Hell on the Prairie

Western Fictioneers Presents:

WOLF CREEK: Hell on the Prairie

By Ford Fargo

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Western Fictioneers

Cover design by L. J. Washburn and Troy D. Smith

Cover painting:
The Flight
by Frederic
Remington (public domain)

Western Fictioneers logo design by

Jennifer Smith-Mayo

Smashwords Licensing
Notes

This ebook is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given
away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with
other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person.
If you are reading this ebook without purchasing it and it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of the author.

Wolf Creek: Showdown at
Demon’s Drop
is a work of fiction. Though
actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious
manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and
imagination of the author except for the inclusion of actual
historical facts. Similarities of characters or names used within
to any person – past, present, or future – are coincidental except
where actual historical characters are purposely
interwoven.

Visit our website at www.westernfictioneers.com

Beneath the mask, Ford Fargo is not one but
a posse of America's leading western authors who have pooled their
talents to create a series of rip-snortin', old fashioned sagebrush
sagas. Saddle up. Read ‘em Cowboy! These are the legends of Wolf
Creek.

THE WRITERS OF WOLF CREEK, AND THEIR
CHARACTERS

Bill Crider - Cora Sloane, schoolmarm

Phil Dunlap - Rattlesnake Jake, bounty hunter

Wayne Dundee – Seamus O’Connor, deputy marshal

James J. Griffin - Bill Torrance, owner of the
livery stable

Jerry Guin - Deputy Marshal Quint Croy

Douglas Hirt - Marcus Sublette, schoolteacher and
headmaster

L. J. Martin - Angus “Spike” Sweeney, blacksmith

Matthew P. Mayo - Rupert "Rupe" Tingley, town
drunk

Kerry Newcomb - James Reginald de Courcey, artist
with a secret

Cheryl Pierson - Derrick McCain, farmer

Robert J. Randisi - Dave Benteen, gunsmith

James Reasoner - G.W. Satterlee, county sheriff

Frank Roderus - John Hix, barber

Troy D. Smith - Charley Blackfeather, scout; Sam
Gardner, town marshal

Clay More - Logan Munro, town doctor

Chuck Tyrell - Billy Below, young cowboy; Sam Jones,
gambler

Jackson Lowry - Wilson “Wil” Marsh, photographer

L. J. Washburn - Ira Breedlove, owner of the Wolf’s
Den Saloon

Matthew Pizzolato - Wesley Quaid, drifter

THE WOLF CREEK SERIES:

Book 1
Bloody
Trail

Book 2
Kiowa
Vengeance

Book 3
Murder
in Dogleg City

Book 4
The
Taylor County War

Book 5
Showdown at Demon’s Drop

Book 6
Hell
on the Prairie

Book 7
The
Quick and the Dying

Appearing as Ford Fargo in this episode:

HELL ON THE PRAIRIE…………Troy D. Smith

DRAG RIDER……………………..Chuck Tyrell

THE OATH………………………...Clay More

IT TAKES A MAN………………...Cheryl Pierson

ASA PEPPER’S PLACE…………..Jerry Guin

MULESKINNERS: JUDGE NOT…Jacquie Rogers

NEW BEGINNINGS ………...……James J. Griffin

INTRODUCTION

In Wolf Creek, everyone has a secret.

That includes our author, Ford
Fargo—but we have decided to make his identity an
open
secret. Ford Fargo is the
“house name” of Western Fictioneers—the only professional writers’
organization devoted exclusively to the traditional western, and
which includes many of the top names working in the genre
today.

Wolf Creek is our playground.

It is a fictional town in 1871 Kansas. Each
WF member participating in our project has created his or her own
“main character,” and each chapter in every volume of our series
will be primarily written by a different writer, with their own
townsperson serving as the principal point-of-view character for
that chapter (or two, sometimes.) It will be sort of like a
television series with a large ensemble cast; it will be like one
of those Massive Multi-player Role-playing Games you can immerse
yourself in online. And it is like nothing that has ever been done
in the western genre before.

This particular volume is the first of our
Wolf Creek books to be an anthology, rather than a collaborative
novel- we’ll do this from time to time in order to bring more depth
to our characters.

You can explore our town and its citizens at
our website if you wish:

http://wolfcreekkansas.yolasite.com/

Or you can simply turn this page, and step
into the dusty streets of Wolf Creek.

Just be careful. It’s a nice place to visit,
but you wouldn’t want to die there.

Troy D. Smith

President, Western Fictioneers

Wolf Creek
series editor

HELL ON THE PRAIRIE

By

Troy D. Smith

“
Hell on the
Prairie
!” Marshal Sam Gardner slammed the newspaper
onto his desk in disgust.

“
Did you read this trash?” he asked
his deputies.

Quint Croy shrugged. “I seen it, yeah. When
that drummer coming in on the train from Wichita brought it in
here, and said you might like to have it. I never picked it up and
read it, though.”

“
How about you?” Sam asked the other
deputy, Seamus O’Connor.

