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matt_s

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  1. matt_s
    DAVEY BROWN Mickey managed to connect the dots on Tim Flenderson's description of the leading rogue. Pale skin, dark hair, fancy clothes, and most of all the gruesome ears on string about his neck as a trophy nailed him down to a near certainty as a one "Davey Brown". A younger Davey Brown had run with John Glanton himself before the latter met a violent and thoroughly deserved demise at the hands of the Yuma back in 1850. Even then, he had acquired a reputation for violence and audacity. After Glanton's death, Brown kept a low profile and was assumed by many to be dead. Because he had either been staying out of trouble or in parts distant, Mickey would doubt if there was a current bounty on him. Horse thieving wouldn't be worth the government's while setting a large bounty on, but if the Arizona or Mexican authorities learned Brown was out and about, it was a near certainty they would pay handsomely for him to be dealt with.
    The Glanton gang among many other crimes robbed ferry crossings, extorted wayfarers, ransacked mining supply convoys, and raided settlements.
    ...
    Davey Brown? Damn my eyes if I won't see that son of a gun hang, said the Sheriff.
    Aye, some people I reckon are too wicked for hell and the devil just spits 'em out. Nasty enough that oblivion waits until the final day when the hearts of men are sorted out before the judgment seat.
    The Sheriff pauses in his musing and adds, But nothing so outlandish for Davey, way I see it. Just laid low for awhile or took his misdeeds elsewhere when the Yuma chopped that fiend Glanton to bits, and now he's back. The other no-accounts he's surrounded himself with, well plenty of folks realize that if you put God and Law aside it's a hell of a lot easier to make a living with a gun than with ploughshares in these parts.
    ...
    He had heard a few more stories of the doings of Davey after his so-called disappearance in 1850. Rumor had it that Davey managed to not only survive the Yuma ambush but make away with some of the ill-gotten gold that the Glanton Gang had sequestered away. That gold was cursed, some old cowboys swore, and each coin whispered in their owner's ears calling them to evil. But the older cowboys laughed a bitter laugh at this. Glanton, Davey, and that whole lot always was bad, and they hardly did it for the gold, neither. They had liked the thing in and of itself.
    Maybe the gold wore thin, maybe he just got bored. But the town preacher had in drunken confidence one night told Malakai another tale. During the Civil War, Davey had set himself up as a freebooter of sorts. There were Union guerrillas and light cavalry see, both Federals and allied Indians, causing trouble, blowing up bridges, hitting convoys and depots, the cutting off war as the Iroquois would call it. And the secesh had placed a hefty bounty on each one - one hundred dollars dead, not a penny alive. In stepped Davey. Now, fighting the bluecoats was hard. But massacring unarmed farmers and passing them off as Federals was easy. The same awful trick Glanton had pulled down in the old country of Mexico more than a decade before.... The preacher had fled from a small town sacked in this way and his brother and uncle had been shot down there. Not much came of this after the war - a blink of an eye at Antietam was more death than Glanton, Davey, and their entire gangs had wrought or ever would.
     
     
  4. matt_s

    Banquo's Refuge, town saloon

    By matt_s,


    Saloon
    The town saloon, a title from ol' Bill Shakespeare, but with Old West grime all around, the muck and disrepair laying bare the futile aspirations of Martin Wrightman the proprietor. The whiskey is as cheap as you'd hope for in a out of the way place like this. The expense of getting distilled spirits out here is balanced by the desultory population and the general lack of travelers looking to wet their throats. Still, for a hot meal and a shot of drink, it serves as nicely as any place. Whether you like it or not, there are no better places in town to kick back after a day of work, shoot the breeze with the locals, or while away the evening hours with a few hands of poker.
    The place was a family enterprise. Martin owned the deed and handled much of the finances of the business, his brother Albert ran the poker tables, and his cousin Susan was the primary bartender. Family was what the Wrightman's knew they could count on in these parts.
  5. matt_s
    This is a list of various locales, subject to fleshing out as we go along...
    - Aguadulces silver mine about a mile out of town. A wagon road links the two and mining equipment and supplies for the delvers of the deep go up the road and ore and the wealth torn from the ground comes down it
    - Banquo's Refuge, the town saloon
    - Pendrick's Medical Emporium or whatever that uppity leecher is calling his apothecary/doctor's workshop/pharmacy these days
    - United Railroad Service Yard and Waystation, the railroad stop and depot if it can even be called that, on the fringes of town
    - Wagne's General Store. You can buy things here, generally speaking
    - Halberforth's Armaments and Hunting Supplies. You can buy things that can maim, dismember, and otherwise confound people you dislike.
  6. matt_s
    Dr. Archibald Pendrick, the local sawbones. He claimed to have a medical degree from one of those fancy schools out East, maybe Harvard itself depending on the telling. Who knows what the provenance of his knowledge of leechcraft? But even the skeptics among the Arcadians, of which there are many as an easy mark in the West soon finds their pockets emptied and their skepticism hardened right soon enough, will confess to the competence of the good Doctor.
    Archibald had been in the medical corps in the late War, and his motions with scalpel and needle were with a confidence that betrayed a disturbing quantity of practice. He knew when to cut, and knew when not to. The medicines he parceled out as town apothecary were mostly distilled alcohol mixed with some bitter herbs to provide a flair of the alchemical but rest and good drink mended what hasty work with a scalpel could mar. And the patients he did cut into rarely got the gangrene from it, and the bones shattered by ornery horse or panicked cattle tended to set well enough when he was put to work.
  7. matt_s

    Life in the West

    By matt_s,


    Professions
    There are many ways to line your pockets in the West. Ranchers, farmhands, miners, trappers all work hard to pry their fortunes petty though they may be from the surface or even the bowels of the wild Earth. In town, shopkeepers, bartenders, sutlers, and coachmen keep the monotonous hum of commerce going. The railroads gouge across the land in great strips of iron. Hammered ties and laid track by the weary hands of itinerant workers from every corner of the world have sewn the nation together. Now, great trains wander the land loaded with conductors, engineers, and guards. And on the plains and in the hidden places of the land, always lurk the bandits...
    Think about what role you see your character as being drawn to in the West. Are they setting aflame the bridges of their past or continuing their vocation in a new frontier (new to them for the marrow of the bones of the earth is long since turned to dust)? What types of folk do you respect or find grating?
     
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