Ralph Compton Blood on the Prairie (The Gunfighter Series) - Softcover

Healey, Tony; Compton, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593333896 ISBN 13: 9780593333891

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

An infamous gunslinger finds his vow to reform put to the test in this exciting installment in Ralph Compton's bestselling Gunfighter series.

Twenty years ago, Sherman Knowles was notorious as a fearsome shootist with an itchy trigger finger and a hot temper. Now he resides in peaceful Elam Hollow, his gunslinging days far behind him. He hasn't fired a weapon in over a decade and is happy for that to be the end of the matter.
 
Then he receives a visit from his brother's widow, asking for his help in finding his kidnapped niece, and Sherman is left with no choice but to pick up his guns once more and head out into the wilderness to rescue her before it's too late. But you cannot escape the past, and Sherman soon finds the ghosts of yesterday waiting for him on the bleak, unforgiving prairie...

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Rider series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.

Tony Healey is the author of the Harper and Lane mystery series, featuring Detective Jane Harper and Ida Lane, a survivor with a gift for reading the dead. The Harper and Lane series has been favorably reviewed by authors Blake Crouch, Mark Edwards, and by Publishers Weekly. Hope's Peak and Storm's Edge are available from Thomas & Mercer. Healey independently published the crime novel Not for Us, the young-adult thriller Past Dark, the science fiction series Far from Home, and is currently at work on a Western.

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Chapter One

On his last visit to Broken Bow, Sherman's brother, Jed, had been in full health. Tall, broad shouldered and lean from years of working the land, Jed possessed the kind of wiry strength only a man who worked with his hands possessed.

In his travels, Sherman had encountered all kinds. Men who looked dumber than an ox but were gifted with a genius intellect; women whose features were hardened by tough lives and tough conditions but could sing with such sweetness as to make even the most hard-hearted son of a gun weep with sorrow.

His brother, Jed, was just so deceptive. The man possessed not an ounce of fat on his entire body; he was all bone, muscle and sinew. The last time Sherman had seen him, Jed's hair had been beginning to thin at the crown, but that was the only thing that aged him. He looked far younger than his years.

That was not the case now.

The sickness had drained him. It had aged him, hollowing out his cheeks, darkening his once bright eyes. His hair had turned gray and all but fallen out. His once strong and sturdy frame had become little more than a withered husk. Jed was all paper-thin, dry skin stretched tight over bone. His hands, which had once been big and viselike, were elongated claws that could barely grip a spoon with which to eat-and Jed had stopped doing that three days ago. Sherman looked at his own hand, and his prosthetic appendage. The hook where his right hand had once been. Our hands tell our story, he thought.

Sherman peeked in at Jed through the open doorway. His brother lay on a cot, sleeping soundly, hands clasped on the chasm of his stomach. He'd grown so thin that his top row of teeth jutted out, pronounced in a way that Sherman had never seen before.

Hattie took his hat and jacket from him. "He's been that way a few days now. Just sleeping."

"Will he know I'm here?" Sherman asked.

"Oh, sure. He'll wake up and talk to you," Hattie assured him. "Just don't expect too much. As you can imagine . . . he tires ever so easily now."

Sherman watched her busy herself. "I want to say something-"

"No need to say it, Sherman. I know, and I appreciate it."

But he felt the need to explain himself. To let her know, whether she wished to hear it or not, that he appreciated her caring for Jed. He appreciated the dignity she'd afforded him as the sickness took hold and reduced him to his present state. "Hattie . . ."

"Please, don't."

Sherman pressed on, undeterred. The whole ride from Elam Hollow, he'd been thinking about what he'd say to his sister-in-law. How to express his gratitude to her. "Hattie, I just want to say, what you've done for Jed these past couple of months, you've gone above and beyond, you really have-"

Hattie shook her head. "No, no, no. Not here, not now. There will be a time, but that time is not now. I can't do this now."

"Okay," Sherman said softly.

