The Gypsy Murders

By George M. Goodwin

Young Dan Gates had grown up never knowing his mother. All his father had ever told him was that she had died giving birth to him and her name was Masilda. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday there is a double murder on the ranch owned by his father. When a U.S. Marshall named Harlan Mann comes to investigate the murders he brings more to the town of Lubbock than they could ever have imagined. Dark secrets running back over twenty years will be brought to light and the man responsible for it all will be one of their own.     

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pale Horse Publications
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227087102

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

He followed the slow lazy circle of the buzzards for nearly two more miles until he was right below ‘em. The whole time he’d been riding Dan figured he was going to find that the prize of the birds would be another of their steers. Maybe a large animal had brought one down, he thought, or it could be that one of the heifers had dropped a calf and it didn’t make it. Both of which happened fairly often on a ranch this size. Still if they did have a big cat or a wolf pack that had moved into the area, he needed to know about it. After all he wasn’t just drawing wages anymore. Now whatever loss the ranch had, was his loss too. What he found instead was far worse than any dead cow or calf and it burned an image into his head that would take him some time to forget if he ever could. He spotted the man’s body first. He was laying flat on his back out in the open. The black leather clothing he wore told Dan he was probably one of those gypsy people that crossed the lower edge of their ranch land from time to time headed farther west in their brightly painted wagons. Maybe all the way to California.

This one wouldn’t be though he had been shot just once, but that was enough. Right dead between his black eyes that were cloudy now from staring endlessly into the bright sun. No longer was he able to blink it out for even a few seconds. Pa sure aint gonna like this, Dan thought.

Chapter 2

Not that he held anything against these people himself and had never saw the harm in their crossing the corner of the ranch property, but it sure riled his pa up something terrible. He’d rant for days afterward about it and swear that all of ‘em was nothing but thieves and no account loafers. According to his pa. they were too lazy to work for an honest days living. Always trying to figure out instead some way to take something from those who had worked hard for it. Dan knew his pa had run several of them off ranch in the past, but now a dead one on their land was different. He wasn’t just dead either, but murdered it looked like to him. Dan had seen men killed in gunfights before, but this fellow wasn’t even wearing one. Murder would mean the law would have to be brought in. Something else Pa wasn’t gonna like. Dan figured all lawmen ranked just a little higher than gypsies by his pa’s thinking.

The Gates Ranch at that time covered roughly sixteen thousand acres of west Texas range. It ran some five miles North to South and about the same from East to West. Their land started four miles or so west of the town limit of Lubbock Texas.

From their western line to the border of the New Mexico Territory at this time stood empty. For now, it was open land and at times they ran cattle on it themselves, usually just before a drive when their herd was the largest. Dan’s pa, Edward Gates, had settled this place back in 1863.

Chapter 3

That was thirteen years before the town of Lubbock had even been founded. He told Dan that he had been smart and came before the westward push that started after the end of the Civil War. At the time he settled it, there was nothing there but cactus and Indians. He’d heard his pa boast of that many times. The first cattle on the ranch was a hundred head of old Spanish stock that he’d pushed out of the breaks by himself. Done over a period of two months of hard backbreaking work. That was another story that all the hands had heard more than once when Edward was telling them how easy their job was now. That ‘now’ was 1883 and to be honest. most of the bad Indians had either been killed or sent to live on reservations. Some few had escaped and went North and West to hide out in the mountains, or so they’d heard. Dan took his ground sheet from his bedroll behind his saddle and covered the dead man with it. He was just about to ride into Lubbock to let the sheriff know what he’d found when he noticed the flies. A lot of flies. They were over from the dead man near a clump of mesquite bushes about twenty feet away. Not really wanting to see more than he had already, he forced himself to walk over there. That’s when he found the second body.

This one was a woman. Like the man, she too had been shot between the eyes, but Lord almighty, what she must have been through before that shot ended it, he thought.

Chapter 4

Her clothing had been mostly torn off her and he figured she had been molested. She had also been beaten very badly at some point before she was killed. Dried blood at her nostrils and the corners of her