DELAWARE BEND by Ken Farmer

In the mid and all the way to the turn of the century, there was an area in northern  Cooke County and Grayson County, Texas called the Delaware Bend. At one time, it was known as one of the three most dangerous and deadly areas in North America sharing that honor with Leadville, Colorado and Tombstone, Arizona.

Stories are a place to hang knowledge on.

Originally part of Fannin County, it was included in Grayson County when it was established in 1846 and was finally split with the western half of the big loop in the Red River going to Cooke County in 1848. The entire area was bounded on the west with the Chisholm Cattle Trail and on the east with the Shawnee Cattle Trail.

The Shawnee—also called the Texas Trail is today known as Preston Road—used the crossing at Colbert's Ferry. It was the only decent crossing of the Red until you got to Sivells Bend in Cooke County or Red River Station in Montague on the west. It was important in that it was the primary crossing between Texas and Indian Territory from about 1850 to 1899 for both the Shawnee Cattle Trail and the Butterfield Overland Mail route.

Stories are linear in nature, but are best presented

by an abstract person.

Delaware Bend, upper right corner

There were still Indian villages in the area when Texas declared its independence in 1836. The primary tribe was known as the Delawares. In 1842 a treaty was drawn that would exclude Indians from the land east of the Cross Timbers—an unusual strip of forest ranging from five to thirty miles wide that ran from the Arkansas River on the north some four hundred miles south to the Brazos. Well, it seems the Cross Timbers and the land west ran smack dab across the Delaware Bend. 

The area rapidly became a haven for outlaws and rogue Indians. Joe T. Roff, son of one of the early settlers wrote in his memoirs the following:

"While the great majority of the people were of the type spoken of, yet many renegades from the States had drifted into the Indian Territory to avoid the laws of the States. There were bold cattle and horse thieves to be dealt with, but when the honest people could not be protected by the law, they appealed to the first law of nature and made and enforced their own laws." - Joe T. Roff

History is not always what it seems…it's what whoever

wrote about it wants it to be.

There were many sightings of William Clarke Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and later, the James Gang in the Bend area in and around the town of Dexter. The natives tell the story that Jesse would give some of the local boys fifty cents to keep an eye out for posses.

When someone begins a conversation…'I may be wrong'...Rest assured 

they don't think there's a chance in hell.

Dexter was a booming town until the railroad from Denison to Gainesville and points west went south through Woodbine instead of Dexter as was projected—the town kinda died on the vine after that. But that's another story. 

Dexter Hotel - Then and now

Here's some pics of the Dexter Hotel, both back in the day and recently. It was still standing seven years ago when I was up in that part of the county doing some research…it looked haunted.

A Colonel W. D. Young owned much of the fertile land along the river bottom, including a settlement known as Shawneetown. He turned it into a landing for cotton barges. He also served one term as a US Marshal and is known in Texas history as a Confederate hero who was ambushed Oct. 16, 1862 in events leading up to what is known as the largest mass lynching in American history—The Great Hanging in Gainesville, Texas.

Writers learn to write by writing.

The Delaware Bend remained a gathering area for outlaws on the scout until the Lee Gang—brothers, James, Pink and Tom, along with Ed Stein—with their huge rustling operation, were shut down. James, Pink and Tom are key antagonists in our latest Bass Reeves novel, "Across the Red". 

What's left of Delaware Bend—at one time some of the best farming land in Texas—now lies under Lake Texoma.  There are a couple of houses and a feed store still left in Dexter along with a very interesting cemetery and the pile of old boards and a brick chimney that once was the Dexter Hotel.

Look at your tracks and acknowledge what you have

 or haven't done.

Continuing on with the next installment from my DICTIONARY of EMOTIONS

 LOVE FEAR

B

PRIME: FEAR

BEWILDERED - Perplexed or confused, mystified; dazed.

Secondary:

ADDLED - To make or become confused.

BEDAZZLED - Dazzled to a point of confusion or amazement.

BOGGLED - Overwhelmed with astonishment.

BENUMBED - Feeling totally stupefied.

CONFOUNDED - Brought into confusion.

CONFUSED - Unclear, addled; lacking logical order.

DAZZLED - Deeply impressed, overwhelmed or amazed.

FUDDLED - A state of confusion.

FLABBERGASTED - Dumbfounded.

LOST - Distraught; gone astray.

MUDDLED - Confused.

STUPOROUS - A state of reduced sensibility; dazed.

PRIME: FEAR

BELLIGERENT - Hostile, eager to fight.

