Quackery

My book Doctor in Petticoats is about a modern woman doctor, or as modern as she could be in the late 1880’s. I had her attend a college for women doctors in Chicago to give her the education and respectability I needed for the book.

Reading Bleed, Blister, and Purge; A History of Medicine on the American Frontier by Volney Steele, M.D. I discovered that in the 1870’s and into the early 1880’s most doctors had little to no formal learning. Harvard Medical School in 1870 didn’t even give written examinations because a good number of the students couldn’t write. Medical schools popped up that did very little to teach the students what they really needed to know to be doctors. And in some cases all they had to do was send in $5 or $10 depending on the grade of paper and receive a certificate that proclaimed them a doctor. In some cases people were better off going to a local woman who had herbal cures than going to someone with a certificate nailed on the wall.

Many of the so-called doctors would come up with gimmicks that they proclaimed healed. These were the forerunners of the term “quack” which is from quacksalver; a person who claims special merit of his medications and salves.

During the 1870’s and 1880’s the newspapers cried out about the poor medical treatment of the people in the west and mid-west until finally in 1889 when Montana received statehood, the Medical Practices Act was passed. A Board of Medical Examiners was created. This was the start of controlling the doctors practicing medicine.

Excerpt from Doctor in Petticoats. The heroine is casting the hero’s leg.

“Clay, it’s Dr. Tarkiel, Rachel. You fell and broke your leg. I have it set, but we still need to stabilize it.” She brushed the wisp of wet chestnut bangs off his forehead.

“It hurts,” he whispered.

The sound of his voice squeezed her chest. His pain had become her pain. She placed a palm on his cheek. “I know. If you’re awake enough to swallow, I can give you some medicine to help with the pain.”

“Yes,” he hissed between his lips. Furrows formed on his brow and his color paled.

“Keep holding his leg,” she said to Mr. Smith and hurried to her medicine cabinet. She tapped powdered laudanum into a glass and added water. Stirring the tonic, she returned to the table.

“Drink this. It will ease the pain.” Rachel slid a hand under Clay’s head, raising him enough to sip the liquid.

His nose wrinkled, and he shook his head at the glass. “That’s awful.”

“But it will take away your pain. Try again.” She held the glass in front of his mouth again. His reluctance to drink the foul taste was a good sign.

He drank the remainder.

Rachel settled his head on the table and filled a basin with water. She unrolled an adhesive bandage and placed it in the basin. Picking up a square bandage, she sprinkled laudanum in the middle and placed it over the wound. Mr. Smith held Clay’s leg off the table while she wrapped a clean bandage from his ankle to below his knee. She placed two long flat strips of wood on either side of the leg and wrapped the whole thing with the soaked adhesive bandage. She still marveled at the genius who’d thought to press the white plaster of Paris powder into bandages to make casting material for broken bones.

She rubbed each layer, smearing the plaster together and sealing the layers. The cast was an inch thick when she smiled at Mr. Smith. “That should keep him from doing harm while the bone heals.”

Mr. Smith shook his head. “He’s a hard man ta keep still, Miss.”

www.patyjager.net
www.patyjager/blogspot.com

Breaking Out of Pigeonholes-GUEST Judy Alter

DR. JUDY ALTER

            Writers are easily put in pigeonholes, especially genre pigeonholes. My first novel, After Pa Was Shot, was apparently a young-adult novel. I didn’t know that when I wrote it, but that’s how my agent marketed it. And voila! I was a young-adult author. I stayed in that pigeonhole for several books—seven to be exact—because I was comfortable there and that seemed to be what editors expected of me.

           
But then I wrote a novel, Mattie, which had a few steamy scenes in it and was published by Doubleday in the now-long-defunct DDD Westerns line. I followed it with A Ballad for Sallie, told by a twelve-year-old girl. It’s my contention that not all novels featuring twelve-year-old girls—or boys—are young-adult works, but the editor at the mass market house that reprinted it said Sallie didn’t sell as well because it was a juvenile.

