killed by Comanche, I believe, about halfway West, several children died, and Hamish MacDonald died when his wagon tumbled down a mountainside, after he took a trail he was advised not to attempt), visiting wild settlements where now stand real towns, and withstanding highly inclement weather. About three-fifths of the way across Arizona, they decided to stop and put down stakes.
The place they chose was fortunate, because it was right next to the only water for forty or fifty miles, both west and east, and it was close enough to the southernmost tip of the Bradshaws to make the getting of timber relatively easy. There was good grazing to be had, and the Morton clan made good use of it. Their homestead still survives to this day as a working ranch, as do the large homes they built for themselves. Young Seth Todd, the last of the Mortons (and Electa’s grandson) owns and runs it.
South of the town was where Hamish MacDonald’s son, Matthew, set up his cattle operation, which had been his late father’s dream. He also bred fine Morgan horses, the only such breeder in the then territory of Arizona. His sister, Megan, ran the bank both before and after she married, she having the head for figures that Matthew never possessed.
For the first few years, everyone else lived inside the town walls, whose fortress-like perimeter proved daunting to both Indians and white scofflaws, and the town itself became a regular stopover for wagon trains heading both east and west.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What concerns us here is the spring of 1871, the year that gunfighter Ezra Welk went to meet his maker. Former marshal Jason Fury (now a tall but spare man in his eighties, with all his own teeth and most all of his hair, and, certainly, all of his mental capacities) was very much surprised that I was there, asking questions about something “so inconsequential” as the demise of Ezra Welk.
“ Inconsequential?!” I said, as surprised by his use of the word as its use in this context.
“You heard me, boy,” he snapped. “Salmon Kendall was a better newsman than you, clear back fifty or sixty years!”