Western Seed, a Novel by Red Johnson - Fiction (post Civil War era)
Jed felt it would just be easier to die. He couldn't keep a thought clear, but suddenly it seemed that he saw his mother down on her knees, bleeding from the bullet in her stomach, firing her revolver. She had taken her murderer with her, killing him with a shot between the eyes. He saw her plain as day. She never gave up! One of the last things she had ever told him was to never give up!
"Think! think, dammit!" Jed admonished himself in a faint voice. "Start with the basics. Where am I? the pond, the beaver lodge." He looked up. What was the time of day? It was black outside. "Right" he reassured himself. "That's why I can't see. So, how bad off am I? Two bullets, one still in, another went through my leg". He started to fade out again.
"Think,think," he murmured, "name...Jed...dammit".
He had almost fallen asleep again when the last words of the crazy old man came back to him: "I'll be back to bury you, boy!" Jed had to move, had to get away. He had no choice. If he didn't, he would be killed in the morning. He tried to move...pain riddled his body. His head resounded with it. " Why my head. Why?" Jed thought. He could recall no head injury. With exquisite care , he felt his skull. There it was ....a gash of some sort. Perhaps a bullet grazed him. He felt his hair again, and found it full of blood and mud. Another handful of moss and he padded that wound, too.
Western Seed is page after page of excitement. It is the story of a young 16 year-old man growing up fast, because he had to. The book is about love, hate, revenge, and cruelty. It is about friendship, bonding, and manifest destiny. It is set in the post civil war era of a reconstructed South. Jed Rumsey becomes the fastest man alive with a gun for one purpose, but life will deal him another set of cards. Red Johnson is working on his second novel about Benjamin Thorne, a man who was a big part of the gold rush history in California.
Murder in The Gold Country, A True story - Non-fiction (August 1855)
A Mexican boy, who had seen the gun fight from a distance, approached the officers, and said he saw a wounded man enter a cloth cabin; he pointed in the direction of the cloth shanty (They had sail cloth from the abandoned ships in San Francisco harbor as side walls, and roofs. Wood planks were used for short side walls and floors. Some had the ground for flooring).
Sheriff Charlie Clark and Deputy Ben Thorn walked side by side approaching the cloth shanty with two revolvers drawn each, and at the ready.
First in English, then it can be surmised (because both men knew broken Spanish) in Spanish they called to the man to come out as their prisoner. The man refused. Sheriff Clark ordered Deputy Ben Thorn to: "burn him out!" Gathering dead chaparral, setting it on fire, and throwing the burning bush on the cloth top of the shanty; it went up like a match. The wood frame began to burn.
Flames engulfed the cabin. Just when the officers figured the man had decided to die by fire rather than surrender; the Hacalitas Gang member crashed out the the front wall of fire. His clothes and hair on fire, his two hands were out reached with a pistol in both blazing away at the two lawmen. His shots went wild without effect.
Sheriff Clark and Deputy Thorn stepped forward with their own pistols leaping in their hands. multiple flashes and lead balls exiting the barrels of each of their pistols; both good shots with either hand. Lead balls peppered the man until he fell backward crashing to the ground dead before his head hit the ground.
This wildly entertaining, book is very well researched, and a must-read for the lover of non-fiction history. Never before has a book been written about one of the most significant events that happened during the California Gold Rush era: the raid on Rancheria Gold Camp. The Mexican vaqueros of the Ione and Jackson Valley ranches had enough of being treated like dogs by the Anglo miners. They would get their revenge!
This was an era of the wildest of the Wild West. In those times, a man would be hung for stealing a mule. What would the miners do to someone that shot and killed their camp mother, in the back, as she was lowering her baby out a window to save it from the Mexican raiders? The retaliation was more horrific than the raid! The chase of the real bad guys include some of the best lawmen the Old West produced, three gun fights, and one better than the OK Corral of Tombstone. There exists two scenes, that if made into a movie, would never be forgotten as long as that movie-goer lives. All that and every bit really happened. This is a true story you will never forget!
Hell Will Be To Pay, The True story of Henry Plumer -
California Gold Rush Miner, Rancher, Businessman, Nevada City Marshall, Sheriff of Bannack, Idaho Territory, and ...
The Fastest Man Alive With a Gun
His challenge: "Then it will be pistols, and you may draw it, cock it, and I'll not go for mine until you have done so, and uttered the word to fire!" Six years in the making! A historical story of the gold rushes of: California, Idaho, & Montana. Accounts of spectacular gunfights!
Until now, Henry Plumer was known as one of the worst criminals of the old west. One author went so far as saying he was "one of the ten worst criminals of all time". This compared him to Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein. I say "until now" because this book will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Sheriff Plumer was innocent of all the alleged crimes he was accused of by the Vigilantes of Montana.
Hell Will be To Pay, The True Story of Henry Plumer $27.95
Murder In The Gold Country
$15.95
Western Seed $9.95
Read the ongoing saga of Hell Will Be To Pay at http://www.goldcountrytimes.com/legends_main.htm
