Two Guns, 1 Mile

Book excerpt: I first became aware of the town of Two Guns, Arizona in the summer of 2001 while on the tail end of a cross-country road trip. Driving through Arizona with the lovely lady who would later become my wife, we motored along the remains of Route 66, heading for home in California, when she said "that would make a great title for a book." I followed her gaze to a battered road sign, complete with a full patina of desert dust and the requisite bullet holes, and it read "Two Guns" and below it in slightly smaller white lettering "1 mile." I immediately thought of a couple of plot lines for which the title would be perfect, but I didn't think I could get a whole book out of it. Instead, I tried a few times over the years to put it in as the title of a short story, but kept on changing it for the final draft. I didn't want to use it up. Then, after researching the history of Two Guns, I realized that this title contained not just one story, but several. As has been true so many times throughout our nearly 20 years of marriage thus far, she was absolutely right the first time: it had to be a book. Two Guns, 1 Mile is a collection of original short fiction and historical fiction. The titles "Dual," "Sunset (fade to black)," "Extra Terrestrials," and "Two Guns, One Smile" contain only original fictional characters and fictional events. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Other stories, including "Sharp," and "Smoke" contain only original fictional characters, but also include details from real events. For the purpose of the stories, I condensed some of the historical events, omitting details that were not relevant to the plot, but without altering the reported facts. The remaining stories in this collection, including "One Last Round," "The Whore War," "Trading Post," and "Upon the Rock of Our Redeemer" are fictionalized accountings of reported events. In "One Last Round," and "The Whore War," the events play out as described by reported facts, with the exception that Bill Duckin was not reported to have been in Clabberfoot Annie's brothel on the night in question. However, as their times in Canyon Diablo are reported to have overlapped, his presence there, and in the capacity as I described it, would not have been out of the question or out of character for the man. As for "Trading Post" and "Upon the Rock of Our Redeemer," the characters of Earle Cundiff and Adolph Cannon were respectively reported to be the owner of the Canyon Lodge (Two Guns) Trading Post, and a prospector of meteoric diamonds. Their roles within these works are entirely fictional, though my descriptions of them do abide by the generally known facts of their lives. Cundiff was shot and killed by Harry E. (Indian) Miller on March 3, 1926, and Cannon was reported to wander the desert between Winslow and Flagstaff over a period of several decades collecting diamonds that had supposedly been deposited there by the impact at what is now known as Meteor Crater. However, the dialogue and actions of these characters in their stories have no factual basis.Whenever possible, I have tried to keep to the facts of the historical events exactly as they have been reported in multiple sources. However, the stories contained in this book are works of fiction and are meant only to entertain. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.