Passin' Through
Chapter One
BEHIND ME A noose hung empty and before me the land was wild.
I rode a blue horse to the trail's divide and tossed a coin to
choose my way. The coin fell left and I turned the roan, but doubt
rode my shoulders like an evil thing.
The rimrock broke and the trail dipped through the crack, and my
horse picked a careful way to the bottom, down the earth and
rockslide that lay below the notch. Sweat stung my neck where the
rope burns were, for the flesh was torn and raw. At the bottom of
the slide I turned left again and the roan moved eagerly forward.
There would be riders behind me now, eager to hang me again, for
they were fierce and bitter men with hatred for me, a stranger.
Yet when had I not been a stranger, riding alone?
There had been nothing ahead to look to, and nothing behind I wanted
to remember, so I'd headed west into new country simply because it
was new country. Wild and reckless and hard I was, and quick with a
gun to shoot, with a face honed down by sun, wind, and hardship, and
eyes, some said, like chunks of blue ice.
When I came upon them standing beside the trail I wa ... read full excerpt from: Passin' Through ebook
