A young Black gunman rides through a lawless West, chasing the men who lynched his father. Trained by an old outlaw prospector and haunted by the ghost of vengeance, The Boy learns that justice and revenge aren’t always the same thing.
When his path crosses a fiery saloon woman named Red and a preacher hiding behind a mask of faith, the lines between sinner and saint blur in blood and dust.
The Boy is a dark, poetic Western about love, hate, and survival in a world that was never built for him. Reno Bachman strips the genre down to bone and ash—where every bullet has a name, and every name has a story.
A young Black gunman rides through a lawless West, chasing the men who lynched his father. Trained by an old outlaw prospector and haunted by the ghost of vengeance, The Boy learns that justice and revenge aren’t always the same thing.
When his path crosses a fiery saloon woman named Red and a preacher hiding behind a mask of faith, the lines between sinner and saint blur in blood and dust.
The Boy is a dark, poetic Western about love, hate, and survival in a world that was never built for him. Reno Bachman strips the genre down to bone and ash—where every bullet has a name, and every name has a story.
The cross was already burning when the man stepped outside. The men rode in hard, thirty at least, with torches, rifles, and whiskey in their veins. The man stood in the yard, rifle steady, each shot deliberate. One dropped from his saddle, then another. Even in the chaos his hands
were calm. He was that kind of shooter—born with it. But no man could stop a flood. They swarmed him, gunsmoke and curses thick in the air. A boot caught his jaw, knocked him to the dirt. His arms were pinned, knees pressed against his chest.
“That’s him!” a voice bellowed, sharp as a whip. “That’s the nigger that can shoot!”
The mob jeered, faces lit by firelight, spitting the word like venom.
Then a single revolver cracked. A man dressed in black— face covered by silhouette twisted in firelight—approached. He spoke coldly, as he raised and shot his revolver.
“Now he’s the nigger that can die,” the man sneered. The man’s body jerked, and he folded into the mud.
Laughter erupted, cruel and loud.
From the edge of the woods, hidden in brambles, a boy watched,
heart pounding against his ribs. The boy wanted to scream, wanted
to run, but he froze, eyes wide as his father’s body bled into the earth.
The mob tore through the farmhouse, breaking glass, overturning
tables. A woman’s scream split the night, then silence.
The boy shifted to run—only to feel a gnarled hand seize his wrist.
“Stay down, boy,” came a rasping whisper. “They’ll smell your fear if”
you move.
The boy turned. An old man crouched in the dirt, face streaked with
mud and ash. His beard was matted gray, one eye clouded white.
His hands were rough, scarred, the kind that once held iron steady.
“I know them devils,” the old man wheezed. “Rode with worse in my day. But they ain’t takin’ you. Not tonight.”
That night buried itself in the boy
’s blood.
The Boy is a short, gritty Western novella by author Reno Bachman, and it packs a wealth of story and a cinematic atmosphere into its concise pages. Somewhere on the western frontier, a young Black boy, hidden from view, witnesses a white mob erect a cross before his home and set it ablaze. The child’s beloved father, widely acknowledged as an accomplished marksman, defends their home, only to be overwhelmed by his attackers and murdered, as the boy is held back from intervening and certain death by an aged stranger. The mob, led by a man named Silas Vane, burns down his home, killing everyone else in the house. The old stranger, a former stagecoach robber turned gold prospector, takes the boy in and teaches him the ways and skills of survival until he’s prepared to seek justice for himself and his father.
Readers never know the main protagonists’ names as they are always referred to as “The Boy” or “The Prospector.” The Boy lives a tough life with The Prospector, but he thrives and matures, gifted with the same skills with a gun as his father before him, and as the pair travel, his reputation is made. He is a quiet, dignified, mysterious figure of a man when he catches the eye and affections of a saucy, red-headed white saloon girl in town. The discovery of their liaison is the touchstone for his vengeance.
The story is well-paced and immaculately crafted, with each descriptive word carefully chosen to create clear and evocative images of the settings and action. There is all the grit and sweat and blood and raw emotion of a harsher time, unfiltered by laws or common morality. The author does a great job choreographing the scenes of gunplay, especially during the resulting showdown.
I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this story, leaving me to replay each scene in my head. I recommend THE BOY to readers of Western fiction.