F Richard Allen

Riding Shotgun on the Normal Stage F Richard Allen

In 1875, Isidro, a Tarahumara Indian from the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico, arrives in Fort Worth just in time to witness the justified killing of Bender Kilgory, the gang leader of a southwestern outlaw gang of brothers. Clarence Withers does the shooting although Bender shoots first. This over a poker game dispute. Once the brothers find out who killed their brother, they go in search of Clarence for the simple purpose of revenge. Their search will eventually take them to the town of Normal Coincidently, Isidro is the first to arrive in Normal. He learns to read and write English from his new friend the blacksmith, Gottlieb Hegwer. He passionately engages in his tribe's practice of persistence hunting which requires him to run long distances over broken ground and kill his prey by hand. The people of Normal are at first skeptical and then shocked by this unique practice. The story unfolds with a rich tapestry of characters including sheriff Robert Long, his beautiful daughter Sally, the new deputy sheriff and ex-Union soldier, Dan Cooper and an unsavory traveling poker player, Clarence Withers, a man with a penchant for gunfights. Then here comes the Kilgory gang. How these people interact with Isidro and with each other provides an authentic historical perspective on the questions of race, sexuality, and killing in the old west.