A MATTER OF CHARACTER
Robin Lee Hatcher
Who says a woman can't keep a secret?
Who says a woman can't keep a secret?
It's 1918, and Daphne McKinley, heiress to a small fortune, has found contentment in the town of Bethlehem Springs. But Daphne has a secret. A series of dime novels loosely based on local lore and featuring a nefarious villain known as Rawhide Rick has enjoyed modest popularity among readers. Nobody in Bethlehem Springs knows the man behind the stories … except Daphne. When newspaperman Joshua Crawford comes to town searching for the man who sullied the good name of his grandfather, Daphne finds herself at a crossroads, reassessing the power of her words, re-thinking how best to honor her gifts, and reconsidering what she wants out of life.
"In the third Sisters of Bethlehem Springs book, the characters are smart, feisty and do not care a hoot about what society thinks of them. Hatcher always pleases readers with her portrayal of strong, independent women." — RT Book Reviews
*************************************
EXCERPT
St. Louis, Missouri, August 1918
Propelled by a white hot fury, Joshua Crawford pushed open the door to Gregory Halifax's office so hard it hit the wall with a loud wham. Startled, Gregory looked up a split second before Joshua slapped the newspaper onto the desk.
"What is this garbage?" Joshua demanded.
Gregory's expression changed from one of surprise to a smirk. "So you read it."
"Of course I read it, and I'm here to demand a retraction."
"A retraction? For what?"
"For what you wrote about my grandfather."
Gregory laughed softly. "You must be joking. The article is about dime novelists. The part about Richard Terrell was the words of the author, not mine."
"But you made what Mr. Morgan wrote in his novels sound as if it was fact rather than fiction. It's not."
"How do you know it's not? Tell me. What do you know about your grandfather before he settled in St. Louis? Nothing, that's what. You've said so yourself."
"Did you contact anyone in Idaho to try to confirm that the character in Morgan's books is based on the real Richard Terrell?
"I didn't need to. I interviewed the publishers for my story. And again, the focus of my article is the men who write dime novels, not on the characters found in their books."
"But in the process you've dragged my grandfather's good name through the mud. I want a retraction."
Gregory pushed back his chair and stood, the smile gone from his face. "When you prove anything I wrote is in error, then come see me again, and we'll have this discussion. Until then, get out."
For one moment, Joshua thought he might be able to control his temper. For one very brief moment—just before he caught Gregory's jaw with a right hook followed by a left jab to the gut. Gregory flew backward into the wall. The glass in the office door rattled again. Joshua readied himself for the other man to fight back. To his dissatisfaction, it didn't happen. Gregory's eyes were still unfocused when more men poured into the office and grabbed Joshua by the arms, hauling him away. One of the men was Joshua's boss, Langston Lee.
"You're fired, Crawford. Collect your things and get out. I won't have my reporters brawling. You hear me. Get out or I'll call the police."
Joshua longed to turn his rage onto his boss, to give Langston Lee a little of what he'd already given Gregory Halifax. But he had enough good sense left to resist the urge. He was already out of a job. He didn't want to spend time in a jail cell besides.
But so help him, he would get a retraction out of this newspaper. He would prove Gregory Halifax was a shoddy reporter and see that he was fired. He would hear Langston Lee apologize. And he would make certain D. B. Morgan never again maligned his grandfather in print.
This wasn't over yet.
**************
Chapter One
Bethlehem Springs, October 1918
Maybe it was time to kill Rawhide Rick. He'd served his purpose, the old rascal. He'd hunted buffalo and fought Indians and stolen gold from hardworking miners and sent men to the gallows. Now might be the time for him to meet his Maker. The trick was deciding how to kill him.
Daphne McKinley rose from her desk and walked into the parlor, where she pushed aside the curtains at the window.
A golden haze blanketed Bethlehem Springs. It had been a beautiful autumn. The prettiest one yet in her three years in this serene Idaho mountain town. The trees had been the brightest of golds, the most fiery of reds, the deepest of greens. Daphne had spent many a mild afternoon walking trails through the forest, enjoying the colors and the smells.
