Tag Archives: Pat Nolan

Contents Vol. 2 No. 9

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Nine of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

In Issue Nine, Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine, Wayne Bruce continues the investigation into his father’s death in Act One, Scene 4 of Just Coincidence. Brooding in his penthouse high above the cityscape, he has come across evidence of fraud that might implicate his uncle. And as he reconstructs the last hours of his father’s life, the three hours prior to his demise remain a mystery.

It is the year Pax Victoriana180. For Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), Victoriana rules the waves as well as the airship lanes. In the continuing saga of Cheése Stands Alone. Captain Lydia Cheése has fallen down the rabbit hole and finds herself in the clutches of a herpetologist by the name of Serre-Pain and his traveling snake show, Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium. If she is to find her father, the notorious Commodore Jack Cheése, she must bide her time and masquerade as the snake enchantress, Madame Ophelia.

Number Eleven of On The Road To Las Cruces marks the last chapter in this fictional retelling of the last day in the life of a legendary Western lawman. His death has left many things about his final hours unresolved. Verandah speculation and dark conspiracies have found fertile ground in the barren lands of the New Mexico Territory about who killed the man who shot Billy, The Kid.

And last but not least, Installment 21 of the 1940 detective story, Better Than Dead (Dime Pulp’s longest running serial), hapless confidential investigator Lackland Ask has to get out of town, and quick. With a price on his head put there by the mob, sought by the police and a gang of international diamond smuggler saboteurs, and now in the sights of the mysterious Thieves of Bombay, his only recourse is to make himself scarce.

FYI: Dime Pulp Yearbook 21 contains the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, available for perusal in their entirety. If you missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, clicking on the link at the beginning of this paragraph or on the menu bar above is a good way to catch up.

Dime Pulp continues its crime spree with two new pulp fiction serializations, Cheése Stands Alone by Phyllis Haldursdottir and Just Coincidence by Pierre Anton Taylor, as well as the continuing serialization of the pulp crime fiction of Better Than Dead, A Detective Story and the Western, On The Road To Las Cruces . If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Two, Number 9

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

“Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.” Thus begins the seemingly non-stop, endless narrative of Better Than Dead in which women are not the only trouble although most of it, told with the wit and street savvy of Runyon and Parker.

Better Than Dead—21

In late February of 1908, a one-time drover, buffalo hunter, saloon owner, hog farmer, peach grower, horse rancher, US Customs inspector, private investigator, county sheriff, and Deputy US Marshal set out from his adobe home on the mesa above Organ, New Mexico accompanied by a young man in a black buggy on the journey to Las Cruces. He would never arrive. This is the story of that journey, a novel account of the last day in the life of a legendary lawman.

On The Road To Last Cruces ~Eleven~

In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. Her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana has lasted 180 years maintaining as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to rapid advances in bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone IV

In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and dark knight joined in a fateful and tragic quest for justice.

Act One, Scene 4

On The Road To Las Cruces ~11~

September 6, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Novel Account of the Last Day in the Life of A Legendary Western Lawman, Billy The Kid, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Garrett, Pat Nolan, Pulp Fiction, WesternNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Apollinara did not want to hear another story of how her husband had been assassinated.

Her oldest son, Dudley, who was known to all as Pepe, had brought the young reporter to their doorstep. She did not show her anger or distress. They were decent folk. They would be polite.

He introduced himself as John Scanly and explained that he had once worked for the El Paso Herald. He claimed that he had been fired for showing too much interest in her husband’s murder.

“I believe there’s a conspiracy of silence surrounding the circumstances of your husband’s death. My original curiosity was piqued when I encountered resistance to anything but a cursory examination of the evidence. Now I’m determined to uncover just who might be behind this plot and expose their motives.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “The results of which I plan to publish as part of a larger book dealing with the life and exploits of the most remarkable lawman of the Southwest.”

They were seated on the verandah of a house on the outskirts of Las Cruces, less than fifty yards from the road to Organ. Abe Falk owned the house they were now living in, generously rented to her at a cut rate. It was his way of demonstrating to the public his benevolence. Apollinara was in no position to be ungracious or even ungrateful. The family had had to move down from the mesa after Cott had foreclosed on the mortgage, an action taken a few days following her husband’s funeral.

The bright early July afternoon was beginning to heat up. Paulita had set a pitcher of lemonade on the little table between her mother and the reporter, stirring the contents with a long wood spoon while her baby brother clung to her pinafore. Pepe, her older brother, was seated on the steps to the verandah, his long legs stretched down to the path that meandered out to the white picket fence where Scanly’s horse and buggy were hitched.

“Isn’t it out of the ordinary that he would be unprepared for trouble or even not on his guard? His shotgun was loaded with birdshot. Clearly, he did not expect to use the weapon offensively or defensively. In my interview with Doctor Fields, he stated that a man as wise in such matters as your husband would not have been in the position he had probably been in, wouldn’t have turned his back had he thought he was in any physical danger.”

Apollinara nodded, lips set in a grim line. She knew her husband’s caution. He had made many enemies over the years as a lawman. But she knew he could be careless, too, especially if he’d had too much to drink. It was then that his normally vigilant self became confused with its own deathless reputation.

“Doctor Fields also informed me that he had taken a thorough survey of the crime scene and found that it appeared there had been another party lying in wait along the trailside. There was evidence of fresh manure and the ground was trampled by boot prints.”

These were things that had been whispered to her countless times. They made her fearful, despondent.

“Also, on the day of your husband’s funeral, the Attorney General and Captain Short with the Territorial Mounted Police were sent down from Santa Fe by Governor Kerry. They confirmed the coroner’s suspicion that there had been a third party. What’s more, they found something he had over-looked, shell casings from a Winchester rifle.”

These details meant nothing now, would change nothing. He had died in a way she always feared that he would. She could not come to grips with the pervasive air of injustice that rumor stirred up. Self-righteousness had been his trait. For all his faults, though, she had never ceased her affection for him, even in the most trying of times, the most recent probably being the worst. She missed his familiar long, gangly, slightly stooped presence in the low ceilinged adobe. His predictability had made her life secure no matter the circumstances.

“I spoke with Captain Short a few days after he had interviewed Brazil. He expressed surprise at the boy’s docile demeanor. This evidently strengthened the suspicion that another party was involved. Clearly, Brazil is not the killer type. My conversations with folks who know him have confirmed that impression. He was never considered a dangerous man. As I was present at the preliminary hearing, I can testify that my sense of Brazil is similar to the prevailing opinion. He is a follower not a leader, and he is beholding to Mr. Cott who plainly holds the leash.

“Among other information that would point to collusion, I have come across the fact that Adams never had cattle to bring up from Mexico and graze on the disputed property. There was never any herd nor was there ever a ranch in Oklahoma, their purported final destination. Nor did Adams ever have any intention of buying Brazil’s goats! Why then would Adams and Brazil concoct such a fiction if not for some dark purpose?” Scanly paused to judge Apollinara’s comprehension of what he had been telling her. He took her grim silence as permission to continue. “I would also question whether either of them had the cunning or intelligence to devise such a scheme.”

Paulita could not help but continue to stir the lemonade, as she eavesdropped on the adults, the ice making a musical sound striking the side of the pewter pitcher.

“Now I don’t know if the name Joe Miller is familiar to you, Mrs. Garrett, but it belongs to a notorious assassin who is believed to be part of this conspiracy and may even be the actual triggerman.”

“Don’t you mean Jim Miller?” Pepe stirred from his perch on the steps, stood up, and stretched his long legs.

“Jim Miller. Did I say Joe? I meant to say Jim. I was informed by a Texas Ranger, a friend of your pa’s, that he had interviewed the undertaker from El Paso who happened to be in Las Cruces that very day and had seen Miller in what can only be described as a conspiratorial conversation with none other than Mr. O’Lee! Also. . . .”

Apollinara excused herself. “It is a beautiful day, Señor, but perhaps a little too warm for me. My dark clothing is too welcoming of the light.”

Scanly rose to his feet. “Ma’am?”

“But please, stay seated, be our guest, enjoy the day.” She stood, stoic, dignified. The man lowered his eyes. If he had been homelier, he could have passed for a young Ashton Upson. There was the same love of the sound of his own voice. There was the same self-pride, but then all men had some of that. Full of himself, his insinuation could never be wrong. “Paulita, serve Mr. Scanly more lemonade, por favor.” Then she disappeared behind the summer door into the dark, cooler house.

Scanly turned to Pepe who had moved to sit in his mother’s rocker. “As I was saying, while in El Paso, I met with an informant who would most certainly be privy to these types of details. What he told me indicates a much wider conspiracy. A prominent rancher is involved, and who that might be is fairly obvious. As well, so is a well-known attorney who, in my estimation, is the only one with the intelligence to craft such a devious plan.”

Scanly got no argument from Pepe. “From what I’ve been able to learn, a meeting was held at the Regent Hotel that included Miller and the other two in which Miller agreed to do the killing. Coincidentally, that meeting took place in the very same hotel in which years earlier your pa met with the Governor of the Territory and agreed to take on the investigation of Jennings and his boy. And it included at least one of the same participants!”

Wide-eyed, Pepe shook his head. “Now don’t that beat all.”

“The twist to the plot,” Scanly continued, confident that he had his listener hooked, “and which I do believe the lawyer provided, was that someone would be furnished to admit to the shooting and someone else would testify that it was self-defense. That would be Adams and Brazil.”

“That copperhead! That snake!”

“Adams claims that your pa threatened Brazil. Now, from what I’ve heard about Mr. Garrett, he was not one to make idle threats. The consensus is that had he made the threat, he could have shot Brazil from where he sat in the buggy rather than after stepping down.”

Pepe’s mouth spread sideways in a smirk. “Now ain’t that the truth. If he’d figured for a scrape, he’d a taken his sixer with him. But he didn’t reckon that he needed to get rough with Brazil because he had a lawyer up in Santa Fe who swore we could get him off the land legally. Besides, he wasn’t any more scared of Brazil than he was of a jackrabbit!”

“My suspicions are all but confirmed at this point. There was more at stake than that hunk of overgrazed rangeland. There was indeed a plot to murder your father.”

An explosion sounded in the direction of Las Cruces, like a shot, but less distinct, hollow. Then another. A beige cloud advanced up the road toward them accompanied by shrieks, shouts, laughter and the barks of dogs. The horse tied to the fence post shied.

