Western Oracle

… for In a Wicked Age

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1,A “mail-order bride” come from back East to meet her new husband 1,A “nun” with an interesting set of vices 1,A band of outlaws seeking a place to hide 1,A barber-dentist who both gambles and drinks to excess 1,A black ex-slave unafraid of hard work 1,A bounty hunter, easy to track by the trail of dead he leaves behind 1,A box canyon with only a single exit, rustlers lying in ambush 1,A box full of gold buried in a half-forgotten cemetery 1,A cattle baron in need of men without conscience to drive off a stubborn settler 1,A cattle drive, beset by rustlers 1,A chainmail shirt found on the body of a dead Lakota Sioux warrior 1,A Chinese railroad camp – and the hatchet-wielding highbinders who run it like a prison 1,A Colt pistol with a silver rattlesnake inlay on the grips 1,A company of US Cavalry troopers riding hard on the trail of an Apache war party 1,A corrupt Indian agent buying cases of liquor 1,A cynical gambler with a pair of loaded dice and a derringer up his sleeve 1,A dangerous-looking man in a flat-brimmed hat, its hatband ringed with tiny skulls made of Mexican silver 1,A dead man’s daughter trying to sell a mine that might have gold in it 1,A desperate group of Mexican outlaws on the wrong side of the border 1,A dime novel, telling the fictional exploits of a real, and infamous, gunman 1,A dude from back East discovering the West isn’t quite what he expected 1,A famous gunfighter concealing his identity to avoid being challenged 1,A fine hotel where visiting cattlemen stay while they make their big-money deals 1,A former Confederate soldier who hasn’t yet given up the war 1,A frontier saloon where the whiskey and the women are both dangerous 1,A gambler, down on his luck, with nothing to his name but a deck of cards 1,A good place for an ambush 1,A gunman hunting an accused rapist, but starting to doubt his quarry’s guilt 1,A headstrong woman who’s too good for any man 1,A high-stakes poker game where a fifth ace just hit the table 1,A kidnapper double-crossed by his partner 1,A lonely buckboard … its only cargo a tiny pine casket 1,A lonely mesa, a day’s ride out of town, and the faint line of campfire smoke rising from it 1,A love-hate relationship between a woman and the bandit who captured her 1,A man bent on revenge for his family’s murder, and a bounty hunter who wants to take the killers alive 1,A man taking up a gun for the first time, ready to kill 1,A man tracking down his wife, kidnapped during their wedding and auctioned to a whorehouse 1,A man with his neck in a noose, hanging from a dead oak tree 1,A Mexican peon who would sell his mother for two bits 1,A Mormon handcart company starting West far too late in the year 1,A nameless stranger, drifting into town intent on upsetting the balance of power 1,A Pinkerton agent hot on the trail of a gang of train thieves 1,A powerful mayor scaring ranchers off their land 1,A pretty young schoolmarm, the most educated woman in town 1,A professional gunman hired for his reputation and given a Sheriff’s badge 1,A retired gunfighter who can’t seem to ’’stay’’ retired 1,A riderless, sweat-lathered cavalry horse galloping into town 1,A rumor of a fortune in Confederate gold 1,A sacred mesa, defiled by rapacious miners, and the price to be paid 1,A seller of patent medicines, in need of a colorful assistant 1,A sharpshooter who had his hands crippled by a former student 1,A shattered man pardoned from a prison work camp 1,A sheriff who puts away his star and heads south to deal some justice 1,A showdown at high noon on a deserted and dusty street, the townsfolk peering fearfully from cover 1,A shy local youth tagging along where no innocent should be 1,A silver dollar with a bullet hole cleanly through the center 1,A skinny cowpoke, bow-legged and leather-skinned, enjoying the first whiskey he’s had all month 1,A soiled dove with a good memory and a bad temper 1,A sour old prospector limping into town beside his loaded mule 1,A stagecoach full of strangers traveling together 1,A tame horse with a hidden brand 1,A team of grifters with a satchel full of blank land deeds 1,A tin star, needing polish, having been unworn for a long time 1,A train full of passengers, all curious about the occupant of the fancy private car in the rear 1,A traveling circus rides into town 1,A traveling preacher who once had a far different career 1,A tribe of Indians forced by privation to hunt for game outside their reservation 1,A wagon loaded with dynamite and the skittish horses pulling it 1,A wagon train headed into Indian territory without sufficient knowledge or preparation 1,A wealthy widow determined to clean up her town 1,A wild young man, fast with a gun, who thinks he has nothing to lose 1,A young deputy who’s runnin’ things while the Sheriff is gone 1,A young feller, dangerous with whiskey and beginner’s luck, testing his new six-gun 1,A young Iroquois brave, searching for his first scalp 1,A young tinhorn from back East looking to make his fortune 1,A young wife and the silent gunman she hired to avenge her husband’s death 1,An Apache war party lying in a dry riverbed 1,An entrance to a huge sinkhole, intentionally hidden in the scrub 1,An honest banker with a silver watch and a dusty three-piece suit 1,An honest Chinese coolie looking for money to send back home 1,An Indian trading post on the edge of a deep valley 1,An isolated stockade fort manned by a troop of U.S. cavalry 1,A newly-abandoned telegraph station with the wires cut 1,An old cannon with a broken wheel – the only defense a small town has 1,An ugly range war with broken fences and murdered cowpokes 1,An upright piano out in the rain 1,Many men and horses went this way, five hours back 1,The bank where every business in town keeps its money, robbed by masked outlaws 1,The box-canyon hideout of a gang of notorious outlaws 1,The boy who out-ropes and out-rides everybody on the cattle drive … is not a boy 1,The girl who shot her husband in the neck 1,The gruff editor of the local paper, telling the truth at any cost 1,The half-dead oak tree where the Vigilance Committee holds its hangings 1,The immigrant sodbuster and his enormous, hardscrabble family, cruelly cheated 1,The local undertaker, concerned that his business is about to improve 1,The sudden discovery of a gold deposit 1,The town drunk, witness to a crime he can’t completely remember 1,Three brothers who refuse to pay protection money to bandits 1,Three dead outlaws propped up for a photograph 1,Two bounty hunters going after the same prey 1,Two Indian tribes smoking the peace pipe together 1,Two men on horseback watching the town below from atop a high ridge 1,Two men plot to break into a bank, in the middle of a revolution 1,Vultures circling over a distant butte
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