Boodle Land

By Robert Collins

Harrison County lies in the High Plains of Kansas. Settlers are coming west, and even this small and isolated county is growing. But all is not peaceful on the prairie.

Two towns, Verona and Promontory, want to be the county seat. The town that gets the seat will get the county government, the chance for a railroad, and hope for the future. The town that doesn’t get the seat might not exist in six months or a year. This desire will spark a rivalry between the towns that will last for years.

Magickers won’t decide the outcome. Neither will gunfighters or the Army. No, the battle will be waged at the ballot box, in civil court, and in the columns of the towns’ newspapers. Which town will prove itself, and which will be nothing but a “boodle town?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Collins
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463038673

Robert Collins

Two people with different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities met at a European and Balkan music and dance ensemble named Koroyar and their lives became intertwined, combining their gifts to continue exploring life as an avenue of creative expression. Robert Collins has a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, and has been an educator in the Los Angeles area for thirty years. He studied writing with Joan Oppenheimer in San Diego, with Cork Millner privately, and also in the Santa Barbara Writer's Conferences. Elizabeth Herrera Sabido, at the age of sixteen years, began working as a secretary at the Secretaria de Industria y Comercio in Mexico City where she was born, then she was an educator for twenty-six years, and a teacher of international dance for The Los Angeles Unified School District. She has also studied Traditional Chinese Medicine, and is a Reiki Master Teacher. Attracted by the Unknown, the Forces of the Universe, and the human psyche, during their lives they have studied several different philosophies. Elizabeth has been involved with various religions, Asian studies, and Gnosticism with SamaelAun Weor, and Robert has explored spiritual healing practices in Mexico, and studied with Carlos Castaneda's Cleargreen and Tensegrity. Elizabeth and Robert start their day at four-thirty in the morning. They enjoy playing volleyball and tennis, and in the afternoons play music, alternating between seven different instruments each. Their philosophy of Personal Evolution has led them to explore over 110 countries between the two of them such as Japan, Nepal, Egypt, Bosnia- Herzegovina, the Philippines, Turkey,Russia, etc.

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BOODLE LAND

by

Robert Collins

Ebook Edition

Copyright © 2020 by Robert Collins

Ebook 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, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

A Word from the Author

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

It was a box, almost white, in the midst of a landscape of endless green and a vast sky of blue. It wasn’t entirely strange to him to see such a sight. From what experience he had, modest though it might be, settlements on the High Plains of Kansas were tiny boxes of color among the great unclaimed prairie. Usually these were homes made of sod, constructed of brown bricks of soil. Sometimes they were only a sliver of brown, as their roofs had grass growing on them, or were set into hills or the sides of ravines.

But this box was different. It was white, or more properly, as he observed once he was close, a light shade of tan. It was a limestone structure. That made it a rarity, isolated as it was. Tan limestone was common in the towns and cities, as was wood and red brick. He knew that farther east limestone was common on farms. The community school could also be built of stone. Yet this was alone on the High Plains, not in the Flint Hills or between the rivers and streams of the more settled sections of the state.

It could be a sign from the Lord, he mused.

There was no such sign posted over the front door of the structure. Instead, the sign over the door read, BISON BONE HILL STORE. He hitched his horse to the post a few steps from the door. He took the handle of the door. It turned, and the door opened.

The interior was somewhat darker than the outside, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw that the store was as simple as could be expected. To his left were three stacks of four crates, their openings facing the wall, with a board laid across the top of the three stacks. To his right were barrels with rough writing on them: wheat, corn, flour, and the like. On one of the barrels was a cardboard box; it was from the Colt arms manufacturer, and said it held .45-caliber cartridges. On the wall to the left of the door hung a few pans, a few spurs, and a few other iron goods, while on shelves to the right of the door were belts, reins, and some other leather goods.

Facing the door was a buffalo robe, nailed to a wooden frame set into a stone interior wall. From behind the robe there was the smell of bacon cooking, and the sound of it sizzling in a pan. The robe was pushed aside, and the lovely aroma filled the room.

