Prott's Ditch

By R. Harlan Smith

All Conrad Daniels wanted was to leave his killing life behind and farm with his family. But time catches up with a man, like Lenore from his past, his reputation as a gunfighter, and the horrors of Antietem Creek catching up with him. Now there's a female bounty-hunter who wants to kill him, and she's already tried once.

Did Lenore O'Slattery want a man, or a husband? Conrad Daniels denied he was a gunfighter, Antietem was hounding him, and Michelle Dulac carried a Shaps rifle. Gunfighter or farmer, it's going to be a busy season for Conrad Daniels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. Harlan Smith
• Release date: Mar 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507008980

R. Harlan Smith

I write, for the most part, in the paranormal genre. Ordinary people with extraordinary abilities make for more interesting, character driven stories that have greater appeal than plot driven stories.  My settings are usually in and around Gary, Indiana where I attended Lew Wallace high school, and lived the better part of my younger years through the 50's. My tendency to overdo descriptive passages comes from my fondness for the suburban areas south of Glen Park, the southern most part of Gary. The years I spent in Los Angeles also contribute to my settings. My characters are modeled after people I have known, and are rarely simply contrived, so everything I write is somewhat autobiographical by virtue of the setting and my relationships with the actual characters. My interest in the paranormal arises from my own personal experiences which led to researching them and finding some explanation for them from authors such as Carlos Castaneda and Jane Roberts, as well as my education (BA Behavioral Sciences). I will tell you truths you won't believe and fictions you'll embrace like the gospel, but I won't tell you which is which.

Book preview

1

Killing a man’s got two reasons: Your government puts you there, or the other fella does. So the hard part about the war for Conrad’s father was coming home from it. He had nowhere to go, but to wander, and he had to kill a few fellas along the way. They was upstarts and Rebels carrying a grudge and too much whiskey for their own good. The Sheriff seen the start of it in the Two Brands Saloon down in Abilene and he watched Conrad’s father trying to be peaceable from the start.

We’d like to buy ya a drink, Yankee, just to show ya we got no hard feelin’s over the war.

The younger one agreed. Yes sir, no hard feelin’s

Conrad’s father tried to be good about it. I had my limit boys. I’m more in the mood to eat than drink.

The big one was willful; a man who held his face too close to another’s when he talked, so you could smell his last meal. Y’can’t see your way to have a drink with a Rebel, mister?

I don’t want another drink, is all.

The young one was carrying too much whiskey. His eyes was shiny and his lids was droopy, and his grin was a false face for trouble. Maybe he thinks he’s better’n us, Amos.

You think you’re better’n us, Yankee, cause you won the war?

Conrad’s father knew he was in a fix. He put his hand to Amos’ chest and pushed him a step back. I’d say you boys better sleep it off.

He does, Sonny. He thinks he’s better’n us.

"I told ya. I said so, didn’t I?

Look fellas, I don’t want no trouble. It’s gettin’ late. I’m tired and I want a meal in me and a bed under me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.

Amos took a grip on Conrad’s father’s shoulder. No ya don’t feller. You ain’t gettin’ off insultin’ us so easy.

Let’s take’m outside, Amos. Show’m a thing or two.

He’s afraid, Sonny. The gents a yellow, Yankee coward.

Aw, we scared’m. I’m right sorry we scared ya, mister. Ain’t y’sorry, Amos, you scared’m?

No, I ain’t sorry. I like seein’m scared. We’ll see you outside, mister. We’ll see who’s better’n who.

I don’t want no trouble, fellas. I ain’t up to no fight.

We’ll be waitin’ for ya.

Amos and Sonny downed the last of their whiskey and went out. Conrad knew he was in a terrible fix and he knew he had to face up. He drew a breath and went outside.

They was out there, cocky and grinning at him. Conrad’s father walked around to face them. I wish you boys’d think it over. I don’t reckon this’ll be good.

He don’t reckon, Amos.

I don’t reckon either, Sonny boy.

Conrad’s father relaxed and waited for their tell, and there it was, they bent their knees. He went down, sitting with his legs spread in front of him, fanning his pistol, two hits in each man as they shot over his head. The younger one moaned, Oh, Lord, Amos, I’m tastin’ blood, and cried he was sorry for his ways and carried on, miserable, until he bled out. No one ever seen a man fan a single action pistol like that.

Both men was buried proper and Conrad’s father become a hero in Abilene with a reputation that attracted a third man who seen Conrad’s father wore his gun low on his hip and tied to his leg. He was a mean-spirited man from New Orleans who some said rode with Quantrill. His face was dark in the manner of a man whose skin had been baked and frozen and rained upon during his travels, and hardened like granite into an expression of hateful contempt so that no man could sit comfortable in the company of such an individual. He was a killer who enjoyed killing, the worse possible kind of man, and it was said he had a big sister worse than him.

This man, this Andre Dulac from New Orleans, abused by war and Union prison camps, was a damaged animal, so hated and despicable he was feared by reputation, imagined and documented. Life had not allowed him the luxury of truth, and he took a foul course to end, moaning and curled up like a worm, at the feet of Conrad Fanner Daniels, with three forty-four caliber holes in a tight pattern through his chest, and no one ever seen a man fan a single action pistol like that.

The Sheriff’s reasons for him to leave Abilene drew no argument from Conrad Daniels. He was content to put it all aside with a handshake and the earnest advice of the Sheriff to leave town for his own sake and for the sake of Abilene. He headed north to wind up in Prott’s Ditch where he found Kathleen teaching school and some good farm land. Farming was what his father did, and that’s what he knew. When his Kathleen bore him a son, he put his gun away for good and prayed to God little Conrad would never know.

Conrad grew up to be just like his father. A boy is bound to be like his father when there’s no other heroes to take from. He had a studied way of rolling up his sleeves just like his father, and combing his hair. He wanted to walk like his father, with a slight limp from a Rebel rifle ball he caught at Antietam, but he wasn’t shot, and that wouldn’t be realistic. Things had to be realistic.

The most fascinating thing about Conrad’s father was the way he talked in assertive shocks of wisdom. The porch swing groaned its ropes as they looked out over an acre of fire flies while his father told him to let his mind wander and watch the wandering go by because that was his life, that flow of thinking and images, and the important thing to know about that is you can be here while your life was there, going on by. He called it being outside your life, and the good thing about it was it gave a man better judgment in making decisions. He always told Conrad, You can count on what I tell you, boy, and Conrad always said, Yes, Pa.

Conrad always had questions and what-ifs over what his pa told him, and the subject of being outside your life was an inspiration for him. He said it didn’t seem realistic for a man’s life to be there while he was here. He said it one summery evening after church services as they walked the road into town to Billy’s Ice Cream Parlor, both of them loosening their collars and ties and swinging their jackets over their shoulder so they could roll up their sleeves. Conrad didn’t understand a word of it and he couldn’t imagine why a man would want to sit and do such a thing. Conrad’s father made it clear a man had to live according to the scriptures, so he had to have a true picture of his own self and what was righteous and what was evil. He said it come to him by accident during the battle at Burnside’s Bridge over by Sharpsburg from a half breed Indian man who tied off his leg when he was shot. He dragged him down along the water a ways where the fighting wasn’t so fierce. The rifle shots was thick as insects in the air and that Indian wasn’t rattled one bit and they got to talking and watching the water turn darker and darker red. He was an Iroquois and not a true Christian, but he sure acted like one. He said a man had to have a true picture of himself and the only way to have it was to stand outside his life once in a while when he was alone and thinking things over. According to him it was the only way to follow your beliefs, so if it would help you follow along with the scriptures, it was a good thing