Apache Patch` is a novel based on a theme I have used in seven other westerns I have written about the United States Marshal Service. A concept where the Marshal Service was one of the two major arms in establishing law and order as we know it today. The other aim was a strong judiciary working in concert with the Marshals. This collaboration was a determined, calculated effort to cripple lawlessness in a developing nation, not just The Wild West, and to finally establish justice on the local level, with local control.
The concept evolved to have Marshals at large, involved in any occupation, and to act as ombudsmen, amicus curiae or as a law officer when they saw the need, anywhere, and anytime. No matter what they were pursuing, they were to wear their badges at all times, one over their heart and one on their holster, and they were to be compensated as a United States Marshal all of their lives.
KT Pritchard is the main character, who as a young man gives up being a Sheriff in a small Kansas town to move on with his life to fulfill a desire to be a rancher. He decides to head for Apache`Patch, an enclave of the Apache`Nation in an area of lush grass and plentiful water in southwest Missouri that follows the course of the White River. KT is visited by events that eventually finds him taking on the role of United States Marshal at large. He is summoned to such service by the persuasive and inspired personality of one William Winfield Webster, Chief United States Marshal. He is sustained by one Cornielius Bidel, leading Judge of the Fifth Federal District Court of Kansas City.
A bureaucratic governmental plan fraught with inevitable flaws, difficulties and problems, even though a praiseworthy attempt to right a wrong, is devised. This is in an attempt to make restitution to the hostile British, Hereford cattle breeders, for the cattle lost on the open ranges after they were introduced by the British, at the request of the President of the United States.
A massive herd, twenty thousand head, is initiated at Apache`Patch. These cattle are to be driven north and combined with two more herds of twenty thousand and eventually concentrated for the British at a ranch established at Tryon, Nebraska. Mary Marguerite Eagle, know as Ramrod, daughter of Screaming Eagle, an Apache`Chief, is in charge of the cattle operation for the Apache`Nation in Apache`Patch. She becomes the ramrod of the Nation's cattle, which by agreement become the nucleus for the governmental plan under the direction of Marshal KT Pritchard. A love affair develops between the two after they meet and together deal with the daily trials, tribulations and adversities of the trail and the plan.
The story introduces the reader to many memorable characters who helped build the west, and in doing so, the nation. The novel tells from my heart and experience, of quintessential love, twisted and coiled bigotry and the indomitable spirit of the men and women who pioneered the west. Values shared by any human being are incorporated throughout the storytelling, thereby enabling the reader's minds-eye to see and hear more than the written word.
