OK, going to nit-pick on this on basis of historical accuracy, first.
"buckskin" is not usually referred to, in terms of a horse color, in that time...black, roan, brown, dusty, bay, gray, red, and white are traditionals (bay would be what you're looking for...the blond with tinges of red). Appaloosa is a pattern...like a deer fawn's spots, and can come in ANY of these colors.
Western riders who rode "work" horses generally didn't ride geldings...gelds were for sidesaddle and for "easterners", being that the whole purpose of gelding is to take some of the edge off the horse, and make it more docile...cowboys needed aggressive horses, and tended to prefer stallions over mares, but live breeding stock, in either case.
Marshal outranked sheriff. Marshal was a US fed certified position, while sheriff was county. The term "town marshal" is common in western fiction, but generally speaking, it was "town sheriff" or "city marshal", with emphasis on city, as most cowboys had less respect for city than US positions...think jurisdiction hierarchy, a US marshal (a "real" marshal) could follow a criminal throughout the territory, and beyond, if he chose, a city marshal was limited to city limits, a sheriff's posse had to stop at county lines. Cowboys generally only came to town when payday hit (once a month, in most cases) to party away their money.
County jails, for the most part, did not exist, in the west...whatever town/city closest to the apprehension held prisoners, until they were moved to jurisdiction where they would be tried. Granted, that eventually meant they'd end up in the county seat, or possibly, the territorial capital, depending on jurisdiction involved. But such offices as Sheriff's may have shared with the courthouse, or with the town marshal, but not over a designated jailhouse (and it was usually the courthouse)
You're creating a town more like an eastern city...tobacconists were generally part of the general store...not enough business, despite ubiquitous smoking, to support a store specifically for it. Multiple general stores is a rarity...and usually limited to two, owned by rival factions (irish/english, or the like...who won't do business with potential customers of the other group), "emporiums *were* general stores...just ones who also carried high class items...think of the line from the movie "Tombstone" "the latest Paris fashions, straight from San Francisco"...an "emporium" differed from your run of the mill general store in that way. Dry goods stores may or may not have been separated, depending on town size. Feed stores, on the other hand, were OFTEN separate institutions, even in relatively small towns. Grocers were always part of general stores, in the west, though they MAY have had a butchers (not a "meat market")...generally, though, in cow country, folks bought direct, not from a butcher. They'd buy a piece of cow whole, and do their own cutting. Drugs and patent medicines would be from a traveling wagon, or the barber/dentist's, Tack/Saddle/Harness would be part of the livery or feed store, one (usually, if there was a feed store, it was also livery and tack+gear), plenty of other niggling details to pick at, but unless you're talking post-civil-war Kansas City metropolitan, you're going WAY too big for a western town.
A rifle was in a saddle sheath, or holster, not a scabbard...scabbards were for blades, period.
Back in those times, they *never* referred to a Colt .44, as a "Colt .44" because Colt had several .44 caliber models, each designed to take a different round. The most common (and useful) was the Colt Navy, but the shorter Army round was also common, as was the Russian .36 (carried 12 rounds, was a bigger gun with a shorter barrel). "Pepperboxes" were also common, as gambler's guns or ladies' pistols (4 barrel "derringers" with all barrels discharging at once)
All pistols at that time were single action, meaning the hammer HAD to be pulled back before pulling the trigger could do a damned thing.
Fast wasn't usually what won a gun fight (look it up) fastest guy to AIM a shot was. fast general put a round somewhere in the general direction, that's all. MIGHT shake the other guy up enough to line up the second shot...not with experienced fighters, though. The "fast guns" you read about were not all that fast, truthfully (with the exception of Wild Bill...but he spent years AFTER gaining his reputation practicing by riding at a 4X4 post, and fanning the hammer, while at a full gallop, working on a six out of six hits in the top 4 inches of the post), they were just VERY cool headed, and got that first shot off goddamned right. getting the GUN out fast was a psychological thing, in the few cases it was used, but FIRING was, for the named men, usually a much more deliberated thing.
Now, with all of that nitpicking done...the story is well written, and doesn't come off as 60's-70's TV western melodrama, or a John Wayne movie...you might want to make Diamond more human, as he comes across as sort of a "old west superman", the story has DEFINITE promise.
So you know where all of my "factual corrections" come from...civil war, and post civil war expansionist history are HUGE areas of interest for me, not only because I have direct family relations to many of the "big names" through one line or another of my family, but because I'm in the situation Heinlein describes in Tunnel in the Sky...I'm a "romantic", who reads up on all of the adventure history offered, and wish I was there, while it took hard practicality, not romanticism to actually survive and thrive in those times (though I DO kind of straddle the line, with my personal history of behavior and military service)...my family can boast of direct line to Tripps and Luna lines (both fairly known, but not infamous, law-enforcers of Texas and Oklahoma during territorial periods), indirect relation to the James brothers, the Youngers, and Wes Hardin (in case you didn't know, the Jameses were 2nd cousins to the Youngers, who were, in turn, 2nd cousins to Hardin...though they disavowed him, when his behavior became too notoriously immoral)...my relation is through the cousins BETween the James and Younger family...have a family pic with my triple-great grandad in the Northwest Texas Cattleman's Association, with James, and Jesse James, and Jim Younger (Cole was off on his outlawing runs, at the time) in our scrapbook. On Dad's side, Doc Holliday (John Henry of Pennsylvania) had a sister who married the brother of Dad's great grandmother's husband...so his brother-in-law's sister-in-law was in our direct lineage...and more closely, the Cantrell sisters (Queenie, specifically) are direct descendants, via the Cantrell-Moore-Gray line through Virginia-Tennessee-Oklahoma.
Of course, there is plenty of "not notorious" blood involved, but every one of those names are connected to the family line closely enough to cause in-depth research (of course, with such a sparse and dispersed population, pretty much any family that followed the expansionist pioneering has similar connections, either closer, or farther...it was "a small world comprised of great distances")
The funniest thing of all...my maternal-paternal (mom's dad's mother) grandma was Oklahoma's first female police officer (OKC), then first female detective. (Tipps line...*her* grandaddy had been a fairly know shootist and town marshal)
Anyhow, correct those areas, or don't...they're only something a buff like me would notice, I think, the story's good, has plenty of potential. |
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