The Long Dark Trail: Western Short Stories

By Kerby Jackson

In this book you will find four western short stories, two non-fiction articles, and excerpts from two forthcoming western novels by Kerby Jackson.

Jackson will take you way back to the wild, wild west where revenge lay in wait around every corner, and the aroma of black powder filled the air.

With his affinity for the era and keen attention to historic detail, all western lovers are in for a treat when they read the fiction and non-fiction of Kerby Jackson.

Western short story collection, (plus two non-fiction articles, and two novel excerpts,) approximately 18,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kerby Jackson
• Release date: Dec 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301272518

Kerby Jackson

Kerby Jackson is an author, independent miner, historian and oft times mining rights advocate living in Southern Oregon's Rogue River Valley. He writes Western Fiction, as well as historical non fiction mostly pertaining to Southern Oregon and the Gold Rush era.

Book preview

The Long Dark Trail

Western Short Stories

Kerby Jackson

* * *

(Approx. 18,000 words.)

Copyright Kerby Jackson 2012

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Six Guns Press, USA

at Smashwords.com

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License 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 book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or 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 this author.

COVER DESIGN

Cover :

A.K. Norinco

Cover Stock Image:

cowboy by sad444 @ istockphoto.com

Font:

Dry Goods Antique JL

by Jeffrey N. Levine (UrbanFonts.com)

Back Cover Image:

Hotel by Keely33 (SXC.hu)

FOREWORD

The book in your hand, be it in digital form, or in good old fashioned paperback is a collection of writings. Some of it is fiction. Some of it is non-fiction. Some of it has been published before. Some of it hasn't. Also included are excerpts of two western novels that will be available in the near future.

The intent of this collection is to merely provide a sort of overview of some of the author's written work for those who may not be familiar with it, as well as an opportunity to offer some short fiction to the reader that has never been previously available in a published format.

The collection begins with a short Western story called Back Trail. First written in 2007, the story is set somewhere in Eastern Oregon's High Desert Country. Despite this, the story is based in part on the Southern Oregon legend of the Triskett Gang who supposedly looted $75,000 worth of gold from the mining camp of Waldo in 1852. In the process, the bandits shot and killed many innocent bystanders including women and children. As the story goes, the Triskett Gang was supposedly hunted down by a posse and wound up on the losing end of a fierce gun battle on Waldo Hill where the entire gang was shot to ribbons after being surrounded. Supposedly, they cached the gold, which to this day has never been found. However, before the reader goes running off to Waldo Hill with a shovel and a metal detector in tow, despite the frequency of the Triskett Cache in books and magazines about lost treasure hoards, it's probably important to mention that local historical records have yet to turn up any mention of the Triskett Brothers, let alone any such great bloody robbery and shootout having ever taken place near Waldo. To make matters worse, while lots of outsiders talk about the Trisketts, few locals have ever heard of them. I suspect that like so many other lost treasure stories, somebody is pulling our leg.

Next comes a short piece of western fiction entitled The Man With No Name, which was one of the earlier short western stories I wrote. Unlike Back Trail, it really is based on historical fact, in that the Blodgett family, early pioneers to Oregon, really did bring a child-sized casket with them across the Oregon Trail. This story is such a well known Oregon legend that it inspired the title of Nash and Scofield's famous work on Oregon folklore, The Well-Traveled Casket.

Skookum is probably one of my better known pieces of short western fiction. Written in 2007, it brings back Lloyd Brackett, a major character in my novel, Vengeance on Althouse Creek. This time around, Brackett tracks down a salty Indian named Joe Skookum who can't hold his firewater.

Bones is one of the earliest pieces of western fiction that I wrote. Despite it's short length, as a western ghost story, it features many of the elements that I later utilized in my novel The Troubled Land and represents a cross roads where I was moving from writing supernatural fiction into westerns. This transition period on occasion showed itself in Vengeance on Althouse Creek, but especially came through in The Troubled Land. You don't find much fiction that blends the traditional ghost story with the western story, even though our ancestors here in the Far West were a superstitious lot who told many ghost stories around their campfires.

Gold on Silver Creek and The Disappearance of Gus Lindholm are both pieces of non-fiction pertaining to Oregon's Gold Rush era. Both of these pieces appeared in my book Gold Dust.

Included as well are excerpts of my novels Vengeance on Althouse Creek and Gold Ridge.

BACK TRAIL

Jim Blake had nary been in the saloon for a half hour when he heard the thump of boots sound on the boardwalk outside, followed by the low pitched whine of the bat wing doors being pushed in.

For a moment, he looked up from his drink and in the mirror on the back of the bar, he took in the image of the man who had just stepped through the door. In the reflection he could see a man about half his junior carefully studying the inside of the bar. He must have been about twenty, or maybe even younger, but it was difficult to gage for the room was only dimly lit