           
The label “children’s writer” still follows me these days, partly because I’ve written a lot of nonfiction for young adults, everything from a history of Montana to a book explaining vaccines and a biography of Harry S. Truman. But by the 1990s I moved into a new pigeonhole: western writer. I was active in Western Writers of America, even president for a term, and I was writing westerns—no, not “shoot-'em-ups” but four of the books I’m most proud of (though choosing  your favorite of your books is, as a friend of mine has said, like being forced to choose a favorite child). 

           
I thought Libbie, a fictional account of the life of Mrs. George Armstrong Custer published in 1994, was my big breakthrough (it proved not to be). It got great reviews from all sorts of publication, including lots of romance review magazines—and one scathing review in the Dallas Morning News because the reviewer, who called himself a curmudgeon, dismissed it as a romance.

Jessie, the life of Jessie Benton Frémont and daughter of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, was next. As the wife of and explorer/adventurer/entrepreneur/lifelong failure and the daughter of a forceful senator and proponent of westward expansion, Jessie was in the midst of the national political scene for many years before following her husband about the country and eventually becoming an author.

Cherokee Rose was based on the life of Lucille Mulhall, the first woman trick roper but the publicity for that book was nil—I saw one brief mention in Entertainment Today. The market for women’s western fiction was either dying or moving away from me. I didn’t publish adult fiction again until 2002 when Leisure Books brought out a mass market edition of Sundance, Butch and Me, told, of course, by Etta Place. I always particularly liked that book because it made my well-read son-in-law laugh out loud.

           
There are still countless western women I could write about. Indeed I wrote a y/a entitled Extraordinary Women of the West, and a friend laughed that I should tell the editors I had about a hundred more women to go. But I saw the handwriting on the wall, busied myself with the non-fiction y/a market and my daytime job, and dreamed of writing mysteries, while reading every cozy I could get my hands on.

AVAILABLE LATE AUGUST

           
 Finally I dipped my toe into the Guppy pond of Sisters in Crime and found myself literally a newbie in a new world. No one knew I had a publishing history, and I certainly didn’t understand the intricate ins and outs of finding an agent and publishing a mystery. In retrospect I wasted a lot of time querying agents and a few of the better known small presses, giving one press an exclusive that stretched out to a year, wasting another year with an agent who decided he couldn’t sell it.

           
Next I queried a new press, Turquoise Morning. They accepted Skeleton in a Dead Space more quickly than they predicted. It’s launching August 29, give or take, and I’m busy planning marketing, on Facebook and Twitter, writing blogs, and learning all kinds of things that didn’t exist when I last published adult fiction. As we all know, in the old days, your publisher did the marketing; today, we do it.

           
Now if I can just jump out of the y/a and western pigeonholes into the mystery one—or maybe a bigger one that encompasses all three? Western mysteries sort of intrigue me, but I haven’t come up with a plot yet. And after my recent trip to Scotland, a mystery set in Scotland has my brain whirling with possibilities.
Pigeonholes be darned!

~*~*~*~

Judy's forthcoming cozy mystery is Skeleton in a Dead Space from Turquoise Morning Press, due in late August or early September.

Her most recent books are Extraordinary Women of Texas and Great Texas Chefs (both TCU Press) and Cooking My Way through Life with Kids and Books (State House Press).

She is the author of seven published Western Historical novels for adults, nonfiction books for young adults, one collection of short stories, and a critical biography of Texas novelist Elmer Kelton.

Judy's works have won awards from Western Writers of America, Western Heritage Wrangler Award, Texas Institute of Letters, and the Children's Book Council.

RECOGNITIONS:

Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement – Western Writers of America

Named One of 100 Women, Living and Dead, Who Have Left Their Mark on Texas – Dallas Morning News

Named Outstanding Woman of Fort Worth in the Arts, 1988, - Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women

Named to Texas Literary Hall of Fame, Fort Worth Public Library

I am a regular blogger- http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com/  and http://potluckwithjudy.com/   and regular reader of the listservs from the Guppies and Sisters in Crime.

From 1982 until 2009 Judy Alter worked at Texas Christian University Press, five years as editor, and the remaining as director. Using her vast knowledge and university degrees, much of her writing has been about the experiences of women in the American West.

