15.10.2024
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1.
When she was nineteen, two bandits dressed-up as Indians killed Molly Sheridan's father and her three younger brothers, and burned their ranch. They carried her off, but hadn't tied her hands properly, perhaps because they'd got so drunk, perhaps only because they didn't imagine she could give them any trouble, bound or no. Thus as they were riding, she was able to get hold of one of their pistols, and shoot the men dead.
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18.05.2024
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I had a good job. I was the editor and part owner of a weekly newspaper in Waverly, Kansas. It was a town of about 1000 souls, settled after the Civil War by a group of pioneers from Ohio. In fact the main event of the year was a large gathering in a clearing on the edge of town and it was called Old Ohio Days. I had a good house, a modest three bedroom bungalow within walking distance of my job. I had two good children who had long-since grown up and moved away.
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03.05.2020
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Early in the morning of August 21, 1863 William Clarke Quantrell and his band of Missouri ruffians sacked and burned the city of Lawrence, Kansas and changed my life forever. Amost all of the city was destroyed including the Lawrence Journal newspaper, where I worked, and the Eldridge House Hotel, where I lived. Fortunately I was in Topeka on that day, covering the newly-formed and very contentious Kansas Legislature.
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30.01.2020
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It had been a hot and dusty ride from Kansas into Colorado en route to my new posting as the postal agent and sutler at Fort Hayden. I'd ridden all day with the Rocky Mountains tantalizingly near without having reached the river they told me was still more than a day's ride out from the fort. I now saw the river ahead, cool and inviting, but I knew I wasn't going to make Fort Hayden today.
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