Wow. Let me first just thank Cheryl St.John for asking me to post to this wonderful site. I’m a long time visitor, sometime commenter, and have been a fan since researching my current release, All or Nothing.

Writers and readers of historical fiction know—whether we’re talking romance, mystery, or any other sub-genre—more goes into the story then simply writing the tale. We need to know the landscape of the piece. Understand the perils and pitfalls of the time period. And, most importantly—what was it like to be a woman in those conditions? How did one bathe? Eat? Where was the bathroom? And what was one to do when it was so blasted hot outside without air conditioning?

All or Nothing is set in the Arizona West of 1876. The time when my bandit—a real to life bad guy who was never captured, El Tejano—roamed the Dragoon Mountains outside of Arizona. The story is seasoned it with my own life experience, after spending much of my childhood playing among the rugged adobe ruins of Fort Lowell, in Tucson, Arizona.

However, much of my research came from my previous profession. A trained archaeologist.  I traveled the southwest surveying for corporations. I studied historic and prehistoric sites, bagged and tagged artifacts, and hauled boxes of them to dusty museums, all the while knowing that someday I’d fold all that knowledge into my own stories.

I’d been a writer for years, but strictly in the work sense. No romanticizing allowed, my supervisor would say.  I was an archaeologist, tasked with writing reports on sites we discovered, researching bottle-bottoms and landmarks, recording that history for posterity, for whatever corporation funded our research.

My favorite discovery came after surviving the scariest hike in history—surveying ridge tops down the rugged, red slopes of the Copper King Mountains in eastern Arizona. Exhausted, shaken from almost tumbling down a drainage hole during a rockslide, I needed a minute before starting up again. I walked. I took deep breaths, sat—head between my knees, when I saw it. A bit of white and blue mixed in with the pine needles and gravel. I picked it up, surveyed the shard, and found another. A broken plate. Praise God, I stumbled on an historic site—the Little Colorado Mine. My discovery, and mine to map, survey, and write up for history. But, just the facts, they warned me.

Fine. I did it their way. And, oh boy! It was a struggle.

My romantic nature wanted not just to report on the Limoges pattern on shattered dishes. I wanted to discuss the woman who’d opened her hope chest after traveling the rutted road in their rickety wagon, and found her wedding china smashed! How she sobbed over their hand-painted shards. Sure. Maybe that’s what happened.

Or, perhaps a marriage of convenience lured her to that God forsaken bit of land under the shadow of Copper King. In a fury, her husband out digging for silver (and finding nothing but wretched copper ore), she flung a plate or two at his head right before she hitched up the wagon and hightailed it out of there. 

Or, maybe their third baby knocked it off the table while reaching up for a cookie, they all had a good laugh, picked up the pieces and tossed them out onto the trash heap and went in to read the Bible together.

So, my supervisor was right. All I knew for sure was I had a shattered feminine plate in a rugged wasteland. It wasn’t my job to figure out how it broke or why. 

But guess what? As an author, I can.

I can take bits from that experience, the harrowing experience down the mountain side which opens All or Nothing, and weave it with the story of a massacre left widely untold by the popular citizens of Tucson, and pick apart the accounts to guess what might have actually happened there. I also can create a heroine who was confronted with one of the worst occupations in history – being an Army Laundress for the US Cavalry—some of the most unsung heroines of our time.

Researching these things in a time before the internet was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. But, with the help of women like you—I was able to research historic catalogs, read through to find the price of coffee (green or roasted), by the bag or barrel, and what rations and pay were given a woman who worked for the Cavalry!

Like a kid in a candy store, I grabbed facts. I pocketed them. I wove in “spice” for the story, seasoning my characters and their encounters with each other. I walked with them through the fort grounds, laid out my map, figured out what angle to reach the stable from the parade grounds, and lived the story with them.  My editor picked out the rough spots, evaluated my historical claims and matched them to reality. Where did the train really stop? What song would your heroine be dancing to? Humming? In 1876! Thank heaven for the Internet. A library at our fingertips.