She is the single mother of four now-grown children and the grandparent of seven. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with Scooby, an Australian shepherd, and Wynona, cat that is part Maine Coon.

Thank you for visiting Judy Alter here at Sweethearts of the West. You're welcome to leave a comment for her.

Celia Yeary

Let's Go To Luckenbach, Texas

WELCOME TO LUCKENBACH, TEXAS-POP. 3

Settled in 1850 by German pioneers, tiny Luckenbach remained obscure until 1970 when Hondo Crouch, rancher and Texas folklorist and writer, bought Luckenbach for $30,000 from an ad he saw in the paper.

GENERAL STORE AND BEER HALL

Luckenbach remains as it was—one unpainted combination general store and beer hall, a traditional rural dance hall, and a sometimes-used blacksmith shop.

COMANCHE TRADERS

  Luckenbach was first established as a community trading post and was one of the few that never broke a peace treaty with the Comanche Indians, with whom they traded.

WILLIE NELSON AND WAYLON JENNINGS IN CONCERT AT LUCKENBACH

Years later, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson memorialized Luckenbach with the song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)"

Author Peter Doggett recalls that Jennings later told audiences that "he hated the song and had admitted 'The guys that wrote the thing have never been to Luckenbach. Neither have I."

Luckenbach, Texas / Back to the Basics of Love

The only two things in life that make it worth livin'
Is guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquee lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love

Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin'
Got us feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys
Between Hank Williams' pain songs and
Newberry's train songs and Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain
Out in Luckenbach, Texas ain't nobody feelin' no pain

So baby, let's sell your diamond ring
Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
This coat and tie is choking me
In your high society you cry all day
We've been so busy keepin' up with the Jones
Four car garage and we're still building on
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love

Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us feudin'
Like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams' pain songs and
Newberry's train songs and Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain
Out in Luckenbach, Texas ain't nobody feelin' no pain

Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas
With Willie and Waylon and the boys
This successful life we're livin's got us feudin'
Like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams' pain songs
And Jerry Jeff's train songs and Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain
Out in Luckenbach, Texas there ain't nobody feelin' no pain.



CASUAL GATHERING OF MUSICIANS



OLD OPEN AIR DANCE HALL

The little community is still an active home to country music as of 2010, where folks gather by the score to listen to area musicians and drink cold beer, particularly Shiner Bock, a local favorite brewed by the oldest brewer in Texas.

HIGHWAY SIGN

Luckenbach's bemusing ambiance, according to one writer, "is like Brigadoon; you're almost afraid to go back because it might not be there again." It's there, though, in the Hill Country, east of Fredericksburg off U.S. 290, five miles south of Farm to Market Road 1376.
Don't count on the signs, though—thieves swipe them as fast as they can be placed.

Enjoy your visit!

Celia  

COOKIN' AND EATIN' IN THE "OLDEN DAYS"

Nellie Witt Spikes (1888-1977) was a true pioneer woman and the wife of a West Texas plains farmer. For two decades spanning the thirties and forties, she wrote columns for several small town newspapers in Texas, under the title “As a Farm Woman Thinks.” These days, she might be called a blogger. In July of 1942, she wrote the following:

“Well I must get dinner ready for the men in the field. Would you like to put on this bonnet and go with me? First we will get the chicken. Look how wary that young rooster is of crumbled bread and the wire hidden behind my back. Just a jiffy and he will be dressed and cooling. It will not take long to pick some string beans; better get a few cucumbers and onions, and three or four beets, we like them buttered. After the beans are strung and on cooking, we will go to the smokehouse for a hunk of bacon to boil with the beans. Next, to the potato patch, where some small potatoes can be gotten. They are pretty easy to scrape while the skin is so tender. You may beat this bowl of cream for butter. I will make a peach cobbler. Syrup sweetens peaches now as well as it did for our grandmothers. It is so nice to have milk and butter in the refrigerator instead of in the well. Yes, we have walked a good piece, several blocks if we were in town. Meals are so scattered this time of the year, but how nice it is to pick your own.”

