Dead-Men Hanging

By Bob Sellers, Jr

Welcome Back to the Weird Wild West

This is the story that started the series before it became a series.

Blood-Lines introduced many of the characters that you've followed while Blood-Born introduced you to yet more.

Now, bear witness to how a local sheriff uses what resources that were available to him as he meets out justice and defends the law on the western frontier of the United States.

Between those who are whom you might expect, and those who are not.

Join us as we continue their story, yet again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Sellers, Jr
• Release date: Aug 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463167830

Bob Sellers, Jr

Bob Sellers and his family live in Southern Minnesota (USA) where he is employed as a Senior Programmer Analyst who enjoys bleeding purple and gold while cheering for his Minnesota Vikings of the NFL. As part of his many hobbies, he is also an avid motorcyclist and enjoys competition barbecue whenever possible. Many years ago, he ventured into fan fiction while he participated in several events that were organized by fans of the Forever Knight television show and further went on to enjoy the hobby while as a member of the on-line writers groups once offered by Kelley Armstrong. With the discovery of Wattpad and his more recent involvement as part of the Rochester MN Writers Group, he has enjoyed learning much to take his stories to the next level, both in content and design. A long time fan of the supernatural, he’s always been interested and enjoyed the darker tales of things that go bump in the night. Author’s Website - www.sellersjr.com

Book preview

Dead-Men Hanging

Weird Wild West

Book III

Bob Sellers JR

Copyright

Dead-Men Hanging

Copyright © 2018 by Bob Sellers JR

Published by Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed by Smashwords

Available now from many fine retail outlets

First Printing, 2018

ISBN 13: 978-043167830

Cover Artwork supplied by the following artists:

Janusz Gierat – www.madink2000.com

Kiselev Andrey Valerevich – www.shutterstock.com

Cover Design Creative Assistance by the following artist:

Taylor J. Sellers

Author’s Website - sellersjr.com

Wattpad - @sellersjr

Twitter - @sellersjr

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

www.sellersjr.com

Dedications

For Wendy, Allison and Taylor

Who, without their continued support and encouragement, this book would never have been possible.

.

For Frank Boccia

August 11th, 1943 – June 21st. 2016

Infantry Lieutenant, First Platoon, Bravo Company,

Third Battalion, 187th Regiment,

101st Airborne Division,

United States Army

The Screaming Eagles

Who taught me that the real truth with regard to historical events are well worth the challenge to both learn about and from once they have been properly revealed in a historically accurate book rather than a movie scripted by Hollywood such as the ten bloody days among others that he spent upon the real Hamburger Hill.

For Janusz Gierat

Who showed me that you can actually have dead men properly hung from a tree.

Table of Contents

As invented by Quintus Valerius Soranus

Copyright

Dedications

Legalese and other such fine Minutiae

Prologue

Chapter Zero

Blind-Man’s Bluff

Two of a Kind

Shell Game

Smoke and Mirrors

Dhampyre One-oh-One

Full Mental Jacket

Along Came a Spider

Behind Enemy Lines

Picture Perfect

Epilogue

Special Excerpt from Blood-Bath

Special Excerpt from Blood-Feud

Bonus Horror Short – Crops in the Corn

Reader Comments

Also by Bob Sellers JR

Acknowledgements

Preface

Author’s Plea

About The Author

Tributes

Other Books of Interest

Legalese and other such fine Minutiae

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Characters based upon Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series appear with permission.

Any other similarities in resemblance, name or paranormal nature of real people or beings dead, undead or otherwise impaired are entirely by accident and pure happenstance unless specific permission was given for their use.

Where some individuals may have been referenced indirectly in some fashion or another, a select few of them are there for reasons that may or may not be meant for only the author to know and possibly muse about at great length regarding the artistic liberties that may have been taken and otherwise enjoyed in the process.

Perhaps to remind a certain grouping of those particular individuals that may not know it yet, but it is a very bad idea to irritate an author for many, many reasons should they ever read this.