Coming from behind the robe was a man of average height and a thin build. He appeared to be in the middle of his life, with a somewhat browned face. The dark hair on the top of his head was unkempt, but his beard mustache were reasonably neat. He wore a white work shirt, denim pants, and scuffed boots.

You caught me making lunch, stranger, the man said in a raspy voice.

Forgive me.

Naw, that’s all right. Don’t get much trade here. Guess I’m not always the good shopkeeper, huh?

I quite understand. I’ve hardly seen a soul on the trail.

Mind if I get back to my cooking? Feel free to look around, or sit on one of the barrels and take a load off.

Very kind of you.

While he sat down on top of one of the barrels, he saw the shopkeeper take up a small leather strap attached to the buffalo robe. He wrapped and tied the strap, so the robe no longer served as a rough door, and instead became a rough curtain.

What’s your name, stranger? the man called from the other room.

Mitchell Gough. What’s yours?

Andrew McNeal.

Mister McNeal, I couldn’t help notice the name of this place.

What? You mean Bison Bone Hill?

Yes. Is there a story to it?

McNeal laughed. Yeah, I suppose you could say there’s a tale. Not much of one, really.

What is it?

I’ve had this store for a few years now. Followed homesteaders coming down the trail.

Trail? What trail?

The Pawnee River Trail.

Do you mean that scrub-lined ravine I’ve been following is a river?

Yes, sir. Ain’t much of a river, except when it pours, which happens every now and again. There’s a good little spring at the source of it. Not too far from here, to tell the truth. Anyway, there’s homesteads here and there along the river trail. Folk wanting to be close to the railroad, but not that close, if you take my meaning.

I do indeed.

Well, this is about close to where the river starts. From here the trail is a straight line to Garden City. This seemed like a good spot for this little store. I had the stone hauled in, and up it went. Didn’t seem to need a name, really. It was just my little store.

Why not give it your own name?

That’s where the tale comes in. See, after a year or so, folks wanted a post office out here. They didn’t want to come here, then go on into Garden to post their mail, and no one liked waiting on a fellow from there to come out here, whenever he’d get around to it, to bring us our mail. So, we asked the United States Mail for a Post Office. They told me they needed a name for this place. ‘McNeal’s Store’ wasn’t a proper name, so they said.

Why not?

Well, McNeal might not be that common a name, but I suppose there could be other stores in the West run by men named McNeal.

That does make sense.

"So I offered up the name ‘Bison.’ ‘Nope,’ says the United States Mail. ‘Too many towns in Kansas with ‘bison’ or ‘buffalo’ as their name. I put my head to the problem.

I first came out here several years ago, hunting buffalo. It’s how I knew about the spring. Well, there were places where we hunters would stack up buffalo bones, here and there, before we loaded them in big wagons to take to Dodge. Those stacks were quite a sight, I have to tell you.

I’ve seen pictures, Gough said.

Oh, those photographs look impressive, but they don’t take in what these eyes saw. Well, anyway, there I was, having to come up for a name for this little place. I didn’t want to put my own name down, and ‘Bison’ was too short, so the name ‘Bison Bone Hill’ came into my head. Now, we ain’t on a hill, and there haven’t been bones, or even buffalo, around these parts for five years now, probably more than that. But it was a name, and the United States Mail accepted it. That there is the story.

Gough looked at the man for a moment. When he’d first saw McNeal, he thought the man was either one of those men who had come to the West to make money any way he could, or he was a man who didn’t like the company of others, but wasn’t such an isolated soul that he’d live in a hand-made sod dugout miles from even the barest sign of human habitation. What other sort of man would build a trade store along a trail so modestly in use?

He realized, while McNeal told the tale of the name of this place, the man was the other sort of fellow who would have founded this store: a true pioneer.

Gough was from Iowa, but he’d been in Kansas his whole adult life, and for years had been coming across pioneers. These were the men who were happy to walk past the boundaries of civilization. Their formal job might be as an explorer, or a soldier, or a surveyor, or, in McNeal’s case, a hunter. They would move past the cities, the towns, the villages, even the county and state lines, to observe, or to fight, or to do whatever they had come to the West to do, by choice or on command.

In Gough’s mind, what made men like McNeal different from the men he thought of as frontiersmen were that pioneers weren’t out alone, if they could help it. Pioneers weren’t the solitary beasts of men who wanted to live alone in the unspoiled wilderness. Men like McNeal tended to see themselves as the first, not the only. They sought out the danger, whether from wild animals or Indians, conquered it, then waited for their fellow Americans to join them in safety. A frontiersman wouldn’t build a store, then wrestle with the Post Office for a proper name for the place where the store was located. A pioneer would go through that effort, in the hope that it would be worth something to him someday. Slaps on the backs from those who came after. The eager ears of children wanting tales of the pioneer days. A good house, a good family, and a good place to rest the bones while his soul went to Heaven for his reward.

If I’m right, Gough thought, then the Lord may have delivered all of us. Mister McNeal, thank you for telling it.

You’re most welcome. You come in here looking for anything in particular? Or were you looking for a bit of shade, or to fill your canteen?

Shade and water would help, but I can see what you stock. Gough glanced around. You seem to have a little of everything.

I carry a little of this and a little of that. Mostly what folks ‘round here need so’s they don’t have to go all the way to Garden for necessities. The one thing I can’t get my hands on are magick stones.

A magicker lives in these parts?

Naw, but I’ve had a magicker or two follow the trail and stop in. Gough saw a frown appear on McNeal’s face. You ain’t one of those folks that that has a beef with magickers, are you?

Gough shook his head. Not with anyone in particular, though the folk I work for would prefer not to be around magick too much.

Who do you work for?

A group of settlers, looking for a place to start farms and trades, and live in peace.

Not one of those strange sects?

No. Common, Christian folk.

Who don’t like magick.

Who are uncomfortable with its use, Mister McNeal. They would like to farm without magick light, or water created from nothing. You must admit that we sometimes rely too much on such a strange force as magick.

Depends on what you mean by that, friend. I’ll grant you that in Dodge there’s been fellows who use magick as much as others use their pistols. I’ll grant you that in the big cities, magick is easy to rely on. But if you take what you see, or what you read about in the papers, you’d think there’s more magick in the world than there really is.

And how would you know that?

Like I said, I first came out here as a buffalo hunter. One of my partners was a magicker. Like most, he could only do one spell, but it was about the best there was for us.

Which was?

Silence.

Not fire, or soothing beasts?

No, sir. See, buffalo could be easily spooked. Well, they had to be, what with coyotes, and rattlers, much less Indians, and then us hunters. Any loud, sudden noise, and the herd would go wilder than frightened horses on a stampede. Well, Davy, that was his name, he could only cast one spell, a silence spell. So he’d cast it over our spot, and we could shoot two or three buffalo before the herd knew they was down. Then he’d rid us of the spell, one of us would fire in the air to send the herd running, and we could go down and get the hides, and the meat, and whatever else we needed, without fear.

And you weren’t troubled by using magick?

Not in the least.

Did you learn anything about magick from this man?

Yes, sir. Davy said only one in ten folks is a magicker, and only one in three of them can cast more than one spell, or can cast really big spells. It’s them that you hear about, or read about in the papers.

I see.

You said the folk you’re working for are looking for a place to settle, that right?

That’s right.

You said they prefer not to use magick. They aren’t the sort of folks who think magick is the work of the Devil, are they?

No, Mister McNeal. They would prefer not to rely on magick, to be away from it, but they don’t begrudge others for using it. Why do you ask?

Well, sir, it’s like this. My little store does just enough to keep me fed, though I have to rely on trade as much as on dollars. We’re in our own little county here, did you know that?

Gough shook his head.

Bison County ain’t organized, seeing as there’s just a handful of farmsteads out here. I might be living in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not as isolated as you might think.

No?

No, sir. I get the Garden City papers once a week. I read about what’s going on.

What is going on?

"Folks like you, and the folks you’re working for, are looking to push back the frontier more. The eastern part of the country