GrimRiders by Tim Curran

Author:Tim Curran [Curran, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He supposed that maybe it bothered him more than he was ever willing to admit. He hadn't seen much of his niece, Anna Marie, as she grew to womanhood. Her mother, Katherine, was Pepper's favorite sister—he had six others, all deceased but one. Maybe in retrospect, he should've spent less time on the trail and more time with her, the only real family he had. And especially after her husband George died of consumption. Katherine was a capable woman and she'd continued to run their dry goods store in Phoenix, but she was soft as butter at heart. Anna Marie walked all over her. Had Katherine been a rug she could not have absorbed more boot prints. Anna Marie needed a strong male figure in her life, but she had none. Katherine had not remarried. Pepper remembered, even as a little girl, Anna Marie had been very confident, very headstrong, very sure of herself in every way. She was smart, but she was also wily. And when she became a young woman with a plentitude of natural beauty and charm, boys and men fawned over her. She had something they desired greatly and she put it to use.

She was wild. She was hungry for something more than a storekeeper's life.

And maybe that's what had fascinated her about Nathan Partridge. For, if Katherine was to be believed, Partridge could not necessarily be blamed, for Anna Marie pursued him shamelessly. Katherine was even of the mind that they had had relations before marriage.

Pepper never doubted that a bit. No more than he doubted that Partridge was the first. His niece was not a whore, she was no slut in his way of thinking, but she was independent and free-thinking.

No, he hadn't liked her marrying Nathan Partridge—him being the son of old Black Jake and something of an outlaw himself—but, even had Pepper been present at their courtship, he couldn't have stopped it. Once that girl set her mind to something, mountains trembled and seas divided.

This is what Pepper was thinking about as he rode up into the hills to the ruins of the Partridge farmhouse. He'd been up there when he first arrived, but only for the most cursory examination. Hoping, maybe, that he'd find the escaped convict. Now he returned.

He rode down the snaking overgrown road through stands of spruce. Birds were singing and squirrels chittering in the trees. Butterflies roamed the meadows and a buck broke cover suddenly and made for the deep thickets.

He found the farm much as Partridge had, neglected, going back to earth.

The barn was collapsing. The fields thick with wild grasses. The windmill tower rusting. And the loghouse itself nothing but a collection of blackened timbers and boards. Only the chimney stood straight and tall.

Pepper tethered his horse to the hitching post and struck out on foot.

Smoking a cigarette, he casually patrolled the grounds and took it all in—the smells, the sounds, the sights, the very feel of utter desolation. He could almost sense all the

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