Six-Guns and Slay Bells -- Story 12

The Longest Night

They’re an odd couple, an Indian medicine man and Blanchard East. Odd, very very odd.

The Indian kills for East, animals of course to sustain him. And sometimes the Indian robs the dead of what is necessary to keep East alive, if that’s the word to describe him. They ride for one particular town, a town that looks dead, even from far away. But these odd men are the only hope the town can ever have, and on the longest night, on the night when the earth revels most in the blackness away from the sun, on this night, East will meet those who tried to destroy him. Thanks to the Indian, he will meet them.

But the town has lost its women and children to the men in black. And, counting the Indian and East, seven men ride to rescue them. Seven men ride into the mouth of hate and danger and blood and fear. But will the night be long enough?

LARRY D. SWEAZY (www.larrydsweazy.com ) won the WWA Spur Award for Best Short Fiction in 2005, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction 2011 and 2012, and was nominated for a SFMS Derringer award in 2007. He has published over 50 articles and short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; The Adventure of the Missing Detective; Boys’ Life; Hardboiled, and other publications and anthologies. Larry is the author of the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (Berkley). He is a member of MWA (Mystery Writers of America), WWA (Western Writers of America), and WF (Western Fictioneers). Larry lives in the Midwest, with his wife, Rose, two dogs, and a cat.

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