The Ultimate Werewolf by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SOUTH OF

OREGON CITY

Pat Murphy

▼▼▼

Reynal passed Jem the bottle and he took a long drink. The warmth of the whiskey chased away the chill of the September evening. The two men leaned against the split-rail fence of the corral, just beyond the circle of torchlight where the fiddler played and the farmers danced on the hard-packed dirt of the street.

“There’s a pretty one,” Reynal said, watching a young woman whirl past in the arms of a young man. Her blonde hair was twisted into curls and she wore a blue satin ribbon around her neck. Her face shone in the torchlight, paler than any man in the town. “Ah, she’s a beauty.” As she passed, Jem caught a whiff of cloves and cinnamon, spices the women used in lieu of perfume.

Jem did not understand these white women. Over the scratching of the fiddle, Jem heard feminine laughter—the giggles of young women who had traveled with their families to farm this new land—and he froze, fearing this unfamiliar territory as another man might fear the rapids of the Columbia. Jem took another swig of whiskey and returned the bottle to Reynal.

Jem’s father had been a trapper at Fort Vancouver. His mother had been Cayuse—a princess of her tribe, to hear his father tell it. But his father had been a liar, and Jem hadn’t put much stock in what he said. His mother had died of measles when he was five, and Jem had grown up wild, eating at the trappers’ table at Fort Vancouver and cared for by the trappers’ squaws.

Jem’s father had died in 1848—he caught an arrow between the shoulder blades in one of many skirmishes with the Cayuse. Jem was sorry for it—his father had always treated him well—but Jem was a man by then, seventeen years old and ready to live his own life. He spent a few years trapping beaver and selling the pelts to Hudson’s Bay Company as his father had before him.

In 1851, Jem decided to settle. He built a cabin in a pretty valley three days south of Oregon City. He had a few head of cattle and the game was plentiful enough. He had come to town for a taste of human company and lingered for the dance. But after a day of the company of Reynal and the other trappers, he was ready to escape to the solitude of his cabin.

“Look there,” Reynal said, lifting the hand that held the bottle to point unsteadily. “There she is. I heard about her.”

Jem glanced in the direction that Reynal was pointing. On the other side of the corral, a slim young man in a broad-brimmed hat leaned against the railing. “What do you mean?”

Reynal leaned close to speak in a drunken whisper. “That’s a woman. She dresses like a man.” Reynal shook his head, scandalized. His eyes were bloodshot and he stank of whiskey. “She came riding into town yesterday on an Indian pony and allowed as how she crossed the plains by herself.

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.