Authentic Tales of the West: Part 6

Flattery’s Feed Store

Arnold Ashford’s Journal Entry #6

Well, for all the foreboding that Alice’s words had instilled in me, the next several weeks were relatively quiet. The local Rancher was busy as a bee; it seemed his hands were involved in everything. Whether it was running his own farm, or hiring Cowhand’s to run the herd of Cattle, or Horsemen to come and train up some new Horses, this man epitomized the Spirit of the West that I had heard about.

Back in West Virginia, the Mayor and his group of allies were the movers and the shakers. Out West, it really is the vigor and vitality of these Ranchers that drive the progress. Always looking to the next Building Project, always planning ahead for the Resources that will be needed to bring the next thing into existence.

It hardly seemed like any time had passed at all since this industrious Rancher had a meeting with Milton Flattery to plan out a Feed Store for Dodge City. That Cattle herd was growing out quite nicely on those Kansas plains, and Milton was just the man to run this new endeavor. It was a memorable night when Flattery’s Feed Store was completed; drinks were drunk, laughs were laughed, shoulders were clapped and these Dodge City folk looked genuinely tickled and gratified at the completion of the work.

It seemed almost overnight that everything changed. The next morning, the air seemed stiller, than normal, almost as if all of the spirit had gone out of the very wind itself. As the day wore on, the temperature just never seemed to stall out; it kept climbing higher and hotter, until the sun was at its zenith. I had never felt heat like that in my life. But I would continue to feel that same heat day after day after day; a Drought of Biblical proportions had come to Dodge City

— Check back next Monday for a new entry in Ashford’s journal —