A TOWN CALLED FURY REDEMPTION
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
with J. A. Johnstone
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
EPILOGUE
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
Oct. 29, 1928
Mr. J. Carlton Blander, Editor
Livermore and Beedle, Publishers
New York, New York
Dear Carl,
Thank you so much for pointing me toward this Fury story! I know you didn’t mean for me to get a “wild hare” (or is that “wild hair”?) and just go charging out to Arizona at the drop of your not-inconsequential hat, but that’s exactly what I did. The story runs deeper than you could have known—or the sketchy reference books say, for that matter—and I found a number of the participants still alive and kicking, and best of all, talking!
As you know, the story actually begins long before the events you provided me to spin into literary fodder. They begin in 1866, when famed wagon master Jedediah Fury was hired by a small troupe of travelers to lead them west, from Kansas City to California. Jedediah was accompanied on this mission by his twenty-year-old son, Jason, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, they being the last of his living family after the Civil War. Jedediah was no newcomer to leading pilgrims west. He’d been traveling those paths since after the War of 1812.
I have not been able to ascertain the names of all the folks who were in the train, but what records I could scrounge up (along with the memories of those still living) have provided me with the following partial roster: the “Reverend” Louis Milcher, his wife (Lavinia) and seven children, ages five through fifteen; Hamish MacDonald, widower, with two half-grown children—a boy and a girl, Matthew and Megan, roughly the ages of Jedediah’s children; Salmon and Cordelia Kendall, with two children (Sammy, Jr. and Peony, called Piney); Randall and Miranda Nordstrom, no children, (went back East or on to California—there is some contention about this—in 1867); Ezekiel and Eliza Morton, single daughter Electa, twenty-seven (to be the schoolmarm) and elder daughter Europa Morton Griggs, married to Milton Griggs, blacksmith and wheelwright (no children); Zachary and Suzannah Morton (no children), Zachary being Ezekiel’s elder brother; a do-it-yourself doctor, Michael Morelli, wife Olympia, and their two young children (Constantine and Helen); Saul and Rachael Cohen and their three young sons. There were a few other families, but they were not listed and no one could recall their names, most likely because they later went back East or traveled farther west.
The train, which contained livestock in the form of a number of saddle horses and breeding stock, a greater deal of cattle, goats, and hogs (mostly that of Hamish MacDonald and the Morton families) and, of all things, a piano owned by the Milchers left for the West in the spring of 1866. It was led by Fury, with the help of his three trusty hirelings. I could only dig up one of the names, here: a Ward Wanamaker, who later became the town’s deputy until his murder several years later (which follows herein).
Most of the wagon train members survived Indian attacks (Jedediah Fury was himself killed by Comanche, I believe, about halfway west, several children died, and Hamish MacDonald died when his wagon tumbled down a mountainside, after he took a trail he was advised not to attempt), visiting wild settlements where now stand real towns, and withstanding highly inclement weather. About three-fifths of the way across Arizona, they decided to stop and put down stakes.
The place they chose was fortunate, because it was right next to the only water for forty or fifty miles, both west and east, and it was close enough to the southernmost tip of the Bradshaws to make the getting of timber relatively easy. There was good grazing to be had, and the Morton clan made good use of it. Their homestead still survives to this day as a working ranch, as do the large homes they built for themselves. Young Seth Todd, currently the last of the Mortons (and Electa’s grandson) owns and runs it.
South of the town was where Hamish MacDonald’s son, Matthew, set up his cattle operation, which had been his late father’s dream. He also bred fine Morgan horses, the only such breeder in the then-territory of Arizona. His sister, Megan, ran the bank both before and after she married, she having the head for figures that Matthew never possessed.
For the first few years, everyone else lived inside the town walls, whose fortresslike perimeter proved daunting to both Indians and white scofflaws, and the town itself became a regular stopover for wagon trains heading both east and west.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What concerns us here is the spring of 1871, the year that gunfighter Ezra Welk went to meet his maker. Former marshal Jason Fury (now a tall but spare man in his eighties, with all his own teeth and most all of his hair, and, certainly, all of his mental capacities) was very much surprised that I was there, asking questions about something “so inconsequential” as the demise of Ezra Welk.
“Inconsequential?!” I said, as surprised by his use of the word as its use in this context.
“You heard me, boy,” he snapped. “Salmon Kendall was a better newsman than you, clear back fifty or sixty years!”
I again explained that I was a writer of books and films, not a newspaperman.
This seemed to “settle his hash” somewhat. However, it was then that I changed my mind about the writing of this book. I had planned to pen it pretending to be Marshal Fury himself, using the first person narrative you had asked for. However, in light of Marshal Fury’s attitude (and also, there being other witnesses still living), I decided to write it in third person.
And so, as they say, on with the show!
Sincerely,
Bill
1
The black, biting wind was so strong and so fierce that Jason feared there was no more skin left on his upper face—the only part not covered by his hat or bandanna.
His nostrils were clogged with dust and snot, despite the precautionary bandanna, and his throat was growing thick with dust and grit. Whoever had decided to call these things dust storms had never been in one, he knew that for certain. Oh, they might start out with dust, but as they grew, they picked up everything, from pebbles to grit to bits of plants and sticks. He’d been told they could rip whole branches from trees and arms off cacti, and add them into the whirling, filthy mess, blasting small buildings and leaving nothing behind but splinters.