Boon

BOON
By Ed Kurtz
A Dimension W Production
Dimension W is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press digital edition 2020
Copyright © 2020 Ed Zimmerman


LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
Ed Kurtz is the author of The Rib From Which I Remake the World, Bleed, and other novels. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories and Best Gay Stories. Ed lives in Connecticut.
Bibliography
Angel of the Abyss
At the Mercy of Beasts
Bleed
Blood They Brought
Boon
Control
Dead Trash
Nausea
Nothing You Can Do: Stories
Sawbones
The Forty-Two
The Rib From Which I Remake the World
Vengeance of Boon


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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
 
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
 
Part Two
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
 
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
 
A Preview of VENGEANCE OF BOON


Acknowledgments
I conceived of this book when, gazing at the finely painted images gracing the covers of my large collection of Western paperbacks, I imagined one that didn’t feature a white man first and foremost. Instead, in my mind’s eye, I pictured my own partner, author doungjai gam, a Thai-American woman, astride her horse on the frontier. The picture was just too tantalizing to leave at that, so I wrote the novel, and as the dedication tells you, I did it for her. Accordingly, my first and biggest thanks goes to her, for inspiring me every day as an author and a human. She isn’t exactly all that similar to Boon, but there would never have been a Boon without doungjai gam.
Huge thanks are due to David Dodd and Chris Bennett for their sharp eyes, deeps wells of cultural and historical knowledge, and willingness to beat me over the head with cold, hard facts when I got things absurdly wrong. (Those things that continue to be absurdly wrong are entirely my fault for refusing to back down from my wrongness.) Boon is a substantially better book for their efforts, and I couldn’t be happier to have been granted the opportunity to work with them.
My gratitude as always to David Wilson for adding Boon to the Crossroad roster, alongside my previous books with them, Angel of the Abyss, Nausea, and Sawbones. Boon is a spiritual sibling to Sawbones (there is indeed some crossover between them), so it is only fitting that Boon should find its home with Crossroad Press.
Thanks to Allison Dickson, Errick Nunnally, John Foster, Brian Lindenmuth, and Brice McVicar for taking the time to read my early drafts and offer their insight, not to mention a few blurbs. Y’all are the best.
Last but far, far from least, my thanks to Terrence McCauley, author of the fabulous Aaron Mackey Western series, for lighting the fire beneath my posterior that took me from wanting to someday write a full-length Western novel to actually getting it done. Terry has been such a tremendous cheerleader and inspiration for my ambitions in and love for this genre, and I’m pleased as hell that he struck that match. Thanks, my friend, and long may you ride.


for doungjai gam


Part One
Red Foot


Chapter One
We were two days west of a bump in the road called Stiff Neck, Texas, when Boon told me she was a right smart parched from the trail dust. It was the first thing she’d said since the morning we rode out from that damned place and I knew her canteen wasn’t empty, so she wasn’t talking about water. To tell the truth, I was startled when she said it. I had gotten used to the quiet, and for a second, I thought someone else had appeared out of thin air to talk to me. But there wasn’t anybody else as far as I could see, and that part of the panhandle was flatter than a sunbaked johnnycake on the flushest part of God’s green Earth.
Stiff Neck might not have been the town’s proper name, if one could call it a town at all. I never did see a sign proclaiming its right name one way or another, but it was what Boon said it was called and I saw no reason to contradict her. Whatever the place was written down as on the map, there hadn’t been hardly anybody left when Boon and I arrived. Stiff Neck had two problems. The first was, the railroad did not come anywhere close to it, which choked the little settlement off from the parts of Texas that sat on the tracks. The other problem