Unrequited

Unrequited is a novella consisting of two stories involving actual persons and events that took place in Tombstone and the Arizona Territory in the 1880s, told with a supernatural twist. Birds of a Feather tells of a curse that haunts the principle actors in the Earp-Clanton feud in the aftermath of the infamous gunfight at the O - K Corral. Wyatt Earp sees his brother Virgil crippled and his brother Morgan assassinated, yet is unable to derive satisfactory retribution from the vendetta he leads against the killers. His friendship with Doc Holliday is poisoned by his love for Josephine Marcus as he tries to deny his guilt in the death of his common-law wife Mattie Blaylock. Ike Clanton's repeated acts of cowardice result in the deaths of his family, his friends, and ultimately himself. Johnny Ringo, the so-called "King of the Cowboys," cannot live up to the expectations of his own mythology. He finds the death he seeks, but was it murder, or suicide? A shotgun duel with Wyatt Earp brings an end to Curly Bill Brocius, who might otherwise have become the greatest outlaw leader of them all. But when the gun smoke clears, his body has vanished. And Frank Stilwell, the deadliest of the Clanton gang's killers, is gunned down on the railroad tracks in Tucson...by the ghost of his victim, Morgan Earp. Ghost Light is the story of Riley Jenks, an itinerant cowboy who is smitten by a beautiful actress he sees performing in a traveling Shakespeare production at the Bird Cage Theater. His confrontation with his rival, another actor in the troupe, takes a dark turn when he mocks the fearful theatrical traditions pertaining to the elements of witchcraft in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Forces of truth versus deception, reality versus illusion, devotion versus dalliance, and belief versus denial collide onstage in a final, fatal denouement. The documented facts surrounding these stories are discussed in the introduction and in the Historical Notes sections following both offerings.