David Durant

## Introduction

**David Durant** is a shadowy character that has a troubled past. He has seen, done, and experienced much in his life. He sticks to shadows and corners most, he speaks of his past quite vaguely and not often, but is a morally gray and tattered soul trying to survive day to day in the frontier.

## Biography

David Durant was born to Elizabeth and Joesph Durant in 1860 in Vicksburg Mississippi. He was raised in comfort, leisure, and safety with his family and house keeping staff until three years later when the Civil War came to their doorstep. The Siege of Vicksburg claimed the lives of many, including his parents and family. Only the house keeping family survived, taking David with them as they fled the city north, to freedom. The black housekeeper, Martha, protected David as her own and raised him with her children until he was into his teenage years.

When David was 16 years of age, Southern rebels still fighting their war found the family and brutally killed Martha and her entire family. The rebels didn't believe David was theirs and sent him off on his own as they took his family from him. David was now orphaned a second time, however this time malice was seeded in his heart. He already blamed the North for killing his parents, now he loathed the South for claiming his adopted family's lives as well.

By this time he had nothing and very little knowledge to survive on his own. He lied his way into the US Military as he saw no other option. He was attached to General George A. Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment, C Company. As history revealed, this attachment would not bode well.

During the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the decimation of Custer's forces, C Company attempted a retreat from the battle. Durant barely made a tattered tree line before his fellow comrades were wiped out. Durant fled into the wilderness and was presumed dead by the military. However, Durant never returned or reported in with his command thus deserting his post.

As Durant fled the region, he was pressed to avoid hundreds of Native warriors hunting any stragglers or deserters. Durant was no exception. As he ran through the brush and forests in the middle of the night, he was set upon by a tiny war party. They bound him and stripped him in the woods, rifling through his tiny supply of provisions. He pleaded for his life but they did not speak English and he did not understand whichever tongue they spoke in. He was lashed to a tree and whipped so long that skin was torn from his back.

The small war party camped in that glen for the day and into the next night, beating Durant periodically when it suited them. Finally, as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, one released him from the tree and threw him to the ground. Another approached with a blade of some kind, assumingely to scalp him, but something must have caught the young warriors eye for a brief moment. He snapped his head to the tree line just long enough for Durant to lunge at him and push the blade from his hand. Durant reached for his revolver in the brief struggle, and five shots rang into the night air and four of his attackers lay dead. Durant was left with a tattered back, a bleeding right shoulder and blood streaming down his face. As he slowly reached with his left hand to feel the blood he screamed in pain. During the attack he had suffered a swipe of the crude blade across his face, taking with him the sight from his left eye and part of the left side of his face.

Durant hastily wrapped his head in rags, gathered his provisions along with some of theirs, and took one of their pale white horses from the glen and disappeared into the wilderness.

When Durant was still young and hiding from the military, he found a small lumber town deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains and settled there for a time. He fell in love with the daughter of the town stable master. It is with her, his affinity for horses grew and his previous knowledge from his days as a soldier were beneficial to their stable. He was hired as a stable hand and the two carried on a very private and secret relationship. However, it is impossible to keep a child a secret. The two gave birth to a little baby girl, however the town discovered their affair and as they were not yet married, they created a small uproar. The girls father protected all three of them but the spiteful and power hungry self-appointed "mayor" of the town, who was also the preacher, spate poisonous words into the peoples ears and they trapped the small family in the stable owners house. They set fire to the home with everyone inside. Durant tried to usher the family to the cellar and pray it would save them but a beam fell, crushing the father and the daughter would die of smoke inhalation before the night was out.

Durant emerged from the cellar the following morning with his baby girl in his arms. Tears streaming down his smoke soot covered face, he took his daughter into the woods with whatever of his few belongings he could carry. He knew he could not raise his baby girl on his own as she would not survive, so when he arrived at the next town down the mountain, he quietly left the girl at a large home filled with lots of happy and smiling people, praying to God she would be safe and loved. He never saw her again.

During his time in the west he learned many skills and honed existing ones. He spent time working spur lines on various railroads, he dabbled in bounty hunting for a brief period, and he finally he met Mal Griggs. Griggs and Durant became friends quickly and using the knowledge each of them had, they formed a very successful moonshining business. During their time as moonshiners they made obscene amounts of money and used it to bolster themselves up in that region. However this attracted revenue agent attention and before long they were forced to flee the region, leaving behind all their money and work.

## Connections

During his time working with Griggs he became acquainted with Emily VanderSant through a sheer happenstance encounter. The two men learned Ms. VanderSant was fleeing her oppressive family back east and was trying to explore and discover the west, on her own. Griggs and Durant eventually became employed by Ms. VanderSant to protect her from agents dispatched by her family to retrieve her. She objected to much of how Durant and Griggs conducted themselves, until armed men came within a breath of seizing her and her newfound protectors killed them.

They lost contact with her for some time after that.

## Odessa

After all the chaos of his years, Durant found himself in familiar terrain of Odessa. He, again by sheer happenstance, has reunited with Emily after helping save her life from a cougar attack with the help of new found acquaintance Sheriff Thomas Hoop. Currently he resides around Strawberry as it is quiet and peaceful.