“It’s a motor carriage!” Paulita ran to the gate, her baby brother waddling behind her. The machine swayed and jogged from side to side, navigating the ruts in the wagon road, chased by outraged dogs and the town’s children. Scanly’s horse reared, shaking and tipping the buggy trying to free itself as the dust and noise rattled past. Seated high on the bench of the contraption were what appeared to be a man and a woman, he with a black hat held on his head with a chinstrap and she with a wide brimmed chapeau held in place with a yard of chiffon scarf. Both wore goggles. The woman waved at Paulita and her brother gaping through the pickets.

“They must be going up to Cott’s spread for the big barbeque.” Pepe said after the machine had gone from sight and he had settled back in the rocker.

“That’s right! O’Lee has been elected to the Territorial Legislature. I sincerely hope that that is the only thing they are celebrating.”

Pepe grunted and then noticed his mother had returned and stood to give her his seat. Apollinara made no indication that she wanted to sit. She had been drawn to view the noise and novelty as well.

Scanly addressed her. “There is a mystery about this tragedy, Mrs. Garrett, and it is my aim to try and bring it to light. If you will allow me.”

Apollinara nodded from the doorway more in resignation than agreement. There were those who sought to benefit from the misfortune of others. This young man was no different. She could almost hear Ash Upson saying so himself. “There are those who kill and get a reputation, and there are those who write about them, for a similar notoriety.” It was the code of men, of the West.

“I am the recipient of an anonymous note from someone who claims to have been a friend of Mr. Garrett. In it, the author advises me to steer clear of probing too deeply into the matter, for, and I quote, ‘I know the Organ Mountain bunch and Pat got himself killed trying to find out who killed Jennings and you will get killed trying to find out who killed Garrett.’

“Ma’am, I have been in contact with more than one person who has told me that your husband was gathering new evidence regarding the White Sands murders, that Gil Leland had told him or was going to tell him everything, and that he was writing a book about it. Would there be notes from these interviews or rough drafts regarding this matter among his effects?”

Apollinara closed her eyes as if to gather strength. Had her husband and Ash not written their book, perhaps things would have been different, that no-account boy would have faded from memory. Instead, that one event overshadowed his entire life. He was remembered only as the man who shot Billy, the Kid.

When she reopened her eyes, she spoke, slowly, firmly, “My husband was a man of few words, Mr. Scanly. There is no book.”

This novel is the culmination of a youthful ambition. It pays homage to the many sagas of the old West I devoured as a young reader, the countless B Westerns I watched on Saturday morning TV, the yards of paperback Westerns I burned through as an adolescent and as a young adult, the prime-time horse operas available to me almost nightly in the late fifties and sixties. I was smitten with Western lore and wanted to contribute to it. It was a subject that always caught my attention as was the case when I came upon Leon Metz’s biography of Patrick F. Garrett known the world over as the man who shot Billy, The Kid. Professor Metz’s thorough account presented Garrett as the quintessential lawman of the old West. One of the gems uncovered in my reading of the biography was that Garrett and his friend, Ashton Upson, had written and self-published a version of that crucial event entitled The Authentic Life of Billy, The Kid, with Upson, an ex-newspaper man, providing ‘biographical’ information and Garrett, the uncluttered directness of a police report in his pursuit of Bonney. As a result, some three decades ago, I sat down at my typewriter and set out to write a novel based on the life of a legendary lawman, a life overshadowed by one significant incident, the killing of William Bonney.

Over the years numerous version of my manuscript, mostly typewritten, have languished in a drawer or gathered dust on my desk and to which I was drawn, on occasion, to reread and rethink the presentation of the material. In the process, a novel took shape, one that began as a bare bones cinematic adaptation of a biography and emerged as something more meaningful: the story of the relationship between two men, one garrulous, the other taciturn, the Mutt and Jeff of the old Southwest, and the tradition of storytelling and authoring of ‘true’ accounts. The life of this legendary lawman encompassed more than just that one episode, however. Garrett’s own violent death in the early years of the Twentieth Century seemed to punctuate the passing of an era. There is a resonance to the other particulars of his life as a lawman that belong to the saga of the Southwest.

On The Road To Las Cruces is a work of fiction tethered loosely to historical fact as any Western history buff will be quick to discern. The detail and color of the late Nineteenth Century Southwest presented here is due largely to the intrepid historians, both amateur and professional, whose bailiwick is that particular era. An author can feel comfortable writing about his contemporaries, but to travel to the past takes the expertise of those for whom the diligent tracking of detail is all consuming and, in many cases, a just and only reward. I am fortunate to benefit from such carefully researched knowledge. The quasi-fictional landscape that came into being in my imagination would have been noticeably paler had it not been for the writing of such excellent authors, storytellers, and historians as Mari Sandoz, J. Frank Dobie, Leon Metz, Owen Wister, Charlie Siringo, Jon Tuska, and Colin Rickards, to name but a few. It goes without saying that Garrett and Upson’s collaboration was invaluable.

In this work of fact-based fiction, I have allowed myself license to rename, upend, and fabricate certain details to hurry along the story. The inaccuracies, the anachronisms, the inventions are entirely mine. What is related on the road to Las Cruces is as much a retelling of some history as it is how such a retelling might come about, and is represented in the manner of a tall tale, the deadpan details of a crime story, melodrama, and the makings of a conspiracy to murder. The subtle hyperbole of the Western storyteller is a joy to hear, masking in understatement devilish wit and intelligence. It was my intention to evoke that tradition.

Pat Nolan, Monte Rio, 2011

Contents Vol. 2 No. 8

August 9, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dime Pulp, Hard Boiled Fiction, Hard Boiled Myths, Just Coincidence, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

In Issue Eight, Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine, continues with our two new pulp serials, Phyllis Haldursdottir’s global steampunk saga, Cheése Stands Alone, featuring Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), and Pierre Anton Taylor’s Just Coincidence, a familiar fiction of dynastic intrigue and the dark revenge of a masked crime crusader.

In Act One, Scene 3 of Just Coincidence, Wayne Bruce continues the investigation into his father’s death. A chance encounter leads him on a motorcycle chase in pursuit of mysterious abducted young woman. An emotional connection to an old mentor and an overwhelming nostalgia move him to act against the injustice of social marginalization. That he is a dark prince as well as a dark knight is just coincidence.

It is the year Pax Victoriana180. For Airship Commander Lydia Cheése, Victoriana rules the waves as well as the airship lanes. In the continuing saga of Cheése Stands Alone, Captain Lydia Cheése has fallen down the rabbit hole and finds herself in the clutches of a herpetologist by the name of Serre-Pain and his traveling snake show, Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium. If she is to find her father, the notorious Commodore Jack Cheése, she must bide her time and masquerade as the snake enchantress, Madame Ophelia.

Number Ten of On The Road To Las Cruces reaches a crucial point in this fictional retelling of the last day in the life of a legendary Western lawman where memory becomes a dialogue with one’s self in the justification of a killing and a blind pride that leads to to death. As an echo from the abyss, the famous retelling is retold as a rebuttal as well as an oral chronical.

And last but not least, Installment 20 of the 1940 detective story, Better Than Dead (Dime Pulp’s longest running serial), hapless confidential investigator Lackland Ask continually thwarted by kidnapping, murder, attempted murder in his quest for stolen diamonds and the mysterious Empress’s Cucumber. Things not only get worse, but he has lost someone whose youthful energy had stolen his heart. And now the cops have him and they want answers.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—20

On The Road To Last Cruces ~Ten~

Cheése Stands Alone III

Act One. Scene 3

On The Road to Las Cruces ~Ten~

August 9, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Novel Account of the Last Day in the Life of A Legendary Western Lawman, Crime Fiction, New Mexico Territory, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Pulp Fiction, Western, Western FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

“I’m dead, old boy, all this chin wagging has me exhausted.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t expect more from a literary novice such as yourself. To be a true scribe, you have to have a fire in the belly, a passion to pen words, and once you get rolling, like a locomotive, you have a hell of a time coming to a stop. I figure if we keep up this pace, we’ll have to buy the ink by the pound. . .”

“And the whiskey by the barrel.”

“A writer needs fuel, a little liquid inspiration, and the distilled kind burns brighter and hotter than coal oil.”

“Hell, I hope you’re not thinking of drinking that, too!”

“You misjudge me, sir, and the refinement of my tastes. I will admit to having imbibed in drink that was as vile though never that whose purpose was to fuel a lamp.”

“All the same, I don’t know how you do it. I’m having a hard time understanding why. I’m no book writer.”

“Pat, we have to get our version of the events before the public in a credible, verifiable manner, and we must put to rest the claims of your critics who say that you are nothing more than a hired assassin.”

“That’s a damn lie!”

He took me by surprise. Had I known he was due, I would have done what any man in his right mind would have done.

“I showed you the editorial in the Messila Democrat, the one they reprinted from that San Francisco paper. The writer was of the opinion that you should have been brought up on charges. . . .”

“I was performing my duties as a sworn officer of the law! I knew when I went after him that I might have to kill him. I can only humbly apologize, at this late hour, for not having consulted with that San Francisco editor!”

“You know as well as I do, Pat, the scribblers live for scandal and controversy. It butters their bread, and assures that the bottle will always be close to their elbow. They are a low-down, cynical, vituperative, disparaging, backbiting, slanderous lot who wield a lurid and poisonous pen with no regard for veracity, fairness, honor, and integrity. They defame your person in print, and in illustration, by portraying you as shooting him from behind the bed, from under the bed, among other places of concealment.”

“Hell, I wasn’t behind the bed for the simple reason I couldn’t fit there. A bible leaf couldn’t have fit there! I wasn’t under the bed either. I could have been under the bed but that would assume that I was expecting him, and I wasn’t. He took me by surprise. Had I known he was due, I would have done what any man in his right mind would have done.”

“Exactly my point, and then they charge that you are writing an account of the ordeal with the nefarious object of making money! They are continually astounded by the obvious and do their best to cast it in a malicious light. They are a mongrel pack of asinine pencil pushers. What in the Hell do they suppose your object to be? Do they really believe that you should not attempt to make money out of what they are calling a lucky shot? Scribblers of every ilk who have never been to New Mexico and have never got within a thousand miles of their subject can compile newspaper rumors and pen as many lies about you and about him as they please—I have counted eight ‘authentic’ biographies to date—and make as much money out of their bogus, unreliable heroics as can be exhorted from a gullible public, and they are acclaimed! Yet, our truthful, factual history should be suppressed because you were paid for ridding the countryside of an outlaw! How do these impertinent meddlers, these penny-a-line hacks know how much money you have made by this accident or incident or whatever name they choose to designate it? You had to petition the Territorial Legislature just to get the reward money that was rightfully yours! How many thousands of dollars worth of stock and property did you save the citizens of this Territory by accomplishing your sworn duty? If they were reasonable men, they might be swayed by these considerations, but they are not. They are nigglers, parasites, pasquinaders of dubious parentage, sneering traducers who elevate the mangiest of curs to a lofty position by comparison!”

