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Duncan’s Purse- A Lost Town with a Dark Secret. Part I.
A First Line Fiction Story — Prompt# 30
In a town where nothing ever changed, his was the first new face in years. Duncan’s Purse wasn’t always like this, of course. During the early to mid-1900s, it bustled with prospectors, miners, lumbermen, and trappers, but after the hills ran dry of silver veins and mountain creeks carried no more gold and the caribou migrated further northwest and the wolves followed, and bridges across Red Witch River washed out with every spring melt, the town became too much work for too little coin.
No one could understand why the townsfolk remained.
The long-timers, offspring of the original pioneer families, kept to themselves, looked out for one another and viewed any new face as suspicious and bearing ill intent. They were not a welcoming bunch. Most curious travellers stumbling into Duncan’s Purse were quick to become passers-through, with the locals coming out of buildings and woods alongside the only road in and out, standing, watching but turning their backs when a new face stopped with a warm word.
Naturalists, tree planters, tree huggers, hippies, hobos, the disowned, displaced, and deplorables occasionally meandered into Duncan’s Purse seeking refuge and charity, but there was nothing to freeload and no…
