Ammunition Belt

About the Book

Sierra Belt, a sharpshooting seventeen-year-old rancher’s daughter is weaned on a series of dangerous encounters with rogue animals. She grows up hunting and working with her father as a hunter for hire on Colorado’s Western Slope of the 1860’s. The experience serves her as she later faces treacherous men.

The maturing girl chances on a young half-breed at the rendezvous and experiences attraction if not love for the first time. The romance ends as quickly as it started owing to dislocation. A year later, on a trip east with her friend, she experiences a near fatal attraction to a promiscuous young man.

Events spin out of control and the girl takes matters into her own hands. The consequence of her actions propels her into a prolonged chase across the country and through the mountains. At the same time, her half-breed friend experiences tribulations of his own and is hunted by a ruthless Mormon assassin.

Fate and fortune intervene in a beneficial manner to spare the young people. A reunion occurs, but the circumstances are bitter sweet.

About the Author

Although my family was the last on the block to get a television set, I was well acquainted with Western heroes like the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Gene and Roy, Marshal Dillon and Cheyenne; and I admired them all. My family was poor and I was born while my dad was fighting the Japs in the Pacific. As a young boy, my brothers and I were privileged to hear dad’s recounting of his daring exploits. His stories at dinner were wild and imaginative. He admitted that telling stories and embellishing them was just part of the heritage of an Irishman. He had been brought up believing that the Irish were fighters, and it was an article of faith in our house. He had three brothers and then four sons and all were properly pugnacious. If one of us boys got beat up, the next biggest of us had to go redeem the family honor; because it was how dad had been taught. I always thought that it was lucky for him that Uncle Dick was a Golden Gloves fighter and a husky football player. On the few occasions when all of us boys got beat, dad would solemnly tell us that he couldn’t interfere because then someone might get killed. My dad was a fabulous story teller, but he was also tough and uncompromising. In his mind there was only right and wrong. Indecision and vacillation never entered into his consciousness. His experiences had all been righteous. Television stories of the Wild West weren’t much of a departure from life with my own dad. He instilled in my brothers and me the need to love and protect one another, and to interfere if a girl was being abused. Hell, it wasn’t any different than the cowboy code. It’s little wonder that Westerns resonated in my mind and grounded me in the American traditions of honor, decency and loyalty. As a Wisconsin native my formative years were also influenced by the stubborn and hardnosed efforts of Vince Lombardi, whom my father respected and revered. Dad was my role model with a touch of John Wayne thrown in for good measure. If anyone thinks that the early years aren’t important, they’re just plain wrong; and any psychiatrist will tell you that. The point I’m trying to make is that the formative years of our country need to be honored and celebrated. They stand for something, and they need to be written about.