Showing results by narrator "David M McGowan" in All Categories

But let’s not forget that the NW Mounted Police are in the midst of some big changes both inside and out. Politicians are threatening to do away with them, at least one law-breaker is proving hard to find, and changes within the force are being resisted to point of mutiny.

Nine short pieces of fiction constructed around 170 years of North American history and interspersed at intervals by fourteen poems. The first story is a fictional account of the first European to reach the Pacific coast of Canada. Following are fictional pictures of the winners and losers who became builders of North America and thus, eventually, all winners and though they didn’t know it or want it, builders of what exists today.

The year is 1885. Hank James has been in Canada several months panning gold from a stream near Roswell, British Columbia. When he hears a prizefight will be held in town, he attends, along with everyone for miles around. With a little help from the fight referee, he wins big betting on the fight. Having realized that the life of a miner isn’t nearly as romantic or rewarding as he expected, and with advice from the policeman who helped him win money on the fight, Hank goes to Farwell to haul freight with pack horses for contractors building the transcontinental railroad.

There is more than bad weather for Hank James to contend with as he rides in search of the land of his dreams and the woman of his heart. Portis Martin, manager of a large cattle company, has no use for the small homesteaders that have begun to pepper the area…and he isn’t afraid of using every dirty trick he knows to run them out.

Thomas Brash is trying to escape but knows he never will. No thinking person can escape from their past. Pursuing him is the memory of the family he lost to cholera. Perhaps he believes that traveling alone in a wild, dangerous land will end all his memories; there is no doubt he wishes to be alone. Whatever his intentions, the appearance of Frank Clement and the circumstances of that meeting upset those plans.

Call him a bounty hunter, a rangeland detective, an actor, a chameleon, a puzzle solver; whatever title you choose, Bob Morgan will find a way to reshape depravity, corruption and destruction into the manageable and acceptable. All that is necessary is to not expect too much, appreciate whatever improvement may be realized, and don’t look too closely at Morgan’s past.