This short column says it all about what life was like for women in rural West Texas during the thirties and forties and even the fifties. What a lot of work for just one meal! This passage reminds so much of my childhood, it’s almost painful for me to read it. I cannot count the number of times I tagged along after my grandmother out to the chicken pen around mid-morning, both of us wearing our bonnets she had made. There she would pick out two pullets and wring their necks. No wire to use as a garróte for my grandmother! She had too much to do to be inconvenienced.  …  She would then bring the chickens back into the house, clean them and cook them for dinner, which on the Texas high plains, was the noon meal. When chickens are dunked in boiling water to loosen the feathers, a distinct odor meets the nostrils. To this day, sometimes when I cook an egg, that smell comes back to me. I contribute that to the sense of smell being our most ancient.

Of course we grew a garden and had an orchard, which called for spending the summer of every year canning and preserving. We had no microwave and for a long time, no refrigerator. With the exception of flour, sugar, syrup and spices, everything we ate, we grew. And my two grandmothers cooked it from scratch every single day, including cornbread and biscuits. I can remember thinking sliced bread was the ultimate in sophistication....And in the middle of all of that, my grandmothers and my old aunts did quilting.

It’s hard to believe the changes in eating and food preparation that have occurred in my lifetime. Giving it some thought, I think I’ve just answered the question of why our society has an obesity problem. Eating is too easy nowadays.

Anna

http://annajeffrey.com

http://annajeffreyauthor.wordpress.com

Bandit Built Store

The following accounting was obtained from Roscoe Wyatt, Oscar John and Walter Ray. Oscar and Walter both remember the Younger brothers in person. Wyatt was a conscientious historian. Personal interviews included two of my family members: Emma John Weeks and Percy Weeks. Oscar John (87 at the time of the interview) worked on the Bandit Built Store. He knew the Younger brothers from when they hid out on his La Honda ranch.

Among the men hired to build John Sears’ store, referred to as the ‘Bandit-Built Store’ in 1877 were the Younger brothers from Forsyth, Kansas. At that time no one in La Honda, CA, knew them as the Younger brothers, because they were posing as cousins to Oscar John and Walter Ray. Jim Younger actually lived behind the Redwood City Court House for one year using the name of Joe Hardin.

Cole, Jim, Bob and John Younger lived in Forsyth, Kansas on their father’s ranch in May, 1861, when the Civil War broke out. Cole, the youngest son, joined the Confederate Army and became a colonel. In November of that year, a short leave gave him a chance to visit his parents. As he approached the ranch, he found the place engulfed in flames. A band of Union troops and local Northern sympathizers reached the ranch before him and stole all of the stock before burning the grain, corn, and feed. They also threw his youngest sister, who suffered from tuberculosis, out on the cold ground, causing her death. When their father discovered what had happened and put up a fight, they hung him from a tree on the ranch. This left their mother, oldest sister, Molly, and three younger brothers homeless.

Within hours Cole, along with a friend, organized local Southern sympathizers and within a few hours they started wiping out their enemies. It’s reported that Cole alone killed one hundred men that he knew had something to do with his father’s and sister’s death. By the end of the war, Cole had a price on his head for desertion, killing for revenge, and a long list of other charges. He left his family in the care of his cousin, John Jarret’s parents. He, John Jarret and a few friends left for California where they hoped to find sanctuary at his uncle’s ranch in San Jose, but ended up using a ranch in La Honda as their hideout.

Oscar John and his stepfather met the gang as they rode onto the ranch. Oscar was ten years old at the time. He recalls unsaddling ten horses. Everyone but Cole Younger and John Jarret left the ranch. They helped build the lakeside Ray ranch into a large two-story building. Cole and John traveled back to Kansas in order to bring the rest of their family west. They learned their mother had died and that Jim and Bob Younger had been accomplices to the James gang robberies. Cole was convinced the Ray ranch was the best place for the remainder of his family until everything blew over.

They arrived back in La Honda August, 1876, when big changes were happening. A new sawmill belonging to R.J. Weeks (my ancestor) opened and John Sears just started clearing an old bear pit site for his store and hotel. At last luck was with the Younger family. Oscar John talked John Sears into hiring his cousins from the east, no questions asked. The three brothers and John Jarret went to work on the store. Oscar John recalls seeing Cole shingling the roof of the store. When the store was finished, the men returned to the Ray ranch to work the harvest.

