Clay Barton - Kentucky Bounty Hunter

By John J. Law

Ma always wanted me to be a lawyer. She always believed in fighting for justice the right way. She never did admire lawlessness and the outlaws of the times. She said Jesse James and others of his kind were just creations of the press. She said they often benefitted from the local newspapers glorifying their exploits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.C. Hulsey Books
• Release date: Mar 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215566572

Book preview

One: The Beehive.

Ma always wanted me to be a lawyer. She always believed in fighting for justice the right way. She never did admire lawlessness and the outlaws of the times. She said Jesse James and others of his kind were just creations of the press. She said they often benefitted from the local newspapers glorifying their exploits.

It's just another sign of just how divided our country still is, she would often say.

Ma was never one for violence of any sort. She hated the Civil War and everything else that followed. Ma was the epitome of the proper Southern woman from Kentucky. Pa was a lot different from Ma, in that regard. He believed that a man had to fight for what he believed in, even if it sometimes meant killing another man. That was why he enlisted in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. Pa believed that men weren't supposed to be afraid to take a stand and fight for what was right. Pa even had the honor of serving under General 'Stonewall' Jackson during the Battle of Bull Run, one of the first battles of the war. Unfortunately, he paid the ultimate price for his principles and died in the middle of the war. They said a Union sniper took his head off, rest his soul.

After Pa's death, Ma was never the same. She died of a high fever many years after she heard the news. Something tells me, she just didn't have the heart to fight through the fever. After all, the country was not the same after the war had ended. Pa was gone, and we had no rights to the property and life that we once had. When the war ended, we lost everything we had. Those dang Yankees took everything we had, even Ma and Pa. Now, this is all I have left.

I don't think Ma or Pa would agree with my choice of employment after the war. Regardless, I have to do, what I have to do, to stay alive. Wherever you are Ma, Pa, I'm sorry.

I thought of both my folks as I approached the old abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere. I had tracked down Biggs Wedges to this location. Old Biggs had stolen several horses from a lot of angry ranchers in the area. He made a lot of those fairly, well-to-do folk angry. Angry enough to hire me.

Come out and face the law, Biggs, I said.

I called him out from behind the safety of a lot of rocks and a thick bush. I wasn't stupid enough to call him out in the open.

You've got a lot of nerve to say that, Barton.

A voice responded from inside the shack. It was Wedges. You ain't the law. You're anything but the law, you stinking bounty-hunter.

I also heard several others