Once Upon A Time in the Past
The Sons of Sam Logan
by
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From Chapter 1:
It was April 1866. White-gray clouds hung low in the sky above Muddy Creek, Missouri. Muddy Creek, Missouri was a little community that set deep in a valley of oak, willow and cedar just outside Independence, Missouri where most of the land had been homesteaded before the Civil War.
Samuel Wilson Logan and Martha May Logan had moved into the valley in the early 1850s, back when a settler was required to build a house, a barn and raise a garden and live on the place for at least three years before obtaining a title or deed to the land.
With neighbors helping neighbors, farmhouses and roughly-built barns had sprang up all along the banks of the creek. In less than two years the little community had grown tremendously and was later dubbed “Muddy Creek”, a quiet and humble little town, until a small outbreak of typhoid fever hit the valley.
Dr. Richard Charles Clarke held his red horse to a steady gait. He sat the seat of his black-hooded buggy on his way from the Melvin Humphrey farm, the last of several visits he had made to check in on their daughter, young Cicely Humphrey’s typhoid. On the way back from the Humphrey homestead, Dr. Richard Charles Clarke pulled the bay up into the yard of the Samuel Wilson Logan farm. The mare blew and snorted. Dust followed the rig to a halt and for a moment settled in all around the buggy. But then the wind came and ordered the dust to move on elsewhere, blowing first through the wooden-spoke wheels of a canvas-covered wagon, tongue on the ground, unhitched in the yard out front of the weather-grayed farmhouse.
“Hello, the house!” the doctor yelled as he climbed down off the buggy and stood with his back to the rig, abiding by the old custom of the West a visitor to first address the house before calling on the occupants.
He watched a blonde-haired woman and three small, bare foot boys emerge from the house and step down off the porch into the yard he stood with his back to the buggy. “Morning, Mrs. Logan?” the doctor said, removing his hat and holding it in his hands as the woman and youngsters stopped before him.
“Morning yourself, Dr. Clarke,” the woman returned. She looked to the youths. “Boys, say hello to Doctor Clarke.”
“Hello, Dr. Clarke,” the youths chorused.
“Hello, boys,” the doctor returned. “And how are we today?”
“We just fine,” the boys said in unison.
“What brings you out so early in the morning, Dr. Clarke?” Martha May asked.
Doctor Richard Charles Clarke, son of an Italian immigrant family, was in his early fifties with graying hair that hung to his shoulders and matched his neatly trimmed mustache. His eyes were velvet, and held the look of knowledge, obtained only by long, hard study and education.
“You’ve heard about the fever in the valley?” Dr. Clarke said as he stood clad in his usual black suit and hat.
“Haven’t everyone?” Martha Logan asked carelessly, instantly feeling shame that she might have offended the physician.
The doctor hemmed and then looked squarely at her. “Anyway,” he went on, “I’m here to beg for your assistance once more.”
“You don’t have to beg, Dr. Clarke,” Martha May said politely. “What is it you want me to do?”
“You have heard about the Humphrey girl’s illness, I assume?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. How is she doing?”
The doctor looked to the trees and the wind in their leaves before answering. Of all the seasons, he liked spring best. The air smelled good, clean, fresh, and the coolness in the slightly breeze felt good on his face.
“Not well,” the doctor said shortly. “I wished I had more time to look in on her. But there’s so many in the valley got the fever that I must get medicine to.”
He paused. Martha May watched him. She couldn’t help but fell sympathy. He was the only doctor in and around the community of Independence to keep the outbreak of the fever under control. It was only because of her experience as a volunteer nurse that he often called on her whenever sickness struck the little community of Muddy Creek, whether it was he needing her assistance or a nervous husband of an expecting wife.
“I’d be obliged to you, Mrs. Logan,” Dr. Clarke said matter factually, “if you’d look in on young Cicely—leastways until I can get back to her.”
The boys stood silently at her side, not pushing and shoving one another, as she had expected. She was actually surprised they acted like little gentlemen, as they just stood there staring up at her and the doctor.
The wind flagged the tail of Martha May Logan’s long beige dress and popped the tarpaulin of the canvas-covered wagon in the background.
The youngest of the boys, a skinny little blonde-headed kid with a little gray hat dangling from a chin-string behind his back, moved to stand in front of her, looking up at the physician with sky-blue eyes.
Martha May used one hand to hold back strains of her blonde hair caressing her cheeks and the other hand to rest on the boy’s shoulders standing before her.
She was in somewhat of a difficult situation now, and perhaps could not accept the physician’s proposition to care for his patient at that would reverse other plans. Moreover: Doctor Clarke had come at a very inconvenient time, just when they had sold the farm and was making ready to go out West. She, Sam and the boys were already pressed for time to keep an appointment with Colonel Winston Grimes, an old
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About the Book
In three books I tried to capture all aspects of the Old West—the rowdy towns, saloons, prostitutes, homesteaders, cattle ranchers, cattle rustlers, cattle drives, stampedes, canvas-covered wagons, wagon trains, wild horses, cowboys, Indians, miners and prospectors, fur traders, claimjumpers, sheriffs, outlaws, gunfighters, railroads and trains, stagecoaches, banks and holdups, love, life, and death—when I wrote the trilogy of “Once Upon A Time In The Past”.
Book One of Once Upon A Time in the Past, subtitled “The Sons Of Sam Logan”—involves four young boys, Chance William, Burt Wiley, Peter Wallace and Jesse Lee “Boots” Logan, a black youth who adopts the Logan name, who grows up and become outlaws—opens circa 1890 in Payton, Kansas:
Rancher Clay Miller sat behind his desk staring at four miniature porcelain horses: a black and white piebald; black, white-rump appaloosa; golden palomino with a white blazed face; and a black stallion with a diamond-shaped white dot on its forehead. The rancher’s eyes then stared down at a necklace made with pure gold nuggets wedged together on a long string of rawhide-leather with a black, genuine Indian arrowhead at the end. He reached down and picked the necklace up. A shadow of sudden gloominess crossed his face as he gazed at the necklace. A finger fiddled unconsciously with the arrowhead dangling at the end of it, as he held the necklace in his hands, staring into space. The necklace brought back memories of the past—good times and bad times. His thoughts wiggled and waggled as his recollections took him back into time long before he was a man: