Bloody Summer by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman [Gilman, George G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction, Fiction, Brigands and robbers, Westerns, Dakota Indians
ISBN: 9780450015472
Google: pOJsHNypPEQC
Amazon: 0523002939
Barnesnoble: 0523002939
Goodreads: 3025908
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 1973-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE Creek flowed by turns rapidly and sluggishly from a source in the far distant north west so that the going was alternately flat and graded against Edge. But the chestnut mare was a younger and stronger animal than both the horses he had used to reach the town and she seemed to derive some form of equine satisfaction from widening the distance between her and the smoky warmth of the livery.

After a series of catty-cornered moves among a grotesque area of outcrops five miles from town, to ensure that he was not being followed, Edge allowed the mare to make her own pace, merely bringing her back on to the correct course whenever she took it into her head to wander away from the river bank.

Although the morning became brighter with the pale yellow of winter sun and the frost melted away into broad patches of wetness, it did not become noticeably warmer. Edge ate breakfast as he rode, breaking up the meat loaf in his cold-stiffened fingers. When Summer was lost amid its surrounding hills, the clear light served only to emphasize the empty wasteland formed by the eroded terrain..But although it was really one vast plain, it was not flat like the prairies of his native Iowa. It rolled in hummocks and dips, forming an erratic arrangement of convolutions like an ocean fossilized at the height of a storm.

The creek followed a line of least resistance through this Godforsaken stretch of country and since he stayed close to it, Edge was constantly in a long, meandering depression. He well knew that one band of Teton Dakotas had been gunning for whites and judged it a safe bet that there were more scalp-hunting parties in the area. So he avoided halting to boil coffee and even as he ate he kept a constant surveillance for Sioux sign.

From time to time he uncorked the whiskey bottle, enjoying the warmth which the raw liquid spread through his chest and across his stomach.

After two hours of easy riding, in which he covered a little more than ten miles, the creek narrowed suddenly and the water turned white as it was forced through a shallow gorge. Half a mile further on it disappeared underground. Edge halted his mount and took a long pull at the whiskey bottle as he contemplated the possibilities. Then he urged the mare up the incline of the nearest high ground and shaded his slit eyes with a hand as he surveyed the area ahead. He saw only another view of emptiness with not a single patch of brush or scrub to indicate the underground course of the water.

All he could do was to accept the stableman’s directions at face value and continue to head westwards. He came down off the skyline and now had to take a firmer control on the reins since the mare had no clearly discernible course to follow.

The creek stayed below ground for more than two miles and then reappeared as little more than a gentle stream trickling along a trench at the centre of a broad bed.

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