Wolf Creek; Kiowa Vengeance

By Ford Fargo

Welcome to Wolf Creek.

Here you will find many of your favorite authors, working together as Ford Fargo to weave a complex and textured series of Old West adventures like no one has ever seen. Each author writes from the perspective of his or her own unique character, blended together into a single novel. In our latest adventure, Wolf Creek is threatened by marauding Kiowa warriors who seek to avenge the deaths of their comrades at the hands of buffalo hunters. While the town fortifies itself, and a cavalry detachment looks for the raiders, the stage from Wichita is attacked *leaving a handful of Wolf Creek citizens alone and on foot in hostile territory*
About the author: 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.

Appearing as Ford Fargo in this installment: Bill Crider, Jackson Lowry, Kerry Newcomb, Troy D. Smith, Frank Roderus, & Robert J. Randisi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Western Fictioneers
• Release date: Jul 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301294879

Ford Fargo

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.

Book preview

Western Fictioneers Presents:

WOLF CREEK: Kiowa Vengeance

By Ford Fargo

WOLF CREEK: Kiowa Vengeance

Smashwords Edition

A Western Fictioneers Book published by arrangement with the authors

Copyright © 2012 by Western Fictioneers

Cover design by L. J. Washburn

Western Fictioneers logo design by

Jennifer Smith-Mayo

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual incidents or locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

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 – Deputy Marshal Seamus O’Connor

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 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 Nix, 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

Appearing as Ford Fargo in this episode:

Bill Crider (Cora Sloane)- Chapter 1

Jackson Lowry (Wilson Marsh)- Chapter 2

Kerry Newcomb (Sampson Quick)- Chapter 3

Troy D. Smith (Charley Blackfeather)-Chapter 4

Frank Roderus (John Hix)- Chapter 5

Robert J. Randisi (Dave Benteen)- Chapter 6 & 7

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.

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

CHAPTER ONE

The six-man Kiowa scouting party came down on the Manning ranch like a wolf on the fold.

Roy Manning and his younger brother, Hal, had been about to go looking for a couple of strays. They’d just ridden out of the barn when Hal got an arrow through the throat. He made a gurgling sound and clutched his neck with both hands. Blood spurted between his fingers, and his horse broke into a run, throwing Hal’s body off about twenty yards away.

A ball from an 1866 Henry Yellow Boy blew a hole in Roy’s heart, and he pitched from the saddle, dead before he hit the dirt.

Two of the Kiowa warriors jumped from their horses and drew their knives. One cut away Roy’s scalp while the other was busy stripping Hal to remove his genitals.

The other four warriors had already stormed into the house, where Sue Manning was trying to hide her son and two young daughters. A warrior knocked her to the floor with one blow, while the other three dealt with the screaming children. All the surviving Mannings were dragged outside.

They killed the boy first, then held Sue while they raped her daughters. She’d fainted long before they got to her.

When the warriors rode away from the ranch, no one was left alive. And in that, they were lucky. The scouting party, steeped in blood, headed northeast, toward the road where the stage from Wichita would be heading for Wolf Creek.

***

The woman who called herself Cora Sloane wasn’t impressed with her fellow passengers on the Wolf Creek stage.

Whenever the swaying coach hit a bump in the road, which was all too often, Lester Weatherby, a talkative whiskey drummer from St. Louis, would deliberately bounce against her and try to collide with her bosom. He was a small, unprepossessing man, and when he wasn’t bouncing around, he tried to ingratiate himself with Cora, which only irritated her. She found herself wishing that the stage door would flop open and Weatherby would fall out. So far it hadn’t happened.

Cora wished she were sharing the seat with one of the other passengers—though, on second thought, not the one who sat across from her. John Hix said he was Wolf Creek’s barber. He looked as if a good puff of wind would blow him away, but something about his eyes bothered Cora. They were empty as the prairie sky, but there was a kind of feral heat in them that reminded her of a coyote she’d seen once as it tore into a couple of chickens. Hix had told Cora that he’d been out of town on business, though he hadn’t said where he’d been or why—the plain implication being that whatever business it was, it was certainly none of hers.

Cora had never been to Wolf Creek. She’d seen an advertisement in a newspaper that said the town was looking for a school teacher, and she’d written a letter to apply for the job. To her surprise, she’d been accepted—she’d packed at once and left the hotel in Wichita where she was staying. She didn’t like to remain in one place for too long, but Wolf Creek was small and far enough away from her home to be safe. Or so she hoped.

The most intriguing passenger was the man beside Hix. He appeared to be in his late forties, though his shaggy hair was still dark and untouched by gray. He’d introduced himself politely to Cora and the other passengers as Dave Benteen and explained that he was going to Wolf Creek to set up as the town’s gunsmith. An unnamed friend had helped him purchase a store where he’d be working. His weathered face showed the scars of past battles, and Cora wondered what they might have been. His haunted eyes gave him the look of someone with secrets.

Cora had seen that look in her own eyes in the mirror, and she’d had to learn to smile with her eyes as well as her mouth in order to hide it.

She reached into the reticule at her feet for the copy of Mister Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales that she’d put there before leaving, in the hope that she might read some of it along the way. The coach was rocking so much, however, that she hadn’t tried to read for fear that she might become sick. Now the road seemed a bit smoother, and she thought she might be able to pass some time by dipping into one of the tales. She wasn’t always sure that she grasped Hawthorne’s meaning, but the woman fleeing her terrible past in The Hollow of the Three Hills was someone Cora could sympathize with all too easily.

I see that you’re a reader, ma’am, Dave Benteen said as she opened the book.

I am a teacher, sir, and teachers read. Do gunsmiths?

Benteen grinned. I’ve been known to crack a book now and again, though my taste runs more to Mister Poe’s tales than to Hawthorne’s.

Cora gave him a demure look over the top of her glasses. Mister Poe’s work is a bit too morbid and gruesome for me, and while Mister Hawthorne does indeed look on the dark side of things, he does so without excess.

She opened her book to end the conversation, but she found that she was still unable to read. Even on the smooth road the coach was swaying too much for that. She closed the book with a sigh and was about to replace it in the reticule when she heard a distant scream so harsh and piercing that it rivaled anything in the works of Mister Poe.

She looked out the side window and saw six Indian warriors riding toward the coach. They seemed in no special hurry, as if they knew the stage couldn’t possibly outrun them. They rode as if they were one with their mounts. Cora had never seen anything like it.

Oh, Jesus Christ, Weatherby said. He seemed to shrink within himself at the sight, and his face turned pasty white as if he might be ill.

The coach lurched forward, and Cora heard the driver slap the reins and yell encouragement to the horses.

They aren’t coming to welcome us to Wolf Creek, Benteen said, as the coach picked up speed. He spoke as calmly as if he were taking tea in the family parlor. You have a gun, Hix?

Hix was as imperturbable as Benteen. He shook his head and said, "I prefer other