Merkabah Rider_High Planes Drifter by Edward M. Erdelac

Author:Edward M. Erdelac [Erdelac, Edward M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

They squealed at the biting cold, and shouldered to be near him and take part in his unnatural warmth.

The snow swirled around Tooms and cut into his face, but he did not flinch. The wind whipped at his long gray coat and tried to knock the broad brimmed hat off his head like a rambunctious schoolboy. Tooms was not amused. He didn’t shiver and he didn’t blink, even as the white flecks scraped at him like icy grains of iron birdshot, desperately trying to penetrate the slot thin slashes of his dark eyes.

One of the lagging little shoats behind him gave a high, shrill cry and stopped in its tracks. It nosed the snow up to its belly, then shuddered and collapsed. Several of the larger hogs circled around it and began to worry it immediately, tearing its wind-burned flesh.

Tooms did not stop. In all, there were about thirteen pigs following him. Blue hogs, wire-haired shoats, and pot-bellied pigs, their pink skin flushed red from the winter storm. They scuttled along in a milling herd like piper’s rats, their swirling breath like the smoke of thirteen little fires. Tooms did not wait for the ones who fell behind. They would catch up or they would die.

Though the storm would surely impede him, it could never stop him. He walked on, letting his long legs break holes in the dunes of bright white and piston methodically, carrying him surely northward. He did not hasten, nor did he slow. His breath puffed like the steam of a black engine. The big Whitworth rifle was propped over his right shoulder, while his left arm hung loose at his side. Broken manacles, and their long lengths of chain, rasped metallically and cut shallow furrows in the tramped snow, first one, then the other, monotonously. Their iron was cold against his wrists, yet he did not hug himself for warmth, as if he disdained comfort.

The storm assailed him with another gust, pleading with him to turn aside from his course. He shrugged it off as he would an entreating woman clinging to his greatcoat.

There was killing to be done.

* * * *

“Who is Medgar Tooms?” The Rider asked. He felt cold suddenly, although it was warm enough in the little cabin, and fever sweat trickled down between his shoulders.

“I heard you before I saw you,” the old man smiled faintly. “All them doodads you got on. The clinkin’. I thought it was him. Medgar Tooms,” said the old man, wistful, as he ladled more broth.

He looked up at the ceiling then, and closed his eyes.

“And they went into the country of the Gadarenes,” the old man recited. “And when He came up out of the ship, immediately there met Him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.”

The Rider put his elbows on the rickety table. He ran the back of his hand across his sweating forehead. He was not overly familiar with the Christian Gospel, though he had read it.

Still the old

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