If Rawhide Rick—who by this point in the series of books had become the infamous Judge Richard Terrell—was dead, what would become of the dashing Bill McFarland, hero of The McFarland Chronicles? Without his arch enemy, his life might become rather dull. Or perhaps it was Daphne who would find life dull without Rawhide Rick. Wicked he was, but he certainly kept things interesting whenever he was around.
She rubbed her eyelids with the tips of her fingers, and when she pulled them away, she noticed ink stains on her right hand. Her fountain pen was leaking. Perhaps it was time to buy a typewriter. But would writing on a machine feel the same?
Daphne turned from the window, her gaze sweeping the parlor. She'd come to love this small house on Wallula Street. Since moving into it soon after Gwen—its previous owner—married Daphne's brother, she'd delighted in making it her home, decorating and furnishing it in ways that pleased her. Daphne's childhood homes had been large and filled with servants waiting to attend to her slightest wish. But she had often been forced to live by the timetables of others. Now she could do as she willed, when she willed. The freedom she enjoyed was intoxicating.
The best part was when she wanted to be with family, she got into her motorcar—her very own, quite wonderful McLaughlin-Buick—and drove to her brother's home to play with her young nephew and infant niece. She was completely dotty over the two of them. She loved to crawl around on the floor with Andy—he would turn two at the end of November—the both of them squealing and giggling. And there was nothing like cuddling three-month-old Ellie. Daphne thought the baby girl smelled like sunshine.
A sigh escaped her. She hadn't time for daydreaming about Morgan's and Gwen's darling children. She must decide what to do. If she was going to kill the judge, she needed to notify Elwood Shriver at once. Wavering in indecisiveness served no good purpose.
***********************
Copyright 2010, Robin Lee Hatcher
Do not reproduce without permission from the author.
A MATTER OF CHARACTER is available on-line at Amazon.com (http://is.gd/ctcE0), Christianbook.com (http://is.gd/ctcLt) and other on-line retailers, as well as in local bookstores everywhere. To obtain autographed bookplates or for more information about books by Robin Lee Hatcher, visit her web site at http://www.robinleehatcher.com/.
COWBOY FOR A RAINY AFTERNOON
By Stephen Bly
"I have always been a fan of Louis L'Amour but I must say your book is as good if not better than anything of his. I shall remain a fan of Stephen Bly." Jimmy Dickens, Grand Ole Opry
"Bly offers a kinder, gentler Western that should appeal to fans of Louis L'Amour." Library Journal
Summary of Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon:
A 10-year-old boy with red straw cowboy hat, cap gun, and silver-painted wooden bullets. Six story-telling, cribbage playing old cowboys. A '49 Plymouth with open trunk. A damsel in distress. All the fixings for a summer's day adventure at the Matador Hotel in 1954 Albuquerque. Maybe you weren't born 100 years too late!
CHAPTER 1
The Matador Hotel died on July 5th, 1965, but they didn't bother burying it until last fall.
New Mexico heat blanketed Albuquerque that July like too many covers in a stuffy cabin. The kind of day that you sweat from the inside out and feel sticky dirt in places that you don't ponder much except in the shower. I reckon that four-bladed overhead fan that squeaked like an unfed cat failed to console Shorty McGuire. Doc Boyce said he passed on durin' the night, but no one discerned it until they observed the empty back table at the Round-Up Café. For the last nineteen years of his life, Shorty lived in a second-floor room at The Matador. At straight up 6:00 a.m. ever' mornin' he ate two eggs fried hard under the faded picture of Theodore Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill.
As a boy, I calculated that Shorty McGuire and the others must be pushing a hundred-years-old when I met them for the first time in 1954.
I reckon I surmised wrong.
The Albuquerque Herald reported that Hadley (Shorty) McGuire was only 86 when he died on that July day in 1965. The Herald is right most of the time.
As the last of that bunch at the Matador, there was no one left to take his
trappings, so Whip Johnson and me cleaned out Shorty's goods a few days after his funeral. Whip managed the hotel in the 60s for his Uncle Durwood Johnson who gained some fame in the Southwest on the rodeo circuit after the war. He won the hotel on a bet on a black half-thoroughbred stallion down in Magdalena.