“Now where were we? Ah, yes, you had dogged those boys and cornered them in an abandoned line shack at Stinking Springs. How did you know where to find them?”

“I followed their trail from Wilcox’s place. I could see by the direction the tracks were taking that they had made for Stinking Springs.”

“After that gun fray in Fort Sumner, you’d figure they’d make a bee line for Mexico”

“When we rode up to within half a mile of the shack, I knew we had them trapped. I divided the men up in two groups, and led my boys, Tip and Barney, up an arroyo to where we were able to get in close.”

“How could you be sure it was them? What led you to suspect that it was actually them and not some local sheepherders who had taken shelter from the weather?”

“The tracks led right up to where there were three horses tied to the projecting rafters of the adobe hut. I knew there to be five of them. They were all mounted, and so I concluded that two of the horses were inside.”

“Of course, an elementary deduction, old boy. We have the horses, but what about the criminals? How could you pick out the leader from among his mangy cohorts?”

“I had an accurate description of his outfit, especially his hat, a green bowler. I told my men that should he show himself, I intended to kill him then and there. With their chief dead, I was positive that the others would surrender.

“You don’t think that he could have been taken alive?”

“He had sworn that he would never give up, that he would die fighting, a pistol at each ear. In regards to this tendency, I knew him to be good to his word.”

“He could be reckless, I would attest.”

“I informed the men that the signal would be when I brought my rifle up to my shoulder. We would all rise and fire.”

“This had to be in the wee hours of the morning, six feet of snow on the ground, not able to light a fire to keep warm. How long did you have to wait?”

“Just before daylight a man appeared in the door-way. His size and dress, especially his hat, matched exactly the description I had of him. I raised my rifle and fired. The men did the same.”

“I’ll assume that at least one of that volley found its mark.”

“He turned and reeled back into the adobe. Billy Wilson called out. I could tell it was him by that Yankee accent. He said we’d killed Charlie Bowdre and that he was sending him out. I replied that he could come out with his hands up.”

“I heard that someone instructed him when they pushed him to the doorway. Who do you suppose it was?”

“It would be impossible to tell. We were in shouting distance but still a ways from where we might be able to eavesdrop.”

“Could he have said something like, ‘They murdered you, Charlie, but you can get revenge, kill some of those sons of bitches before you die?’ That sentiment would be in keeping with his ruthlessness, even in the aftermath of his close chum’s mortal wounds.”

“We can only speculate as to what was said. All the same, Charlie stumbled out, his pistol still in its scabbard, and when he recognized me, he came straight at me.”

“Did he go for his gun? Did he speak? What did he say?”

“He motioned with his hand toward the shack. I think he was trying to say something.”

“He didn’t offer any regret?”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps he expressed remorse over not accepting your offer of leniency when you had met with him a fortnight previous. Or sorrow over leaving a young wife and child unprovided for. He might have said something like ‘I wish, I wish’ by way of repentance.”

“No. He keeled over and I caught him as he fell. I laid him down on the ground and he died right then, that green bowler pulled down over his ears.”

“I guess you could say that he died with his boots and his hat on. Did he gasp, ‘I’m dying’ or anything to that effect?”

“He was gargling and choking on his blood even if he had wanted to say something.”

“Gargling on his blood, you say.”

“It wasn’t whiskey.”

“I propose a toast, sir, to the completion of our noble effort. This modest volume is as fine a book as has ever been writ on the subject, and whose exposition sets the record straight once and for all.

No finer endeavor can man put forth than the edification of the populace, especially when they are accustomed to the fallacious assumptions advanced by the partisan press and in the crimson screed of penny dreadfuls. I hold in my hand history, pure and simple. I am confident that you share in the assessment of our triumph.”

“Yes, I don’t doubt that it is a coup. The title itself constitutes quite a mouthful.”

“The truth, my good fellow, is always a mouthful. I could have pandered to the crowd with a lurid nomination but for my sense of dignity, my sense of correctness in the pursuit of literary style, my sense of history, and above all, my sense of righteousness. Would I dare sully our genuine enterprise with such florid designations as ‘King of The American Highwaymen’ or ‘The Great Detective’s Chase’ or the supercilious puffery by that pseudonymic author who borrows on the exalted heritage of Spanish ancestry to give himself a mere hint of veracity, ‘The True Life of Billy The Kid’? I can go him one better if one equals a hundred. What I hold here, my good friend, is the authentic life of that noted desperado of the Southwest, whose deeds of daring and blood made his name a terror in New Mexico, Arizona, and Northern Mexico. It is a faithful narrative unlike the fabrications emanating from the mephitic crypt of the Atlantic literary syndicate!”

“It appears that the truth, like a new rope, can always stand some stretching.”

“To what are you referring, sir? I stand by the sincerity of our account. True, I did engage in hyperbole when dealing with the formative years of this hellion. But this is merely a literary device to engage the reader. In a duel, you don’t start off with a knife when your opponent has a revolver. We are in a contest with mendacious mongrels who slash the truth to shreds with their rabid nibs. I speak with authority on this subject as I have numbered among their rank and am aware of the crude inventions tendered as fact just to entice the reader into another month’s subscription. I have excised that pecuniary coarseness from my literary character. Truth is my mistress! I serve only her!”

“Consuela will be very disappointed to hear that.”

“Don’t try to sidetrack me, Pat, I am offended that you suspect my motivation. In the attempt to make an honorable yet marketable presentation, I have had to tread the same terrain as the purveyors of cheap cowboy claptrap. However, what I bring to the poker table is a sophisticated sense of style, wide erudition, and the simple fact that I’ve looked in the eyes of many of the participants of this chronicle. I’d say that’s akin to a royal flush!

“The entire length of our collaboration, I had as my compass the shining example of the inimitable Walter Scott. His rousing sagas of medieval times transposed to the dusty arroyos of the Southwest, this was the object of my elevated style. As for the verses in the early chapters, they announce to the reader that they have entered a domain in which the Muse is honored. Poetry is edifying, it sings to the soul. Even the most delicate of readers of this rugged yarn will take heart that they are in the company of educated sensibilities. The very ink with which all of history is written is merely fluid prejudice! I, sir, am simply diverting the flow to a higher ground!”

“The problem is that my name on it says I wrote it.”

“Your name is your contribution and testament to the legitimacy of the account. You are the hero of this narrative. I am Boswell to your Johnson, a mere quill driver, a scrivener of tolerable skill, a shade, a genial hack. I put into words your experience, your man hunting savvy, your dogged determination in apprehending this rabid, murdering cur!”

“I was just doing my job.”

“And you’re too modest a man to flaunt your accomplishments. Yet your due is denied you. You are disrespected in the press by politicians who puff themselves up by disparaging you. Your decency is an anathema to them.”

“Another jolt?”

“My pleasure. But to reiterate, this book is a testament to a man who put himself in harm’s way to bring law and order to the decent folks of Lincoln County and the New Mexico Territory. And it is our endeavor to set the record straight.”

“Still, I am troubled.”

“Pat, I’m all ears.”

“This is not about your physical appearance, Ash.”

“Touché, old man. Continue.”

“It’s been bothering me ever since we corrected the galleys. Now I know my part was mainly in relating the facts of my hunting him down, capturing him at Stinking Springs, going after him when he escaped from jail, and flushing him out back in Fort Sumner. You wrote everything else. . . .”

“Tut, tut, old fellow, I’ll get my due just in knowing that in tandem we pulled together to create an opus of unparalleled authenticity.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at.”

“Open the sluice gates then, I’m anxious to glimpse the glint of your precious mettle.”

“You puffed up this no-account son of a bitch and made him appear thrilling and romantic just like some character in a novel. But that’s not him. He never saved a wagon train from Indians, or rode a horse eighty-one miles in six hours. If twenty Indians had chased him as you say, he would have left a trail of yellow shit a mile wide from here to Santa Fe. He wasn’t reckless and daring, he was cunning and deceitful. He always watched his back. The time he dropped his guard was the night I killed him.”

“Now, Pat, I fully appreciate your concerns. But for the thoroughness of our account, I could not have a man of your substance and very real stature go against a flimsy stick figure villain. That would not have played well, either. He had to be someone with enough flesh to give blood to the chase. If I had not allowed myself the license to elaborate as I did, he would have been nothing more than a lifeless scarecrow. I believe I made him a worthy opponent.”

“All the same, I come off badly, more like that Sheriff in England. . . .”

“Nottingham?”

“That’s the one, and that other fellow. . . .”

“Robin Hood.”

“That’s right, that’s the way you made him out to be. And I look like a damn fool. . . .”

“Whoa up, old man. It’s time to dismount and rest the horses. What you forget is that you are the hero. He is the one who killed twenty-one men by the time he had reached that very age.”

“He was lucky if he killed half a dozen.”

“Be that as it may. He was a cold-blooded killer. He could never elicit sympathy from the public. You represent justice. He represents the miscreant who must pay the toll on the road to Hell. Justice has been done. In the final verdict, my good man, the truth rests on your side of the scale. The facts speak for themselves. Everything that has bearing on this episode in the history of the Southwest is contained in this volume. Everything!”

“Not everything.”

“You don’t say. Now then, enlighten me as to my omissions.”

I have no regrets in ending the life of such a treacherous, double-dealing coward.

“When I told you John Poe had found out that our man was still skulking about in Fort Sumner, I was protecting the identity of the true informant.”

“Who was?”

“Ash, this cannot go beyond this room.”

“You have my word as a gentleman and an author.”

“It was Pete Maxwell. He was concerned that his little sister, Rosalina, was much too deeply involved with our man, and if it went on much longer that she would calf his desperate breed.”

“Pat, that news is about as fresh as last week’s El Paso Herald. Everyone knows John Poe is inept at anything but being a politician. He’s more interested in shaking hands than putting irons on them. What else?”

“As you’ll recall, when I explained what occurred at Stinking Springs, I was certain that I had him in my sights because I had been given an exact description of his apparel, right down to that green bowler.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I was sorely disappointed when it turned out that it was Charlie Bowdre I killed. When we passed back by the Wilcox ranch with our prisoners, I mentioned this to old man Wilcox, and he told me something quite surprising. He said that the night we caught that bunch off guard in Fort Sumner and killed Tom Folliard, they held a pow-wow at the ranch in which they reviled me and my posse.”

