Another excerpt

This is a short bit from a book I wrote a few years ago entitled "The Long-Time Posse":

"We better go see what's going on," I said, grabbing my hat and slapping it on my brown-haired head.

When we arrived at the beer joint, which didn't take long since we just had to walk up the road about a quarter-mile, everything was quiet. The bartender, Mickey Nevin, was leaning on the bar with one hand and wiping up some spots with an old piece of towel with the other.

"What happened, Mick?" I asked.

"Nothing. We just had a altercation, was all," the Irishman answered.

I looked into his filmy green eyes under the bushy gray eyebrows. There was a red tint around the lids of both, like he hadn't been getting enough sleep. His face was pudgy, but he wasn't fat at all, even if he was approaching 60 years in age.

"Was that Wilson kid drinking too much again?"

"Nah, it wasn't him this time. Just a couple of them young farmers fighting over the pool table until I kicked them out. It was no big deal, they were just yelling at each other for about five minutes before I asked them to leave. I don't think neither one wanted to do any fighting."

"What were there names?"

"I don't know, but one was called Rusty and the other one Dusty. They looked like twins, but I ain't never seen them before. You know how these people are always coming and going, passing
through town and stopping for a beer or two on the way to or from the Green River to go fishing or such."

"Well, it's pretty near closing time and we wanted to make sure nobody was trying to hold up the place."

"Thanks, Sheriff and you, too, Hank, for taking a look. You want something to drink?"

"Not tonight."

On the way back to our small office, which sat on a side road behind the County official's house, Hank was telling me, "It must've been them I saw getting on their horses just before I came and got you. I ain't never heard of no twin boys from around here, nor anyone named Rusty or Dusty."

"No. Nor me either. But they're out pretty late for being strangers here. Where do you think they're heading tonight?"

"They must be camping out somewhere."

The main road to Colorado through the northern part of the Territory brought all kinds of people to the town. There were only a couple hundred residents scattered around, if even that many, about half of which lived in the town proper among the small number of business establishments, Mickey's being the only saloon. A general store, bank, church, school, and post office with blacksmith shop adjacent, were about it.

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This is only a smidgen of it, but the town is fictitiously named High Bench. Hank, the deputy, gets killed later that night and some days later the bank is blown up and robbed just before dawn, and a posse is formed to chase the robbers. It takes longer than usual for the posse to catch up with them, a woman member of the posse is taken hostage along the way, and one them gets shot, not fatally, before they finally round up the bank robbers, Rusty, Dusty, and a couple more outlaws. It's written with humor, crisis, and romance, and when it is published it'll sell thousands. Here's hoping.