Not moving from his position on the porch Jordan Scarbrough's eyes scanned the twelve mounted men. "I see you brought enough hands to get your cattle off of my place." "Or to hang a nester," said one of the mounted men. Burt Wolcott quickly said, "Now that's enough of that, let's see if we can't settle this peaceably. It seems this fella made a mistake and came to the wrong place to set up house keeping." Brandt Kelso stepped into view and stood in the doorway. Wolcott saw him and his face turned red. "So now you've joined this nester, it wasn't bad enough that you were a turncoat and went over to Sheldon." Jordan took another drag off of his cigarette and then flipped it into the yard. "Your beef is with me mister, not with Kelso." "You damn right it's with you. Who do you think you are shooting one of my men and then running them off of this place? I am Burt Wolcott and this land belongs to me, it was abandoned and I took possession and that makes it mine, it's now part of the Rocking W holdings. And you better take a hard look around at all of these men Scarbrough, because that shotgun you're holding doesn't scare me one bit." "If even one of your men goes for a gun this shotgun is going to become real important to you Mr. Wolcott because it's going to blow you right out of that saddle and after that it won't matter to you what happens because you'll be out of it."
About the Author: About the Author: Donald "Wayne" Manning Born on a farm in rural southeastern Oklahoma, a state that is still known as the Indian Nation, and growing through childhood at a time when electricity had not yet been extended to those rural areas. Mr. Manning remembers those times when life wasn't so easy. It was a time when a family grew its own food, drew its water from the well in a bucket, cooked on a wood burning cook stove, heated bath water over a fire and bathed in a laundry tub. Farming was done with horses or mules and crops harvested by hand. Late fall was when the hogs were slaughtered and the meat that wasn't smoked was salted down in wooden barrels, with the fat rendered into lard and some made into lye soap. One of the highlights of his growing up was going to visit his grandparents' who lived even more primitive in the backcountry of Oklahoma's Kiamichi Mountains. The study of American History has been his lifelong passion and along with his real life experiences has given Mr. Manning special insight into how people lived during the western expansion and he incorporates it all into his Historical Fiction Novels of the old west. He writes about people, country, rivers, terrain, landmarks, real historical towns and ghost towns, all places he has actually been to and incorporates them and his-torical events into the lives of the characters in his novels. Having lived and traveled extensively throughout the American West Mr. Manning now resides in northern California. He says; "Good story telling is a gift, sharpened by life's experiences. It's not something wholly learned out of text books. I thank God that I have been blessed with that gift."