“Understandable.”

“He also told me that at one point our man made a big show of giving Charlie his vest and his hat, the two distinguishing items of clothing by which he could be identified. Charlie, it appeared to Wilcox, was genuinely touched by his chum’s generosity. Little did he know that he was being set up as a target. I have no regrets in ending the life of such a treacherous, double-dealing coward.”

“And rightfully so. History will judge you fairly, my friend. We can include that conjecture in the second edition, if you wish.”

“You think there will be a second edition?”

“Without a doubt. I’m already at work on a sequel of sorts. ‘Colorful Characters of the Southwest.’ It will be an omnibus of facts and fancy regarding our corner of the world. Pioneers like Chisum and his clan, celebrities such as Governor Wallace. . .it will include sketches of all the denizens of our locality, ranchers and sodbusters alike, brush poppers and snoozers, and wild Indians, a rich panoply of life on the frontier. It will play big back East where they are hungry for the rustic. While you are tending your peach orchards, I will be plying my pen to the work of history!”

“Did you say ‘Indians’?”

“Why, yes, I did.”

“I could tell you a story.”

Next Time: The Man Who Shot Billy The Kid

Contents Vol. 2 No. 7

July 5, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dime Pulp, Hard Boiled Fiction, Hard Boiled Myths, Just Coincidence, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

In Issue Seven, Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine, continues with our two new pulp serials, Phyllis Haldursdottir’s global steampunk saga, Cheése Stands Alone, featuring Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), and Pierre Anton Taylor’s Just Coincidence, a familiar fiction of dynastic intrigue and the dark revenge of a masked crime crusader.

In Act One, Scene 2 of Just Coincidence, at his father’s funeral, a privileged young man plots revenge on those he suspects of his father’s murder. An emotional connection to an old mentor and an overwhelming nostalgia move him to act against the injustice of social marginalization. That he is a dark prince as well as a dark knight is just coincidence.

It is the year 180 of Pax Victoriana, one hundred and eighty years since Queen Victoria took the throne and whose persona if not the actual person, are kept alive as the paragon of world peace. For Airship Commander Lydia Cheése, Britannia still rules the waves as well as the airship lanes, with the exception of the carbon states of New Brazil and United Outlaw Africa. In the continuing saga of Cheése Stands Alone, Captain Lydia Cheése has fallen down the rabbit hole and finds herself in the clutches of a herpetologist by the name of Serre-Pain and his traveling snake show, Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium. Then the agents for IOTA show up and things get (shudder) slithery. Lydia’s efforts to locate her fugitive father, the infamous Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése, have brought her to the attention of the Investigative Office of The Admiralty and her flight from them will take her on an airship globetrotting adventure.

Number Nine of On The Road To Las Cruces reaches a crucial point in this fictional retelling of the last day in the life of a legendary Western lawman where memory becomes a dialogue with one’s self in the justification of a killing and a blind pride that leads to to death. As an echo from the abyss, the famous retelling is retold as a rebuttal as well as an oral chronical.

And last but not least, Installment 19 of The 1940 detective story, Better Than Dead (Dime Pulp’s longest running serial), follows hapless confidential investigator Lackland Ask through another tangle of tense circumstances as his quest for revenge and profit are continually thwarted by kidnapping, murder, attempted murder as well as stolen diamonds and the mysterious jade Empress’s Cucumber. Things only get worse when he loses someone close to him in an explosion and then finds himself being fit for a pair of cement overshoes.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—19

On The Road To Last Cruces ~Nine~

In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. The peace of her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana, despite some major environmental disasters, has lasted 180 years keeping as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone II

Act One. Scene 2

On The Road To Las Cruces ~Nine~

July 5, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionAsh Upson, Crime Fiction, Fort Sumner, Lincoln County, New Mexico, Pat Garrett, Pat Nolan, Pulp Fiction, William BonneyNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

“Let’s begin the proceedings. How does the defendant plead?”

Billy Brazil stared blankly at the magistrate. Then, as if startled, answered, “What’s that?”

His lawyer, Abe Falk, leaned over and whispered into his client’s ear.

“How does the defendant plead?” the judge repeated.

“Not guilty, your Honor,” Brazil replied quietly.

“Very well, Mr. Prosecutor, call your witness.

“I call Mr. Adams to the stand.”

Adams, his green bowler clutched to his chest, took his seat in the chair next to the magistrate’s table.

“Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

“I do.”

“State your full name for the record.”

“Charles Adams.”

“To the best of your recollection, what took place on the road to Las Cruces?”

“I stopped the buggy to urinate, and while I was standing there, I heard the old man say ‘Well, damn you, if I don’t get you off one way, I will another,’ or something like that.”

“Where were these people in relation to you?”

“The old man was in the buggy and Brazil was on his horse. They were at my back.”

“So you did not see the deceased standing upright at all?”

“I think when I seen him, the first shot had been fired and he was staggering.”

“Did he fall to the side, to the front, or to the rear of the buggy?”

“About two feet to the side.”

“Where was the defendant at the time?”

“He was on horseback, about even with the buggy. He had a six-shooter in his hand.”

“Who fired the second shot?”

“My horse bolted and I had to grab the lines and wrap them around the hub of the wheel to stop him from running. Then I went over to where the old man lay.”

“What about the defendant?”

“He was still on his horse and about in the same place.”

“Did the deceased speak?”

“When I got to him he was just stretching out. He did groan a little, and he might have said something. It sounded Mexican.”

“And what was that?”

“I can’t be sure.”

“Could you venture a guess?”

“It sounded like he might have said quien es?”

“What about the defendant, what did he say after all this had transpired?”

“He did not say much. He said, ‘This is hell.’ and he handed me his six-shooter.”

“Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

“Very well, Mr. Adams, you may step down. Mr. Prosecutor, call your next witness.”

“I call the Dona Ana County medical examiner, Doctor Fields, to the stand.”

A large man with a wide intelligent brow and graying muttonchops removed himself from the chair behind the prosecuting attorney’s table and strode to the witness stand.

“Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

“I do.”

“State your full name for the record.”

“Walter Charles Fields.”

“You are the medical examiner for the County, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Can you describe what you found when you arrived at the scene of the crime?”

“I found the deceased in a six-inch sand drift about four miles from town on the road to Las Cruces in an area known as Alameda Arroyo.”

“And what was the disposition of the body?”

“The deceased had been shot twice, once in the head and once in the body. He was lying flat on his back, one knee was drawn up. His trousers were unbuttoned and his male organ was visible which would indicate that he had been urinating at the time he was killed.”

“Was there a weapon at the scene?”

“Yes, there was. A shotgun identified as belonging to the deceased lay parallel to his body about three feet away. It lay on top of the ground without any sand kicked around it.”

“And what were the findings of your autopsy?”

“The deceased had been shot twice, one shot hitting him in the back of the head and emerging just over the right eye. The second shot was fired when the deceased was on the ground, the bullet striking the region of the stomach and ranging upward.”

“Thank you, Doctor Fields.”

“When a man is shot in the back of the head, he does one of two things with what he has in his hand. Either he clutches it convulsively tight or he throws it wide. There were no signs in the sand that the gun had been violently thrown. I would therefore conclude that this could not possibly be a case of self-defense as claimed by the defendant, but murder in the first degree.”

Abe Falk leaped to his feet. “I object! The witness offered conclusions that go beyond the scope of the original question!”

“Mr. Falk, this is not a trial, merely a hearing to determine the circumstances. . . .”

“All the same, your Honor, I respectfully request that the last comment by the witness be struck from the record.”

“Very well. Objection sustained. Doctor Fields please restrict your answers to questions asked by the prosecutor. Mr. Prosecutor, you may continue.”

“No further questions, your Honor.”

“Quien es?”

“That’s all he said?”

“Near as I can recollect, yes.”

“Could you see his expression?”

“No, he was pretty much just a shadow.”

“So you couldn’t tell if he saw you.”

“No, I don’t think he saw me.”

“Then why did he ask, ‘Who is it?’”

“He was asking Pete who the boys on the front porch were.”

“And Pete was in his bed.”

“That’s right, and I was crouched down in the dark next to him.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“Pete said, ‘That’s him!’”

“Then what happened?”

“I shot him.”

“How many shots were fired?”

“Two.”

“He fired back then.”

“No, both shots were mine.”

“What did you do after you shot him?”

“I got the hell out of there. I didn’t know if I’d killed him or just wounded him.”

“He was armed, though.”

“I couldn’t tell at the time that I shot him. Later, after I was sure that he was dead, I saw that he had a butcher knife in his hand.”

“I find it hard to believe that a desperado of his reputation would be walking about without a firearm.”

“He did favor that self-cocking revolver.”

“He didn’t have it on him?”

“I didn’t see it if he did.”

“Did you look for it?”

“No, once he was dead, I figured that no amount of pistols were going to make him any more dangerous.”

“Pat, I’d hate to think that you shot an unarmed man.”

“I had no way of knowing if he was armed or not, Ash. I wasn’t going to take the chance that he was and ask him.”

“You had a chance to see how cool and calculating he could be, when you were operating Beaver Smith’s saloon over in Fort Sumner, didn’t you?”

“He had come in with some of his compadres. That lot had been in there a few times before. They generally behaved, hoisted a few and played cards like most of the regulars.”

“I’ll wager he did like to belly up to the bar.”

“Can’t say that I ever saw him take a drink of liquor. He was partial to the paste boards, though.”

“Yes sir, he was adept at cards from a very early age. I should know, I boarded at his mother’s establishment in Silver City. He was quite a handful even in those days.”

“As I was saying, I was engaged in a game of chance at a nearby table and I had a good view of the goings-on.”

“Some hold that poker is more of a game of skill than chance, Pat.”

“Ash, you know as well as I do that when I play poker, it’s a game of chance. . .there’s always a chance I might win!”

“Sir, your wit is like prairie lightning, bright and dry. Allow me to top your glass off with another jolt. But, please, please, continue. . .I apologize for my interjections.”

“One of their bunch, an hombre with the go-by of Grant looked to be getting pretty damn drunk pretty damn fast. He yanked a six-shooter out from an old saddle tramp’s scabbard at the bar. He waved it around, keeping it away from the old man, teasing him. He was an accident waiting to happen.”

“Certainly, that gun could have easily gone off and pelted somebody with a lead plum.”

“The boy came over to Grant, laid his hand on the pistol, said a few quiet words to him, and got Grant to let go of it.”

“That should have been the end of it.”

