OUT NOW: The Devil's Left Hand
"Bannack was on fire by the time that Joseph got there. Not a literal fire with smoke and flame, but an unstoppable mess of greed and grit..."
Howdy folks! I’m excited to announce that my latest short story project, The Devil’s Left Hand, is available now for purchase on the Amazon Kindle Store! Yes, coinciding with the release of the first Hollywood Western epic in ages (Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga), this is a tale you won’t want to miss.
Many of you know that I adore the Western genre. I’ve mentioned in the past that I think it’s one of the most fascinating storytelling mediums to come out of American culture, and has a lot of potential for redemptive material. Between the real frontier history and the fictional tales we’ve mythologized, there’s a lot to love about a good, old fashioned horse opera.
Meditating on that, I’ve been working on this short story for a while now, and I hope you enjoy it.
If you’re expecting something more paranormal-ish in nature like my previous outings in The Bear-tooth Mountain Archive, then you might be a bit disappointed1. But don’t let that deter you! The Devil's Left Hand is a historical fiction Western based on true happenings that occurred in Bannack during it's time as a part of the Idaho Territory in 1864. If you love the Old West, American history, or are a junkie for thrilling and redemptive fiction, then this is the short story for you.
To give you just a taste of what you’ll get from this here tale, below is an excerpt from the beginning of the first section…
If Joseph Milton had known that he was about to be witness to an armed stage robbery that afternoon, he surely would’ve stayed home cozied up by the fire. Having spent the morning working his frigid fingers to the brittled bone, Joseph walked in the front door just as his wife, Helen, had bumped up against a cupboard and dropped a day’s worth of eggs onto the floor. She stood speechless above the broken shells and egg whites, fighting back tears. Joseph carefully walked over and cleaned up the mess, took Helen in his arms, and held her.
The winter had made provisions scarce, and the Christmas festivities hadn’t helped any. Although they planned on riding to town later that week, Helen had set her mind on baking their daughter a birthday cake. The two of them had already scrounged up what little they had to buy their little girl a hand-crafted cross-decorated necklace at the local mercantile, but the cake was important to Helen. She had baked one for her children for every birthday, rain or shine, and this one would be no different. Susan was twelve years old now and—as the Milton’s only living child—had only cattle for company. They may have lived only a few short miles out from Bannack, but it was far enough that Susan failed to make any friends in the year they’d lived here.
The Miltons arrived in Bannack the previous spring. The journey from Illinois had been treacherous, and they’d lost one child, a six-year-old son named Henry, to pneumonia shortly after settling in what was considered the Idaho Territory. They had underestimated the cold, and though the boy had been sick and later recovered, the fever returned with a fierceness that their son couldn’t evade. As there was yet no established church in Bannack, Joseph buried his son in the pasture out behind their small, cabin home. A crooked wooden cross was the only marker of the boy’s resting place.
While most men moved to these lands in hope to plunder Grasshopper Creek of its natural riches, the Miltons did so to escape the bloodshed out east. The war had not been kind to their family, and both Joseph and Helen had lost brothers to the never-ending carnage. To them, the booming town of Bannack—which had more than quadrupled by the time they arrived—signified a new start for their children far away from the horrors of war.
But the Angel of Death had followed them even here.
If this sounds like your cup of tea, join Joseph Milton as he navigates the corrupt gold town of Bannack, overrun by a band of outlaws just waiting for the wrong guy to make the wrong move.
I’d like to thank all of those who have been so supportive of my work thus far. Whether it was The Beast of Bear-tooth Mountain, my short stories (such as A Standoff at the Gates of Hell, which can be read exclusively in Silence & Starsong Issue 3), or this very project, thank you for being willing to check out my work.
I’d like to give a quick shout out to a few of my friends: Elicia Johnson, Josh Robinson, and Ritchie Brock. These folks have been championing my work online, and I couldn’t be more thankful for all their help. Give them each a quick follow here on Substack. If you like my work, chances are, you’ll like theirs also!
The Devil’s Left Hand is available now on the Amazon Kindle Store. If there’s enough interest, I may even self-publish a paperback version…
Never fear! More entries in The Bear-tooth Mountain Archive are underway! I’m developing a few new adventures for Reverend Jude Anthony as we speak. The Archive isn’t even close to being closed…