The Call of McCall — Gregory J. Lalire

A rip-snortin' saga of guys and gals and adventures that made the Wild West wild.—Tom Clavin, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter. Born and raised in the Daniel's Den, a bordello in Boonesborough, Kentucky, bastard Zach McCall never knew his mother and only sees his whiskey-drummer father, Fat Jack McCall, occasionally. Reluctantly, Zach serves the South during the Civil War and meets younger half-brother Little Jack in Louisville. After the war the illegitimate McCall befriends Jasper Washington, an educated, former bear-wrestling black man intent on reuniting with his pal Wild Bill Hickok in Springfield, Missouri. Zach heads west with Jasper, joined by hero-worshipping, deceitful Little Jack, who is looking for adventure and to get away from his father after a dispute ending in a punch that broke the younger McCall's nose. The McCall boys and Jasper, Wild Bill's self-proclaimed protector, witness Hickok's shootout with cardsharp Dave Tutt and are on hand for the lawman-gambler's further adventures in the Kansas cow towns of Hays City and Abilene. In the end, they all arrive in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, where one of the Wild West's most famous murders takes place—during a poker game at the No. 10 Saloon.