LEGEND 4: The Man Who Shot Garfield Delany by I.J. Parnham

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You can always count on Ian Parnham to leave you smiling. He delivers again in “The Man Who Shot Garfield Delany”, his entry in the Express Westerns anthology A Fistful of Legends.

The story begins with a gunfight:

“Go for you gun when you’re ready to die,” Frank Beckett said.

Garfield Delany gulped, his cocky attitude fading away faster than the dying rays of the sun at his back. “You won’t get to ride out of Liberty, Marshal,” he said, the tremor in is voice betraying his nervousness. “I’ve killed eleven men and I’m looking forward to making that a dozen.”

Our appetite’s been whetted for blood and sudden death. But as usual in Parnham’s West, no one is as good (or as bad) as they seem. In this case, the shootout is an act in a Wild West show, an “authentic account” of an event that took place twenty years earlier. But is it really authentic? Ex-Marshal Frank Beckett can’t quite remember.

So when Frank’s boss decides to make the gunfight more and more exciting - to the point that Frank faces a gang of ten desperadoes, saves the town from being blown up and rescues Bat Masterson’s sister - Frank plays along. And it works just fine, until Frank meets the one man who really knows what happened twenty years ago. That man has a score to settle, and is determined to settle it with a gun.

What happens next? Read it and see! A Fistful of Legends is available from Amazon and a bunch of other online booksellers. And if you happen to be in the UK, you can pick one up at your neighborhood Tesco supermarket.

Want more on Black Horse and Avalon Western author I.J. Parnham? Visit his blog The Culbin Trail and check out the Almanack's reviews of his books.

More Legends:.
Legend 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford
Legend 2: Billy by Lance Howard (Howard Hopkins)
Legend 3: Lonigan Must Die! by Ben Bridges (David Whitehead)
Legend 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)