“Well yes, but no sooner had he gone back to his game, Grant snatched up the revolver again, walked be-hind the bar, and began breaking bottles and smashing glasses. I’d about had it with him by then.”

“I’ll say. He’d made himself pretty unwelcome.”

“But before I could get to him, little Jimmy Chisum collared Grant and was about to do my job for me.”

“Jimmy Chisum, now there’s a rooster.”

“Grant turned on him like a snake caught by the tail. He threw down on him with that old tramp’s six-shooter and cocked the hammer back.”

“That sounds like a mighty close situation.”

“Things got very quiet right about then. But as I said, the boy was a cool customer. He walked right over to Grant and said to him ‘why don’t he put that gun down and get the hell out of here before someone gets hurt.’”

“Now Grant was not a greenhorn desperado, was he?”

“That’s right, and he was on the prod!”

“But the kid was cool as the shade.”

“He didn’t take his eyes off Grant. And Grant, who had the look of a man gone too long to the bottle, was suddenly as sober as a country Baptist. What’s more, he had the drop on him. Then he said something like ‘now, you little bucktoothed sonofabitch, I got you!’ and he pulled the trigger.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. The gun misfired.”

“You don’t say.”

“And they weren’t any further apart than you and me.”

“What did he do?”

“He blew the man’s head off. I was finding bits of brain behind the bar for weeks!”

“Last week you talked about how you couldn’t scare up a posse to go out after him and his gang. How did you manage to secure the assistance of the Canadian River boys?”

“The Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association had charged them with locating and bringing back stock that had supposedly been rustled by the men we were after.”

“So just who were those Canadian River boys?”

“Damn it, you know as well as I do who they were, Ash!”

“Refresh my memory, Pat. For the purposes of our narrative and the eventual readers of this book, it’s important that we get the details right.”

“Let’s see. Frank Stewart, of course, Lee Halls, Jim East, Lon Chambers, a character they called ‘The Animal,’ Poker Tom, and Tenderfoot Bob. Charlie Siringo was among that bunch, but he and a couple of others declined to take up the manhunt. I didn’t blame them, they were mostly cowhands. That was not what they had hired on to do.”

“Stewart must have understood that if you captured those boys, the stock depredations would most likely stop.”

“I had developed information that the men we were after had been seen in the vicinity of Fort Sumner.”

“Yes, you might say that Sumner had a fatal attraction for him, like a moth for a flame.”

“Once there, I had the men lie low and keep their presence concealed. I took a turn around the Plaza. There I ran into old man Wilcox’s son-in-law, Juan. I had suspicions that he might have information I was after. I was right. He had been sent to town by the gang with instructions to return and report on the lay of the land.”

“All right. Hold up while I get all this down. This was in December of ’80, am I correct?”

“That’s right. The weather had been particularly bad. A blizzard had blown through just the day before. There was a foot of snow on the ground if there was an inch. ”

“Good, good, weather conditions are important. They set the scene for the events about to transpire.”

“Juan confirmed that the men I wanted were at his father-in-law’s place. I knew Wilcox was a law-abiding citizen, but had he betrayed them, they would have killed him without second thoughts.”

“They were nothing if not cold blooded and ruth-less.”

“It seems that they had planned to come into town the following day with a load of beef. They learned that I was on my way to Sumner and so Juan had been sent in to size up the number of my force.

“I asked Juan if he would work with me to set a trap. He agreed immediately. I hunted up someone I knew to be sympathetic to these men and forced him to write a note saying that my party and I had left for Roswell and there was no danger. I also wrote a note to Wilcox stating that I was in Fort Sumner with my men, that I was on the trail of the gang, and that I would not let up until I got them. I gave the two notes to Juan. I warned him not to mix them up as his father-in-law’s safety depended on it.”

“You were confident that if those boys took the bait that they would ride for Fort Sumner that night.”

“That is so. I also knew he would be leading his gang. . .”

“Consisting of. . .”

“Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson. . .”

“A wanted murderer and a counterfeiter.”

“Tom Pickett, Tom Folliard, and Charlie Bowdre.”

“Guilty by association.”

“The old military hospital building was on the east side of the Plaza, the direction I expected them to come in from. Bowdre’s wife also occupied a room in that building. I figured that they would pay her a visit first. I took my posse there, placed a guard about the house, and awaited the game.”

“The boys got the cards out and engaged in a little prairie pastime while we waited. It was getting on dark and we had secured a room in another part of the old hospital to keep out of the cold. Snow was lying on the ground increasing the light from the full moon outside.

“Around eight o’clock, one of the guards called from the door, ‘Someone is coming!’ They were two hours earlier than I had expected them. ‘Get your guns, boys,’ I said, ‘None but the men we want are riding tonight!’

“Lon Chambers and I stepped out onto the verandah. The rest of the men went round the building to intercept them should they aim to pass on into the Plaza. The gang was in full sight approaching. Folliard and Pickett rode in front. I was close against the adobe wall hidden by the harnesses hanging there. Chambers was next to me. They rode up until Folliard’s horse poked its head under the porch. I called out ‘Halt!’

“Folliard reached for his pistol. Lon and I both fired. His horse wheeled and ran. I fired at Pickett but the muzzle flash from Lon’s rifle had blinded me and so I missed him.”

“I’ll bet he was taken aback.”

“You would have thought by the way he ran and yelped that he had a dozen balls in him.”

“What about Tom?”

“Folliard was crying and moaning. He had received his death. He managed to wheel his horse and ride back toward me. He called out, ‘Don’t shoot me, Garrett, I’m killed!’ One of my men ran out toward him, yelling, ‘Take your medicine, old boy, take your medicine.’ I warned him off. ‘He may be killed but he’s still heeled and liable to spit lead!’ I stuck to the shadows. ‘Throw up your hands, Tom, I’m not going to give you the chance to shoot me,’ I said. His horse stopped right in front of where I was standing.”

“Did he say something like ‘I’m dying, goddamn it’?”

“He moaned some. He was doubled up in the saddle.”

“I’ll wager he said something like, ‘I can’t even lift my head!’ and ‘It hurts, it hurts.’ And finally ‘help me down, let me die as easy as possible, boys.’”

“I don’t recall his exact words if he even spoke any. He was in a world of pain.”

“What happened to the rest of the gang? How did they fare under the onslaught?”

“During the encounter with Folliard and Pickett, the party on the other side had engaged the rest of the gang, had fired on them, and killed Rudabaugh’s horse. I learned later that it ran twelve miles under him, to Wilcox’s ranch, before it died. Soon as my men fired, the remaining outlaws ran off like a bunch of wild cattle. They were completely surprised and demoralized.”

“But Tom Folliard’s luck had run out.”

“That it had. We unhorsed him and disarmed him and laid him out on a blanket on the floor of the hospital. He begged me to end his misery. ‘Kill me,’ he said, ‘if you was ever a friend of mine, Garrett, you’ll kill me and end this torture.’

“‘I have no sympathy for you, Tom,’ I replied, ‘I called for you to halt and you went for your sidearm instead. I’m no friend of a man who would shoot me simply because I was doing my duty. Besides,’ I said, ‘I would never shoot a friend as bad as you have been shot.’

“Now when one of my men came up to where we were, he changed his tune. ‘Don’t shoot anymore, for God’s sake, I’m already killed.’”

“Who would that be?”

“It was Barney Mason who, along with Tip McKinney, was part of my original posse.”

“Married to Polly’s sister.”

“That’s correct.”

“And a notorious horse thief.”

“So some claim, but he proved invaluable in tracking down these desperados.”

“What did he say to Folliard?”

“Oh, he said something like ‘take your medicine like a man, you ain’t got much of a choice.’ And Tom answered, ‘It’s the best medicine I ever took, pard, but it hurts like Hell.’ He asked, ‘Could you have McKinney write my old grandma in Fort Worth and tell her that I died, can you do that, old chum?’ Barney answered him, ‘Hell, you’d kill your old grandma if she found out that you died with your boots on, Tom, it’s best that she didn’t know.’

“At one point he exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, is it possible that I must die?’ I said to him ‘Tom, your time is short.’ and he replied, ‘the sooner the better. I will be out of pain.’ He expired soon after that.”

Next Time: The Trail To Stinking Springs

Contents Vol. 2 No. 6

June 5, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dime Pulp, Hard Boiled Fiction, Hard Boiled Myths, Helene Baron Murdock, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Six of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

In Issue Six, Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine, is adding two new pulp serials to the ongoing lineup. Beginning in this issue, the steampunk saga Cheése Stands Alone (previewed in Volume I, No. 6) featuring Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) makes its official entry into the Dime Pulp roster. Also joining Phyllis Haldursdottir’s global saga as a new serial is Just Coincidence, a familiar fiction of dynastic intrigue and the dark revenge of a masked crime crusader.

In the first installment of Pierre Anton Taylor’s Just Coincidence, a privileged young man revisits his childhood neighborhood now a ghetto of poverty and crime. An emotional connection to an old mentor and an overwhelming nostalgia move him to act against the injustice of social marginalization. That he is a dark prince as well as a dark knight is just coincidence.

In the steampunk world of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése, history has taken a sharp left or a right turn (depending on your point of view) in 1892 and the familiar events of history are turned upside down if they even happened at all. It is the year 180 of Pax Victoriana, one hundred and eighty years since Queen Victoria took the throne and whose persona if not the actual person, are kept alive as the paragon of world peace. Britannia still rules the waves as well as the airship lanes, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere and some of the Southern with the exception of the carbon states New Brazil and United Outlaw Africa. Cheése Stands Alone begins with Captain Lydia Cheése redoubling the effort to locate her fugitive father, the infamous Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése, which has brought her to the attention of the Agents of The Admiralty (AOTA), and which will make her next three months of the year 180 PV an airship globetrotting adventure.

Number Eight of On The Road To Las Cruces reaches a crucial point in this fictional retelling of the last day in the life of a legendary Western lawman where memory becomes a dialogue with one’s self in the justification of a killing and a blind pride that leads to to death.

And last but not least Installment 18 of The 1940 detective story, Better Than Dead (Dime Pulp’s longest running serial), follows hapless confidential investigator Lackland Ask through another tangle of tense circumstances as his quest for revenge and profit are continually thwarted by kidnapping, murder, attempted murder as well as stolen diamonds and the mysterious jade Empress’s Cucumber. That he has a young adventuress in tow only complicates matters.

