The Man From Nowhere by Joseph A. West

Author:Joseph A. West [West, Joseph A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451227416
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2009-07-06T22:00:00+00:00

The day was dying as Oates headed back toward the mesa.

Only when he left the trees and rode across open ground was he aware of the enormous breadth of the sky. Shooting stars were falling to earth in a constant trail of sparks, and Oates thought that if he held his breath and was quiet enough, he’d hear them thump onto the grass and lie there, smoking like cinders.

Around him as he urged the paint forward at a trot, coyotes were talking in the darkness and once an owl swooped over his head and vanished among the moon-struck pines like a gray ghost.

There was an eerie, ethereal cast to the night and Oates felt he was being watched by eyes hidden in the trees that, full of moonlight, gleamed like opals.

He wiped damp palms on his pants, thinking of ha’ants and boogermen. Oates forced himself to smile. Fear has a way of making the wolf bigger than he is and it quickly changes the man back to the boy.

He had no reason to fear the night . . . only the all-too-mortal humans who stalked its caves of darkness.

The mesa revealed itself as a massive, hulking shape that blacked out a galaxy of stars. The moon bathed the land in silver light, but created shadows everywhere.

It took Oates ten frustrating minutes to find the faint thread of the switchback game trail, but once he did, the sure-footed mustang climbed willingly enough.

He reached the summit, let his stunned eyes read the scene before him, then swung out of the saddle and tried to piece together the disaster that had befallen his companions.

A blackened, burned-out cedar was his first clue. The tree had been set ablaze, accidentally it seemed, because the ashes of the small fire that could have caused it lay close to the trunk.

The blazing tree would have been a fiery beacon that would have been seen for miles. Had it attracted the attention of Darlene McWilliams and her riders?

Oates looked around and the flutter of something white caught his attention.

A sheet of paper had been pinned down by a rock. Next to it, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, were meat and bread. Oates made a sandwich and as he chewed, he held the paper up to the bright moonlight. Only one word had been scrawled on the paper: HEARTBREAK.

But under that, Sammy Tatum had made a quick sketch that showed five riders on a pine-edged trail.

Five riders!

Oates looked more closely. The three women were obvious, sitting their saddles with their skirts tucked up over the knees. But there were two men. One was Sammy, riding like a sack of grain, the other a tall man on a horse that the boy had shaded black.

The mystery man had seen the blazing tree and had persuaded the others to leave the mesa, probably pointing out that if he’d seen the fire, so might Darlene McWilliams.

They were now headed for Heartbreak, wherever that might be.

Oates finished the sandwich, then realized he was dog tired.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.