(I intend to have this available through Amazon in a few days. I've been working on it hard, and it's taken me longer than I expected. But I've been having a real blast writing this fifth book in the Colter Farrow series. I started it back home in Minnesota and I'm doing the final polish here in southeast Arizona. Here, Colter returns home to the Lunatic Mountains. Only, much has changed, and a war rocks the land...)
The first front of the
Lunatics, their flame-shaped pediments of towering gray rock streaked with snow
that glowed in the high-altitude sunshine, stood up proud and tall on their aproning
pedestal of blue-green forest. In the lens-clear light, the crags appeared
close enough for Colter to reach out and grab.
But even after three hours
of steady riding, they appeared only slightly larger than they had from the
outskirts of Hodges. They did, however, look altogether different, for the
westward-angling sun now stretched purple shadows into long flues and fissures
that hadn’t been visible in the sun’s direct gaze. Now the angling light
revealed precariously balanced boulders, slab-sided rock outcroppings,
church-like steeples, and steep talus slides over which the dark specks of
birds of prey—eagles or hawks or both--circled as they hunted for their evening meals.
As Colter and David
continued riding, their horses now snorting and blowing as they lunged up into
the lower foothills tufted with forest, the mountain shadows slid over them
suddenly.
Just like that, day became night.
Just as suddenly, the air
turned brisk, and it smelled of the cold rock jutting above. The craggy peaks
were now hidden from view as the riders ascended the forested pedestal atop
which the Lunatic Range was balanced.
Colter drew Northwest to a
halt at the crest of a steep stone dyke that poked out of the cedar- and
pine-peppered shoulder of the mountain, like a broken rib. He curveted the
horse, sitting sideways to the mountain, and stared back out over the broad
valley from which they’d come.
The town of Hodges was a distant brown speck to
the southeast, nestled in a bowl in the jade valley. Colter wouldn’t have been
able to see the settlement at all if not for the diminishing rays of the
tumbling sun painting it copper.
Above him, Colter could
hear the muffled roar of the wind blowing against the natural stone battlements.
Here where he sat Northwest, the air was still. He heard a faint crackling and
turned to gaze over his right shoulder.
A heard of mule deer,
likely having scented the riders, bounded across a far shoulder of the
mountain, just below timberline, the younger, smaller yearlings following the
does while a big stag with a massive rack and yoke-like shoulders stood on the
incline above, at the edge of the trees, gazing back toward the source of
possible danger.
Home.
The wash of sunset colors
across the sky. The tang of pine and cold rock. The distant roar of the wind,
the occasional screech of hunting raptors. Every cloud and tree shadow, the
deep green and purple shadows of the maze of cliffs and mesas jutting around
him. Every breath of the air against his face…
Everything whispered that
single, comforting, reassuring word in his ears and warmed his blood:
Home.
Colter turned his head to
gaze out along his back trail once more, his eyes tracing the slender purple
ribbon of the ancient Indian trail that he and David had started following when
they’d left the stage road many miles back. He could see only parts of that old
trail carved years ago by an unknown people—at least, an indigenous people
unknown to Colter.
Only horses could
negotiate that ancient trace, which undulated up and over and around all of the
many hills and valleys and small canyons and haystack buttes, around or through
small bosques and mottes of scrub trees and brush—all the stuff one didn’t even
notice until you traveled over and around such obstacles yourself, until this
country closed around you and swallowed you, made you feel at once very small
and insignificant, very whole and very free.
Alive.
“Hey, Colter—you all
right?”
The redhead turned to see
David sitting the claybank maybe forty feet up the slope, at the very edge of
the spruces and tamaracks darkening behind him and from which came the
exhilarating smell of forest duff and balsam.
“I couldn’t be better.”