Dime Pulp Yearbook 21 contains the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, available for perusal in their entirety. If you missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, clicking on the link at the beginning of this paragraph or on the menu bar above is a good way to catch up.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—18

On The Road To Last Cruces ~Eight~

In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. The peace of her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana, despite some major environmental disasters, has lasted 180 years keeping as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone I

In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and a dark knight joined together in a fateful and tragic quest for justice

Act One. Scene 1

On The Road To Las Cruces ~Eight~

June 5, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Western FictionA Novel Account of the Last Day in the Life of A Legendary Western Lawman, Assassination, Las Cruces, New Mexico Territory, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Western FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Billy Brazil had the well-scrubbed look of a youngster. He had ridden abreast of the buggy on Adams’ side. His getup, in the old man’s eyes, appeared ludicrous, all the more reason to despise the young man.

“Gents,” Brazil spoke touching a hand to the brim of his flat brimmed John B. He appeared amiable enough, pale eyes, a blond moss on his upper cheeks, a ruddy complexion, and a mouth full of white teeth in a smile.

Perhaps it was the black and white cowhide vest trimmed with red piping that seemed so outlandish. The Montana peak of the Stetson’s crown was all the latest rage among the younger range hands and it did not surprise him that Brazil sported his in the same manner. The red flannel shirt was a little hard on the eyes and the stiff Levi’s pants looked brand new blue stuffed into the tops of his boots, a pointy toed, riding heel variety. And the big blood bay was enough horse for any man. Troubling too might have been the revolver the young man had strapped to his waist, but that also appeared part of a preposterous affectation. In his slightly inebriated state, the old man had the feeling that he was watching the final hand of a card game, but from a distance, a fuzzy distance.

“Mr. Brazil,” Adams returned the greeting, fingering the reins nervously. “This is certainly a surprise. I understood we were to meet up with you in Las Cruces.”

“That was the plan,” Brazil replied with the smile still painted on, “but I had to stop by Bill Cott’s spread to clear up a matter before the negotiations begin. I hope this won’t inconvenience you any, Mr. Adams.”

The mocking in Brazil eyes was not lost on the old man. It appeared that his presence was going to be ignored for the time being, and that was fine with him. Just the sight of the arrogant pup was enough to make his gorge rise. That he had been meeting with Cott, O’Lee’s brother-in-law and the man who held the mortgage on his land was unsettling. He did not want to be played the fool.

“Not at all, Mr. Brazil. It would be a welcome relief to hear the sound of someone else’s voice. . .I mean, it would be pleasant to have a conversation. . . .” The sweat running in rivulets from under the green bowler, Adams was clearly uncomfortable. He switched the reins from one hand to other as he retrieved his arms from the sleeves of his canvas duster, which once free of the young man’s body, resembled an empty white shell before collapsing back onto the buggy’s seat. Adams wet his lips and attempted to continue. “. . .that would encompass the point of view of. . . .”

“That’s an odd cut for an overcoat,” the old man interrupted to bring himself into the parley. He was not going to be ignored.

Adams answered almost with a sigh of relief. “This is my motoring duster. I wear it when I go automobile riding. . . .”

“You own a. . .motor carriage?”

“Not exactly. I have an acquaintance in El Paso who does and he allows me to operate the tiller on occasion.”

“Yes, I read about the two that were shipped over from New Orleans in that special railcar.”

“Oh, well, there’s more than that now.”

“I suppose there would be.”

“A dozen, at least. Just in El Paso itself.”

“They’re a novelty, certainly.”

“You’ve been following the great New York to Paris Auto Race in the newspapers I suppose.”

The old man shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not as current as you are.”

“The race started in New York City a couple of weeks ago, February twelfth nineteen ought eight, to be exact. Seventeen days have elapsed so I figure they should be in Montana about now.”

“I don’t care for them. They’re just a passing fancy. They will never catch on. The rich folk will use them to parade around. You can’t go any distance in the damn things without them breaking down or getting stuck and needing a horse or mule to haul them out or needing to feed on that stink water!”

“Petroleum.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ve also heard it called gasoline.”

“Like I said, without it you can’t go nowhere and you can’t carry enough of it to get anywhere!”

“Well, I figure just the opposite. There’ll be pipes running alongside the road everywhere there’s a road just like telephone wires and you’ll be able to sidle up to one of these poles in your automobile and turn a spigot to fill your bucket with gasoline.”

“That’s the most laughable thing I’ve ever heard!”

Young Billy did not hide the fact that he was laughing. The buggy, crossing a section of road furrowed by erosion, bucked and lunged.

The old man was attempting to light the stub of cigar in his mouth, but trying to set fire to the charred end was like threading a needle on the back of a bronc. That the old man was a little rocky from the snakebite medicine did not help. The radical sway of the buggy jogged his arm, sloshed his gurgling gut and jostled the near empty bottle in his pocket. They were encountering rough seas and his bladder was beginning to protest. Storm clouds gathered at his brow as he steadied his arm and achieved his aim. He puffed the cigar back to life, smoke pouring angrily from the corner of his mouth. He did not care to be laughed at.

Billy continued with his derision. “Mr. Adams, I’ll bet you didn’t know you were riding with a baby killer.”

The old man exploded. “You’re talking crazy! I never killed a child in my life!” He knew to what Brazil was referring. He had heard the accusation before, and he knew he was not responsible, but the words stung all the same.

“You must be getting feeble in the head, old man, if you can’t remember what you done to my Aunt Shirley.” Brazil’s grin was wicked.

The words buzzed inside the old man’s head like enraged hornets. He wanted to swipe at them, but he would be playing into the young man’s hand. Ash’s voice urged him to ignore the needling. “A man prodded into action don’t know his own mind,” words he himself had spoken, the specter of his old friend reminded him. He felt for the bottle in his pocket. A last draught would empty it. He pulled on the cork, gazing beyond it at the heat wrinkles rising off the barren rocky landscape.

It was on a day much like this one that he had taken this very same road out to Bill Cott’s ranch. He was still Sheriff of Dona Ana County at the time. He had ridden out accompanied by his deputy, Jorge, and an Oklahoma lawman to interrogate a young ranch hand with a price on his head.

With the acquittals of O’Lee and his bunch, he had had to forfeit his claim to the reward money. The job of Sheriff paid very little. He had become accustomed to extravagance and it irked him that he had to pinch pennies just to get by.

Besides, Apollinara and he had also started on their second batch of children and so there were more mouths to feed. To augment his meager salary, he had taken an appointment as a Deputy United States Marshal. This gave him the authority to pursue illegal Chinese immigrants who were crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. However, it was demeaning work, rounding up human cattle at fifty cents a head. As Sheriff, he was also paid five dollars a day for court appearances. Then again, court sessions were infrequent and could never be counted on as a steady source of income. He could also pay himself an informant’s fee. If he came upon illegal gambling, he would claim that he reported the activity to the proper authority, which in this case was himself, and collect fifty percent of everything. Regrettably, most of the gamblers were his cronies, and more often than not, he was a participant. That left the daily drunk round up. He would send his deputy to collect the local drunks after supper, keep them in jail overnight, feed them breakfast in the morning, and then turn them loose. Technically, this was considered two days in jail, and he could collect fifty cents a day per prisoner while only spending about fifteen cents for each man’s breakfast. “There is more than one way to skin a cat,” Ash had often intoned, “but it’s a hell of a job any way you do it.”

He would not have recognized the portly gent who strolled into his office that day as a lawman. His attire was more suited to that of a banker or a lawyer. The man introduced himself as Sheriff Black from Green County, Oklahoma. He explained that he had tracked a man wanted for murder in Green County to Bill Cott’s San Augustine Ranch, and asked for help in apprehending the fugitive.

The Sheriff was not so much interested in the reward money as he was in repairing his tarnished reputation when the murderer escaped his custody. He offered to split the reward fifty-fifty.

The fugitive was going by the name of Billy Reed. He was accused of murdering his farming partner and dumping his body into a pond. He had been arrested and put in jail, but had escaped. The local citizenry had collected the two thousand dollars for the reward. In the Sheriff’s opinion, if approached, the young man would probably not go quietly, and he would be greatly appreciative of any assistance.

“I was discharging my lawful duty as a peace officer. I was completely within my rights. . . .”

“My aunt Shirley lost her child because of. . . .”

“Boy, you are just flapping your gums! You have no idea of what transpired!”

He and Black had gone out to the Cott Ranch in Black’s buckboard. Jorge had followed on horseback. Not far from the ranch house, he had left the buckboard and horse with Black and he and Jorge had gone on foot down around the bluff, following the path to the rear of the garden. They had quietly tripped the latch to the gate and quickly crossed the red tile patio to the open kitchen door. Billy Reed, a tall, burly young man with a crop of dirty blonde hair, had his back to them. He had been helping Shirley Cott in the kitchen. He had leveled his Colt at the large young man, asking, “Are you Billy Reed?” The young man had turned slowly and nodded yes. Informed of the warrant for his arrest, he had nodded his assent and extended his wrists giving the indication that he would go quietly.

“Reed was a murderer, a hunted killer. . . .”

“The hell you say, I heard tell that he was a kind and gentle kid who. . . .”

“You have been fed a load of bull with a shovel! The truth is that I probably saved Shirley Cott’s life! No telling when the homicidal urge would have possessed him and he would have killed again!”

Just as he had holstered his pistol and was reaching for the manacles, Reed had hit him squarely on the jaw, knocking him down. Jorge had lunged at the fugitive, getting his arms around the boy’s thick neck. He himself, though stunned, had had the presence of mind to wrap his arms around Reed’s legs to trip him up. It had taken the two of them to wrestle him down, arms flailing, legs kicking, and screeching in an odd high, almost feminine pitch. Shirley Cott had also screamed, hysterically.

“She still has nightmares about what you did to her that day!”

“I’m sorry for that, but it could not be helped. He resisted arrest.”

He had yelled at Jorge, “Hold ‘im down! Hold ‘im down!” Jorge, spitting his Indian curses, had had his hands full with Reed who was almost twice his size. They had almost got one manacle clapped around the young man’s wrist when the Cott’s English bulldog scrambled into the melee. The dog had clamped his jaws on the back of his thigh and he had felt the pain shoot through every inch of his body. He had jumped bolt upright, releasing his hold on Reed. Reed had struggled to his feet with Jorge hanging on to his waist, tearing and dragging the young man’s pants down around his knees. With Jorge slowing him down, he had managed to hit him on the back of the head with the iron manacle. The blow had floored Reed. But Cott’s bulldog had turned his attention to Jorge and taken a chunk out of his deputy’s forearm. He had bitten all of them, even Reed, ripping clothes and flesh in his mad frenzy, his barks and growls adding to the din of grunts, screams and curses. Jorge had torn Reed’s shirtsleeve off at the shoulder trying to twist the boy’s arm around his back. Reed, bleeding from the gash on the back of his head, had thrown himself around like a wild bull at a rodeo. As the boy struggled to his feet, dragging the both of them with him, they had all fallen into the china cabinet by the kitchen door. It had overturned, spilling the glazed contents onto the red tile floor. Reed had lost his footing, slipping on the broken dishes. He had managed to get a knee in the middle of the boy’s back. Jorge, a foot on the fugitive’s neck, had twisted his arm around behind him so that it could be manacled.

“You shot him in the back!”

“Boy, whatever that child would have been, rest its soul, it would have had a jackass for an uncle.”

The old man shook his head. “You can probably blame your Aunt Shirley for that. If she hadn’t interfered, that boy would have gone back to Oklahoma to hang.”

Brazil laughed. “I heard she caught you a good one, too!”

Shirley Cott had waded into the fray with a cast iron frying pan. She struck him just behind the left shoulder and had numbed his whole left side. At the same time, the dog had sunk his teeth into Jorge’s thigh causing him to ease the hold he had on Reed’s arm. The boy’s work boot had flown off, hitting his deputy square on the bridge of the nose. Reed was then able to scramble free and lunged out the door on all fours across the patio toward the icehouse.

“I called to him to halt, but he didn’t. There was only one reason why he would be running for the icehouse instead of the wide-open spaces. I found a six-shooter on the shelf right inside the door afterwards.”

As Reed had reached the door of the icehouse, he had drawn his pistol and Jorge had drawn his brace. Two shots were fired. One caused the icehouse doorframe to erupt in splinters. The other tore into the boy’s back, killing him instantly.

“You shot him in the back. In my book, that marks you as a coward.”

“I hate to disappoint you, son, but I didn’t kill him. My pistol misfired. The cartridge had bloated up in the chamber like a dead steer.”

“You’re a liar! My Aunt. . . .”

The old man had been holding his anger though it bubbled in his throat and burned like acid. He could not abide being called a liar. “Son, you are walking on quick-sand,” he hissed. “Your Aunt is lucky I didn’t charge her with harboring a fugitive and interfering with a peace officer!”

Brazil had lost his composure as well, his face an angry red. “My Aunt lost her unborn baby because of your damned riot! That child would have been my nephew or niece.”

The old man fixed Brazil with a glare. He drew on the cold stub of tobacco clenched between his teeth. “Boy, whatever that child would have been, rest its soul, it would have had a jackass for an uncle.”

“Gents, let’s put this personal animosity aside and talk livestock,” Adams interjected. “Nothing to be gained by dredging up the past.” He turned to Brazil, “What’s the count on your herd of goats?”

Brazil stared angrily at the old man and then shrugged. “Must be about eighteen hundred head give or . . . .”

“Eighteen hundred!” the old man exploded, “that’s six hundred more than we settled on!”

“That is correct,” Adams agreed, “I thought we had fixed on the number. Tell the truth, that’s more goat than I had bargained for. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened! This sniveling pup’s trying to rob me!”

Brazil ignored the old man. “I had six hundred does drop kids is what happened.”

Adams shook his head and removed his green bowler, swabbing at his brow with his sleeve. “Gents, the fact is that I didn’t want twelve hundred head of goats in the first place but I’m offering to buy them off the land so I can graze my cattle. Unless that number is pared down, our deal might be off.”

“I know how to trim that number. I have the solution right here.” The old man brandished his shotgun.

“Now, now, I don’t think there is any need for that. Mr. Brazil, can we make a deal here?” Adams reined in the horse and stopped the buggy.

“I’m a reasonable man when I’m dealing with reasonable folks, but to hell with this old bastard, if I don’t sell them all, I ain’t selling any!”

Adams climbed down from the bench, wrapping the reins around the buggy whip. “Let’s not be hasty now. I’m asking you to take the time to reconsider while I say a little wayside prayer.”

The old man glowered at Brazil. “You bamboozled my boy and ruined the range with your damned cloven hoofed locusts, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before you get the better of me!”

Brazil fixed the old man with a grin of defiance. “Well, Mr. Adams, I have given it some thought, and I don’t think I will sell those goats after all. I’m perfectly happy with the arrangement I have now.”

The old man would not show his profound disappointment. He managed a laugh though it was an empty one. “It makes no difference if you do or not.” He stood up, a little unsteadily, and dismounted from the buggy, leaning his shotgun against the bench. “I’ll get you off that land one way or another.” He turned his back to the two men, saying, “Think I’ll water a little mesquite myself,” and walked to the opposite side of the road. He was livid, the very notion that the deal he had counted on to reverse his fortunes had gone sour was almost more than he could stand. His legs felt weak, his gut churned, and it was not just from the aguadiente. His ears were ringing, his breathing labored. Again, Ash’s voice insinuated itself. It was as if he were calling his name, but from a far distance. He let himself go at the side of the road. The stub of cigar in his other hand had gone out. It was not worth firing up again. It was done. He tossed it aside. He was done.

Next Time: Quien Es?

Contents Vol. 2 No. 5

May 14, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dime Pulp, Hard Boiled Fiction, Hard Boiled Myths, Helene Baron Murdock, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Five of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

In this instalment of On The Road To Las Cruces, the legendary lawman recounts his efforts to bring those accused of the White Sands Murders to trial. A foreboding dogs him as he recounts the details. Someone is approaching from behind. And then the horseman appears. What is related in the novel account of the last day in the life of this legendary lawman is as much a retelling of some history as it is how such a retelling might come about.

Better Than Dead’s seventeenth installment finds private detective, Lackland Ask, “Lack” to his few friends, realizing that, after finding the body in Alice’s apartment, his luck isn’t getting any better and that it is affecting the safety of his friends. People might start calling him “Lucky” meaning exactly the opposite. He’s desperate and like all desperate men, he makes bad choices. His plan for revenge is taking its consequences out on him

Dropping A Dime takes a look at a few overlooked or neglected heroes of pulp literature: historian and author Ron Goulart, hardboiled novelist James Crumley, and noir author James Sallis.

Dime Pulp Yearbook 21 contains the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues and are available for perusal in their entirety. If you missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, clicking on the link at the beginning of this paragraph or on the menu bar above is a good way to catch up.

Dime Pulp continues its crime spree with the serialization of 2 full length novels, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story and On The Road To Las Cruces as well as the cranky opinions of yours truly in another rare outing of Dropping A Dime. If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Two, Number Five

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—17

On The Road To Last Cruces ~Seven~

In this installment of the catchall column, Dropping A Dime, erstwhile editor and word wrangler Perry O’Dickle emerges from his ink stained den to pen a tribute to the legendary albeit little known Ron Goulart, pulp fiction and comic book historian, fiction flogger under numerous pen names who wrote futuristic novels that played off the unintended Schumpeterian and most often hilarious consequences of mechano-tech—he was the gleeful saboteur of a Popular Science future. As well, in this latest installment by the man in charge of these shenanigans, the crime fiction of the two Jims, Crumley and Sallis, are given a rapid rake of the side eye and peripheral consideration.

Ron Goulart and the Two Jims

On The Road To Las Cruces ~Seven~

May 14, 2022Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Western FictionCrime Fiction, New Mexico, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pat Nolan, Pulp Fiction, The White Sands MysteryNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Fourteen years had passed since the old buzzard died. Lately his memories of Ash had been frequent.

That he had considered writing another book would have been reason enough to conjure the raucous spirit of his old friend and drinking companion. The hours they had spent, sometimes into early morning, drinking, talking, and thigh slapping he remembered with a wry fondness. Ash had always done most of the talking. And all of the writing. He had watched his friend hunched over the roll top desk by the light of a coal lamp scratching steel nibs across sheaves of paper to inscribe the words they had spoken only moments before. Ash had claimed that if they kept up the way they were going, they would have to buy their ink by the pound. He had provided much of the enthusiasm and conviviality that was needed to see their book to its completion. He missed those bright patches in an other-wise grim and hard scrabble existence, and the friend who, bedraggled and weary after their all night marathons of drinking and telling lies, sometimes looked like a hedgehog who’d just smoked an exploding cigar.

“The grand jury met on April first and returned indictments on O’Lee, Leland, and Mcann. I figured that they would expect me to move on them as soon as a decision was reached. However, the joke was on them. I went to serve the warrants the following day. Falk had already sent word to O’Lee’s ranch so he knew of the grand jury’s action and I did not expect to find him there. O’Lee’s foreman told me that his boss and Leland had gone out to round up strays but I knew better. I had them on the run. My strategy was to pick them off one by one, leaving the leader until last. If I had all three in jail, I knew that O’Lee’s influence would prevail. I was anxious to get to Leland. O’Lee had that figured which is probably why he kept him close to his side. I had to settle for Jim Mcann.

“I knew right where to find him too. At McNeil’s boarding house. The morning after the indictments I had sent word over to Alice McNeil to serve Mcann a particularly hefty breakfast. I knew that Mcann presented with the choice of a hearty spread or ramming hooks for the hills would let his stomach make the decision. I was right. I served him a warrant to go along with the flapjacks and sausage. Then I told him to wipe the syrup off his beard and accompany me over to the lock up.

Falk was as surprised as I was when the judge remanded Mcann over to jail.

“I figured if I kept him isolated in the cooler long enough that he’d come around and start letting on to what he knew. I suppose that’s what Abe Falk figured too. He went about getting the preliminary hearing scheduled within the week. Part of his strategy was to get me to divulge the extent of the evidence I had against his clients.

“My main witness was a ranch hand by the name of Welkin. He had been at O’Lee’s ranch the night of Jennings’ disappearance and testified that all three men had ridden in on frothing horses late that night. He had heard them discussing in low voices something that was obviously of great concern to them. He had heard O’Lee say something to the effect that they weren’t going to be bothered on that account any longer. He also testified that O’Lee had burned a sheaf of papers, what could have been legal documents, in the fireplace.

“Well, Abe Falk didn’t get to be one of the most powerful men in the Southwest by being a pussycat. He tore into Welkin like an auger into rotten wood. By the time Falk was done with him, he was lucky if he knew who he was. It even looked to me that he had made him into a witness for the defense!

“It was pretty much all downhill from there. I had physical evidence, of course, but lacking the actual murdered bodies of Jennings and his son, it was not all that weighty. Falk dismissed most of the other testimony as hearsay or merely opinion. I had a woman who was riding the Alamogordo stage that same day. She claimed that she had seen the three men race by, hell bent for leather. Falk tried to discredit her by accusing her of having an affair with the stage driver. He even accused me of promising Welkin two thousand dollars of the reward money if his testimony led to their conviction. I had done no such thing, of course.