The huge Irishman shrugged as well. “I
skimmed over it some.”

Sam grunted. “Well, I guess you’re too damn
tall to read anything too close.”

Sam and Quint were both puzzled over that
comment, but their boss’s comments often puzzled them, so they let
it go.

“
Listen to this,” he said, picking the
paper back up. “ ‘Sodom and Gomorrah would blush, we are told, at
the vice and iniquity that run rampant in the southern end of Wolf
Creek, the area that locals have given the appellation ‘Dogleg
City.’ It is said that Negroes, Mexicans, and Celestials have the
run of that neighborhood, making it into a heathen Empire where
white Christian lives are as cheap as they were in Nero’s Rome.’
”

“
Well, that’s malarkey, right there,”
Seamus said. “We ain’t even got that many Mexicans this time of
year.”

The marshal ignored him. “But this!” he
thundered, jabbing the page with his forefinger. “This is what
really chaps my hide. Listen!”

Quint stifled a yawn. He had the graveyard
shift, which had ended two hours before, and was having trouble
concentrating on anything other than his awaiting cot.

“‘
Nor is the so-called reputable part
of town much better,’” Sam read aloud, “as corpses are stacking up
like cordwood in the town square. Wolf Creek is developing a
reputation as one of the most ‘wide-open’ towns on the frontier,
its legacy being written in the blood of its hapless denizens. It
has truly earned the sobriquet so aptly bestowed upon it –Hell on
the Prairie.’”

“
What does it mean by ‘hatless
denizens’?” Quint asked, his voice a little slurred by
fatigue.

“
Sobriquet is Mexican for hat, I
think,” Seamus said with a sly grin.

Sam spared them an annoyed glance, then
continued.

“‘
Much of the blame for the town’s
unfettered lawlessness can be laid at the feet of the
itinerant
pistolero
the town
fathers have employed to organize Wolf Creek’s constabulary, one
Samuel Horace Gardner.’”

Seamus braced himself for the wave of fury
that would surely be flowing from the marshal at that accusation.
Quint yawned again.

“‘
Marshal Gardner,’” Sam continued,
“‘son of a prominent Illinois attorney who often crossed paths in
the courtroom with Honest Abe Lincoln himself, by all accounts
acquitted himself with considerable gallantry in the recent War of
Rebellion.’”

Seamus brightened. “Here, now, Sam,” he
said. “That sounds nice enough.”

“
For what it’s worth,” Sam said.
“Listen to what comes next.”

Sam rattled the paper, then read on.

“‘
Tragically, Mssr. Gardner has
squandered his great promise, and his noble bloodline, descending
into a veritable maelstrom of immorality and vice; a profligate
gambler with his lecherous fingers in sundry licentious pies,
Gardner is widely considered to be a puffed, preening popinjay. Of
late he has adopted the affectation of never being seen in public
without a silver-headed cane, to draw attention and sympathy to a
wound he received whilst failing to protect his town from a horde
of leftover Secessionists.’”

“
Mess yer Gardner?” Quint asked,
puzzled.

“
M’sieur,” Seamus said, no longer
wishing to toy with his exhausted comrade. “It’s a fancy way of
sayin’ mister.”

Quint shook his head. “There’s an awful lot
of foreign words in this newspaper. I don’t understand half of what
this jasper is sayin’.”

“
Well,” Seamus replied, “it
is
a St. Louis paper, after
all.”

“
What this jasper is saying,” Sam
declared, “is that every misdeed since Cain struck down Abel can be
laid at my door, and I am unfit for my position.”

“
I’d like to see him try to keep a lid
on this kettle,” Quint said, indignant on his boss’s behalf. “I
doubt if there’s a man alive who could do half as good a job as you
do, Marshal.”

“
Hear, hear,” Seamus said. “A hearty
amen to that.”

Sam sighed. “I appreciate your loyalty,
boys. But if this keeps up, I may be out of a job.”

“
What are we gonna do about it?” Quint
asked.

“
Go over to the
Wolf Creek Expositor
,” Sam said, “and fetch
David Appleford over here, the grinning weasel.”

Seamus was puzzled.
“
The Expositor’s
a local
paper,” he said. “Appleford has no hand in what’s being printed in
St. Louis.”

“
He has no direct hand,” Sam said.
“But the Wichita papers picked up on the foolishness he’s been
printing here in Wolf Creek, and now the St. Louis rags are picking
it up from
them
. Before you
know it the whole country will be printing this horseshit. Our town
fathers are a herd of asses, but I don’t think they want their city
known as ‘Hell on the Prairie’.”

“
I don’t know,” Seamus said. “I think
it has sort of a ring to it, if you ask me.”

“
No one did. Just get Appleford in
here. And wake up Quint and tell the poor boy to find a better
place to snooze than my office chair.”

A few minutes later, Seamus herded David
Appleford through the door, a rough hand on his shoulder.

“
Hello, Marshal,” Appleford said,
smiling uncomfortably. “Can I do something for you?”