John Jarret spent that season at the Ray ranch, one season in Redwood City and then went back east. He returned the next year and started work on my family’s ranch. While he was there, he married Molly Younger, thereby becoming Cole’s brother-in-law as well as cousin.

The James Brothers were planning to rob the Northfield Bank in Minnesota.

They couldn’t pull the job by themselves and no longer trusted their gang. They sent a message to Cole by a man named Giles. Since the Youngers knew Northfield, they expected them to participate in the robbery. Frank and Jesse James sent a message stating that if the Youngers refused to come, they would have them exposed to the law. Cole decided to participate to save his sister and brother-in-law. He left a rare set of pearl handled pistols with Jarret at the Weeks Ranch. He realized if he got caught with them, they’d be a dead giveaway as to his identity.

Cole had an agreement with Jesse James that this bank robbery would be their last appearance in the mid-west. Jesse assured Cole that after this job, they would never have to worry about money again.

Unfortunately, the robbery went wrong. During their escape Jim Younger was shot in the jaw. Jesse wanted to kill Jim because it would hinder to their escape.

Cole absolutely refused. So, while Jim lay bleeding in a wet creek bottom, the James brothers made a clean getaway. The Younger brothers gave themselves up to the law to save Jim from bleeding to death. Cole, Jim and Bob Younger were sentenced to serve terms in the Minnesota Penitentiary.

When John Jarret learned what had happened to his brothers-in-law, he happened to be working away from the Weeks ranch and only coming home on the weekends. Giles showed up at the ranch with a forged note from Cole. Molly wasn’t home so he gave the note to their housekeeper. It was written to Molly and asked that she give Giles the two rare guns. The note stated that Cole’s prison term was just about up and that he wanted to sell the guns so he could get a new start in life. The housekeeper, remembering Giles from his first trip, thought he was on the level and handed over the guns. Jarret, for some unknown reason, came home that night and found Giles there with the guns in his possession. After he read the letter, he knew it was forged because Cole always wrote in of care of him, not Molly. Giles confessed that he had a chance to sell the guns to an Illinois museum.

Jim Bartley, La Honda rancher and teamster, visited the Younger brothers at the Northfield, Minnesota Penitentiary. He learned that an old sweetheart of Jim Younger visited him regularly. She promised to marry him when he got out of prison. Jim looked forward to that day, planning once more to start life anew. However, the woman turned him down when he got out. His heart was broken. Having nothing to live for, he rented a room at a cheap boarding house and shot himself through the head.

Cole and Bob dropped into obscurity after serving their terms.

ONE MAGIC NIGHT from A 2011 SUMMER COLLECTION

Have any of you ever incorporated your family history into your writing? Do you like to read books that are based, however loosely, on factual happenings?

My mom was the oldest of eleven children. She knew everyone in our family and how they were related. Because she and my dad grew up together in a tiny little town in southeast Oklahoma (their high school had a graduating class of twelve), she also knew quite a lot about his side of the family as well.

But when I was younger, I was not interested in the stories she told me. It was only later, when I was grown and had children of my own, that I began to wonder and ask questions, and by that time, her memory had already begun to decline.

If you have ever read the book, The Education of Little Tree, (by Forrest Carter) or seen the HBO movie, this story might sound familiar. When Andrew Jackson decided that the Indians were to be assimilated into the white man’s world, he put lots of plans into action that would take years to snowball and evolve into what they eventually became—a truly shameful period in the US governmental policies and procedures. One of Jackson’s plans, besides Removal, that was carried through into subsequent presidencies, was the idea of assimilating Native American children in white homes to integrate them more completely. The Native American children were taken from their villages and given to willing white families (along with a tidy little government stipend for their troubles) to raise.

