Council Grove, Kansas, was a bustling last stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Hordes of settlers, cowboys, and soldiers passed through on a daily basis. And from a distance watched a man named George Copley. He had wrung a fortune from the crowds of travelers- some of it legitimate, and some of it not!
Copley was an astute criminal who was well-versed in the ways of the world. To cover his trail, he got a judge elected that was right favorable to doing things his way. He made his men behave in Council Grove and on the Santa Fe. If they wanted to get wild, they had to go over to Junction City. And he also elected a weak-kneed sheriff.
There was just one hitch: this tinhorn sheriff had a tender conscience, and some of Copley’s doings were pricking it right smart. It didn’t matter a whole lot, since the sheriff had only a deputy or two, and anytime he asked for more, only friends of Copley answered the call. So everything went merrily along.
That is, until old boy the Sheriff got too big for his breeches, and thought up the outlandish idea of calling in some trouble shooters, itinerant deputies who had not received their dole of Copley’s gold. When Jacob and Esau Cochrane arrived, they promptly dug up a sinister plan of massive proportions. And Copley sent two men to kill them the very same night.
But the brothers hung fast, like a tick on a hound dog. So he got serious and brought out the big guns. Not only did he fail again, but now the brothers had even more uncomfortable questions which they insisted on asking in front of his honor, the judge. Not to be outdone, Copley hired the deadliest….
To read the rest of the story, check out my brand-new cowboy novel, The Sons of Thunder! It’s a gritty, rip-roaring yarn of two brothers who walked into a deadly crossfire of politicians, outlaws, and crooked ranchers! It needed a team of forensic lawyers to uncover and confute the devious schemes of George Copley, and a division of the army to deal with the backlash from his gangs. But neither were readily at hand. In fact, the only people brave enough (or crazy enough!) to take the job were the sons of old Isaac Thunder, a backwoods trouble-shooter from south Texas! Normal criminals shook in their boots when the sons of thunder came for them. Copley didn’t care who they were: he refused to be scared of them. So he learned the hard way why every other man southside of the law was!
Dusty Trails 