The Ghost Dancers by Wesley Ellis

Author:Wesley Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Even if we were just guessing, we guessed right,” Jessie said. She gestured toward the dark, straight horizontal lines that had appeared suddenly a few minutes after they started up the low ridge the wagon was now mounting. “Those lines are rooftops, or I’m missing my guess.”

“There’s no guesswork involved,” Ki said. “They’re houses, all right, even if there aren’t many of them.”

“Houses close together that way mean a town, and a town means a store of some kind. We just happened to miss it when we were heading for the fort. If we’d taken the other fork on that trail where it split, we’d’ve come to the town before we reached Fort Supply. But it’s strange that it doesn’t show on our map.”

“I’d imagine some careless mapmaker just happened to leave it off,” Jessie suggested. “Now that we can see a bit more, I’d guess there are only a dozen or so houses. ”

“If there are that many,” Ki agreed. “But we’ll know for sure after we top this rise.”

They sat in silence as the wagon moved along. Each yard gained gave them a more complete view of the settlement. Jessie’s guess that the town had only a few more than a dozen houses proved to be very nearly correct, for as they topped the rise and could get a clear view of the tiny huddle of dwellings on the downslope they counted eleven houses. Five of them huddled closely together along the road; the remainder were scattered on the downslope. Between the houses they could see the weathered remains of foundations where at an earlier time other houses had stood.

“There certainly isn’t much left of the town,” Jessie remarked as the team started down the gentle slope.

Ki was pulling on the brake to keep the wagon from rolling downslope onto the horses. After he’d found the balance point where brakes and horsepower were equalized, he turned to Jessie and replied, “It’s easy to guess what happened. A lot of the western forts were closed down when the war ended. It’s possible that Fort Supply was one of them, and people moved away.”

“I hope there’ll be a store of some kind here,” Jessie said. “We’re going to have to buy food, and after my little run-in with that Indian agent, I don’t think we’d be welcomed at the agency’s commissary.”

“That could be embarassing,” Ki nodded. “Because I have a feeling that Rafe Corbett would order the agency’s commissary not to sell us anything, and the closest place where we found to buy supplies on the way here would be a two-day haul each way.”

They’d been moving steadily while they talked, and now the wagon was almost abreast of the first house in the ghostly half-abandoned town. There was no one visible around it, and the ground in front of the narrow porch and on all sides of the dwelling was barren.

“There’s certainly no reason to stop here,” Ki said. “The place looks totally deserted, Jessie.”

“Not quite.” Jessie gestured ahead as she spoke.

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.