Stands 5'10", lean of build with dirty red hair, a scraggly beard of a lighter shade, brown eyes.

Pike wears a double-breasted white leather swallow tail coat, which resembles his Civil War frock coat over a nondescript grey shirt. For trousers, he wears Mexican style Vaquero trousers of a supple dyed red roughout leather, with silver buttons running the length of his legs.

He wears crossed gun belts with a pair of 4 3/4 .44 Smith and Wesson Russian pistols.

Character Traits

• Fair and honest. (+)
• Tough when trouble comes. (-/+)
• True to his given word or handshake. Rides for the brand. (+)
• When forced is merciless. (-)

General Personality

Barnabas Pike earned the nic-name "Pronto" from his oldest brother Sam due to his quick temper. However, somewhere along the line the war and subsequent life experiences seasoned his temper, enabling him to hold it in check.

Though good with his guns, he never killed a man he had not forewarned.

Known as a top hand, but also for his tenacity in all matters. A man to have on your side when push comes to shove. However, he can be friendly. Actually responsive in a positive manner to those he considers friends, which historically has been few. The other side of that coin would be that Pronto could be lethal when called upon to defend his friends, the man he rides for or the company that employs him without hesitation.

Barnabas "Pronto" Pike

Present

• Kalispell Deputy Marshal
• Rancher, Rocking P Ranch, Kalispell Montana
• Owner of stock in the Comstock United Corporation, Virginia City, Nevada
• Partner in the Copper Queen Mining Corporation, Kalispell, MT

Other Jobs

• Dishwasher at the Lickskillet Café, as needed.

• Pike is deadly with either handgun.
• Above average cowhand
• Excellent horseman
• Top teamster
• Above average tracke
• Cow Puncher
• Former Pony Express Rider
• Former Confederate Calvary Officer
• Former Texas Ranger "Minuteman,"
• Former Shotgun Guard, Hired Gun.

Parents

• Father: John Henry Pike ~ deceased
• Mother: Martha Anne Jackson (Pike) ~ Deceased

Brother(s)

• Samual Dirk Pike
• Silas James Pike
• Sister: Maryanne Marie Pike

Pronto's parents were killed by Indians, his brothers and sister had vanished upon his return from the war.

Non-Familial Connections

Friends

• None at this time, new in town.

Foes

• None at this time, but, it's early yet.

1843 ~ 1853

Barnabas was born into a family of five, a sister a year older than he, two brothers, one four, Silas, and one six, Samuel. The Pikes had a fair-sized ranch outside Crockett Texas where John Pike raised cattle and farmed some. Barnabas' childhood was about normal for the time period, with the exception of his temper which showed up at about the age of five.

He was in the saddle by six, and a fair hand by the age of ten. Fighting Indians. He was fearless, fighting his brothers regularly, most times in defense of his sister, who he loved dearly.

1854 ~ 1859

During this period Pronto learned more about weapons handling and usage against not just the Comanche and Apache, but desperados from both sides of the border. Also during this span, it was becoming clear, Barnabas Pike was a rider to be reckoned with. He was winning most of the races he entered. And, at local contests his roping, and bronc riding skills were hard to beat. Aside from his temper, he was becoming the man his father and brothers wanted. But there was trouble brewing, trouble that would divide a nation, and many a family.

1860

Talk of secession was spreading throughout the South. John Pike was against the war solely because taking the men meant the homestead would be left undefended. Neither warring tribes were at bay. But for seventeen-year-old Barnabas Pike, it was exciting, the chance for fame and glory.

1861 ~ 1865

Of an evening, Barnabas rode out to meet a group of young men headed for Saint Louis Missouri with the plan to join the Confederate army. But life has a way of changing plans for folks. Seeing a sign in a window advertising for wiry young men to ride for the fledgling Pony Express.

Within three days he was riding out of Saint Louis for a place called San Francisco California. A long arduous task of riding, changing mounts, and riding. Day and night, in any weather. But he loved it. Even the close calls with hostiles.

On his return trip, disaster struck, outside Carson City, Utah Territory, when his mount tumbled down a ravine and Pronto was seriously injured. He hobbled into a settlement called Mormon Station (Genoa) where he recuperated and when fully mended, returned to Texas to join the Confederate Army. He ran into some recruits from the 8th Texas Cavalry, known as Terry's Texas Rangers, and immediately fell in with them, joining the next morning.

