Otis Cole. Western

Otis Cole is my name and tomorrow was to be my 18th birthday. I stand 5’11” in my bare feet and although 3 inches shorter than my pa, I was 10 pounds heavier at 245lbs. I was lean and heavily muscled like my pa, but even more so. Never had I seen any man with bigger arms and chest than me, and pa said I still had some filling out to do. If that was the case, I’d never find any store bought cloths to fit me. As it stood, pa and me had to make most of our cloths from deerskins. Our feet were so wide we hadn’t a chance at buying any riding boots, so we made moccasins from deer and buffalo hide, using the buffalo hide for the soles because they were thicker and tougher. They also lasted a might longer.
Our whole family ran to big, uncommonly strong men, all dark skinned, brown eyed, and all but me had a shock of black curly hair and big hairy chests. My hair was brown and a mite straighter with fairer skin and green eyes, and if there was ever a hair showed on my chest, I never seen it.
Pa said I was the strongest of all the Cole clan, unless it was his brother Boots, whom I had never met. Pa never talked much about uncle Boots and I figured there was some hard feelings between them The fact is, my strength and fighting ability is probably what got my folks killed, and that didn’t any ways make me feel better.

I reckon my size and strength had as much to do with all the training and sparring I’d done with Chung Li as it did with my family tree. Chun Li was our cook and helper, and my best friend in the whole world. Li we called him, and he had been with my family since before I was born. He was Asian, half Chinese and half Japanese and I guess that kind of made him an outcast with his own people, but he found an honorable man and friend in my father and had stuck with him. Pa was a man that would take you as you are and judge you by your actions, not your ancestry. They had stuck together for over twenty-five years, until Li’s death from a Cheyenne arrow last fall.
Li taught me all different forms of fighting from the time I was four years old till he died with that braves arrow in his craw. He forever had me pushing the limits of my strength and abilities and even though he was dead I still pushed myself in that way, always testing myself, always pushing the limits of my strength and speed.

Harlen had been our sworn enemy ever since I whipped him at the country fair two years ago. It was the biggest event in this neck of the woods and folks would come from miles around to participate. It had been a tradition in these parts for over twenty years. It was held every fall and lasted three days and you never saw such a shindig in all your life.
Folks would dance and sing, we would have a box social and all the women folk would cook some of the fanciest and best tastin cakes and pies you ever saw. Every family brought food from their harvest and we would cook beef, wild pig and venison, sometimes bear and turkeys. And it seemed there weren’t a bad cook in the entire country.
There were shootin contests and horse races, knife throwing for prizes, and just bout every kind of contest we could think up, every man and woman tryin to best their neighbor at something so they could have bragging rights for the rest of the year. The whole prairie around Hyders Gap would be littered with wagons and tents and you couldn't count the campsites. It was a grand time.
The main event was on the last day. It was the wrestling contest and the “prizefight”. Those that wanted to wrestle put their name in a hat and were drawn at random. If you won you went to the next round and so on until only one man was left undefeated. All the big ranchers would pitch in and the winner got a spanking new rifle with two hundred rounds of ammunition, a nice riding saddle and a fancy knife that my pa made.
The ‘prizefight” was pre arranged with the last years winner and likely prospect to whip him. The prize for winning this fight grew bigger every year. This year it was an even $500.00 and the first pick at the box social.
Harlen Dawd had won both the wrestling and the prizefight three years running. He was a big man standing six inches over six feet and from the looks of his nose and his knuckles, he had done a sight of fighting in his time. He made the boast that no man lived who could take his measure and so far he was right.
Last year the ranchers got together and brought in a professional prizefighter by the name of Sandefur, thinking they would knock Harlen off his high horse. Well, that Sandefur feller made a fight of it but in the end old Harlen stretched him out cold. The man was a holy terror with his fists.
I was sixteen that year and pa let me enter the wrestling competition after much argument from ma. At sixteen I was bigger than all the other men except Harlen and Fred Bassett who owned the Rascal Saloon. Fred was the only feller to ever come close to whippin Harlen at the wrestlin event and last year Harlen broke Freds arm for his troubles. There was a lot of bad blood between them and Fred was lookin to get even this year.
... to be continued