Violence has always haunted this family.

Where it doesn’t follow, we hunt it down. We seek it.

Only one would carry the fate of this family through the Depression, and every other hell the twentieth century hurled at them.

Man will always seek to take from others that which he can make for himself. Those are the words that have governed this family.

He arrived to find my mother frozen in a snow drift; her two boys half-starved and barely able to speak. He raised them as his own, and took my father’s dream – and made it into an Empire… Then the empire crumbled.

My father had three children. Only one would live to see their own children grow. Only one would carry the fate of this family through the Depression, and every other hell the twentieth century hurled at them.

Violence has always haunted this family. It followed us from the Scottish Highlands to the slums of Dublin. It ravaged us upon the coffin ships of Ireland; stranded us on the beaches of New Jersey. Devoured us on the battlefields of Shiloh and Antietam. And it followed us here, lurking beneath the pines and rivers.

Freedom is running wild through untamed land.

Death is everywhere on the prairie. In every form you can imagine. And a few your worst nightmare couldn’t muster.

I watched her ride and I didn’t see my mother. I saw a woman. And the woman was magnificent.

I watched her ride and I didn’t see my mother. I saw a woman. And the woman was magnificent.

I knew that war. That war between what you should become, and what you could become.

We are in the land of no mercy now.

The whole world faded away. No stars or moon, no sky at all. No earth between my feet; no rock against my back. There was only us.

Maybe killing this man will get my eyes back. Maybe it won’t. But I chose to find out.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her there’s not heaven to go to. Because we’re in it already. We’re in hell, too. They coexist right beside each other. And God is the land.

I looked back at my father, and I studied his eyes. Looked deep into them. That’s when I knew… I was going to die.

My heaven is filled with good horses, open plains, wild cattle, and a man who loves me. It is always sunrise in my world. And there are no storms. I am the only lightning. I know death now. I’ve seen it. It had no fangs. It smiled at me. And it was beautiful.