The Bishop Meets Butch Cassidy
Recollections of Scottie Abner
by
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I guessed the man in the saddle, sitting so lazy and low and kind of swaying with each step, had to be Bishop Nathan. His left hand was laying across the saddle horn and his right braced back on the cantle, as relaxed and easy as though he was in a rocking chair. He walked his horse across the creek, and on toward the trail drivers, who were as curious, I reckon, as surprised. I couldn't see his face from where I lay, but I judged there was a devilish grin under the hook nose as he kept coming on, and from where the cowboys stood, he must have looked like a patent medicine salesman on his last call for the day and no place to spend the night.
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About the Book
In this bittersweet visit to a simpler time in the American Southwest, Ralph Reynolds crafts a fictional story based on an old oral tradition that the Wild Bunch, an outlaw gang, invaded a New Mexico village near their hideout and shot up its Mormon church. Sparks fly when church bishop, Jim Nathan, a former lawman, confronts the gang and its leader, Butch Cassidy (a notorious fallen Mormon). Another of the outlaws, Clem, becomes smitten with the church beauty, named Deseret. He leaves the gang and joins storyteller, Scottie Abner, and Deseret in a dangerous attempt to halt a cattle drive that threatens the area. High adventure and suspense follows. There’s a dramatic face-off between Bishop and Butch when the gang finds a need for Clem and comes back to get him.
About the Author
An award-winning writer and editor, Ralph Reynolds has written fiction and nonfiction books. He’s also written widely about sports, nature, economics, and agriculture, and his works have appeared in periodicals ranging from the Saturday Evening Post to the Wall Street Journal.