<a href="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/?attachment_id=12396" rel="attachment wp-att-12396"><img src="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/How-The-West-Was-Won-500x332.jpg" alt="" title="How the West Was One This Land Press by Natasha Ball" width="500" height="332" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-12396" /></a>

My latest in <em>This Land</em>.

The sign at Armstrong Bank of Pawnee read 4 o’clock and 96 degrees. My mouth went dry when I heard shots ring out from up the street, at the intersection lined by an old Rexall Drugs and the green awning of a Subway, behind a marching Boy Scout troop carrying an American flag. 

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Then I saw the gun, held aloft by a cowboy on horseback, riding along the yellow dotted line in the center of the road. A small crowd gathered, sprawling on the curbs and quilts under trees. A man announced the parade from a white gazebo, where pleated American flags hung from the railing.

The Pawnee Bill Wild West Show starts this way each year. It’s the overture to the reenactment of one of the three largest Wild West shows in the world, staged just west of Pawnee on US 64, at Pawnee Bill Ranch. 

<a href="http://dowhat.thislandpress.com/11/14/2012/how-the-west-was-one/" target="_blank">Read the whole thing at Do What</a>.