This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mayo.

Come sit by the fire while still it burns bread. It'll tell you a tale in its flickering light.

Of an outlaw, a man named Elmer McGurdy

sent to his maker when he was barely past 30.

But not to his grave. That's a twist in the story. A tale that is twistful and wistful and gory.

So let's sit and eat the stars on some cool desert night.

And I'll ask that you trust that I've got my facts right.

As the yarn that I spin is just full on bonkers, like an old West saloon in the middle of yonkers.

But such are the ways that these stories go.

Tales of the West that start true and then grow.

Stretch by each teller, each adlib, each riff,

till they're taller than redwoods and woven with myth.

So I pledge here by the fire before I begin.

That I will try to honor the real man within.

McGurdy was born in Washington, Maine. His mother was single and gave him her name.

But told him that she wasn't his mother, that he was the child of the wife of her brother.

She was worried about the way folks would talk if they knew he had been born out of wedlock.

But the secret we're told when he finally found out.

Send him off to Walo and booze and self-doubt.

And he grew as a salon and ordinary man, who wandered through life with no purpose or plan.

He worked for some years as a minor for the lead, a cruel and hard business that sickens your head.

He could not hold the job he was drunk and unwell, and thought he'd turn things around and go west for a spell.

...