CROSSROADS - "The Troubadour"

Welcome to Texas, the mid-1880s, and a tiny incidental desert hamlet named Crossroads. It's a little known, seldom spoken of frontier town, snugly nestled beneath majestic mountains along the southwestern border between Texas and Mexico, and morally poised between virtue and corruption. It's a mundane community barely on the maps of this vast region, a unique shade of gray in this harsh black and white world. It's a tiny society unto itself where the sublime sometimes means the surreal. It is a place where wandering souls come for a variety of reasons. For some it's to seek a better life away from the increasingly modernized mayhem of progress. For some it's a place to hang their hat before moving on to their destiny. Still for others it's a sanctuary from the past, a last chance of sorts to start anew.

So welcome, my friend. Welcome to a town where last chances meet new beginnings. Welcome to a town on the edge of the American spirit, where the unimaginable is cultivated from the seeds of the human condition. Welcome to a town where the past and the present roll the dice with the future hanging in the balance.

Welcome... to Crossroads.

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CROSSROADS

"The Troubadour"

By LW Thunder

II=====II=====II * PROLOGUE * II=====II=====II

Music.

It's been said that its harmonious sounds can soothe even the most savage beast. Its words and tunes can brighten the most darkened heart or cause a tear to be shed almost at will. It is believed that music can even heal the afflicted with just a song. History is filled with tales of the sick and infirmed, once condemned to a sad fate, being cured just by listening to a soothing melody.

Music can also tell a story, a tale which has many interpretations by both the musician and the listener alike. In medieval times a man known as a minstrel would travel the lands sharing his tunes and ballads for all who would listen. In this time and place there are modern-day minstrels known simply as troubadours; wandering musicians whose sole purpose is to entertain and amuse those who seek something more than just the weary notes of daily life here in the West.

Such an individual is about to enter our cozy little town and in doing so, enter the very lives of those therein. The messages of his melodic refrains will most assuredly impact those who would listen to his tuneful ballads. He comes with a purpose; to provide music, merriment and more for one and all with merely a guitar in hand and a saddlebag full of hopes and dreams on his back.

But he isn't the only music-maker who has come to town. There is another who plays a different tune, one that doesn't take wishes or desires for your songs. Their melodic paths will undoubtedly cross in a crescendo of fates with the final note yet to be written.

So everyone take heart for The Troubadour has come to town and he will most definitely being taking requests... here... at Crossroads.

II=====II=====II * CHAPTER ONE * II=====II=====II

From his office door Marshal Rory Benson stared out into the early morning bustle of Main Street and rubbed his aching right wrist.

"Damn this weather" he said thru clenched teeth as he glanced down at the painful joint.

It was just one of many physical mementos from a past encounters which always bothered him on damp days and today looked to have a storm coming in. As he stood there he casually observed the pulse of the town. A man dressed all in white complete with white bowler hat steps off the early stagecoach. He motions for his luggage which apparently consists of a simple square case. Benson shakes his head in amusement and chuckles at the sight of such a dandy.