My great-great-great grandfather was one of these children. We don’t know his real name. It was changed when he was delivered to his new “family”, a Presbyterian minister and his wife. Their last name was Walls. So his name was changed to Walls, and he was given the first name, David. Forbidden to speak his language, he was forced to forget all the ways of his People, and dress in white man’s clothing, go to white school. But he was never going to be white, and his place in the world was divided so drastically that he could not fit in anywhere. Eventually, the Rev. Walls sent David to medical school in Missouri. When he returned to the small town where he’d been raised, he was a doctor who rode to his patients on horseback. Later, he married and had children, but it was not a happy union and his son, my great-great grandfather, became an alcoholic whose own children, in turn, left home as soon as they possibly could. My great grandmother, his daughter, married at 13. Her older sister left home one day and never returned. No one ever knew what became of her.

I’ve often thought of these children that were abducted by our cavalrymen, and taken away to their white “families”, forbidden everything familiar and forced to adopt everything new and different, even their speech and childhood games. Can you imagine it? To never be allowed to see your mother and father again. Siblings separated and “given” to different families, their heritage and connection with one another lost forever. How many tears must they have shed? And how lonely and separate they must have felt, how isolated, even into adulthood…so that most of them, I imagine, never were able to fit in anywhere in the world.

My story in the 2011 SUMMER COLLECTION, available through Victory Tales Press, is based loosely on what happened to my long-ago ancestor.

Dr. Shay Logan has just returned to Talihina, Indian Territory, from medical school in Missouri. Shay hopes to settle down and make a life for himself, but how? He doesn’t belong to either world, Anglo or Indian He's made the acquaintance of Katrina Whitworth at the July 4th town social, and the attraction is mutual from the very beginning. Shay begins to have hopes and dreams that may be out of the question…but Katrina seems to have stars in her eyes for him as well. Will she risk everything to be with him? Katrina makes a social blunder, and Shay follows her into the woods to apologize to her, but when they return, Katrina's drunken father humiliates her. To make matters worse, her former beau shows a side of himself she had not seen before. Can Katrina and Shay have a life together that they so badly want? Here’s an excerpt for you.

FROM ONE MAGIC NIGHT:
As his hand started its descent, Katrina turned away. But Shay’s arm shot out, grasping Whitworth’s hand and holding it immobile.

“You will not.”

Three words, quietly spoken, but with a heat that could have melted iron, a force that could have toppled mountains.

Katrina’s father’s face contorted, his teeth bared, finally, as he tried to jerk away. He didn’t utter a word. He stared up into Shay Logan’s eyes that promised retribution, as the seconds ticked by. Finally, he lunged once more, trying to pull free, but Shay still held him locked in a grip of steel. Only when he released that grip was Whitworth freed.

“You presume too much, Doctor Logan, unless you are assuming the care and responsibility of my daughter.”

“Papa! Oh, please!” Katrina felt herself dissolving into a puddle of less than nothing beneath stares of the townspeople of Talihina. What had started as an exciting, beautiful evening had become an embarrassing nightmare. It was torture to think that she was the cause of it all. How she wished she had stayed home with Jeremy as she’d first planned, before Mrs. Howard had volunteered to keep him company.

Now, Papa was saying these things that she knew he would regret later. It was always this way when he drank too much. These accusations had gone beyond the pale of anything he’d ever said before. But Shay Logan wouldn’t realize that. He wouldn’t know that Papa would be sorry tomorrow.

Evidently, there was one thing Shay did recognize, though. She saw the very slight flare of his nostrils as he drew in the scent of alcohol on her father’s breath, and in that instant, there was a flash of understanding in his eyes.

“You’ve had too much to drink, Mr. Whitworth,” he said in an even tone. “I will overlook your behavior toward me because of that, but not toward your daughter. She has done nothing, yet you would strike her, and cause her shame.”

“She’s my daughter,” Whitworth replied sullenly.

“But not your property, Whitworth. Never that. You owe her an apology.”

“No, Shay, really—” Katrina began, then as her father whirled to look at her, she broke off, realizing her mistake. ‘Shay,’ she had called him. As if she had known him forever. As if she was entitled to use his given name freely. As if she were his betrothed.

