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"I must confess Marshal, you are not the man I expected you to be." Eldridge turned his head to take in the room. Empty whisky bottles liked the shelves like glass flytraps. Judging from the number of black bodies crawling and buzzing around them, they were effective at that task. "Not a Marshal," Eldridge answered. "Not anymore." He pointed to an empty spot on his chest where a tin star might have been. "I was misinformed," the women's lips compressed into a thin line of determination. "Never the less, I have heard of your reputation." Eldridge blinked away some of the cobwebs gumming up his eyes, but he could do naught for the ones that fogged up his mind. He wondered for a brief moment how the woman came to be in his room and glanced over her shoulder to the open door leading out to a hallway beyond. She walked right in. Some alarm bell went off in the back of his skull. If she could walk right in while he was...

CHAPTER "Well, ain't you cleaver, you deep thinking son of a bitch." "I have been accused of many things in this life, Custer, but I can assure you, deep thinking has not been one of them." Custer held up his wrists and lifted his boots off the dark ground to present the knotted rope around his ankles. "You think if I'm bound up like a Barbary pirate, I can't get away from you in the dark." "I think if you go running off in the dark, you're liable to end up off one of these cliffs out here." "I don't have to run far, Marshal, just farther than you." "I'm not a Marshal," said Sample. "No, not anymore," Custer agreed. "It must have been tough on you, turning in that star." "I'll not speak on it." "No? Then perhaps we'll speak of me?" "Perhaps we should not speak at all." "You would know nothing of the man you a...

DEAD SHOT - The Fort Smith Series classic western adventure novel "I can't condone this," Parker sat across from Eldridge and poured coffee from a tin pot. He pushed a cup over to the Marshal and blew on the hot liquid before taking a sip of his own. "I'm not asking your sanction," said Sample. "You killed these men outside the commission of your sworn duty." "They were a couple of murders," he ignored the cup of coffee. "They killed her." Parker watched the Marshal bite back a sob. His long fingers shook with rage as he clenched and unclenched his fists. "The law was going to let them get away with it." "I wasn't," said Parker. "You didn't have a choice. The Senator and his ilk were going to make you let them go, let them get away with it." "I would have ignored them." "And they would have killed your wife," Sample growled. "Or your ...

BIG TROUBLE - excerpt "Elvis?" "Yeah Marshal?" I hooked a thumb through my belt and tried not to crap myself. It wasn't easy. I mean, I'd fought Trolls before. And won. Mostly. But this. This was something else. "Did she just turn a Bigfoot into a Zombie?" "Sasquatch." "Isn't that what I said?" "They prefer you call them Sasquatch. Bigfoot is demeaning." "Ghost, I'm not arguing semantics during a magical battle," I warned him. "We're not in a battle Marshal. It's just a line of Sasquatch zombies coming our way." I took a deep breath. It was enough to keep the ghost of my former watcher in the moment. I didn't want him diving into the swiss cheese of his memories and getting lost in there while I might need him. "Anyone done that before?" I tried to steer him back on course. "Done what?" Sigh. "Turn a Bigfoot into a...

THE MARSHAL OF MAGIC – MYTH UNDERSTOOD “I need your help,” the voice on the other end of the phone said and I froze. The simple truth was, I never expected to hear from her again. At least not in this life. Plus, I was still feeling from the sight of a black fox darting from the undergrowth in the woods and dropping a flip phone cell on the path at my feet. It felt surreal and disconnected, like the fragment of a dream where the afterimage lingers long after the sun has come up to burn away the memories. I remembered her. Kiko. From Vegas. The fox made sense.  She was kitsune. Half human, half diety spirit from the island of Japan. I tried to think of a great comeback, one that would impress her and stoke the fires. “I bet you do.” Nailed it. “Because of Vegas?” she purred. I could imagine the curl of her pouty lip, lifted in one corner in a semblance of a smile. “Exactly,” I said into the phone and tried not to yell as I ...