Ride the Whirlwind
Jackie North
M/M Romance, Time travel, Historical
Release Date: 09.17.19
Cover Designer – Jay Aheer
Blurb
Soulmates across time. Two hearts, stronger together.
In present day, Maxton is good at finding trouble and bad at everything else. Then he receives a letter from his friend Laurie, who went missing. The letter is dated over one hundred years in the past.
In 1892, Trent Harrington, sheriff of Trinidad, Colorado, cast off by his family, lives a respectable but lonely life, devoid of any closeness. He knows he will be alone forever.
Trying to escape a past that keeps chasing him, Maxton drives south to Mexico. When his car spins off the road, he is swept up in a desert whirlwind, which takes him back in time to the year 1892. There, unused to the laws of the wild west, Maxton gets arrested, and is subject to the terrifying whims of two deputies who can do whatever they want to him.
Sheriff Trent Harrington of Trinidad is tasked with escorting Maxton to Trinidad. The request isn’t unusual, but the young miscreant is. Maxton draws Trent’s heart out of its shell with his flashing green eyes and lush head of hair. It isn’t right. It isn’t natural. It’s illegal. Yet Trent cannot resist the impetuous young man.
As the two men travel through the dry, lonely desert to their destination, will they find in each other the love and companionship they never thought they’d have?
A male/male time travel romance, complete with the scent of desert roses, brilliantly colored sunsets, starlit nights, roast rabbit over an open fire, growing honesty and trust, and true love across time.
Contains references to Honey From the Lion and Wild as the West Texas Wind but can be read on its own.
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Heroes are awesome, right? Who doesn’t root for the Good Guy? But there’s something about the Bad Buy, the villain of the piece, that tends to draw the eye and remain vivid in our minds long after the movie is over or the book is read. Yes, I see you Hans Greuber fans out there!
You can put your hands down, y’all know who you are!
But in my book Wild as the West Texas Wind, I needed a villain who was bad to the bone, so bad that you couldn’t forgive him, not ever. And you would never find him attractive or noteworthy in retrospect. Little did I know that I would find the perfect villain with a role to play in the events in Ride the Whirlwind.
Tom Ketchum was a nasty piece of work who lived hard and died harder. He had a temper and a mean streak, and shot first, asked questions never. He was even bad enough to be part of the Hole in the Wall gang! (Just so you know, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were part of the Hole in the Wall gang.)
How I found him was this: I went searching on Google for “outlaw, 1892,” because I needed a bad guy from the year 1892. And I found it in Tom Ketchum. Some time in the year 1892, he was on his way to Deming, New Mexico to rob a train carrying a payroll of $20,000 dollars.
Now, while I couldn’t find any evidence of when during 1892 that he robbed the train, the fact of the matter remained: Tom Ketchum was at large in New Mexico (it was actually called New Mexico Territory back then) during the time I needed him to be.
I got so obsessed with this character that I went and bought a hardback book called The Deadliest Outlaws: The Ketchum Gang and the Wild Bunch. I absorbed this book, noting everything about Tom and his gritty life. He was mean, abusive, and controlling, but he was always kind to animals. He was the Perfect Villain.
I was especially fascinated by how Tom died. After getting arrested and spending time in Trinidad, Colorado (where he had his arm amputated due to gangrene from a bullet wound), Tom was hung on April 26, 1901 in Clayton, New Mexico.
But get this: The hanging was bungled. Either they mismeasured the rope or miscalculated Tom’s weight, but instead of having his neck broken in a quick snap, his head was ripped clean off. That’s right, he was decapitated! I know, gross, right? But fascinating. And besides, after reading all the bad things Tom Ketchum did, I think he kind of deserved his end.
Here’s an excerpt from where Maxton and Trent are attempting to board the stage that goes to Villanueva, New Mexico:
When they arrived at the stagecoach office, just down the street, there was a small collection of people waiting in the shade. There was a couple dressed in black from head to toe like they were going to a funeral, a young man with a carpet bag much like Trent’s, and a group of three businessmen, by the looks of their clothes. Everybody was waiting for the door to the stagecoach office to be unlocked, it seemed. But when Trent and Maxton arrived, they all turned to Trent with hopeful expressions, eyeing the glinting silver badge on Trent’s vest.
One of the businessmen took off his bowler hat and stepped forward.
