Farewell to the Mission Indians

"Pio Pico's nephew was living in part of the old mission, but the church and the rest of it were in bad shape. The Indians who had been living there before secularization, learning useful skills like herding cattle, making tallow and hides, or doing masonry and carpentry, cooking, tending vineyards, making good wine and brandy, and other civilized skills, were now working in the Pueblo of the Angels and elsewhere as dirt-cheap labor during the week, and as hopeless drunks Saturday night and Sunday."

(from Amargosa Ambush)

School Days

"You were my queen in calico;
I was your blushing, barefoot beau.
You wrote on my slate, 'I love you so,"
When we were a couple of kids."

Cobb & Edwards   1907

The Long Trail

A pale gray dawn
Cold and windy,
A thin silver crescent-moon rising
Veiled in a wisp of saffron cloud.
Long-horned black cattle
Rising out of the dark hill
Silhouetted sharply against the brightening sky. 

Ridin' the Rails

"My pocket book is empty,
And my heart is filled with pain.
I'm a thousand miles away from home,
Just waitin' for a train."     

(Jimmie Rodgers)

Civil War Lunacy

"Waving to the gray-bearded old Reb, he thought again about the lunacy of war. Especially a civil war. American against American. Eleven years ago the two of them might have been trying their best to kill or cripple each other. And over what? Was stopping the South from having their own country really worth all the killing and destruction? General Logan and lots of others had thought so, and he'd thought so too as a kid; but that was before he saw the results first hand."    (Amargosa Ambush)

Whores and Angels

"Hell yeah," answered the Irishman. "We're all set to retire and open a whore-house in the City of Angels."
Cal smiled. "Good idea. We could always use another whorehouse down there."
"Actually, old boy," said the Englishman, tapping off the ash from his thin cigar, "it's to be a rather exclusive bordello-- no hoi polio allowed."
(Amargosa Ambush)

Whiskey and Romance

     "Cal poured about half a shot into her cup, then reached across and took her left hand in his, her gold wedding band pressing against his palm.
     I'm not passing her up, he told himself. I didn't make any marriage vows. And what the hell; I could get shot tomorrow. He remembered other times he had felt the same way during the war."     (Tejon Trail)