The Best of Penny Dread Tales by Kevin J. Anderson, Quincy J. Allen, Cayleigh Hickey, Aaron Michael Ritchey Ritchey, J. M. Franklin, Gerry Huntman, Laura Givens, Keith Good, David Boop, Peter J. Wacks

Crook were no longer to be seen—they literally disintegrated, scattering over hundreds of yards. A few of the guards fared no better. Other men lay dead or dying on the street. Body parts were scattered everywhere. A large number of bystanders received minor cuts, only a few died from their wounds. O’Rourke was knocked off his feet, and a piece of metal was lodged in his upper right arm—he later discovered it was a small bronze gear.
    ***
    In the dusty aftermath of the explosion, a wounded Irishman worked his way back to Mulberry Bend, wondering why Isabella chose to kill herself. Tears ran in rivulets down his whiskery cheeks. Yer took what ya needed to take, girlie, but God Almighty at what a price .
    He wore Isabella’s bronze cog on a chain around his neck for the rest of his life. He no longer judged a book by its cover, and furthermore, he no longer had any business with Madam L’Orange or the Chinese traders.
    ***

The Great Dinosaur Roundup of 1903
    Laura Givens
    12, March 1903
    My Dearest Bess,
    I take pen in hand to inform you of the possible untimely death of your brother, Pete. I know for a fact he loved you dearly and regretted all the things he said that last time in Wichita. He was drunk that night, and a man will say stupid things when in such a state. I am still here in Wisconsin—a town called Milwaukee—with the Wild West show and will send his last wages and belongings as soon as old Buffalo Bill settles accounts. I’m certain Pete would want your mother to have them, so please see that she gets them.
    I say possible untimely death because Mr. Tesla says, strictly speaking, Pete died a few million years before he was even born. Be that as it may, he was still alive the last time I saw him, though his situation seemed dire enough. Bess, sit yourself down, and I’ll try and explain, as best I might, just what happened and how Pete wound up trying to break a dinosaur with a Bowie knife.
    Well, it all started with the two of us finally getting some time off so we could take in the local culture of the fair city of Milwaukee.
    You’d think that getting massacred at the Little Big Horn twice a day plus an extra matinee on Sunday wouldn’t be all that hard, but it gets to you after a while. Me and Pete got a little happy before one show and decided that maybe Custer should win that night—just as a change of pace. Now, the way it works is the Indians ride around us shooting lots of fake arrows at us. We troopers wear padding under our outfits that those arrows stick into, and we stumble around dying heroically. These city folks just eat it up. That particular night we just stayed up, getting shot at until we both looked like a couple of porcupines. Finally, one of the Indians, big old son of a gun called Cold-Wind-In-Spring, dismounts and stomps over, picks Pete up by his shirt and throws him at me. We both go flying right onto General Custer—Bill Cody himself—who gets up and starts whacking us with his hat and using words that I shall not repeat here. So, we had us a week off.
    Now, Milwaukee makes some mighty fine beers, and just to be neighborly, me and Pete had us a few more than might normally be considered temperate. Well, we got into a sort of roping match to see who could lasso and hogtie this yahoo in a funny uniform and helmet. I won, and Pete was about to use a cigar as a branding iron when we were accosted by a horde of men in funny helmets. To make a long story short, that yahoo turned out to be a policeman with no sense of humor at all, so we got us a night’s lodging in the local calaboose. The next morning Cody shows up to throw our bail. With him is this real refined gent in a three-piece suit, spats and a top hat. That was our introduction to Mr. Nicola Tesla, inventor of the time machine, among other things.
    After he got us outside Bill, blistered our ears for a spell. He finally finished up by saying that if we weren’t the best damned straight-up trail hands he had ever