Hattie looked through the open doorway to the angular shape of her husband flat out on the cot, breathing shallowly as he slept. "Whatever I did, it wasn't enough to stop him dying, was it? So I'm not sure I can stand any gratitude or platitudes just yet. Because we all failed him, even God. Ain't nobody was able to stop it happening, just as there isn't anything in heaven or earth gonna stop what's coming, either."

"I know." Sherman bowed his head. He glanced back at his brother. Sherman hadn't yet crossed the threshold of the door and stepped foot in the room. A part of him didn't want to, either. "It almost seems cruel to wake him."

"It does. But you will not get another chance. The doctor told me as much this morning."

"Really?"

Hattie folded her arms and sighed. "Really."

"Did he say how long?"

Jed's wife sighed. "Maybe by the morning."

The prediction made Sherman's blood run cold. How many people had Jed's doctor seen die before he had been able to make such a prediction? Before he had gotten a feel for how long patients had left before they met their Maker?

Sherman changed tack. "How is Annie getting on?"

"Like a young woman who is watching her father die," Hattie told him.

The brutality of her words, the sharpness of her tongue, made Sherman flinch. He had always admired and respected Hattie. And he'd always feared her, too. But she had done everything she possibly could for Jed. His brother couldn't have asked for a better wife. And for all her hard edges, Hattie was a warm, loving woman. When Jed finally passed, Hattie would be inconsolable, Sherman knew.

Hattie looked at him. "Are you going to go in there and talk to your brother or not?"

"Yes."

"What're you waiting for, then? Time is wasting away."

Sherman considered this. He didn't seem able to step over the threshold. Perhaps because once he did, there was no going back. He could smell the unmistakable stink of death coming from within the room and the reality of what was about to happen to his brother sank in with awful finality. It took every ounce of strength and determination he possessed to enter the room and stand at his brother's bedside.

"Jed?"

His brother barely stirred. Sherman leaned in, placed his hand over Jed's.

"Brother, I'm here."

Jed stirred, cleared his throat. His eyes opened lazily and it took him several seconds to recognize Sherman. Then he attempted to sit up, but Sherman insisted he stay as he was.

"Don't get up."

"Brother?" Jed croaked, eyes widening, the whites turned nicotine yellow. He lay back against the pillow, visibly exhausted. "What're you doing here?"

"Came to see you, Jed."

Jedediah Knowles looked up at the ceiling. "Because I'm dying."

Sherman thought how to soften the impact of what he had to say, how to make it easier on Jed. But there was no way of breaking it to him that would have been any less cruel than the harsh reality of his diagnosis. The ticking clock that now existed between both men. Counting down every second of time that was already spent.

"Jed, I don't think there's long."

His brother swallowed. "I know."

"When I heard you were sick, I got to thinking of the old times," Sherman said. "You know, when we were young. How we grew up. How we went our separate ways."

"I seem to recall one of us choosing a direction and the other deciding to fly wherever the wind took him."

Sherman said, "Sure sounds familiar. But we always got on, didn't we?"

Jed smiled weakly. "Have you come to clear your conscience, Sherman?"

"Not at all."

"All right, yes, we got on. We had our ups and downs, like everyone. But I am mighty proud of the way you turned things around in the end. The way you saw sense. It just took you a while, is all."

"Sure did," Sherman said.

Jed continued. "Nobody knows how to live, Sherman. You just have to pick a road. I picked mine and was lucky to have what I have. Others weren't so lucky, which I guess is just a case of the odds stacked against them. Like whatever this is that's killing me. Ain't nobody or nothing to blame, it was just my time, brother. It was just my time."

Silence fell between them, both men reflecting on their words, on their own paths and how they had converged. One about to carry on, the other about to pass.

Sherman had to ask the inevitable question, and he had to look away from Jed in order to do so. "You scared?"

His big brother thought on that question for a long moment. Finally he said, "I don't know if I'm scared of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593333896
• ISBN 13: 9780593333891
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland