Ralph Compton Blood Duel

Lafferty could not keep quiet no matter how much he wanted to. “But shouldn’t that be for the readers to decide? Is it right to lead them around by the nose?”

Hinds sat back and thoughtfully tapped the edge of his desk. Finally he said, “What is the Times, son?”

“A newspaper.”

“What else, son?” Hinds asked, and when Lafferty did not answer right away, he said, “The Times is a business. All newspapers are. They exist to make money. If they don’t make money, they fold. Therefore it behooves them to do whatever is necessary to increase their circulations so they make as much money as they can. Follow me?”

“I never thought of it in quite that fashion,” Lafferty admitted.

Hinds smiled. “That is because you are young and an idealist. I was the same at your age. Ideals are fine and dandy, but we must never let them get in the way of reality, and the reality is that people don’t want just the bare bones—they want juicy meat, and the more of that meat we feed them, the more of them buy our paper. Follow me now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I will tell you what,” Hinds said, sliding the piece across the desk. “Rewrite this. Throw in some juice. Do a good job and we will run it in the afternoon edition. Do a really good job and I will let you fill in for Farnsworth on a probationary basis.”

“Probationary?”

“You must prove yourself, son. Show me you have what it takes and the job is yours. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“More than fair,” Lafferty said, excitement bubbling in him like bubbling water in a hot pot.

Hinds grew thoughtful again. “In fact, now that I think about it, write two pieces. One about Frost and another about Farnsworth. Make Farnsworth out to be a lion of journalism. Lament his loss to the good people of Dodge City, and to the world.”

Lafferty took a risk. “I don’t mention he was in love with himself and thought most people are idiots?”

Hinds laughed. “No, you do not mention he was an egotistical ass. Praise his virtues, and if you have to, make up virtues to praise. Stir the emotions of our readers. That’s the juicy meat, son.” When the younger man did not leap up and run off to rewrite the story, Hinds asked, “Is something else on your mind?”

“I was thinking, sir,” Lafferty said. “I can turn this into a series of articles. Milk it for all it is worth.” Now that he knew what was required of him, he saw all sorts of possibilities.

“That is fine but don’t get ahead of yourself. Do the rewrite and we will talk some more.”

Lafferty rose and offered his hand in gratitude. “Thank you, sir. I have learned more from you in the past ten minutes than I ever learned from Edison Farnsworth.”

“Flattery, son, will get you everywhere.”

The white one-room schoolhouse sat by itself five hundred yards beyond the town limits. That was Ernestine Prescott’s doing. When she answered the appeals placed in several Eastern newspapers for a schoolmarm and came to Dodge City only to find they did not have a schoolhouse, she politely but firmly requested that it be built outside town, where her young charges could pursue their education in relative peace and solitude. Noisy streets were not conducive to study.

Dodge’s civic leaders were happy to oblige. Schoolmarms were hard to come by. There were not enough of them to meet the growing demand on the frontier, and Ernestine’s credentials were impressive. She had taught school for six years in Hartford, Connecticut, and for another six at a country school in the Catskills.

Ernestine was devoted to teaching and inspiring young minds. So much so, one day she realized she was pushing thirty and did not have a husband or a family or any of the trappings that went with them. That bothered her, but not nearly as much as the realization that there was a great big wide world out there she had seen precious little of. Connecticut and New York were the only places she had been.

So when by pure chance Ernestine saw in the newspaper that Dodge City was in need of a schoolmarm, she wrote them that very evening. She listed her credentials and cited her experience and threw in a comment about how much she would love to teach there, and much to her amazement, without requiring that she prove her mettle, she was accepted. Later she learned she was the first teacher to reply, and they were in such dire need, they accepted her right away. Still later she learned she was the only teacher who wrote them.

Now here Ernestine was, teaching school on the frontier. She had to admit Dodge was rougher than she expected it would be. She always thought the stories about frontier life were exaggerated. It could not possibly be as bad as everyone claimed or no one would live there. But Dodge was everything ever written about it, and more. A bustling hotbed of greed, lust, and violence. Oh, there were plenty of churchgoing folk, plenty of fine people who would not harm the proverbial fly, but there were also plenty who would. Plenty who liked the wild side and all its trimmings.