“‘Shay’ is it, daughter? Not, ‘Dr. Logan’? Shay.” He spit the words out bitterly. He drew himself up, looking Shay in the face. “I’ll not be apologizing to her—or to you. And I’ll expect nothing less than a wedding before this week’s end. Do you understand me, Doctor?”

Shay had lost any patience he might have harbored. “You understand me, Whitworth. You will not dictate to me, or to your daughter on such matters of the heart. As I say, the alcohol has got you saying things you’re going to regret, and—”

“Threatening me, are you? Threatening me?”

“Truman.” Jack Thompson stepped out of the crowd and smoothly came to stand beside Katrina. “Let’s put this…unfortunate incident…behind us, shall we?” He confidently tucked Katrina’s hand around his arm. “I can see that the church auxiliary ladies have almost got everything set up for this wonderful Independence Day meal—” he frowned at Mrs. Beal, nodding at the picnic tables behind her. She jumped, motioning the other ladies to resume the preparation.

He gave a sweeping glance around the group of onlookers. “I, for one, am ready to eat! How about you all?”

Katrina was swept along at his side as he walked toward the tables, speaking to acquaintances and friends, laughing and…and seething with tense anger the entire time. She could feel it in his body, with every step he took and the tightness of his grip as he covered her hand with his. Katrina glanced back over her shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shay, but the crowd blocked her view.

“Smile, my dear,” Jack gritted into her ear. “I’m hoping we can still salvage your virtue, no matter what happened, really, between you and the good doctor. If I see him near you again, I’ll kill him.”

BUY LINKS
Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66862
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/victorytalespress
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/VTPanthologies

Lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/2011-summer-collection-anthology-sweetsensual/16048225
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=55332464

Here's the link at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00564A820
I WILL BE GIVING AWAY COPIES OF A 2011 SUMMER COLLECTION TO TWO LUCKY COMMENTERS! JUST LEAVE ME A COMMENT WITH YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS AND I WILL DRAW WINNERS SOMETIME AFTER 8:00 TONIGHT!

WHEN A GHOST HELPED SAVE A SCALPING VICTIM

Do you believe in ghosts and spirits? Josiah Wilbarger certainly did! Why wouldn’t he, when a spirit saved his life?

Josiah Pugh Wilbarger
and a son

On a hot August day in 1833, Texas settler Josiah Wilbarger and four other men were scouting territory near present-day Austin when they spotted a lone Comanche and gave chase. The brave escaped the party, and Wilbarger and the others turned back toward neighbor Rueben Hornsby’s cabin six miles away. At mid day, they decided to stop for lunch beside a small stream and give their horses a rest. Wilbarger, Tom Christian and a Mr. Strother unsaddled and hobbled their horses. Haynie and Standifer, wary of the Indian they had seen, decided to leave their mounts saddled and tied them loosely to a nearby tree.

The men started a fire to cook beef, and passed around cold corn pone. They were relaxed by the water when war whoops and rifle fire accompanied by flying arrows shattered their peace. The five men jumped behind trees and began firing, but the spindly scrub oaks offered little protection. Haynie and Standifer ran to their saddled horses. Wilbarger called out to them and they turned to see Wilbarger with arrows in both legs. He took a shot to the back of the neck which exited through the front of his throat, spurting blood, as Comanches surrounded him. Certain their friend was beyond help, Haynie and Standifer rode hard for Hornsby’s cabin.

At Hornsby’s, they sent a rider on to Wilbarger’s home some miles away to relay the sad news to Josiah Wilbarger’s wife, Margaret, and to rouse other neighbors. By the time men arrived from the surrounding area, it was too dark to retrieve the remains for burial.

As everyone slept that night, Sarah Horsby suddenly awakened from a dream that left her trembling. She woke her husband and told him of the vision of Josiah Wilbarger, naked and leaning against a tree. Her dream convinced her he was alive and waiting to be rescued. Reuben scolded his wife for waking him because he and the others had to rise early the next morning. He reminded her Comanches never left their victims alive, cutting throats to be certain they were dead. Sarah was unconvinced but went back to sleep.

