An Honorable Man, Part I

Elias Kerwin was born to a woman that people in the town didn’t care for, way out in the old Dakota frontier, she’d been nothing more than a common whore. Until she took up with John ‘Killer’ Kerwin, suspected of rustling cattle up north, a leader of men rough-hewn and vile, and killed ten men as he charted his course. When his mother got in the family way, Killer Kerwin was short running a herd, Elias’s mother trembled in fear for her survival when she heard the words. The townsfolk were not keen on having her there, they thought ill of Kerwin’s yet unborn spawn, all declared no good would come of the kid, like his father he'd be born bathed in wrong. She probably would’ve been chased from town, but good Preacher Jensen stood in their way, he had lost his wife and saw the woman as a lost soul that he needed to save. And though he was twenty years her senior, he took that young woman as his new wife, adopted Elias when he was born, then worked hard to give them both a good life. In that he succeeded, even bought land, three hundred acres just north of the town, built a house for them, a comfortable place where the family could go and settle down. Elias was told, when he was old enough, about his parentage, how he got here, and honestly didn’t think about it, the father he knew was real, and was here. He had even taken the name Jensen, Elias knew where his loyalties dies lie, and he had no reason to doubt these truths until the day that Preacher Jensen died. At that point his life got more difficult, first Preacher’s relatives challenged the will, Elias had to hire a lawyer, and worked some odd jobs to pay off the bill. This he saw as a form of betrayal, and he could lose his temper from the stress, he was known for sometimes having a short fuse, he was young, and hadn’t mastered it yet. Some older folks saw this, whispered of John, and lots of them declared that, “Blood will out.” It rankled Elias when he heard such, began to breed a whole range of new doubts. Now all of this was rather hard on the mind of a kid who was only eighteen, it just got harder when a knock on the door revealed a face that looked grizzled and mean. The figures stopped right there in the doorway, said, “Hot dam, it’s like he is here again! My boy, you look just like your daddy did, the spittin’ image of Killer Kerwin!” CONTINUES IN PART II.