Cotton Pickens

Leslie Ullman traces through her speaker one woman's attempt to find herself and then to live that discovered self within an alien wilderness that ranges from the indifferent to the frankly dangerous. This volume edges toward the growing certainty to plain chance and lucky or unlucky coincidence. Perhaps in response to the uncertain nature of the external world in Dreams by No One's Daughter, Ullman's are very much poems of metamorphosis, of becoming rather than static being.

Cotton Pickens, the unforgettable hero of William Johnstone's classic Blood Valley, returns in a tale of a lawless Montana mining district, a 16-year-old widow and a man who always finds new ways of laying down the law Cotton Pickens' parents had a cussed sense of humor, but there's nothing funny about the way the man can draw a gun. Now he's in the middle of a mining camp district slowly being crushed under the iron fist of another misnamed, hardheaded fellow, Carter Scruples. With Cotton facing off against Scruples, a beautiful young woman caught in-between and a band of outlaws living high and mighty in a dry-docked Pullman Palace Car, the town of Swamp Creek is surely going to get blown sky high. And when time comes to put the pieces back together again Cotton will do his picking one bullet at a time.

Cotton Pickens made it through fifth grade. That and a tin star were good enough to make him the sheriff in the boomtown of Doubtful, Wyoming. And Doubtful's name is no accident. The saying around town is, If you're a lawman, it's doubtful you'll last a day. Spoiled, brash King Bragg is going to hang for the murder of three men in a barroom. But King's arrogant father - and his beautiful sister - use their powers of persuasion to convince Cotton to look into the shooting. And when Cotton does, he uncovers some disturbing secrets about one Crayfish Ruble, the second biggest rancher in Puma County. Soon, Cotton is surrounded by some people who want to hang King now, some who want to bust him free, and some too busy keeping their stories straight... In a town full of fools and sinners, of men bad and downright evil, a gallows is going up and time is running out. And a young, skinny, undereducated lawman named Cotton Pickens is standing up to a savage storm - with only one gun on his side...

Cotton Pickens is feeling about as low as a man can get. Held up, robbed and fired from his job as sheriff, things get even worse when someone murders Cotton's horse Critter. And it's all happening just as a flashy, fleshy stage company comes to town. Some folks demand the show be shut down for immorality. Some folks -- Cotton included -- sure enjoy the proceedings. But when a man gets stabbed to death, a bank safe gets blown up, and another county's sheriff starts imposing his will, Cotton realizes that a dastardly plot is taking over Doubtful. Badge or no badge, Cotton is going to war. To catch a killer. To stand up to some self-righteous fatheads. And for the right to see a little bare-naked leg -- or die trying...

No Whiskey? No Women? No Peace It was a law Cotton Pickens never asked for and never wanted to enforce. But due to the vigilance of the Women's Temperance Society, and the timidity of their businessmen husbands, the town of Doubtful, Wyoming, is going dry. As of January 1st. No exceptions. No turning back. Doubtful's hell-raisers will not take this lying down, and Sheriff Pickens is fighting bootleggers and vigilantes when the next boot drops. The righteous women push through an even worse law bound to spark an outright insurrection. The world's oldest profession and Doubtful's favorite pastime - dallying with ladies of the evening - is the next vice to be outlawed. With all hell breaking loose, and the National Guard on the way, Sheriff Pickens has enemies everywhere he turns. And for a lawman under siege, survival means fast thinking, straight shooting - and breaking a law or two himself

Welcome to the peaceful little town of Doubtful, Wyoming, which has more than its fair share of kill-crazy gunslicks, back-shooters, and flat-out dirty desperadoes. It also has a sheriff named Cotton Pickens, who tries his best to keep law and order without getting his head blown off before breakfast. Cotton Pickens got where he is by virtue of a quick draw and slow wit. He knows the difference between lawbreakers you have to lock up...and the kind you might as well just let go. Deputy Rusty Irons, though, ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. Someone kidnapped Rusty's mail order brides. They were probably doing Irons a favor, but a deputy in love is blind. As for the carny barkers, medicine show con artists and revival-meeting fly-by-nighters who pass through Doubtful...Cotton just tries to keep the traveling hucksters moving. But in one terrible moment it all goes to hell. That's when Doubtful explodes in a frenzy of killing and bloodshed. That's when a lawman like Cotton earns his pay by looking evil straight in the eye. Of course, there's also the matter of keeping his new deputy alive and in one piece.