Within a short time, the dream returned exactly as before. She awakened her husband and the other men. As she served them breakfast, she told them the dream was an omen and that they would find Josiah exactly as she had envisioned. She told the men to wrap Josiah in a sheet and bring him back for her to tend his wounds. The men scoffed at her vision. Reuben knew his wife was not given to irrational thinking, so he was less skeptical than the men with whom he rode. The mother of ten, Sarah had survived the rigors of frontier life and had more than her share of experiences with Comanches.

When the men arrived at the site, they immediately found the bodies of Christian and Strother. They buried the two while looking for Wilbarger. As they were about to give up their search for him, a rider spied what looked like an Indian leaning against a tree, naked, and covered with red war paint. The rider called to the others then raised his rifle to shoot. The naked man stumbled toward them and said, "Don’t shoot. It’s Wilbarger."

Though scalped, wounded in several places, and near death, Wilbarger was just as Sarah Hornsby said he would be. The rescuers gently wrapped him in the sheet Sarah had provided. Reuben held Josiah as they rode slowly back to the Hornsby cabin. Confident he would be found alive, Sarah waited with hot water, bear’s oil, and poultices ready. She nursed him for several days until he was able to be transported home on a makeshift sled.

Wilbrager described his ordeal. The bullet that passed through his neck temporarily paralyzed him, and he couldn’t resist the Comanches who attacked him. Not only did his injury convince the Indians there was no need to slit his throat, it also prevented him from feeling pain. However, he was alert as the Indians roughly stripped him and scalped him. He reported that it sounded like distant claps of thunder as they jerked the scalp from his head.

He fell unconscious until late afternoon. When he awakened, the paralysis had left his body and he experienced terrible pain. He crawled the few feet to the creek and remained in the cold water until he was numb. Before he fell into what was probably a comatose state, he crawled out to a sunny spot. When he awoke, he became aware of swarming blowflies feasting on his exposed wound. In hastily stripping him, the Comanche left him with one sock. He shooed the flies away and covered his head with the sock. He tried to move toward Hornsby’s, but managed only about six hundred yards. Believing his death was inevitable, he leaned against a tree and hoped for rescue.

A vision of his sister, Margaret Collins, who lived in Missouri, appeared to him. She spoke softly, "You’re too weak to go on, brother dear. You lie here and rest and help will come to you before another day is over." She turned and headed toward Hornsby’s cabin.

When Sarah described the woman in her vision, Wilbarger told her that was his sister. Weeks later, Wilbarger received a letter from Missouri. His sister Margaret had died the day before the Comanche attack. He firmly believed he saw his sister’s spirit that night, and that she not only gave him courage to hold on, but also alerted others through Sarah Hornsby’s dreams. People who knew both Josiah Wilbarger and Sarah Hornsby attested to their honesty and mental soundness, and believed their stories.

Josiah after being scalped

Wilbarger recovered from his wounds and lived another eleven years. From her silk wedding dress, his wife, Margaret Barker Wilbarger, 
made caps for him that he wore constantly.

After coming to Texas when it was a part of Mexico, the Wilbargers and Hornsbys joined Stephen F. Austin's 300 as Texas pioneers.

Wilbarger eventually operated a cotton gin near Bastrop. One day while walking through the building, he hit his head on a low ceiling beam. For most people, the event would have merely raised a bump. For Wilbarger, with no hair or scalp to pad the skull, the injury was fatal. He died on April 11, 1844.

Wilbarger's tombstone in
the Texas State Cemetery

A monument at Fifty-first and Berkman Streets in Austin marks the estimated site of the scalping. Josiah Wilbarger and his wife have been reinterred in the state cemetery in Austin. Sarah and Reuben Hornsby are buried in the Hornsby Cemetery at Hornsby Bend near Austin. (Baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby is a descendent of this pioneer family and is also buried in this cemetery.) Margaret Wilbarger Clifton, the spirit who saved her brother, is buried in Florissant, Missouri.

Now do you believe in ghosts?

Thanks to FROM ANGELS TO HELLCATS: LEGENDARY TEXAS WOMEN, by Don Blevins. Thanks also to other sources including THE HANDBOOK OF TEXAS ONLINE and Wikipedia.