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Frome County

Contents

Map of Frome County

A Potted History of the Old West Country

It is 1880 and Frome County is still stateless and mostly lawless.  Hemmed in by the North Mountains to the north, desert to the south and Apaches and more deserts to the east, you have to be tough to survive.  Although frankly, a lot of people have.  The ranchers are beginning to be outnumbered by the sodbusters as waves of immigrants arrive from eastern Europe, the Apaches are unsettled in their new reservation and sundry gunmen ply their trade on the frontier (and just about everywhere else). 

Liberty is the biggest town and the seat of law.  It is the home of Judge Washington Clinton III and his reliable US Marshall, Clint Thrust; both give a good home to Mr Noose and give no quarter to lawbreakers. Despite this, thanks to the Eastern City Railroad and the regular visits from cowboys, Liberty can be quite rowdy but it is building up a good stock of Eastern city folks who don’t care for such nonsense.  To this end most undesirables end up in Railhead, which is the last town before the Dustbowl Desert.  The smaller towns beyond are somewhat worse.  The Garand Ranch is one of Frome’s largest and most successful thanks to the proximity of Liberty and the railroad.

To the Northwest, Hubbardton is a very quiet and genteel sort of place with picket fences and very little crime.  Sweetwater is a rough mining town with plenty of brawls when the loggers come in for the winter.  Cushing and Franklyn are unremarkable, although Sheriff Finkelstein of Franklyn has a long-running feud with Big John Fordham, the nearest rancher.  Fordham is THE living legend, one of the first to settle the territory.  The Fordham Ranch is now much reduced but much of the land was sold to farmers and other ranchers making him rich and formidable.  Finkelstein hates the influence Fordham has hence Fordham’s boys rarely cross the Great Rocky for fear of arrest and impromptu hanging.

Northeast lies the Apache reservation, where warriors complain that the land is poor and farming women’s work.  There is a small cavalry detachment at Fort Buell under Captain Ketchum to watch over them.  Buell is more a trading post than a fort and is where the local Indian Agent is based.  Henryville grew from services to the army and the gold prospectors from the rush of ’67, but is now building wealth from the iron mines over the river.  The two ranches, Pontypine and Wallinger are in dispute over the Grey hill boundary and the simmering dispute worries Sheriff Dumire in Henryville, especially when it spills into his town.  So far there have not been fatalities….

Finally, the land we already know to the southeast where Steaming Rock was so violently awaken from its slumber.  Steaming Rock has ambition but this is thwarted by the proximity of Ramrod, the dirtiest, foulest most ungentlemanly place on the map.  Ramrod is reputedly home to the notorious gunslinger and most evil man in the territory, Blair Campbell.  The most southerly, and poorest, town is Browning however this may change with the discovery of copper at Little Ramrod.  Of the ranches the Lazy B is very profitable but Southfork by contrast is the worst in Frome.  The owner, Sam Ewing blames the sticky black stuff that seeps out of the ground.

So there you have it.  Frome County: you’re sure to receive a warm welcome.