On his 15th birthday Luke Cooper’s family was massacred by Mexican bandits. Turning Rifles Into Silver is the tale of Luke’s adventures as he left his Texas ranch to become the 1st mate on a freighter, to being forced into fighting with the Spanish Foreign Legion, his capture by the Rifs, and finally the beginning of his career as an arms smuggler.
Excerpt
It was a time of trouble along the Rio Grande with Mexican bandits burning ranches and killing everyone in their way so Pa carried his rifle and I had his short gun tucked in my waistband. Me and Pa was headed to the barn to feed the horses and slop the hogs as my younger brother Jeremy fed the chickens. In the kitchen my little sister Ann and Ma where frying up fat back and making grits and biscuits for breakfast. Later Ma was baking a cake ‘cause it was my fifteenth birthday.
Just as we got to the barn a band of horsemen swept out of the trees down by the creek shooting and hollering like crazy. I saw Pa get hit in the back before something hit me a wicked blow on my head. When I come to it was past midday. My head felt like it been hit with an ax.
After brushing away the flies I found a skull deep, blood crusted furrow above my left ear. Turning my head I saw Pa laying a few feet away, jeans and shirt cutup, stripped of boots, and rifle gone.
Somehow I managed to reach him, chased off the buzzards and turned him over. The bullet tore his chest open something awful. After that I passed out. When I come around it was dusk. I made to the water troth, drank my fill and cleaned the wound, covering it with a piece of my shirt tail. Gathering my courage I turned looking over the yard – cabin burnt to the ground, smoldering barn still pretty much whole, horses gone, pigs and chickens slaughtered, gut-shot dog in the yard. Staggering to my feet I searched for Ma, sister and brother. What I found haunts my dreams to this day.
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Reviews for "Turning Rifles Into Silver: The Rif War"
I'm not sure what "Rif" means but that opening chapter sure is gut wrenching. Creating what will probably become a hardened man of some accomplishment, still haunted by what happened to him when he was only 15.
From what I've read and heard from folks. It was Easterners, immigrants from Europe, that considered land along the Rio Grande as their right, and massacred Mexican families that lived there in order to take the land. The King Ranch was a result of a enterprising lawyer from New York who bought up a lot of South Texas and then sent his henchmen to kill the Mexican squatters on the land. A fine heritage. That's why I like write stories true to history if I can.
Recently I watched a TV series, The Son, about a young man whose family was killed by Comanches then took him in. Played well by Pierce Bronson. He became a rich man for all the wrong reasons. True to history.
The FBI Inspector (380 pages) is a collection of 25 short fiction crime novellas involving the law enforcement services of FBI Inspector Joe Giralo along with his three government agents, Sal Velardi, Arthur Orsi and Dan Blachford.
