LEGEND 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford

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Jared is in prison, scheduled to hang. Everyone already considers him a dead man, including his cell mate, Mitchell.

“Most people say how they shouldn’t be here,” Mitchell said. As if to reinforce the point, someone started shouting further down the cellblock, the words deadened by the stone walls.

“Uh huh.”

“Yet you admit to killing four men.”

“I’d have killed five if they hadn’t stopped me.”

Jared, you see, feels no remorse. His only regret is that he didn’t get the fifth man. What brought him to this? Mitchell finds out as Jared reveals his history. Then the story dives back into the present for a gripping climax no one (including Jared) sees coming.

Derek Rutherford tells a tight, gritty tale. You won’t be disappointed. This is no surprise, of course, because he’s already the author of two Black Horse Western novels, Vengeance at Tyburn Ridge and Yellow Town, with a third, The Bone Picker, coming soon.

“Dead Man Talking” is the first of 21 stories in the new Express Westerns anthology, A Fistful of Legends. LEGEND 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (aka Beat to a Pulp editor David Cranmer) has already been reviewed.

A Fistful of Legends is now available (sooner than expected) from Amazon.