Does an author do this much research for a story set in modern day? Perhaps. But, there is so much that contemporary authors can take for granted that we have to stop and really think about. Our readers can tell when we’re faking it.

www.ashleyludwig.com

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One commenter will win an e-book copy of All or Nothing with my compliments… Thanks so much for visiting!

I’m so excited about filling in for Linda Broday today. It’s great to be back at P&P, my favorite place to be. I always enjoy coming here and hanging out with the Fillies.

In the Old West, the terms rustling and rustler had several meanings. Livestock who forged well were called rustlers by cowmen; meaning the animals could graze or “rustle up” nourishment on marginal land. A horse wrangler or camp cook was also a rustler, but the most widespread and notorious use of the word referred to a cattle thief.

On the vast open ranges of yesteryear, rustling was a serious problem and punishable by hanging. At its peak, one of the largest ranches in the Texas Panhandle had over 150,000 head of cattle and a thousand horses. Obviously, thieves could drive stolen livestock miles away before a rancher learned he had animals missing.

The vast distances to town, hence law enforcement, often prompted ranchers to take actions of their own. Court convictions for rustling were difficult because of the animosity of small ranchers and settlers toward big cattle outfits. Many times, “vigilante justice,” hang ‘um first…ask questions later, was handed down by organized stockmen. Like horse thieves, cattle rustlers could be hanged without benefit of trial, judge or jury.

Today, even with detailed brands logged in books, registering with state officials, inspectors, and the meticulous paperwork involving transportation, not to mention a new era of branding technology to keep track of animals, ranches still face cattle rustlers…those dishonest people who want to profit from selling cattle without the bother of raising them.

No longer is a single head of beef stolen for food or an occasional Native American slipping off the reservation to provide for his family… it is big business. Modern day rustlers often sneak onto rural ranches at night, or on weekends when the owners are away, steal and sell cattle. An average calf can bring thousands of dollars on the open market; so multiply that by a trailer, or even a truck load, of cattle and you can see why it’s a profitable business for thieves.

Amid warnings that cattle rustling is on the rise in Texas, recently the state Senate passed a measure that would stiffen penalties for stealing farm animals, making theft of even one head of livestock a third-degree felony drawing up to a ten year prison sentence and a fine. Until the proposal is signed into law, a rustler can steal ten or more head of livestock and the punishment is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the law of the Old West … hang ‘um high and fast.

But was hanging always fast and efficient?

I delved into the subject of cattle rustling and the methods of rustlers while researching for Give Me a Cowboy where my Pinkerton Agent comes to the Panhandle to break up an outfit of rustlers. But I became interested in “vigilante justice” from my mother-in-law, who recently passed on at the age of 92. A story teller, she was reared in Clayton, New Mexico. One of her favorite tales was about the outlaw Black Jack Ketchum, the first man hanged in the town. His execution turned into a big town event, with the lawmen actually selling tickets to the hangin’. As history has it, the sheriff had to use two blows of the hatchet before the rope broke. Probably because of their lack of experience in “structured” hangings, coupled with the lawmen misjudging Ketchum’s weight and stretching the rope during testing, he was beheaded.  Ketchum was buried at Clayton’s Boot Hill on April 26, 1901.

But my mother-in-law’s story only began there. Three decades later, when she was in grade school, Ketchum’s grave was moved to the new cemetery. Because her father was Clayton’s mayor, she witnessed the reburial. According to her, they opened the grave and she and her cousin touched the bones of Ketchum’s little finger. I’m sure in those days a casket did not weather well.

To me it’s so fascinating when history bridges time and touches our lives. Do you have a family story where history inserted itself into reality?

I’m giving away your choice of either hardback or paperback of either Give Me a Texan or Give Me a Cowboy to one of the commenters.

 Click on Cover to order from Amazon

Visit me at www.PhylissMiranda.com

Hello, gang!

    My name is Jeff Smith! (This is me, performing the prize package soap racket, 1890s style.)  My researching peers know me as “Soapy” due to my literal obsession with my great-grandfather, “Soapy” Smith’s, history. My reenacting friends also know me as “Soapy” for my first-person performances as Soapy in which I operate short-con swindles like the shell & pea game, three-card Monte and the prize package soap racket, the know-how all passed down from father to son, generation to generation starting with Soapy himself.

(An 1898 newspaper rendition of the shootout between Soapy Smith and Frank Reid, July 8, 1898)

    I grew up in a family dedicated to preserving and increasing the memory of Soapy. My parents had a building in our backyard that contained a saloon and gambling hall, complete with a full size roulette table that belonged to Soapy, a crap table two blackjack tables, a faro table and a dozen or more antiques slot machines. By 5^th grade I knew more about gambling and confidence scams that most adults.

    Whereas Soapy’s children and grandchildren did not wish to admit the bad side of Soapy, they chose to recognize his many good deeds and downplay the bad. I am perhaps the first member of the family to see and research both sides of this complex Old West crime boss. This has not made me very popular with some members of my family, but as my father once told me, “Jeff, he’s more interesting this way.”

(Soapy in his saloon (Jeff Smith’s Parlor) in Skagway, Alaska, 1898)

One fortunate fact is that Soapy considered himself a business man and thus saved most of his correspondence letters and documents. I personally own about 160 letters, whereas there are perhaps a thousand artifacts within the family circle. My collection, combined with copies of the remainder bundle, has given me something few other relatives of outlaws can brag about; a personal documented look into the world of a renowned criminal. This will all be made public on August 17, 2009, when my manuscript, Alias “Soapy” Smith, The Life and Death of a Scoundrel is released.

 (Seventeenth Street at the intersection of Larimer Street, Denver, Colorado, 1890s.  This was Soapy’s main location of operation.  He had an office on the second floor of the building on the right.)

(Soapy Smith, circa 1890)

(Theater playbill for HONKY TONK (MGM 1941).  Based on book, THE REIGN OF SOAPY SMITH, 1935.  Clark Gable played Candy Johnson)

Quick history of “Soapy” Smith

    Born: November 2, 1860, Coweta county, Georgia

    Died: July 8, 1898, Skagway, Alaska. Cause of death, a bullet to the heart.

    Last words: “My God, don’t shoot!”

(Playing card from a souvenir deck.)   

(Jeff and daughter, Ashley Smith, in front of Soapy’s saloon (Jeff Smith’s Parlor) on July 8, 1998 (100th Anniversary of Soapy’s death), Skagway, Alaska)

Soapy Smith is most known for his prize package soap racket in which he wrapped large denomination currency inside bars of soap and mixed them in with bars that contained no bills and sold them for $1.00 each. As the pile dwindled he would begin auctioning off the remaining cakes of soap for large amounts, the victims believing they had a “sure-thing.” No one but planted shills ever won any money.

(Drawing of Soapy performing the prize package soap racket.)   

He traveled around the states with a network of bunco men before settling down in Denver, Colorado. By 1889 he owned several saloons, a cigar store and gambling halls all paid for with soap. He became the Al Capone of the Old West, fixing elections and criminal operations, all the while during which he gave out large donations to the poor, churches and charitable subscriptions.

    One scandal after another, and several gunfights from 1889 to 1895, finally brought his reign of power in Denver to an end. In 1897 he joined the thousands heading to the Klondike gold fields. He arrived and immediately took over control of Skagway, Alaska, until vigilantes pushed to drive him out. It was on July 8, 1898, during a meeting of the vigilantes that Soapy met his demise in a gunfight with one of four guards at the meeting’s entrance. For a century, the Smith family knew that Soapy had died under mysterious circumstances. Recently that information was released showing that Soapy was not only shot by another man, but that he was unarmed at the time. He had been murdered and it was being suppressed.

    Soapy’s escapades through-out his life were published all over the United States. In fact, while the two men were alive, Soapy Smith was more widely known than Wyatt Earp. Although this popularity was reversed, Soapy’s legend is growing. Since 1974 the family holds a public wake. Now there are two. The original is held each July 8 in Skagway, Alaska and the other is held at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood, California.  

 (Cover of LOOSE CHANGE magazine showing Jeff in the Smith family home with the back building saloon and gambling hall.)

(Jeff performing the shell game for a youngster, Anchorage, Alaska, February 28, 2009.  Note that it’s snowing!)

To learn more about Jeff and his notorious great-grandfather, visit his website:

www.soapysmith.net

Be sure to watch for Jeff’s release, Alias “Soapy” Smith, The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, coming in August, 2009!

Doc Holliday has been portrayed in various Wyatt Earp films by some of Hollywood’s finest actors, including Victor Mature in “My Darling Clementine,”

Jason Robards in “The Hour of the Gun,” Kirk Douglas in The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” Dennis Quaid in “Wyatt Earp,” and Val Kilmer in “Tombstone.” They are all portraits of a lonely, haunted and doomed man.

The portraits in the movie was fascinating enough but other parts of Doc Holliday’s life were even more intriguing, including a rumored forbidden love.

In each one, he is an enigmatic figure who has one strong admirable quality: loyalty. Loyalty to the Earp brothers, particularly Wyatt. He had one other great loyalty, and that was to a nun.

Born of moderately well-to-do parents in Georgia in 1851, he became estranged from his family when his father married a woman one half his age within a few months of his mother’s death. She died of tuberculosis, a disease he probably caught from her and that eventually killed him at age 36. Betrayal was a sin that Doc would forever despise.

The one person to whom he remained attached, though, was his cousin Mattie who lived with his family during the Civil War. More about her later.

As a young man, he was drawn to trouble, and an aura of danger began to be associated with Doc. Still, he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and started a practice in Atlanta. Bouts of coughing, though, plagued the young, handsome man and in late 1872 he received the diagnosis of tuberculosis. He was advised to go West for the climate. Bob Boze Bell, author of “The Illustrated Life and Times of Doc Holliday,” reports “tradition says his doctor gave the 21-year-old John Henry Holiday six months to live. We don’t know. There is no record of it. However, he banished himself to the frontier where he intended to meet Death head on and wrote many letters to his cousin Mattie.”

He used an inheritance from his mother to go west and went into the practice of dentistry in Dallas. The TB faded, but there was still pain, and he used whiskey for oblivion, and gambling as a way to focus his mind away from the disease. According to Bob Boze Bell, “The best defense is a strong offense, so Holliday assumes the persona of one whiskey-soaked, bullet-spitting Son o’ Thunder whose only saving grace is that he will soon be dead.”

He met Big Nose Kate, a prostitute who worked in a sporting house, and after a shooting involving Kate, he gave up his practice and took up gambling. He traveled with Kate on the gambling circuit and first met Wyatt Earp in Ft. Griffin.

Fiction and reality clash now. Doc killed a local man who cheated at a card game while, apparently, Wyatt looked on. Doc was arrested and was in danger of being lynched. In many films, Wyatt rescued him. Not true. Kate saved his life by setting fire to a building, and when townspeople rushed to put it out, Kate helped Doc escape and they traveled together four hundred miles to Dodge. It was there that Doc saved Wyatt’s life, and the fabled friendship started.

According to Wyatt Earp, “It wasn’t long after I returned to Dodge City that his (Holliday’s) quickness saved my life. He saw a man draw on me behind my back. ‘Look out, Wyatt!’, he shouted, but while the words were coming out of his mouth, he had jerked his pistol out of his pocket and shot the other fellow before the latter could fire. On such incidents as that our built the friendships of the frontier,’” he wrote.

They were intrinsically linked then. Wyatt was Doc’s only real friend, and Doc’s relationship with Kate faltered during this time. She bitterly resented his attachment to Wyatt and his brothers. He dropped her anytime Wyatt called. His relationship with Kate was a love hate one, with little respect between them. She saved him once, but later signed an affidavit accusing him of murder.

Wyatt left Dodge for Tombstone, and Doc and Kate followed, Kate apparently protesting all the way. It was in Tombstone, of course, that the west’s most famous gun battle occurred with the 30 second shootout at the O.K. Corral.

The day was October 16, 1881. The aftermath is as legendary as the gunfight itself. The killing led to the murder of Morgan Earp and finally Wyatt’s and Doc’s vendetta against a group of outlaws called the Cowboys.

There is no question that Doc killed many a men. But the view of him varied considerably from cold blooded killer to hero. According to the Denver Republican, “Holiday had a big reputation as a fighter, and has probably put more ‘rustlers’ and cowboys under the sod than anyone in the west. He has been the terror of the lawless element in Arizona, and with the Earps was the only man brave enough to face the bloodthirsty crowd, which has made the name of Arizona a stench in the nostrils of decent men.”

The Cincinnati Inquirer, on the other hand, contended he had killed over fifty men and that Jesse James “is a saint compared to him.”

Sometime after leaving Arizona in 1882, Doc and Wyatt quarreled – no one seems to know why – and split up. Kate also seemed to disappear from his life. Doc drifted, mostly living in Colorado. His TB worsened and he moved to a hotel in Glenwood, Colorado, where he died in 1887. Wyatt visited him the day before he died, and in his final moments Doc reverted to the Catholic religion to satisfy his cousin.

Remember Mattie, his cousin? As a nun she became Sister Mary Melanie and spent her life as a teacher and Sister Superior in Atlanta . Doc regularly corresponded with her, and Sister Melanie told her family that had she not destroyed some of Doc’s letters, “the world would have known a different man from one of western fame.” The question has always been why had Sister Melanie destroy some of the letters? Some say a member of her family burnt the rest as having been inappropriate for a Catholic nun to receive.

It is known that she is the only one with whom Doc maintained a lasting relationship, even if only by letter. It is rumored that she was his one true love.

And here’s the rest of the story. Her gentle and kindly spirit was so wildly respected that her cousin wanted to the world to know what a wonderful person she was. So when she wrote a novel, she used her beloved cousin as a character. She also based a character on Doc Holliday.

The author? Margaret Mitchell. The book? “Gone With the Wind.” The characters? Melanie and Rhett.

Doc Holliday remains an enigmatic character today. Good? Bad? Certainly a combination of the two but who is to say which dominated. He certainly seemed to enjoy his notoriety all through his short life, but I, like so many western historians, would love to know what was in those letters to Mattie.

In 1852, celebrated Chicago hero and former Deputy Sheriff, Allan Pinkerton, founded the first detective agency in the United States. Hated and feared by criminals, the Pinkerton Agency eventually became known as the “Pinks,” enjoying a colorful history, which included averting a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the way to his inauguration.

During the Civil War, Pinkerton had a flourishing career as head of the American Secret Service. Adamantly opposed to slavery, he worked for the Union Army to trap southern spies. With his law enforcement agency, he garnered great success. His slogan “We Never Sleep” was painted on his door, along with a huge, black and white eye, resulting in the origin of the term “private eye”.

Said to have a third sense, Allan Pinkerton had an uncanny ability to identify guilty parties long before police investigators came up with a suspect. Although some thought he had mystic powers, he proclaimed it nothing but experience because he researched the habits and practices of not only specific criminals on the lam, but of the criminal mind in general.

By the late 1860’s his sons, William and Robert, joined him and opened branch offices in several cities. Predecessors to the modern day FBI, the agency focused on swindlers, confidence men, and other no-gooders plaguing the big cities and little towns of America. Their field agents clipped newspaper articles and pictures, organizing them in categories. By the 1870’s, they had the largest collection of mug shots in the world and became a data base of criminal activity, leading to the FBI identification system used today.

As the New Frontier spread west, so did the “Pinks”, chasing outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and “Black Jack” Ketcham, but it was the infamous outlaw Jesse James who, for a short time, created scandal and bad publicity for Pinkerton.

Until 1875, the agency held a stellar reputation that even some outlaws admired. But not the James brothers; Jesse, in particular, had an intense dislike for Allan Pinkerton. For years, the renegade managed to outwit the lawman. “Old Man Allan” knew if he continued widening his network of men hunting Jesse and kept pressure on him, the cocky, wanted man would eventually panic and do something stupid.

On January 5th, two members of the James family were innocently attacked by a Pinkerton-led posse. Believing Jesse was hiding inside, the men surrounded a cabin near Kearney, Missouri. When he didn’t surrender, an iron torch was tossed inside. Jesse James’ mother was maimed and his handicapped stepbrother killed.

At this point, fact and fiction collide. Some scholars believe this sparked Jesse James’ path of retaliation, taking him to Chicago for only one reason…to kill Allan Pinkerton. As the story goes, for weeks the outlaw roamed the city’s streets with a loaded gun. Inside was a bullet with the name “Pinkerton” on it. But the famous detective never knew James was in town. Being frustrated and unable to get Pinkerton at the right time and right place, James returned home. This tale has never been substantiated.

For certain, the incident involving James’ family strengthened the outlaw’s position of being viewed by some as a modern-day Robin Hood fighting the wealthy Yankee bankers and rail men tooth and toenail. Well into the 1870’s many Missourians were still riled that, in their opinion, the North had won the war. The “Pinks” were considered the tools of the tycoons. The atrocities against the gang’s family only fueled support for them. Allan Pinkerton staunchly denied that one of his agents tossed the torch and patiently waited his turn to take Jesse into custody.

As history would have it, the gang eventually got overconfident, made mistakes, and lead by Jesse ventured from their beloved south to hold up a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. They found a less sympathetic public, meeting with savage resistance. Because the Pinkertons had sent information in advance that the James Gang, which by then included three of the renegade Younger brothers, was heading north, the town’s citizens were prepared. Caught in a hellish barrage of bullets, the outlaw band withered. Several of the gang were captured. Wounded and bloody, Jesse and Frank escaped, but it was the beginning of the end for them.

On April 3, 1882, after another robbery and with a bounty on his head, one of Jesse’s own gang shot him. Two years, after writing eighteen books, Allan Pinkerton died in his Chicago mansion.

I’ve been asked why I decided my hero in “Ropin’ the Wind” would be a Pinkerton Agent. I wanted a different kind of law enforcer. When you read a western historical romance you are pretty much guaranteed there will be somewhere a mystical, reputable Texas Ranger or a tough-as-leather-strop sheriff. You expect one, just like horses and sagebrush. I wanted someone unique; thus, out of my imagination and research surfaced a citified, undercover Pinkerton Agent with a Texas background. It was so much fun to once again partner with one of the founding fillies of Petticoats and Pistols, Linda Broday, along with Jodi Thomas and DeWanna Pace to write an all new anthology, “Give Me a Cowboy.”

This is an ad that Kensington put into the latest issue of Romantic Times magazine for both anthologies.

I have to admit a Texas Ranger turns my head, even a modern day one. That’s why I cast my “Pink’s” Achilles ‘ heel a rebel-rousing, retired Texas Ranger. There’s just something about a fearless Ranger that ladies love, but I was sure happy how different my hero, Morgan Payne, turned out in “Give Me a Cowboy”.

What kind of cowboy turns your head and wiggles into your heart?

I’ll be giving away an autographed set of our anthologies, “Give Me A Texan” and “Give Me A Cowboy” to a winner drawn from all the comments, so please come on in and join us!   

To learn more about Phyliss, visit her website:  www.PhylissMiranda.com

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