“Welkin had approached me for a loan to buy some property and I had told him that when and if the men were convicted I would then be in a position to make him a loan. At any rate, my case was not in the best of light right then. Falk was as surprised as I was when the judge remanded Mcann over to jail.

“He was a guest of the county for over a year and he never did talk. That’s because he was too busy eating. He had a tab set up at the boarding house that was paid by O’Lee through his lawyer. Can’t say that O’Lee didn’t know the price of silence. Mcann had loaded on near two hundred pounds by the time I had to let him go. I was worried that I was going to have to widen the doorway to the jail to get him out. Finally I had to roll him out of there like a beer barrel.”

“I supposed you eventually apprehended O’Lee and Leland. They did stand trial, if I recollect.”

“They did that, but I never nabbed O’Lee or Leland.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of moving heaven and earth. Well, Abe Falk came close to doing that for O’Lee. He maneuvered the Territorial legislature into apportioning a new county simply to remove those boys from my jurisdiction. The next thing I knew, the crime was no longer in Dona Anna County but in a new one that Falk had materialized out of thin air. Otero County, named after the newly appointed Governor.

“How could he do something like that?”

“Falk is a powerful man and he ain’t shy about flexing his political muscle. He has got his sights set on Washington. He controls much of what passes for politics here in the Southwest. He had George Kerry appointed the Sheriff of Otero County, and George, never one to overlook a chance at advancement, was in his pocket.

“O’Lee would have to face the charges against him eventually. Falk knew this, and he figured that if his boys surrendered to an authority friendly to his cause the interrogations, if any, would be less than thorough. Leland was his wild card and he wanted to keep him close to his vest. Finally, he arranged for O’Lee and Leland to surrender to his man. I was out of the picture by that time except for the fact that they were still under indictment.

“So you never captured O’Lee and Leland?”

“That’s right, they evaded my clutches and never had to spend a day in jail. The new County did not even have a jailhouse yet so they spent the entire time awaiting their trial at the hotel in Alamogordo with pretty much free rein of the town. On equal terms, I would have eventually brought those boys in myself, but Falk plays with a marked deck. You’ve heard the expression that some men will rob you at the point of a gun and others at the point of a pen. Well, Falk is one of those who wields a lethal pen. He was double dealing the whole time.” That memory called for another nip. “I did put a hell of a scare into those boys at one point, though.”

“How so?”

“I knew that an arrangement had been made for O’Lee and Leland to surrender themselves to George Kerry in Las Cruces but no date had been determined. I was up in Santa Fe collecting a prisoner for extradition to Texas when an acquaintance who worked in the Governor’s office informed me that O’Lee and Leland would be boarding the train somewhere along the line between Santa Fe and Las Cruces in the custody of Kerry’s deputy. As luck would have it that was the very train I would be taking to El Paso with my prisoner. Accompanying me was John Hume, a Texas Ranger.

“If you must know, I was sore at having been outfoxed by Falk, and I relished this opportunity to confront O’Lee. I considered goading him and making him do something stupid that would play into my hands. I did not want him to think that he could evade me so easily. On the other hand, that O’Lee and Leland would stand trial was good enough for me. I had the evidence to convict them, and they would hang just as dead whether they were in Kerry’s custody or mine. I was not, however, going to let them think that their subterfuge had succeeded. I was willing to cash in on any foolish move they might make.

“At every stop the train made, I was on the platform surveying the boarding passengers. We were just about to pull out of Sorroco when I happened to glance at the window of the smoking car. There was a bearded fellow seated there that I had not remembered boarding at the previous stops. That made me suspicious so once the train got rolling I asked the conductor if he remembered any one boarding from the backside of the tracks. He confirmed that three men had jumped on board as we were leaving the stop just before Sorroco and that they had taken seats in the smoking car. Right then and there I would have bet everything I owned that they were the boys I was after.

“I had a decision to make. I was tempted to arrest them myself but since the crime was no longer in my jurisdiction, I had no authority to do so especially if they were in the custody of a duly appointed peace officer. I realized that the most I could do was give those boys a bad case of the willies.

“I explained my plan to Captain Hume. We chained our prisoner to his seat and then we walked back to the smoking car. Those boys must have seen us coming as it was mighty quiet when we stepped into that car. Right away, I recognized the men I had been chasing. Both had full beards. Leland wore dark glasses and pretended to be asleep. The deputy had his face buried in some French blue book. The man I wanted, O’Lee, was hiding under a railroad cap. We had worked it out beforehand that Hume would cover Leland and the deputy, and I would have a go at O’Lee. I went over to where O’Lee was sitting, stiff as a raw hide in a snowdrift. I planted my foot on the armrest of the seat next to his and made like I was looking for some reading material in the newspapers and magazines stacked there. Then I leaned against the back of his seat and looked out the window, casual-like, as if I was enjoying the scenery. I was close enough to see the sweat rolling down the back of his neck. Those boys didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.” The old man chuckled, replacing the cork. “I’d say that’s a memory I’ll always savor.”

“What’d O’Lee do?

“Nothing. I figure I had him shaking in his boots. If he or Leland had been foolish enough to start gunplay, they would have got the worst of it. As it was, I got the satisfaction of seeing them sweat. After a time, I sauntered back to my seat in the passenger car. Those boys probably had to go off somewheres and change their britches.”

“Falk had the venue of the trial changed because he claimed that his clients would not receive a fair trial in either Dona Ana County or Ortega Country.

That was a crock served on a silver platter. They would have got what they deserved. Justice, nothing more, nothing less. Those boys had done the deed, that was a fact. Falk figured if he could have the proceedings moved out of the vicinity of the crime, he would be able to control the way the events played in the newspapers. They moved the trial to Hillsboro, a mining camp up in the Black Range. You couldn’t find a more secluded backwater in the whole territory.”

The old man had noticed the rider a while back. They were in the flat stretch about half a dozen miles outside of Las Cruces. He was almost a mile behind and from his pace would soon catch up with them.

“Hell, the case was tried in the newspapers before it even went to the jury! Falk was granting interviews to anyone who could spell his name. He would say anything to put his clients in a good light. Once he even compared O’Lee to Robin Hood and painted me as the wicked sheriff of Nottingham. They made out like O’Lee was some kind of cultivated gent, that he spoke Greek and Latin when he was nothing but a West Texas brush popper. The prosecutor was a hack sent down by the Republicans in Santa Fe to make sure that the Democrats did not win. It had nothing to do with bringing the men who murdered Colonel Jennings and his kid to justice.”

The old man noticed that Adams would occasionally pull back on the reins and that the horse was responding by slowing its pace. He had a good idea of who was following them.

“You would have thought it was fiesta week in Hillsboro. Why, Western Union even ran a wire up there just for the trial! They had reporters come from as far away as New York and London. Folks were arriving by the wagonload everyday just to get a seat in the courtroom as if it was some kind of opera or musical concert. The hotel was packed four to a room in no time, mostly with O’Lee partisans. Tent camps were set up all over the hillside on the outskirts of town. The truth is, the jury had to sleep in the hayloft at Hank’s livery!

“Falk and his crowd held forth over at the Silver Maiden Saloon, and the Santa Fe gang used O’Shea’s Miner’s Club and Billiard Emporium as their headquarters. You could sit in Cobb’s barbershop and watch the gaggle of newspaper boys go from one camp to the other to get the opposing versions of how the day’s testimony had gone. The later it got, the harder it got for those shit scribblers to find their way across the street to the opposite camp for that last glass of convincing. Falk you might say had the deepest pockets and thus proved his righteousness by the number of besotted writers that were swept up at the Silver Maiden the following morning.

“I wouldn’t be saying much if I said that the prosecutor was incompetent. Falk demolished just about every witness who took the stand. And with nary an objection from the Territory’s side. I guess they reckoned that given enough rope Falk would hang himself, but they hadn’t figured that he was as clever as Houdini at getting out of a close place.

“He cross-examined me for a whole three days. He did not cow me, though. I gave it to him straight from the chest. I told him what I thought of his back room manipulating of the courts, how it was his kind that was responsible for the corruption in the Territory, that politics was determining the course of justice. And he could not demolish my testimony. My evidence was irrefutable, and he knew it. I would not be shaken. As much as he tried.

“Falk sunk as low as bringing O’Lee mother to the stand to testify to her son’s character and innocence. Her weeping into her hanky that way, she probably did more to acquit those boys than any of Falk’s underhanded moves. Moreover, it did not help that every testimony in O’Lee’s favor was greeted with cheers and applause from the remuda of Texas jackasses Falk had packed the courtroom with. Or that the Dog Canyon pistoleros had made it plain and clear what would happen to the jury if the verdict was returned guilty.

“The closing arguments lasted all of one day. Falk took the time to denounce each and every witness and piece of evidence against O’Lee, claiming that the accusations were nothing but politics by the Republicans. He name-called the entire Rio Grande Valley establishment, said they were slime, a bunch of broken down hacks, and liars. Claimed that there wasn’t enough evidence to hang a yellow dog, let alone the defendants. It was late evening before he was done with his marathon summation. After the prosecutor presented his rebuttal, Falk’s case did not look as strong as it might have. However, Falk had one last card to play. By then it was close to midnight and the jury was just plain tuckered, but Falk insisted that they return their verdict before they bedded down for the night in their fashionable straw palace. That jury certainly knew what was important to them. They took a whole of eight minutes to declare O’Lee and his assassins not guilty.”

The rider was close enough behind that he could no longer be ignored. Adams had glanced over his shoulder in nervous anticipation. The old man smiled as he twisted the cork out of the bottle with his teeth. He had been right.

“If Gil Leland is ready to talk like I heard then I’d say O’Lee should start worrying about his chances of gaining a seat in Santa Fe. Leland’s sister even admitted in the Las Cruces paper not long ago that soon after the disappearance of Jennings, she went to slop the hogs and found them rooting among young Rudy’s remains near the edge of the pen. This was at the Dog Canyon ranch. I’ve heard tell that for the price of a bottle of whiskey that Leland will spill his guts about the whole affair. He’s as much as admitted to being the one who killed the kid.”

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Nine of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Eight of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: The Man Who Shot Billy The Kid

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Seven of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: The Trail To Stinking Springs

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Six of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: Quien Es?

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Five of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: The End Of The Road

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Nine of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Six of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Two, Number Five of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.