Part One: Reconstruction
Chapter 1 - Catalysts
April 1865
New York, NY
"UNION VICTORY! PEACE!" the paper read, falling to the desk.
"How many times do you have to read it, before you can believe it?" asked the towering man in the shadowy corner.
"Just once," answered Marshall, "Just once, pop."
His father walked out, leaving his presence behind to further infect Marshall. He sat back down and grabbed the paper, pinning it up to his wide hazel eyes to read again. The ink spilled to red and blew out of Marshall's nerves, though his skin was always so red you could never tell a blush.
In a sudden, wild rage he crumbled the newspaper in his palms, and threw it into the wall. Blistering fireworks over the Manhattan isle illuminated the office, and Marshall's eye caught a different headline, an unread headline. He picked the paper back up and read the short article before ripping it and stuffing it in his pocket. Marshall pulled out stationary, quickly wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, which he brought up underneath his finely groomed mustache to seal, and addressed it to his father, "PRESIDENT & CEO of Trojan Railroads: Wyatt Kaleb Troy III"
Marshall Troy left the note on the desk, and his office never to return. He boarded the Boston Post Railway and took the 8:00 PM Trojan Bullet Express Train for Appomattox, VA...
Appomattox, VA
The tents stood pointlessly around the town. Ira leaned over, picked up the rest of his bags, and stopped laughing. The men were tired. Corporal Walker was lying in the empty cot, allowed to keep laughing by the tightly made bed beside him. Ira's time was up. Even though he was one of the only soldiers who wanted to stay, he was the one who was leaving. Ira was a stout man, always sharing a grin, even in the hardest days of the war. His eyes were as round as his cheeks and bluer than the morning sky. Just by looking at him you would never be able to tell he was one of the deadliest shots in the country.
"Well good luck, Sarge" the corporal said in a bitter slight.
After all that war, four years of bloodshed and death, he had to move on when the rest of them stayed on security detail. The war was over. The sniper column finished, but not dissolved. Ira Davis discharged from the 1st Battalion New York Sharpshooters; mustered out of his home amongst the Charlie Company. He carried away a severance pay hefty enough to fund a deep journey into the west. He would only take with him from the camp a New York Times newspaper and his modified rifle.
"Ten dollars," said the grizzly old man.
"I'll take it." Ira handed him the money and mounted the horse. He slipped his long rifle into a slot on the side of the horse and fixed his hat. Ira looked around. The war was finally over. He could not say it enough. He left Appomattox and began the ride west to his new homestead.
Mt. Hope, WV
The cell door slammed closed.
"What's your name, boy" the deputy asked.
The room was quiet. The kid looked at the deputy but did not answer.
"I said....what's your name?" The deputy stared at the top of his hat as the kid avoided eye contact, kickin' dirt on the floor. "You can't be older than fourteen-"
"The hell does it matter?"
The deputy held the kid’s gun-belt in the air to attract his attention, shaking it softly, luring his eyes, but even still they were gilded by the wild strands of dirty blonde hair peeking out from under his brand new white brimmed hat. That’s when the guard figured it out.
"You're Lady MacPherson's kid."
"Don't you say my momma's name..."
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"What's the matter, boy… scared I've said it before?"
"I'll kill ya"
The deputy punched his own palm in phony outrage. The kid didn't move, but sat in the center of the bench, calmly resting his shackled arms behind his back. The deputy opened the cell door intending to teach him a lesson. But directly after a turn of the key, the kid kicked off the bench, rolled back, slipped his shackled arms under his legs, and bounced forward off the back wall at the guard. As the deputy dropped the prisoner's belt and tried to draw his own pistol, the collision brought them both to the floor. In the scramble the kid sprung up, pinned the deputy face-down with his knees, and throttled his neck with his shackles. His kind features and naïve face were just diabolical façades, and that of his real temperament came to the surface as he brought the lawmen to the brink of death.
"Bill?" another deputy in the other room called, "Everything alright in there?"
The kid was busy fiddling with the keys to get his restraints off, but the door was already opening. So he abandoned the keys, slid across the floor to swipe his guns up, and kicked the door open the other way, guns blazing. The first three rounds he fired off, right, left, right... all hit the same target, the deputy closest who had called out. Three more bullets ...left, right, left, capped off the remaining two officers in the jailhouse. He fired at them with both arms crossed, the left one under the right one.
When the kid went back into the cell room to get the key and his belt, the original deputy was coming-to on the floor. "…Who...who are you?"