Secondary:

ACERBIC - Bitter and sharp in speech , manner or temper.

ACID - Unpleasant disposition.

ARGUMENTATIVE - Given to arguing; disputatious.

BELLICOSE - Pugnacious; warlike in nature.

CENSORIOUS - Tending to be critical.

CONTENTIOUS - Quarrelsome.

CRUEL - Intentionally causing pain or suffering on others.

CYNICAL - Believing all people are motivated by selfishness.

DISPUTATIOUS - Given to dispute.

INDIGNANT - Feeling angry due to some injustice.

MALIGNING - To speak evil of; to defame.

MALEVOLENT - Exhibiting ill will.

MORDANT - Bitingly sarcastic.

SARDONICLY - Scornfully mocking.

SARCASTIC - Given to cutting, ironic remarks.

SPITEFUL - To be mean or evil toward another.

VENGEFUL - Desiring vengeance.

VINDICTIVE - Vengeful; spiteful.

C

PRIME: LOVE

CHARMED - Attracted to or fascinated with; delighted and pleased.

Secondary:

ABSORBED - Totally mentally concentrated; engrossed.

ALLURED - Enticed by charm or other attraction.

BEGUILED - Misled, diverted; amused or delighted.

BEWITCHED - Enchanted; fascinated or captivated.

CAPTIVATED - Fascinated by something or someone.

DELUDED - To deceived the mind in judgment of.

DIVERTED - Distracted.

ENAMORED - Inflamed with love.

ENRAPTURED - Filled with delight.

ENTICED - Attracted by arousing hope or desire; lure.

ENCHANTED - Bewitched; to attract and delight.

ENTRANCED - Carried away with delight.

ENTHRALLED - Fascinated; enslaved.

FASCINATED - Holding an intense interest or attraction for.

INFATUATED - Inspired with unreasoning love or attachment.

MESMERIZED - Hypnotized.

MARVELING - Filled with wonder or surprise.

RAVISH - To overwhelm with emotion.

SMITTEN - Inflamed with love.

SPELLBOUND - Fascinated as if by a spell.

PRIME: FEAR

CONFUSED - To be unclear in mind or purpose; bewildered.

Secondary:

ABASHED - Disconcerted.

ADDLED - Muddled.

BAFFLED - Frustrated, stymied, thwarted, foiled.

DISCOMBOBULATED - A state of being upset, confused.

DISCONCERTED - Thrown into disarray.

DISTRACTED - Emotionally unsettled; troubled.

DUMBFOUNDED - Filled with astonishment and perplexity.

GROGGY - Unsteady and dazed.

HAZY - Unclear or vague.

PERPLEXED - Puzzled.

PERTURBED - Disturbed, agitated.

PUZZLED - Mentally confused with a difficult problem.

THE DEEPEST TRUTH CAN BE FOUND BY MEANS

OF A SIMPLE STORY

BLADES, BULLETS, AND THE JAWBONE OF AN ASS-- By Marc Cameron

I’ve written essays here on man-tracking, the hard realities of a fight, prostitutes, horse shoeing, Texas Rangers, US Marshals, and, among other things, beaucoup about my beautiful bride—who will have been married to my ugly mug for thirty-one years this Saturday. I write Thrillers now, and it’s been a while since I’ve written a Western. But, so many of our books in both genres feature lawmen and gunmen that I try to give a word or two of insight from the perspective of my career in law enforcement, even if the posts are decidedly un-Western.    

Yesterday, while watching her boys hack away at each other with orange Hot Wheels tracks, my daughter-in-law lamented that virtually everything they pick up becomes a sword. Of course, at Papa’s house, they don’t have to look far for the real deal. All the dangerous stuff—guns and sharp, pointy blades—are locked away in the safe, but there are still plenty of bamboo, wood, and foam swords, not to mention the fencing foils and a practice saber or two. None of these were handy when one of the boys decided he was a vicious snow leopard—so the Hot Wheels track became a stand-in for the other one to fend off the attack.

Notice the foam sword in my belt

Lest anyone think that we’re raising little bellicose Spartans, my grandsons get a goodly amount of training in faith, music, literature, and service to others. In addition to weapons, when they come to Nana and Papa’s house, they see Friberg paintings of Washington’s prayer at Valley Forge and Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables wearing Stetsons and red serge tunics as they live up to their motto to “maintiens le droit”—maintain the right. These larger than life heroes are also the type of men and women I try to write about—tough, and maybe seemingly uncivilized compared to some who didn’t live through the same situations. 

