Excerpt from North to Alaska by Preston Lewis
Shooting a man in the
back was frowned upon in the old days, though sometimes you lacked a more
honorable option to survive a vendetta. Over the years, I was blamed for one
back-shooting I didn’t commit and never got credit for dispatching the one
crook I did shoot from behind. Now
I’m not complaining, and I’m not saying I’m proud of all the choices I made
with a gun, but I never marched around boasting about my killings or defacing
my pistol with notches on the grips or scratches on the barrel to represent the
men I’d put in a grave. Some fellows
bragged so much about all their enemies they had dispatched that if they’d
carved or scratched notches in their weapons for every fellow they claimed to
have killed, all they’d been left with was a pile of splinters or metal
shavings instead of a revolver.
No, sir, I never
bragged about those things because you seldom knew when a lawman might be
eavesdropping on such arrogance, intending to avenge the death of some hombre
that likely needed an express ticket to hell to begin with. Nor did I claim to be a shootist as I didn’t
want a reputation that would dishonor my momma and her teachings, as she was a
Godly woman who believed in the Good Book. Even if I was her prodigal son,
she’d have been humiliated by me breaking the Fifth Commandment and shooting
another human being in the back. The odd thing about the two times I was
involved in back-shooting incidents, though, is that they were both related,
despite coming some two decades and twenty-five hundred miles apart.
And making matters
worse, both instances happened because of an insect bite. Yep, I’d gotten severely bitten by the gold
bug twice on the frontier, winding up first in Colorado and later in Alaska,
which was colder than a suffragist’s heart. I should know because during my
Leadville, Colorado, stint I encountered Susan B. Anthony, who opened my eyes
to how mean a woman could be. I much
preferred the sugar and vice of Mattie Silks and her soiled doves in Denver to
Anthony’s dire and brimstone over the plight of women in the newest state and
the other thirty-seven. Those were
raucous days when Colorado had first joined the Union, and the suffragists
attacked the God-given rights of the male citizens of the new state.
As misguided as Susan
B. Anthony might have been, she was halfway honest, unlike the most despicable
fellow that ever trod upon the plains or mountains of Colorado—Jefferson
Randolph Smith the Second. Known as Jeff
when I first met him, but later as “Soapy,” he was crookeder than a barrel full
of rattlesnakes and twice as mean. What
he lacked in integrity, he more than made up for in cleverness as he could’ve
swindled Satan out of his horns, tail and pitchfork without the devil ever
knowing what had transpired. He possessed enough charm that shills and
hooligans attached to him like metal shavings to a magnet so you always had to
be careful in any town that Soapy worked because his ruffians were on the
lookout for anyone they might defraud or scam.
Such tricks played out best in mining towns where everyone was looking
for a quick buck and sudden riches.
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10/20/20 |
Excerpt |
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10/20/20 |
BONUS Post |
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10/21/20 |
Review |
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10/22/20 |
Character Interview |
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10/23/20 |
Review |
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10/24/20 |
Series Spotlight |
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10/25/20 |
Author Interview |
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10/26/20 |
Review |
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10/27/20 |
Review |
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10/28/20 |
Scrapbook Page |
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10/29/20 |
Review |
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