The floor of Shorty's little room with one four-pane slide-up window was carpeted solid with six to eight inches of newspapers, not a one newer than 1939. He claimed that cowboyin' didn't provide the time to read much, so he saved them for his retirement. I never did know if he got caught up.
We didn't have the nerve to give his tattered clothing to the Rescue Mission, so we chucked them into the hotel incinerator. We crated his boots, wooly chaps and battered Stetson, then donated them to the state museum. I had a notion they would want to display the gear of an old-time cowboy. But they stored them in a back room for a few years, then sold them at an auction to raise money for a modern art statue that looks like the scrap-iron pile out behind my barn. If I'd known they were selling Shorty's belongings, I'd have bought those suckers myself and buried them, rather than let some car dealer in Denver drive off with `em. But that's the way the past is. You can't hang on to it all. What survives gets stolen by strangers who have no blasted idea of what they hold in their hands.
The tobacco-stained furniture in Shorty's room belonged to the hotel, but Whip decided to replace it all and re-carpet. So they moved in newer furniture, but I don't think the room was ever repainted. Whip and me always thought that room smelled like Lordsburg, but that might be its location on the south side of the hotel, facing the Santa Fe tracks.
I never went back to the hotel after that day. The hippies ran it in the early 70s, then some drug dealers. I think one of them big moving companies bought the place and used it for storage for a decade or two before they tore it down last year. All them red bricks got shipped to the west side for deluxe estate fencing around an upscale gated community. I hear they decided to build urban condos on the old hotel site for rich city folks, but I can't figure what kind of people would want to live in downtown Albuquerque.
At least, not nowadays.
I still have Shorty's rim-fire saddle hangin' in my tack room. It was one of the first ones Estaban Chavez built, when he still had that shop behind the Chinese laundry in Las Cruces. Lots of folks have wanted to buy it over the years, but it doesn't belong to me. Some day Shorty's kin will show up wantin' his things, and I'll have it ready. I keep the leather oiled. Shorty died almost forty years ago, but I'll hang onto it for him.
That's the way things are done around this part of the country.
It's one of the lessons I learned in the lobby of the Matador Hotel.
######
Excerpt from Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon by Stephen Bly, Copyright©2010 by Stephen Bly.
*************************************
EXCERPT
St. Louis, Missouri, August 1918
Propelled by a white hot fury, Joshua Crawford pushed open the door to Gregory Halifax's office so hard it hit the wall with a loud wham. Startled, Gregory looked up a split second before Joshua slapped the newspaper onto the desk.
"What is this garbage?" Joshua demanded.
Gregory's expression changed from one of surprise to a smirk. "So you read it."
"Of course I read it, and I'm here to demand a retraction."
"A retraction? For what?"
"For what you wrote about my grandfather."
Gregory laughed softly. "You must be joking. The article is about dime novelists. The part about Richard Terrell was the words of the author, not mine."
"But you made what Mr. Morgan wrote in his novels sound as if it was fact rather than fiction. It's not."
"How do you know it's not? Tell me. What do you know about your grandfather before he settled in St. Louis? Nothing, that's what. You've said so yourself."
"Did you contact anyone in Idaho to try to confirm that the character in Morgan's books is based on the real Richard Terrell?
"I didn't need to. I interviewed the publishers for my story. And again, the focus of my article is the men who write dime novels, not on the characters found in their books."
"But in the process you've dragged my grandfather's good name through the mud. I want a retraction."
Gregory pushed back his chair and stood, the smile gone from his face. "When you prove anything I wrote is in error, then come see me again, and we'll have this discussion. Until then, get out."
For one moment, Joshua thought he might be able to control his temper. For one very brief moment—just before he caught Gregory's jaw with a right hook followed by a left jab to the gut. Gregory flew backward into the wall. The glass in the office door rattled again. Joshua readied himself for the other man to fight back. To his dissatisfaction, it didn't happen. Gregory's eyes were still unfocused when more men poured into the office and grabbed Joshua by the arms, hauling him away. One of the men was Joshua's boss, Langston Lee.
"You're fired, Crawford. Collect your things and get out. I won't have my reporters brawling. You hear me. Get out or I'll call the police."