“The pen is mightier than the sword” is a good sentiment, but I, along with the characters in my books, tend to favor the Japanese notion of bunbu ichi—“pen and sword in accord.”

One of my favorite scenes from Kipling’s KIM is when the monk chastises the old Sikh soldier for carrying a blade—

“It is not a good fancy,” said the lama. “What profit to kill men?”

“Very little - as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”

Spirited philosophy talks and striving for a better world are worthwhile endeavors, but sometimes the way we wish things were clashes so starkly with the reality of the way things are, that it can hit us like a boot to the head. I call it the Mermaid and Unicorn Fart Axiom—Just because something sounds like it should be fanciful and sweet, doesn’t keep it from stinking. It’s depressing, but that’s the reality of life. Sometimes it sucks, no matter how much we prepare for it not to suck.

For instance—I love dogs. On any normal day, I wouldn’t consider harming a sweet little pooch, let alone shooting one dead. But I have. It wasn’t the poor dog’s fault that his meth-head owner sent him out the back door to rip out my groin. But it wasn’t my fault either and I responded like I’d been trained—protecting myself. It was harsh and it was quick and I hated that I had to do it. Thankfully, it all happened before social media took over our lives or I’m sure I would have received online death threats. Heck, after this confession, they'll probably come rolling in.

I’ve mentioned it before in these essays, but working on the back side of a badge has been a real boon to creating characters for my writing. It has also colored my outlook on the world in which I have to interact. Too much focus on the grimy side of reality—real and true though it may be—can be unhealthy if you’re not careful. It’s easy to start viewing everyone as a possible threat, or at the very least, a closet misfit. You don’t have to see more than one decapitated head in someone’s kitchen freezer to become convinced that society as a whole is pretty well doomed. Find a duffle bag full of Polaroids under a drug dealer’s bed—some of them including girls you went to school with—and you just can’t wash off the icky.

Homicide investigators like to say, “Everyone is a suspect but me…and sometimes I’m not so sure about me.”

Uncivilized as such work might be, the life and the outlook that go with it make it natural to live on the twitchy edge of impending conflict. And just like the tendency to view others as threats, it becomes a habit to view everything around you for use as a possible weapon.

We’re often asked as writers what inspires us to write the stories we do. Richard Prosch wrote an essay on this blog a couple of days ago describing an incident with his father that led him to imagine ONE AGAINST A GUN HORDE. I enjoy that kind of backstory.

I got this question on an authors’ panel in Long Beach a few weeks ago. Oddly enough, I could remember the exact moment I decided to write the story that became DAY ZERO, the next Jericho Quinn novel—which takes place on a commercial airliner.

After decades of traveling with my sidearm, I found myself retired and gunless on a flight between Alaska and Texas where I was to pick up my trusty motorcycle, Modestine. My worldview had softened some in the months since I’d hung up my badge, but it was still natural to look at the shifty guy who was trash-talking the flight attendant a few rows ahead of me and wonder what his problem was. Whether I have a gun or not, I will probably react as if I do until the day that I die. It’s ingrained. So, I decided I’d better arm myself, airplane our not, and began to look for things I could use as weapons if someone went all gonzo terrorist on us. Fiddling with an arm of my tray table, I listened to the flight attendant give her safety briefing. About the time she went through the part about how we could use our seat cushions as flotation, I noticed one of the pins that held the metal arm in place was loose. I figured it would be easy to snap the arm off if things got bad, leaving me with a metal club a little over a foot long. 

I began to imagine Jericho in the middle of a hellacious fight on board a hijacked airliner—one arm through the straps on the seat cushion he used as a shield, while he wielded the metal tray arm to great effect—like Samson wielding the jawbone of an ass against the Philistines. I realized I was turning more writer than lawman when I buried my nose in a notebook and began to write the scene—instead of keeping an eye on the troublemaker a couple of rows ahead of me.

I have to admit that I’m not quite as jaded as the above makes me sound. I may have leaned that way when I was younger, but maturity helps one see things with a little more hope—not a lot more hope, but a little anyway. I fully realize that there are a lot of good people in the world. I’ve ridden my motorcycle thousands of miles across the US and Canada and have yet to meet more than a handful of turds. But every time I think the world is really getting better, I stumble on the comments section at the bottom of some newsfeed. Then I imagine walking among the people who are capable of spewing such vitriol and hate. It brings back memories of the old days behind the badge—and makes me want to reach for a Hot Wheel track…or something a little stronger to defend myself.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published eleven novels, six of them Westerns.   
DAY ZERO, fifth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2015. Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor  

YOUR PLACE OR MINE by Marc Cameron

“That’s a good place to dump a body,” I said, forehead pressed against the passenger window of my sister’s pickup. A tangle of oaks, briars and wild grapevines followed a meandering creek in a thick greenbelt along the quiet road north of Dallas.