“Ah, you’re a sheriff,” said the man, tipping his head in greeting. “Perhaps you can help.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” asked Trent, just like he was a character in a B-grade western, reciting lines that had stood the test of time and been in a hundred movies like it.
“There seems to be a problem with the clerk,” said the man. He put his hat back on and adjusted the brim. “He won’t open the door.”
“Perhaps you could help,” said the businessman’s companion. Everybody in the group nodded and looked at Trent with expectant eyes.
Trent cast a glance at Maxton, who shrugged. He tried not to see the spark of hope in Trent’s eyes that the stagecoach would be delayed, and they could put off getting on it for another day.
As to what they would do while hanging out in Villanueva, he had no idea. There didn’t seem to be a library or a theater, and of course, there wouldn’t be a coffee shop with free wi-fi, besides which Maxton didn’t have his phone or his laptop. He laughed under his breath. That was the least of his worries. Nothing would matter anyway, once they were underway and headed towards Trinidad where Laurie was.
Trent knocked on the door. When nobody came to answer the knock, he knocked again, only harder.
“Sir, you will open this door. You have customers waiting.”
The sound of Trent’s voice in such a commanding tone made Maxton’s scalp prickle, though he couldn’t say why. Trent sounded like he meant business, and Maxton wasn’t at all surprised when the door opened and the clerk came out. He was white-faced, his eyes wide, In his hand he held what Maxton now recognized to be a telegram.
“Whatever is the matter?” asked Trent. His tone came down a notch or two, and it was easy to see that was because the clerk was in some distress.
“I’m very sorry to announce—” The clerk stopped to run his tongue over his lower lip. He lifted the telegram in desperation and read directly from it. “Alert passengers that both northbound and southbound stages through New Mexico Territory are halted until further notice.”
“Halted?” asked Trent, and the crowd around him echoed his dismay. “Whatever do you mean?”
The clerk shook his head, and held up another telegram. This one looked exactly like the first telegram, but it obviously held even more dire news, for the clerk’s hand shook.
“I’m not supposed to share this information, but there’s nothing else for it.”
The clerk handed the telegram to Trent. After he scanned it quickly, he looked up at Maxton with surprise in his eyes, his mouth open as his jaw dropped.
“What is it?” asked Maxton, thinking someone had died. He shifted his thighs and gritted his teeth at the prickly feeling around his balls where the woolen underwear was growing more itchy by the minute.
“It says—” began Trent. He tipped the brim of his hat back and shook his head. “It says that Tom Ketchum and the Ketchum Gang have robbed the stage north of here, then again south of here. They shot out the axles and robbed all the passengers, leaving wounded men and frightened women and children behind.”
“Tom Ketchum,” the crowd said, in unison, like they were reading directly off an unseen script, and the director had asked them to express surprise and dismay all at once.
Maxton thought back. He might know who Tom Ketchum was, or used to be, and remembered reading a book about deadly outlaws who roamed the area back in the 1890’s. His brain was like that, packing away useless information like a magpie gathered shiny objects. It didn’t do him much good to know who Tom Ketchum was, though, and it wouldn’t do the stranded passengers any good to be informed by Maxton that the outlaw’s head had been ripped off in a botched hanging in 1901.
They’d ask him how he knew that since it hadn’t yet happened, and then he’d have to explain about time travel and the whirlwind—and all of a sudden a gust of wind ripped through the street, sending an army of dust at ankle level. Maxton shut off every thought in his head and moved to stand closer to Sheriff Trent, who towered over the crowd as he looked again at the telegram, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“I should go help, if I can,” said Trent, looking serious and determined all at once.
Maxton groaned, though only inwardly. He didn’t want to hang out by himself while Trent went gallivanting across the countryside. Neither did he want to go along to help people he didn’t even know.
“The sheriff’s already got a group of men headed out to those stagecoaches right now,” said the clerk. “Half the men in town are on a rescue mission in both directions.”
Maxton watched as Trent’s shoulders slumped, looking exactly like a big kid who was being denied an exciting outing, like a trip to the circus or something. But it was a relief that they wouldn’t have to do anything like mount a rescue, though how they were going to get to Trinidad now was another matter.
“What’ll we do, sheriff?” asked the businessman, and everybody in the crowd nodded and looked hopefully at Trent.