The Terry Rangers distinguished themselves at the battles of Shiloh (April 6–8, 1862), Perryville (October 8, 1862), Murfreesboro (December 31, 1862–January 2, 1863), Chickamauga (September 19–20, 1863), and Chattanooga (November 24–25, 1863); in the Atlanta campaign (May 1–September 2, 1864); and as raiders in Kentucky and Tennessee under Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Rangers were also part of the inadequate force under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston that attempted to slow Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's inexorable "march to the sea" during the final months of the war. Terry's Rangers delivered what was probably the last charge of the Army of Tennessee at the battle of Bentonville (March 19–20, 1865). Rather than surrender with the rest of Johnston's army at Durham Station, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865, 158 of the reported 248 survivors of the regiment slipped through Union lines to join other Confederates yet in the field. With the total collapse of the Southern cause, however, the Terry Rangers drifted home as individuals and in small groups, having never officially surrendered.

1865 ~ 1875

1865: Returning to Texas after the war he found the family ranch burned and his parents killed by Comanches. Though he could well have restarted the ranch, Pronto drifted and joined the Texas Rangers as a "Minuteman." He took a job as a shotgun guard with Waddell and Mitchell, freighters out of Lampasas, Texas.

Tired of that in 1866 he drifted west into New Mexico and Arizona working as a cowboy as he went. He hired on as a wrangler for a small ranch embattled against a much larger spread which lasted some three months before he rode out, after shooting three men for rustling cattle. He signed on in Colorado, then Montana, and finally Utah as a wrangler with a gun, and all of these riding jobs were concerned with range wars. He worked in Utah for grub, ammunition, and a saddle. Then he rode the grub line south into Nevada.

By the fall of 1870 Pronto arrived in Virginia City Nevada. He hired on with the Sheriff's Office as a deputy. The job was all but uneventful, at least in contrast to his recent past. He met Julia Dey who taught fifth grade at the 4th Ward School at the south end of town. He resided for a brief period at the International Hotel before obtaining a cabin just south of the Divide, an area between Virginia City and Gold Hill. A quarter of a mile from the school where Miss Dey taught.

He and Julia became more than friends and were engaged on Christmas Eve of 1871. Their plans were to marry in the late spring, but pneumonia took her life in mid-February. Pronto stayed on and developed a taste for poker. It was during one of these forays at the Delta Saloon that his luck changed dramatically.

Holding three deuces, Pronto Pike bucked the odds and won a one-third share in the Yellow Jacket Mine. Knowing that the Yellow Jacket employed "security men," it would only be a short time before they came calling to reclaim his one-third ownership. He registered his share and went directly to the Yellow Jacket offices in Gold Hill, where he laid out his warnings to Captain T.G. Taylor, the mine superintendent. Pike continued to work as a deputy and the Yellow Jacket quietly paid his one-third share into the Wells Fargo Bank. By the middle of March Pronto had strapped on his chaps, turned in his badge, and rode off to the west and the promise of a new start in California.

California was not the future he had hoped for and so he rode the grub line southeast into Arizona where his knack for finding range problems got him hired on with a small outfit outside of Tombstone, an up-and-coming mining camp.

Pronto's guns came into play and on several occasions left a pair of outlaws dead and three others wounded. He became a marked man over the incident and was on guard for the two-&-half months he stayed on.

1874 ~ Present

Pike drifted north again. Retracing his back trail to Virginia City. He stayed on the Comstock long enough to visit Julia's grave, pay his respects around town then down to Gold Hill. Captain Taylor received him cordially and tipped him of a big strike in Montana. But he had no desire to ride that far north, but Captain Taylor also told him of an up-and-coming quiet little town in that same Montana, Kalispell. Pronto turned his horse north.

He courted and Married Emeline Harris Blakesley

Education Details

Possible the 8th grade

Languages Spoken

• English
• some Spanish
• Apache
• Comanche

Animals

A hammerhead roan, Chestnut with white flecks

Hammerhead - A stubborn mean-spirited horse

Roan - Having a chestnut, bay, or sorrel coat thickly sprinkled with white or gray

His 1/3 share from the Yellow Jacket mine paid handsomely. And the payments, now transferred to the Kalispell bank, made Barnabas Pike a wealthy man by any standard, yet the wealth failed to change him.

Character Concept: Pronto Pike, gunfight reenactor. Partially stolen from Louis L'Amour's character of the same name in the novel 'Hanging Woman Creek.' The first one of his novels that I read.