My sister, who'd had to endure growing up with me, said something about my creepy outlook on the world, then admitted that the police had recently caught a couple of teenage boys as they walked out of that overgrowth—from dumping the body of another youth they’d choked to death.

     My formative years in law enforcement were spent in the South so I tend to think of that area in fairly violent and bloody terms. Apologies to all my relatives and friends who still live there. I have plenty of happy memories too. But I’ve found too many bodies in the woods. Some were in shallow graves or tarps or bed sheets or old carpet. Some were in nothing at all. There’s something about the oppressive humidity, the sweet smell of decaying earth, and the mottled light through the branches that just screams, “There’s a dead body in here!”

     Man-trackers know people tend to follow natural lines of drift, moving generally over the same path as those who have gone before them. Oddly, it's not unheard of for one crime scene to overlap with another. I heard someone say recently that if all the bodies buried in the desert outside San Bernardino stood up, the place would look like a forest.

     Just like dense woods can evoke a sense of foreboding, other places dredge up different feelings and thoughts. If done correctly, setting is not just a backdrop in which characters move around. It’s a character in its own right.

     I’m writing this at 30,000 feet, between DC and Los Angeles. Washington, with its Heroic statues, less than heroic politicians, granite monuments, spies, spies in training, and herds of unruly youth on summer trips, provides a perfect backdrop for intrigue—the same way a sunset over a wide West Texas street says gunfight.

     I often set scenes in areas where I’ve worked, including DC. In an early Jericho Quinn novel, I wrote a key chase scene set in and around Arlington, Virginia, basing it on my memories and Google Earth. I ended up back there for several weeks on assignment while working on that same book—and realized that, though I had the geography correct, I’d neglected to mention the thrumming buzz of cicadas that filled the trees at that time of year. It was a small detail, but a word or two about these insects certainly fleshed out the setting.

My first Western was set in Western Montana in 1910. I had about a third of it written before I had sense enough to research what was going on in that part of the country in that particular year. Turns out they had a humongous forest fire—belching out enough smoke that streetlights on the East Coast had to be lit during the day. That fire became a major character in a story that would have fizzled without it.  

Over the last few days I’ve walked through chases and fight scenes in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the warren of tunnels that make up the DC Metro system—both places that, at least in my mind, make for great settings/characters. It’s a delicate balance between being too sparse or too wordy in your descriptions.

There’s an old story among lawdogs about a Texas Ranger who, after a gunfight with a fugitive, sent a telegram with the following report to his superiors.

“Ranger attempted to arrest outlaw, outlaw drew weapon, Ranger shot outlaw, outlaw expired.”

Of course the Ranger’s Captain sent word that he needed a more detailed report. The next day he received the following amended report:

“Ranger attempted to arrest outlaw, outlaw drew weapon, Ranger shot outlaw, outlaw expired. Weather: cloudy.”

Each place has its own unique details. Ambient sound—the slap of a halyard against a sailboat’s mast, the creak of saddle leather, or the buzzing of blowflies; smell—the odor of fish and desperation in the teeming backstreets of Chinatown; and weather—oppressive heat that pushes a person to strip to the skin or bitter cold that makes holding a firearm painful if not impossible. They can all add interesting layers to setting and place.

I admit that I enjoy writing descriptions—probably a little more than I should. I slash a good many of them on my own, then again, when my wife reads the manuscript…and again when my editor gets his/her hands on it. We overnight tonight in LA. Tomorrow we head to Japan for a few weeks, visiting our grandchildren and scouting other locations for fights, foot pursuits and new settings where Jericho and friends can have their adventures. A place like that overwhelms my senses, leaving me feeling like Scrooge McDuck in his counting house, except, instead of money, I roll around in a great pile of words and ideas.

Our flight arrives in LA in the early afternoon. I really should go for a run when we get to the hotel. Google Earth shows a nice greenbelt just a couple of blocks away—but I’ll stick to the treadmill. I’m just not in the mood for what I might find out there in the leaves.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published eleven novels, six of them Westerns.   

TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2014. DAY ZERO will hit the shelves February 2015.

Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor