Cowboys and Outlaws

When I was a kid growing up around the old timer cowboys (of said category I find myself in presently) They would tell "re-ride" stories about someone they knew who had performed some great fete, had overcome insurmountable odds, and let nothing, or anybody stand in their way. Every year, another one of these living oracles passes to the other side, and I suddenly realized that someone needs to fill their shoes.

I am not sure I am qualified to do that, but I am going to try. My newest book, Bounty Hunter: New Mexico Justice, is based on a compilation of various larger-than-life men I have known in my life. The hero of the story is Jubal Tull. He is a US Marshal in New Mexico in 1865 at the end of the Civil War.

He got the short end of the stick in life in almost every category, except height and strength. One of the west's most respected and feared law men, Jubal, overcame extraordinary odds. The hardships didn't define him; they refined him. He could have felt sorry for himself , taking the opposite side of the law, but he didn't.

He wasn't a womanizer, didn't drink or chew or use foul language. None of those things makes a man smarter, faster, or more deadly. It seems like the world says that a real man has to have a half dozen vices otherwise; he is not cool. Not so with Jubal Tull. He was a mountain of a man who could ride longer without water, shoot straighter and more accurately under pressure than anyone else could. It was said that if Jubal Tull was on your trail; it was not if you would be caught; it was when.