Joshua longed to turn his rage onto his boss, to give Langston Lee a little of what he'd already given Gregory Halifax. But he had enough good sense left to resist the urge. He was already out of a job. He didn't want to spend time in a jail cell besides.
But so help him, he would get a retraction out of this newspaper. He would prove Gregory Halifax was a shoddy reporter and see that he was fired. He would hear Langston Lee apologize. And he would make certain D. B. Morgan never again maligned his grandfather in print.
This wasn't over yet.
**************
Chapter One
Bethlehem Springs, October 1918
Maybe it was time to kill Rawhide Rick. He'd served his purpose, the old rascal. He'd hunted buffalo and fought Indians and stolen gold from hardworking miners and sent men to the gallows. Now might be the time for him to meet his Maker. The trick was deciding how to kill him.
Daphne McKinley rose from her desk and walked into the parlor, where she pushed aside the curtains at the window.
A golden haze blanketed Bethlehem Springs. It had been a beautiful autumn. The prettiest one yet in her three years in this serene Idaho mountain town. The trees had been the brightest of golds, the most fiery of reds, the deepest of greens. Daphne had spent many a mild afternoon walking trails through the forest, enjoying the colors and the smells.
If Rawhide Rick—who by this point in the series of books had become the infamous Judge Richard Terrell—was dead, what would become of the dashing Bill McFarland, hero of The McFarland Chronicles? Without his arch enemy, his life might become rather dull. Or perhaps it was Daphne who would find life dull without Rawhide Rick. Wicked he was, but he certainly kept things interesting whenever he was around.
She rubbed her eyelids with the tips of her fingers, and when she pulled them away, she noticed ink stains on her right hand. Her fountain pen was leaking. Perhaps it was time to buy a typewriter. But would writing on a machine feel the same?
Daphne turned from the window, her gaze sweeping the parlor. She'd come to love this small house on Wallula Street. Since moving into it soon after Gwen—its previous owner—married Daphne's brother, she'd delighted in making it her home, decorating and furnishing it in ways that pleased her. Daphne's childhood homes had been large and filled with servants waiting to attend to her slightest wish. But she had often been forced to live by the timetables of others. Now she could do as she willed, when she willed. The freedom she enjoyed was intoxicating.
The best part was when she wanted to be with family, she got into her motorcar—her very own, quite wonderful McLaughlin-Buick—and drove to her brother's home to play with her young nephew and infant niece. She was completely dotty over the two of them. She loved to crawl around on the floor with Andy—he would turn two at the end of November—the both of them squealing and giggling. And there was nothing like cuddling three-month-old Ellie. Daphne thought the baby girl smelled like sunshine.
A sigh escaped her. She hadn't time for daydreaming about Morgan's and Gwen's darling children. She must decide what to do. If she was going to kill the judge, she needed to notify Elwood Shriver at once. Wavering in indecisiveness served no good purpose.
***********************
Copyright 2010, Robin Lee Hatcher
Do not reproduce without permission from the author.
A MATTER OF CHARACTER is available on-line at Amazon.com (http://is.gd/ctcE0), Christianbook.com (http://is.gd/ctcLt) and other on-line retailers, as well as in local bookstores everywhere. To obtain autographed bookplates or for more information about books by Robin Lee Hatcher, visit her web site at http://www.robinleehatcher.com/.
COWBOY FOR A RAINY AFTERNOON
By Stephen Bly
"I have always been a fan of Louis L'Amour but I must say your book is as good if not better than anything of his. I shall remain a fan of Stephen Bly." Jimmy Dickens, Grand Ole Opry
"Bly offers a kinder, gentler Western that should appeal to fans of Louis L'Amour." Library Journal
Summary of Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon:
A 10-year-old boy with red straw cowboy hat, cap gun, and silver-painted wooden bullets. Six story-telling, cribbage playing old cowboys. A '49 Plymouth with open trunk. A damsel in distress. All the fixings for a summer's day adventure at the Matador Hotel in 1954 Albuquerque. Maybe you weren't born 100 years too late!
CHAPTER 1
The Matador Hotel died on July 5th, 1965, but they didn't bother burying it until last fall.