Jimmy MacPherson took his sweet time with the answer. He un-cuffed his shackles, put on his belt, and reloaded his pistols as the deputy crawled back to the far side of the cell. He twirled his guns around his fingers, following him inside, and holstered one, leaving the right gun out. It was a point blank stance.
The tip of the barrel, still warm with resonated heat after the gunfight, blistered the feint deputy's forehead. His thumb cocked the .44 Colt Dragoon back, "The name's Kid Colt..."
"…And I'm only sixteen."
He did not fire but knocked the deputy across the face with the handle of his gun. Kid Colt ran out of the Sheriff's Office laughing. An agent of mayhem…
Lee's Summit, KS
Winfield threw the empty bottle against the wall. He kicked his unpolished boots onto the sheriff's desk. A loud burp and a scratch of the chin made it official, no one cared. In the early morning there was a fire that burned down the schoolhouse, but no one got the sheriff. "Wild Card" Cass had no deputy, had no friends. What he did have was the town's fear and respect.
A wayward gang came into town. "Mad Dog" McCreedy got off his horse and told his crew to pillage and burn. They howled and they cackled, forty men in black hats and armed holsters, firing their guns into the air and throwing windows into pieces.
The townsfolk hid, even the men. Most of the posse ended up in the saloon getting drunk. Wild Card Cass walked out of his door ready to light a drenched rag that was sticking out of a whiskey bottle. The townsfolk watched the crazed old man with a powder white beard long enough to tickle his open vest carry the torch. He walked down the street and straight into the saloon.
A loud flash and ruckus blew carnivorous flames out from all around. Almost every member of Mad Dog's gang burned. He had blown the entire bar up. Wild Card walked out of the inferno as calmly as he walked in, unscathed, untarnished. Mad Dog McCreedy came barreling out after him. Without any warning he drew his gun and fired on Wild Card’s back.
The drunken sheriff dropped to one knee ducking the bullet, swung around, pulled out his Remington 1875 revolver holstered on his left hip, and fired on crying Mad Dog McCreedy. The bullet blew back his head.
What was left of his crew that was able to put out the flames on their backs ran out of town in a frantic haste. They wanted no part of an old man with the sheer force of a god. Meanwhile Wild Card was laughing and coughing as he brushed the soot off his open vest. There, embedded in the sandy floor, was a bottle from the dying saloon. He picked the bottle up and wiped the label clear. It was bourbon, the good stuff.
Wild Card Cass looked back one more time with his tired eyes and walked away from the burning saloon. While passing the on-looking school teacher he popped open the bottle of bourbon and said, "Eye for an eye" before he started taking down the bottle's contents in several bulk gulps. It was empty before he returned to his door.
Outside Wichita, KS
The horses rode heavy against the dry sand. The storm around them was caused by them; a fleeing tornado of disturbance. The posse did not stop or slow. The loads on the horse's backs were large bags stuffed with the coins and bills from the Wichita Bank.They could not stop for they were being followed.
The hunting party had been on them since Dodge, and they had wasted all the time they could robbing the bank. There was no getting away now. It was time for Peyton to defect. He looked across at his partner in crime, Charlie "Slaughterhouse" Slater, and did not say a word. A betrayal was brewing inside of him for some time now, one that would never be forgotten. This day had been coming for a while, and Peyton hated himself for it.
With a jerk, he pulled his horse off course and made a run for it. His gang was too distracted by their pursuers to notice. He spent two days on his own before he went into a town. When he got there he entered the saloon, desperate for a drink. The bartender asked him, "What can I get ya?" as he polished a mug with his towel.
"Some of the good stuff," said Peyton as he threw down five pence. The bartender fixed him a drink, collected the tab, but upon seeing the mint marks, looked over at Peyton. He recognized him in an instant.
With long black hair slicked back and held there by his dark hat, the impenetrably thin eyes constantly scouring over his tainted perspective, his half-bred skin shining like a beacon of the savage west, and those fabled charcoal guns he ought to, for Peyton was not only well known throughout these parts but he had just been part of a bank job across the street not a month ago. "You're....B........b..b........" The coins slipped out of his hand and tumbled to the sticky floor. "You're Blackheart Quade."
"I'm not here to make trouble. I just want a drink."
The bartender calmed down and picked the money back up with his jittery hands. Peyton slugged back the glass of whiskey and let the warm quench drown down his throat. He closed his eyes and pretended, for a second, that he wasn't one of the most wanted outlaws in the west.