Dime Novels

By John Thurmond

James Luke Landon was born in the United States to a father who was a cotton farmer and a shrewd business man. After the Civil War, labor was almost impossible to find to work the cotton fields. Luke's father enlisted the aid of a friend who lived overseas and moved his family to Bombay, India, where land prices were cheap, labor was abundant, and cotton grew with a vengeance.

At the age of nineteen, Luke lost his father in a warehouse fire and his mother to a heart attack shortly afterward. His father had built a multi-million dollar empire from cotton and textile mills.

Intrigued by the Dime Novels about the American West as a child, young Luke decided to pursue the dream of living like his heroes and moved back to American. He stayed a while with some friends of his father's before deciding to leave for St. Louis. Always out to borrow money from him, Luke decided to prank the four brothers with whom he had stayed. He never dreamed that it would eventually lead him down a path to Texas, befriended by a cattle rancher, and enlisting the aid of two Texas Rangers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outlaws Publishing LLC
• Release date: May 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224071241

John Thurmond

John has since left this world for a better place.

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Copyright 2018 by John Thurmond

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

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Cover Art by Michael Thomas

Cover design by Outlaws Publishing

Edited by Ann Mealler

Published by Outlaws Publishing

April 2021

10987654321

Chapter One

In the year o 1854 , James Landon, a New Orleans cotton buyer, was tired of the Delta and its black land. The ground, good for sugar cane but not for cotton, was hard to plow. The black clay, whether wet or dry, stuck to the plow. James had a very long staple cotton seed, but not enough land to grow it on. He sent a friend to India in search of more suitable land and cheap labor. 

Bombay, India, seemed to offer the best possible location for Landon to move his farm to. His friend had returned with news of the weather and favorable reports from the Indian government on labor, and a promise of cheap land prices. James moved his family and several tons of cotton seed in the spring.

With a favorable soil temperature, Landon planted six thousand acres of cotton on land that he had purchased for thirty-five American cents per acre. Within the next five years his farm grew to twenty-five thousand acres, all in cotton, that he called Dharawar-American. James and his wife had one child, a son who was born before they left New Orleans. I am that child, James Luke Landon, and this is my story.

Even though my Christian name is James Luke, the Indians employed by my father gave me the name of Dharawar. By the age of six, I followed my father everywhere he went. I was always asking my father stories about America, and would relate the stories to my school mates as stretched out full-blown fairy tales. Seeing that I liked to tell made up stories about America, my father asked a friend in New Orleans to send any news from back home in the way of newspapers or books. The Civil War between the states over slavery was over and America was short on cotton. With no plantations and no labor, James was thinking that he had moved at the right time. 

The first of the many books to arrive were western books about outlaws and lawmen. Dime Novels, they were called. I loved to read them to my friends. With wooden guns and tin badges, my friends and I would play out every story written from each Dime Novel.

James always carried a pistol when he was out on the farm. One day, at around the age of ten, I asked my father, Why do you carry a gun, Dad? Do we have outlaws here in India?

No, Son, James replied. I just feel safer with one on.

Over the next several years my mother started a school, making sure my own education was a little above average. My father founded