The Man Called Bowdry

Not much is known for certain about the man called Bowdry. The bare facts are as follows. Sometime around 1880 he rode into Gray Buttes, Nevada—a long forgotten town—stayed for a time at the Pollard shack out in the hills and, after the old man was killed, made relentless war on the neighboring 3-Bar outfit which was run by the Wadley clan, known thieves and rustlers. Then he disappeared, to be seen no more, nor was he ever heard of again. He was the only one who knew how so many men ended up dead in the boulder-strewn hills around the old Pollard shack, and he never told anyone, unless it was the wild and beautiful redheaded woman named Lucy Reardon. There were those who doubted if his real name was Bowdry. Some even suspected that he was really old man Pollard’s long-lost son and that his name was Will Pollard, a mysterious gunfighter who roamed the early West. But before the stranger appeared it had never occurred to anyone that old man Pollard might have a son, and most would have laughed at the notion that he was related in any way to the legendary gunfighter who happened to have the same last name. No one knew very much about the old man. No one even knew what his first name was. The people of Gray Buttes just called him old man Pollard or old Pollard, and smiled in a certain condescending way when they mentioned him.