Civil War doctor loses his family, and his right arm, to a group of psychopaths who have come to rob them, leaving everyone dying or dead. The doc replaces his missing limb with a double-barreled shotgun and goes after them.
That was the flicker of a movie idea I had in 1993 for a low-budget Western. I needed to flesh it out, but I thought if I pitched the script right, someone might just make it.
That did not happen. Many times.
What did happen: This December 3, thanks to editor Gary G

December 2013
In This Issue:
More In This Issue
- Lynch Mob Law
- Rough Drafts 12/13
- Durango, Colorado
- The Two-Reel Texas Rascal
- Courage Under Fire
- Home Brewed Gun Show
- Geronimo!
- Tracks that Speak
- The Frontier Christmas Trail
- Rat Pack Troopers
- The Flawed Gentleman Bandit
- Getting Shotgun Loaded
- The credits for Tombstone list a Wyatt Earp III in the cast. What is his relationship to the original Wyatt?
- Was the Lost Dutchman Mine real?
- December 2013 Events
- The Shirt of a Condemned Man
- A Literary Life of Adventure
- “Free as the Winds,” Red Cloud Soared Above the Rest
- A Timeless Tale of an American Family
- Christopher Price
- A Cement Pudding
- The Three Godfathers
- A Rope for a Rat
- What are tintypes?
- How were guns cleaned in the Old West?
- Does The Searchers movie have any basis in fact?
- Where is Cowboy Ground Zero?
- Jeffrey Richardson’s favorite reads
- Hero’s Triumph and Tragedy