The Most Hated Man in the West

In honor of the end of November and a hard fought win at NaNoWriMo, I wanted to share an excerpt of my novel Heroine. Though NaNoWriMo has finished, I as of yet still have not finished my first draft of  Heroine but hope to maybe knock it out in the next month.

If you like what you see, leave a comment or download what I've written so far. The work in progress manuscript is available for free download at SmashWords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/253695. Check it out, tell me what you think.

Now without further ado, The Most Hated Man in the West, an Excerpt:

White as death, the man gasped at the end of his marathon of speech. He lowered his head, tears flowing down, through, and into the deep furrows of the landscape of his sallow sunken face.

"They were together! Hot dog!" Calico hollered as if a small child excited by some trivial climax of action at a crude puppetry show. "He was here, and this time he wasn't alone. This time he was with someone else. Probably a fancy looker, too, that would be just his style. We're on his trail, Marshal! We got him and his partner! We got them both!"

"Shut up, Calico. We ain't got nothing. Until the gunslinger's dead at the end of a long braided rope, we ain't got nothing at all." The Marshal was right. They had not a thing at all save a big mess, a gutted Saloon, and two dead bodies. The gunslinger had gotten away, again, and the two bright stars of the Far West had come too late. Again.

Marshal Tall Shooter hated a great many things about this world. He hated disorder. He hated men who sat in shadows and preyed on the naiveté of others. He hated authority that was not his. He hated his dependence on the necessary supplements of life such as were sleeping, eating, and breathing. He hated the allure of women, his own evil lusts, desires, and passions. He hated rest and relaxation and frivolous pursuits, and after the incident with the Dark Hearts in the far quadrant, he had hated every third Tuesday of every month since.

Most of all, though, of everything he hated; he hated the gunslinger most thoroughly and completely. He hated him for the crimes he committed and the lives he had ended. He hated him for his prowess and ease with a weapon. He hated that he had never been able to catch him and made it stick, and now he hated him because he had drawn him here from his post in the cities to this Saloon and to this ramshackle town in the Far West. For almost a year now, the Marshal and his deputy had stalked this town and the countryside surrounding it, always just missing the man that rode with death, and now they had missed him again. The gunslinger always seemed to be one step ahead, and the Marshal hated him most for that.