(Note: The author writes works of fiction)

I am Billy Hyatt, from the panhandle of Texas. At 17, I joined the Confederate Army fighting with Quantrill’s Raiders, which included the likes of Frank and Jessie James. In total, we averaged around 400 riders raiding Kansas in search of anything to help the southern cause. We were killers with the taste of blood, very skilled at our task. After the war ended we were left without purpose and roamed from town to town in search of a new life.

In 1868, I find myself in Dodge City, Kansas. Kansas had become a state in 1861. The state is lawless, full of roaming bands of thieves and murders.

The cattle drives have started. Herding longhorn cattle from Southern Texas, bringing the herds to the railheads in Kansas, where they are loaded on eastbound trains to Chicago for processing. This has become a nest of all that is bad about people. Gambling, drinking, fighting, robbing, murder and whoring, all while wearing guns.

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