“The company—” said the clerk, drawing everybody’s attention to him. “The company has authorized me to either refund your tickets, or to put you up in the hotel until the stagecoaches can be repaired.” The clerk rubbed his forehead, leaving a black streak across his sweaty skin.
“It might take three or four days till that can happen, till the stage starts running again.”
That was a lot of money and effort on the stagecoach company’s part, but it didn’t help Maxton. He’d be stuck in Villanueva for days and days, watching for the whirlwind that seemed to hover around the corner of every building in town, waiting for him to relax his guard, waiting for him to let his mind go wandering and forget where he was. He would have to stay focused and determined for that length of time, and Trent would get tired of him, twitch his broad shoulders in annoyance, and leave him there, all on his own—
The clerk went inside the office and the group of people followed him. Trent remained on the wooden sidewalk, and so Maxton did, too.
Trent took off his hat, ran his fingers through his blonde hair, and then put his hat back on again, all of his movements looking like this was something he did to soothe himself while he was thinking through a difficult problem. That was another tell, and it was easy to see that this was a problem. Trent wanted to get back to his home town, and Maxton wanted to be in Trinidad more than anything, but what could they do?
“I’m going to propose something to you, young Maxton,” said Trent. “And I’ll appreciate it if you give me your full honesty. Can you ride?”
Maxton’s brain felt very blank at that moment. Was it a trick question? Or was Trent serious? Maxton had suggested that they walk the almost 200 miles, but in 1892, a regular guy like Trent would ride a horse. Of course. They would go by horseback. The question was, should Maxton lie or not?
It wouldn’t take a guy like Trent but five minutes watching Maxton around a horse to know that he’d never been around one in his entire life. Then Trent would be pissed that Maxton had lied to him, and he’d be pissed about not being able to simply ride off into the sunset. Then he’d take it out on Maxton. He’d not taken anything out on Maxton yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t, if given the chance.
“No,” said Maxton with a shrug. “But I can learn, can’t I? How hard can it be?”‘
With a little laugh, Trent tipped his head down, his eyes hidden by the brim. When he lifted his head, his blue eyes were smiling, and there was a little curl along the edge of his mouth that was part of the smile, too.
“You’ve got gumption, I’ll give you that,” said Trent. “Now, here’s what I propose. I’ll get refunds for our tickets, and we’ll buy a sturdy pair of horses. We’ll pack light, taking only the bare necessities, and head out directly over the desert. It’ll take us three or four days, but that’s a better speed than the stagecoach would have made. A better speed, for certain, than sticking around here, waiting at the hotel until the stage is repaired.”
“And we won’t have to ride like sardines in a can for the whole way,” said Maxton by way of agreement. Then, just to make sure Trent knew he was on board with this, he added, “Sure, let’s saddle up and get the hell out of Dodge.”
He laughed as Trent’s brow furrowed, because of course Trent wouldn’t know the reference. Nobody knew the reference, which had come from all those westerns that hadn’t been made yet. Nobody would know for years and years, not until everybody in town had been dead and buried and turned to dust—Maxton stopped himself and swallowed hard to banish the dizziness that swamped over him like a tsunami wave.
“I can learn,” said Maxton, surprising himself with his own fierceness. “I’ll learn along the way.”
Whether Trent was impressed with Maxton’s determination or amused that he was a fool who thought he could learn something like that so fast, Maxton didn’t really know. But Trent nodded, and went into the stagecoach office.
Jackie North has been writing stories since grade school and spent years absorbing the mainstream romances that she found at her local grocery store. Her dream was to someday leave her corporate day job behind and travel the world. She also wanted to put her English degree to good use and write romance novels, because for years she’s had a never-ending movie of made-up love stories in her head that simply wouldn’t leave her alone.
As fate would have it, she discovered m/m romance and decided that men falling in love with other men was exactly what she wanted to write books about. In this dazzling new world, she turned her grocery-store romance ideas around and is now putting them to paper as fast as her fingers can type. She creates characters who are a bit flawed and broken, who find themselves on the edge of society, and maybe a few who are a little bit lost, but who all deserve a happily ever after. (And she makes sure they get it!)
She likes long walks on the beach, the smell of lavender and rainstorms, and enjoys sleeping in on snowy mornings. She is especially fond of pizza and beer and, when time allows, long road trips with soda fountain drinks and rock and roll music. In her heart, there is peace to be found everywhere, but since in the real world this isn’t always true, Jackie writes for love.
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