Or as the legendary Klingon Khan Noonien Singh once observed, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.

Several historical events described herein have actually occurred and various historical references have helped form the basis for their fictitious portrayals within the following pages, although on several occasions certain artistic liberties have been taken by the author in regard to chronology and certain other particulars which were done only as it served for purposes of this tale and nothing else intentional or otherwise unless where noted. 

Prologue

This is an updated version of the story that started what has become my variation on the Weird Wild West.

Originally crafted for a themed contest for an on-line magazine, things changed and said magazine never completed the contest while I found that I still enjoyed dabbling with things strange and unknown in a time that would have had much fun and adventure with or without them in the mix.

There isn't really a prologue to this story other than what is found in the first two books of this ongoing series.

In Blood-Lines you learn about several characters and their various natures both mortal and otherwise.

In Blood-Born you continue to follow their adventures with yet more introduced and added plot lines to twist and turn the reader (or I suppose annoy while they try to keep track of them as I have creating them).

This particular story occurs a year or so after events that transpired near the end of Blood-Born and will serve as a bridge of sorts into the fourth book Blood-Bath.

While it has been somewhat blended into the story lines of the first two books, with much additional content, I kept the name as it is indeed one story that has always been special to me.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy and share comments as you find you can or are willing.

Thanks!

Bob Sellers Jr.

Chapter Zero

"I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don’t describe anything in the society outside."

- Stieg Larsson

Summer, 1882 / Goblins Toe, Wyoming

Constable Augustus Poe stepped out from his office and into the cool evening air of the boardwalk, where he paused to relight his pipe.

Immersed in the near erogenous taste of the sweet, aromatic blend of Cavendish tobacco, he looked down the street toward the distant lights of the Long Branch Saloon and Hotel.

Not much else showed signs of life amongst the many boarded up buildings that once had been filled with myriad amounts of hustle and bustle activity both day and night before the disaster that had claimed the mine and those around it.

Hair bleached white from long days spent on horseback was dutifully kept trimmed neat just past his shoulders while his skin remained dark and heavily creased from the soft touch of wind and other such elements that he had suffered along the way while the dark pearl gray of his eyes remained sharp.

Most people who met him thought that he was a much older man than he actually was; his curled beard only having added to the image, although more red than silver gray survived to give some hint of youth.

Yet further example that his barber had once again been proven a miracle worker of sorts indeed.

To the casual observer, the slight limp of his left leg also revealed a walking brace while the rest of him appeared fine.

The mere fact that he had won more bets than he lost while target shooting showed that his aim or draw had not slipped any either; while it may have actually improved some along the way.

An unfortunate mishap of fairly recent sorts with a master vampiress had allowed him yet more abilities that went along with having survived a near death experience from which he had little or no memory of.

While by all accounts, neither would she.

But then again it was just as likely that whenever it was that they actually did manage to cross paths again that it would not come up in idle conversation of any sort even while in subtle passing.

As the story went from what his former vampire deputy and town doctor Abigail had so patiently explained, or dumbed down for him as she had tenderly managed to refer to it at the time; his blood was now so thoroughly twisted and tainted with the blood of the vampiress Rubicon that it would supposedly prolong his life considerably among other things that were yet to be determined.

Although given other falsehoods that he had discovered along the way through his education of most things paranormal or otherwise, he still had found enough doubt to have yet questioned even those particular details even in her telling of it.

But only time would tell as in either case he was in absolutely no hurry to find out.

Old wounds such as those that he had suffered with his leg prior to the great misadventure would not repair themselves under the new circumstances of which he had found himself anytime soon, while new wounds would tend to heal much faster as well or so he had also been informed.

Yet something else that he was not going to test to any great extent until he had to.

It still had not quite fully set in that he was now something of a full-fledged dhampyre although he steadfastly refused to contemplate how the experience and ensuing changes that his body may have suffered accordingly would affect him over the long haul.

To this day the random odd flash of different perspective or tingle as he moved about his day just served to remind him that some things were just best left unexplored.

The only good thing about it all had been