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Background
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Pre History
Dawson had been a loner most of his life; he had never known his mother, and his father was shot by a highwayman when Dawson was fifteen. He left his native Scotland soon after the funeral and eventually became a professional gambler traveling from town to town and city to city.
By the time Dawson was twenty-five years old, he was infamous throughout Europe's casinos and gambling houses as a gambler who could break the house's bank and devastate its bar in a brawl, all in one evening.
Dawson had an aversion to firearms and relied on his fists to settle the disputes that often arose from his frequent winning streaks. His fighting style was a unique blend of martial arts and barroom brawling techniques.
Tall tales of the Wild West had always intrigued Dawson and news of high-stakes gambling being created by the recent Gold Rush drew Dawson to the untamed West.
He wound up in a mining boom town and was unwittingly sucked into a confrontation between the townsfolk and a powerful but ruthless landowner named Homer Jenkins.
Just as Dawson arrived in town, he saw a man setting fire to the Sheriff's office. The arsonist ran when he knew that he had been spotted and Dawson was about to give chase when he heard a cry for help coming from within the burning building. Dawson pulled the semi-conscious Sheriff from the inferno, but it was too late, the Sheriff was dying.
The Sheriff's last request was that Dawson become a deputy long enough to catch the arsonist, Homer Jenkins' son, Bill Jenkins, and bring him to trial. Bill Jenkins had burned the Sheriff's office in order to escape being arrested for a slew of recent crimes and the dying man knew that the townsfolk would be too afraid to form a posse in order to capture the outlaw son since the elder Jenkins controlled so much of the town.
Dawson agreed and the Sheriff pinned a star onto the Scotsman's vest just before he died. Dawson captured Bill Jenkins, but was ambushed on his way to the makeshift courthouse and strung up by Homer Jenkins before the circuit judge could hear the case. Homer and his son escaped prosecution because no one in town would testify against them.
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