New Mexico heat blanketed Albuquerque that July like too many covers in a stuffy cabin. The kind of day that you sweat from the inside out and feel sticky dirt in places that you don't ponder much except in the shower. I reckon that four-bladed overhead fan that squeaked like an unfed cat failed to console Shorty McGuire. Doc Boyce said he passed on durin' the night, but no one discerned it until they observed the empty back table at the Round-Up Café. For the last nineteen years of his life, Shorty lived in a second-floor room at The Matador. At straight up 6:00 a.m. ever' mornin' he ate two eggs fried hard under the faded picture of Theodore Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill.
As a boy, I calculated that Shorty McGuire and the others must be pushing a hundred-years-old when I met them for the first time in 1954.
I reckon I surmised wrong.
The Albuquerque Herald reported that Hadley (Shorty) McGuire was only 86 when he died on that July day in 1965. The Herald is right most of the time.
As the last of that bunch at the Matador, there was no one left to take his
trappings, so Whip Johnson and me cleaned out Shorty's goods a few days after his funeral. Whip managed the hotel in the 60s for his Uncle Durwood Johnson who gained some fame in the Southwest on the rodeo circuit after the war. He won the hotel on a bet on a black half-thoroughbred stallion down in Magdalena.
The floor of Shorty's little room with one four-pane slide-up window was carpeted solid with six to eight inches of newspapers, not a one newer than 1939. He claimed that cowboyin' didn't provide the time to read much, so he saved them for his retirement. I never did know if he got caught up.
We didn't have the nerve to give his tattered clothing to the Rescue Mission, so we chucked them into the hotel incinerator. We crated his boots, wooly chaps and battered Stetson, then donated them to the state museum. I had a notion they would want to display the gear of an old-time cowboy. But they stored them in a back room for a few years, then sold them at an auction to raise money for a modern art statue that looks like the scrap-iron pile out behind my barn. If I'd known they were selling Shorty's belongings, I'd have bought those suckers myself and buried them, rather than let some car dealer in Denver drive off with `em. But that's the way the past is. You can't hang on to it all. What survives gets stolen by strangers who have no blasted idea of what they hold in their hands.
The tobacco-stained furniture in Shorty's room belonged to the hotel, but Whip decided to replace it all and re-carpet. So they moved in newer furniture, but I don't think the room was ever repainted. Whip and me always thought that room smelled like Lordsburg, but that might be its location on the south side of the hotel, facing the Santa Fe tracks.
I never went back to the hotel after that day. The hippies ran it in the early 70s, then some drug dealers. I think one of them big moving companies bought the place and used it for storage for a decade or two before they tore it down last year. All them red bricks got shipped to the west side for deluxe estate fencing around an upscale gated community. I hear they decided to build urban condos on the old hotel site for rich city folks, but I can't figure what kind of people would want to live in downtown Albuquerque.
At least, not nowadays.
I still have Shorty's rim-fire saddle hangin' in my tack room. It was one of the first ones Estaban Chavez built, when he still had that shop behind the Chinese laundry in Las Cruces. Lots of folks have wanted to buy it over the years, but it doesn't belong to me. Some day Shorty's kin will show up wantin' his things, and I'll have it ready. I keep the leather oiled. Shorty died almost forty years ago, but I'll hang onto it for him.
That's the way things are done around this part of the country.
It's one of the lessons I learned in the lobby of the Matador Hotel.
######
Excerpt from Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon by Stephen Bly, Copyright©2010 by Stephen Bly.
All rights reserved. Do Not Reproduce Without Permission
Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon (hardback, Center Point Publishing, June 2010) Support your local bookstore! Ask them to order Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon from Ingram Distributors or order online through http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.blybooks.com/ or your local library.
Stephen Bly is at work on his 103rd novel. He is a Christy Award winner for westerns. He also co-authors with wife, Janet Chester Bly. Father of 3 married sons, he enjoys time with his 3 grandchildren, collecting antique Winchesters, and playing golf. They live in a small town in north Idaho on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation where he's pastor of the only church. More information about Stephen Bly and his books can be found at his blog http://www.blybooks.blogspot.com/ or websites: http://www.blybooks.com/ and http://www.onestepovertheborder.com/
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