Hero Interview from Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot

» Posted on Sep 28, 2012 in Blog | Comments Off on Hero Interview from Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot

This week I’m hosting  Krista Phillips with Sandwich with a Side of Romance, Donn Taylor with Deadly Additive and Janet Bly with Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (September 30th) evening.

Interview with the hero from Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot:

1. Stuart Brannon, tell me the most interesting thing about you.

I attempted to learn to play the foreign (to me) game of golf, by request of my long-time friend, Lady Harriet Reed-Fletcher. It was during the Lewis and Clark Centennial festivities around Portland and she had her heart set on helping an orphan farm gain supporters through a charity tournament played by celebrities. She thought I counted as some sort of celebrity. I countered that I was a very minor one, but she still insisted I play along with the likes of Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill Cody and a young upstart Vaudeville entertainer, W.C. Fields. Part of the problem in grasping the game was my age and the hard life I’ve lived. The crook of my arms, the way they work after all these years, I aim straight and the ball hooks right. If I shoot to the right, the ball flies down the middle. I guess that’s part of my handicap.

2.  What do you do for fun?

Not golf–that’s pure agony. It’s time spent with my grandkids. I adopted 12-year-old Littlefoot, an Indian boy, in 1888. He’s now grown, married to Jannette, and they have four children who me all the joys of family life…Everett, 5, Elizabeth, 4, Edwin, 2, and baby Jenner. We play all sorts of games together when I’m taking breaks on my Arizona ranch. And the older ones actually listen to my stories. What a gift they are to me.

3.  What do you put off doing because you dread it?

At my age and stage of life, I hate leaving the comfort and familiarity of my Arizona cattle ranch. That’s why I said, “No!” several times when both Lady Harriet Reed-Fletcher and my friend T.R. (that’s Theodore Roosevelt) pleaded with me to go to Oregon. But who can resist a request from the president of the United States and a strong-willed woman like Harriet? Either one quite formidable.

4.  What are you afraid of most in life?

That I will have missed what it is God really wants me to do. At my age, by the time a man figures out what he is missing, it’s already gone. My philosophy is that you and I have the opportunity to saddle up this day and ride it into our memories. But that means staying awake, alert. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and realize I slept through the important parts.

5.  What do you want out of life?

A good horse, my own ranch to run my cattle, and a world free of evil.

6.  What is the most important thing to you?

My creed is duty to decency, mankind, and God. That’s why I get involved and back it up with weapons, if necessary, though I’ve tried not to be a violent man. Law, decency, the will of God and future generations demand this country be safe for its women, children and families. I want my legacy to be that the civilized west of the future belongs to my descendants, my offspring. I find myself almost possessive about the west that is yet to come.

7.  Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?

I definitely stay away from dime novels, especially those authored by Hawthorne H. Miller. They’re mostly exaggerations and lies about me. I’ve read all the true adventure stories written by my friend, Teddy Roosevelt. Recently I enjoyed Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson that my daughter-in-law, Jannette, gave me to read on the long train rides from Prescott, Arizona to Gearhart, Oregon.

8.  If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

The perception that I am a gunman, a violent man. There’s always someone trying to better me in a fight or be the man “that killed Stuart Brannon.” I’ve put away a lot of outlaws who have kin who felt they got an unfair shake. Fortunately, those events are fewer, but I still jump when someone comes up to me from behind.

9.  Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

I’m not sure I’d call any of my cow dogs pets or even my mounts. However, I do get close to each one of my usually black horses, even with their faults and irritating quirks. Right now I’m partial to Tres Vientos, who was very upset to be taken from the familiar territory of the Arizona desert sights, smells and sounds and uprooted to the strange, very populated world of Portland and the Oregon coast. He got pretty wild and uncontrollable. Very humbling when you can ride your own horse. Took me many days to get him calmed down enough to be of use in the search for my missing friend, U.S. Marshal Tom Wiseman.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

I’d go back to any day before December 25, 1875, and knowing what I do now, I’d get my wife Lisa and our unborn baby boy off the ranch and into the town of Prescott and closer to a doctor, to possibly prevent their deaths that stormy Christmas she went into labor.