4 Lives

By Jackson Lowry

Did you ever wonder about the back stories of characters in a novel? The Great West Detective Agency is filled with intriguing people with lives begging to be told. The 4 Lives mini-anthology gives the events that brought four of them together. Lefty the bartender at the Emerald City, a former railroad foreman struggling now without a right arm. Good, the half Creek, half-black frontiersman who found being a lawman wasn't for him. Claudette, much more than a dance hall girl, with a wealthy New Orleans past--and murder. Amanda, whose scheming and conniving sets gambler Lucas Stanton on a hair-raising treasure hunt. Their 4 Lives are revealed along with the first chapter of The Great West Detective Agency to give a taste of an action-packed, romance-tinged, all-west adventure with a diabolical mystery that must be solved to preserve the United States!

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Cenotaph Corporation
• Release date: Jul 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311609786

Book preview

Four Lives

The Great West Detective Agency

The Cloud Train

Gus Mullins was a topnotch railroad construction foreman until the tragic accident. Who would ever want a one-armed man for anything? Who, except General Palmer?

The Parisian Dagger

Claudette Dupree is the lovely belle of the New Orleans social scene and . . . a bargaining chip used to keep her father's shipping company solvent. When Claudette rebels, she becomes a murderer—and worse.

Good

Part black, part Creek, Good drifted away from Indian Territory to a job as deputy marshal. He prides himself on tracking skills and never letting the guilty go free. When he

fails to catch the right man, what honor he had flees.

The Lovely Swindle

Always on the lookout for an easy dollar, Amanda Baldridge finds herself hunted by a bank robber she had swindled. On the run, she jumps from the frying pan into the fire. Only her quick wit and beauty can save her.

FOUR LIVES

Jackson Lowry

Smashwords Edition

Four Lives

©2014 Jackson Lowry

ISBN-13: 978-1499693331

ISBN-10: 1499693338

excerpt from

The Great West Detective Agency

©2014 Jackson Lowry

ISBN: 978-0-425-27243-5

Cover © 2014 by Robert E. Vardeman

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Table of Contents

The Cloud Train

The Parisian Dagger

Good

The Lovely Swindle

Excerpt: Great West Detective Agency

About the author

The Cloud Train

Frigid mountain wind smothered his angry words. Augustus Mullins sucked in a deep breath and filled his barrel-chest and roared, What do you mean the damn creosote's all used up? We had twenty barrels this morning.

Terrence Wilkerson refused to be cowed. Go check the supply tent, Gus. Ain't there.

Mullins started to shout at his gang boss, then pushed past him and walked along the narrow ledge his crew had chiseled from the side of the mountain. Far south of his precarious perch, the mighty peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already covered with snow. General Palmer had offered a bonus for chipping away the rock to lay the narrow gauge railroad tracks before winter froze even this low altitude passage. Mullins felt the reward slipping away.

The Denver & Rio Grande found only the hardest places to lay track, or so it seemed to him as he roared past the crew setting a steel rail down and then pounding in spikes to hold it on the ties. The railroad ties were soaked in creosote so the fierce weather wouldn't rot them away in a single season. He shuddered, and it wasn't from the wind. A blasting accident had killed two of his powder monkeys the week before. His lumbering team had increasing problems supplying the ties and the supply train brought the wrong inventory items. His men had grumbled when he kept them from drinking dry the twenty kegs of beer mistakenly sent when he had wanted beef and potatoes.

Young, the clerk, looked up in surprise when Mullins yanked open the tent flap and stepped inside. The sound of the canvas walls snapping like a whip muffled his words, but his fury made the clerk drop his newspaper and try to hide it. The wind snaked past the flap and caught the sheet, wrapping it around the man's fumbling hands.

Boss, what can I get for you?

Terry said we've run out of creosote.

I suppose.

Mullins resisted the urge to grab the man's throat, squeeze and shake like a terrier with a mouthful of rat.

We had twenty barrels to treat the raw wood ties.

It's not in the supply tent. The damned tarry shit stinks so bad I keep it outside.

Show me.

They walked around the tent to the rear where a head-high stack of freshly cut ties dried in the wind. After they cured for a week, the crew soaked them in creosote and let them dry for a day before using them to lay another mile of road. The process worked like a fine watch. Woodcutters supplied the planed ties, crews blasted away the rock to make the ledge on the side of a mountain while others laid tracks. If any part of Mullins' crew fell behind, the other parts of his efficient process failed.

He had worked laying track since he was sixteen, laboring on the Transcontinental road for close to a year before General Palmer hired him away to help on his new road, the D&RG, stretching from Colorado Springs down to the steel mill at Pueblo. Mullins took pride in how he had become an assistant, just as young Wilkerson was for him, learned the best ways of going through different terrain and had finally been promoted to foreman of the main crew driving down toward Durango. He took pride in the three years he had worked for the General and had been rewarded for it.

But he had never fought both the elements and lack of supply before. One or the other. Not both.

Behind the ties. You know that, boss. Young circled the stack and stopped dead in his tracks. They were there this morning. You have 'em sent back down to the Springs?

Twenty barrels of the tarry creosote made quite a pile on its own. All Mullins saw was emptiness. He scuffed his boot along the rocky ground. Here and there he saw where the barrels had been rolled. He followed the trail to a drop off. He just stared at the cliff face below.

The clerk crowded closer, braced himself against Mullins' bulk, peered over the edge and said, You suppose the wind blew 'em over?

Stretching from the edge of the cliff down more than a hundred feet, a streak of sticky creosote crept down the precipice. The cold turned the creosote tacky, making its downward progress slower than if it had been in the summer sunlight only a few weeks earlier. He saw staves from the ruptured barrels already frozen into place from the brown creosote. A deep whiff caught only a slight hint of the pungent odor. Wind and cold robbed it of discovery except by staring into the abyss.

A gust of wind caused Mullins to rock up onto the balls of his feet to keep his balance. He almost let it take him over the edge. Nothing made him happier than seeing another mile of track laid, unless it was the completion of a spur he had built himself. Him and a decent crew. But3 this job made him want to let the wind take him outward, soaring on the updraft, flying away from it all.

Young gripped his shoulder with surprising strength and steadied him, then pulled him back.

You don't want to try fetching it, boss. I don't rightly know how twenty barrels got down there, but we can get more from the Springs. Don't cost much for the creosote. The barrels it's in and shipping'll cost more.

That'll take several days. We're almost out of cured ties, Mullins said. He shrugged off the clerk's hand. Somebody did this. It wasn't an accident.

You mean sabotage? Who'd want to go and do that? I mean, we all share in the bounty General Palmer offered if we get another ten miles of track laid.

The clerk sounded genuinely confused.

Could be all the trouble means the General has business rivals who don't want a road cut through until next year. That would give the stagecoach companies another year of no competition.

I did hear how the stage through Mosquito Pass upped their rates. My sister lives in Leadville, and the freight rates have more 'n doubled.

The General isn't an easy man, either. Business rivals might not be responsible. Personal enemies would delight in seeing him go bankrupt.

Do tell. Never thought on that. The man paused, then asked, "Are we taking a few days off when we run out