A Tangled Web In Tuscan

By George M. Goodwin

Billy Joe Green knew one thing for sure. He had not committed the murder he was about to be hanged for. There was a way to clear himself of it, but he would never use it. It could mean the ruin of the woman he loved. Rebecca Beecham had been orphaned at fifteen and four years later forced into a loveless marriage with a man not only thirty years older than her but who she suspected had caused the death of her parents.

Colton Miller, the Sheriff of Tuscan Arizona was about to find himself caught up in a tangled web of lies and deceit going back nearly twenty years and thousands of miles away. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pale Horse Publications
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227490209

George M. Goodwin

George was born in 1960 in Jefferson County Alabama. The fifth of nine children, eight boys and one girl. The family was raised poor, but not poorly raised. At home, George was taught morals, ethics and respect. Reading, writing and arithmetic at school. Love, honor and obedience to God at church. He grew up on John Wayne movies, country music and the writings of Louis L' Amour, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  

Book preview

Chapter 1

Along with four other boys, they pooled their money and paid five dollars a month to stay in a broken-down old house that had been much abused by the war. Shortly after he turned fourteen, one of the gamblers Billy regularly fetched for hit it big one night. Billy never knew just how much he’d won, but he tipped him a hundred dollars. It was more money than he ever saw at one time in his life. That was his cue. Not to become a gambler, as he’d witnessed too many being fished out of the river, but to get out of the state of Louisiana. To go west somewhere and find out what it was he was destined to do with his life.

The very next day, he began working on that plan. He bought a horse and rig from a down on his luck gambler for forty dollars. Probably one they would fish from the river later. After that, he bought supplies and his first ever new clothes at the general store and rode out. The clothes were a size big, but he’d grow into them. The war had been over nearly ten years now with the south losing. Things had not and he figured would not ever return to how they were before the war.

His first stop after leaving New Orleans was in Houston, Texas. It was there that he decided a cowboy was what he wanted to do with his life. Though he’d done little of it growing up, the ride from New Orleans to Houston made him realize that in a saddle was where he belonged. Soon he had a job on a local ranch but not as a cowboy.

Chapter 2

To start with, he was just a ranch yard hand for now. Fetching tools or lumber or even water for the old man in charge of the yard. Well, fetching was something he did know how to do at least. Being a cowboy, he didn’t know, not yet anyway.

Heck, they’d never even owned a milk cow. That old man taught him a lot of things though. How to ride like a real cowboy. Kind of loose in the saddle, but still ready for anything.

Always expect the unknown, he told Billy. He taught him too how to work a rope and to shoot both pistol and rifle. Used the right way, these guns can feed you and protect your life, he told Billy. Used the wrong way, they will one day buy you a trip to the gallows. Stick to working the cows Boy. It won’t make you rich, but it’s honest money. You can sleep at night with both eyes closed.

A year later after showing the boss his learned skills with a horse and a rope, he was made a cowboy. One of the regular riders for the brand. Billy wasn’t sure if so many coming west during and after the war had caused it or maybe it had always been that way, but out here folks didn’t ask about your past. Fact was they didn’t ask any more than you told ‘em. It meant nobody out here knew what his mother was or that he had no pa. He liked that just fine. It wasn’t so much by what his ma had been, she was just trying to keep them fed, but not having a pa was a whole different story. Having one gave a man more of a chance in life he figured.

Chapter 3

After two years of working there and old Zeke dying, Billy got the wanderlust and was ready to move on. He had turned into a good hand and the boss wished him well and told him to come back anytime he got ready.

As long as I own a single cow there’ll be a job for you here Billy Joe.

It made a man feel good to be told such a thing. Almost like having a family. His next stop was in Abilene. There he didn’t work full time for no particular ranch, but at the stock yard. Ranchers came there to sell their herds and often enough those that bought the herds had no men with them to drive it back to their own range. He met a lot of ranchers there, new and old ones, some big outfits, some others just getting started. That was where he had met Lucas Beecham. Beecham had brought in a large herd to sell. The problem was the man that bought that herd was having a hard time finding drovers. Beecham started asking around fearing the man would back out of the sale. One name that kept coming up was Billy Joe Green. He put out the word that he wanted to talk with this Billy Joe.

Before long, it reached Billy’s ears. He met with Beecham over dinner and a deal was made. Find him some drovers, at least ten to move the herd for the new owner. Billy was to be the ramrod. When they were delivered that gentleman would pay them on the other end.

Take care of this for me, said Beecham, when you’re tired of this type of work come see me at my ranch.

Chapter 4

The Bar B Ranch in Tuscan. There’ll be a job for you there. Steady wages, all you can eat every day and a warm bunkhouse in the winter.

Once the herd was delivered, Billy went back to Abilene only long enough to pick up a little money he was owed there and to say good bye to some of the boys he’d became friends with, then he headed for Arizona.

Shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he arrived in Tuscan. The sheriff in town seemed like a nice enough guy and told him how to find the Bar B Ranch.

Going to work there? asked the sheriff.

Yes sir, said Billy Joe. Much obliged on the directions.

‘He seemed like a nice enough fellow,’ thought Billy as he rode away. ‘What was his name again Colton?’

Billy was twenty-two the first time he ever saw Rebecca. She was nineteen at the time and had just returned from school back east. She was already gone by the time he’d went to work there. She had to be