Uncompahgre

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  SACRIFICE

  “They seen us,” he shouted at her. “Ride hard for them rocks. Follow me!” The ground was a blur, the screams of the Yamparika growing louder behind him, the black stallion and the mustang racing for the cover of the rocks, mountain mahogany and juniper still several hundred yards away.

  He glanced quickly back over his left shoulder. She was just steps behind, her mustang’s eyes wide and white, its neck stretched out like the stallion’s, her small frame low over the pony’s withers, the mustang’s wild mane brushing her chest, her chalk-white face and wide eyes fixed on the protection toward which they galloped. Several shots rang out behind them, the bullets kicking up small explosions of dust ahead of their horses. They’ll get a better bead with the next rounds. He drew the Colt from his belt and extending his right arm rearwards, fired twice. More shots rang out. The mustang screamed and stumbled, trying to keep its footing, then pitched forward, throwing her young rider onto the sandy soil of the creek bottom. Bad luck.

  Hauling back on the reins, he wheeled the stallion in a spray of sand and dirt. The girl was on her hands and knees, shaking her head, stunned. Leaping from the saddle, he gathered her from the waist, holding her folded in his arm like a rolled blanket.

  There was a hiss in the air and his leg buckled. Searing, numbing pain shot up his thigh to his hip, the shaft of the arrow quivering as he tried to keep his feet, its tip protruding from the other side of his leg. “Sonofabitch!” He cursed in pain and rage, panicking the stallion, which wrenched its head and reared, ripping the reins from his hands.

  LEGACY

  Eagle Talon tested the blade of the knife with his thumb, then held the weapon at arm’s length, cutting edge facing him, centered in front of his eyes, carefully comparing the angle of each honed side of the steel. A few more draws across the sharpening stone. His gaze drifted to the tree line of the Little Laramie River, the green leaves tinged with a yellow cast, and here and there a burst of bright yellow in the cottonwoods where a tree limb was dying, its leaves preparing to fall ahead of the rest.

  Beyond the tree line to the northwest rose abrupt buttes, and ever higher rolling, grassy hills, gold-brown and dry with the ending of summer stretching endlessly upwards toward the headwaters of the South Fork of the Powder River and the tribe’s winter camp. He bent forward, his elbows resting on his knees, the sharpening stone held in one hand above his crossed ankles, the knife in the other.

  The pleasant warmth of sun after the morning frost playing on his bare shoulders was intercepted by Walk with Moon’s shadow as she walked slowly toward him, her feet oddly spaced, her step slow, her hand on the great roundness of her belly which stretched the leather tight across her hips.

  She smiled at him. “It is time, husband. Your son wishes to not miss the season of canwapegi wi and to meet his father.” The corners of her mouth twitched suddenly, her cheek muscles tightening. She pressed her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly.

  Eagle Talon hurriedly cast the knife and sharpening stone to the side, scrambling to his feet, stepping toward her and placing his hands gently but firmly on her shoulders. “Walks with Moon? Do you mean, now? Now is the time?”

  She smiled up at him, one small hand rising, her palm resting on his cheek. “I wanted to be sure, Eagle Talon. This is my first…”

  “Of many,” Eagle Talon smiled down at her.

  She bit her lip. “That, Eagle Talon, will be decided by Wankan Tanka. Now, please go to tell Turtle Dove.”

  NURSING A GRUDGE

  The thin, swarthy faced man leered at Reuben, his eyes mere slits beneath a filthy, beaded headband, “Ahh…muchacho con la perla pistola. We meet again.” At his feet the bloody, battered boy raised himself to his hands and knees, blood streaming from his nose and split lips, his face pale, craning his head sideways to look at Reuben and Philippe, one eye swollen shut, his one good eye beseeching.

  The outlaw raised a leggin’ clad leg, his thigh lifting his leather loincloth and viciously heeled Michael in the back driving his chest back into the dirt. The seven men behind the outlaw, slowly spreading out from one another, laughed.. One was very tall, with a musket. Another had a round face with wild eyes and unruly towheaded hair spilling from beneath a battered hat. Curling back his lips, he stuck the tip of his tongue, pink and disgusting, in a bulge through the gap in his front teeth.

  Reuben felt a seething anger rising in his chest. Think. He could sense Philippe’s slow side step away from him spacing out their adversary’s targets, and without looking knew the vaquero’s hands were hovering around the grips of the twin Onyx-handled Colts snugged crosswise in his belt. Eight to two. Unless they get lucky, we can take them.

  As if reading his mind, the leer on the outlaw’s face tormenting Michael twisted with a mocking, vicious curl of his lips. Shadowed by the remnants of the log structures in front of them, more men drifted out. A barrel glinted in a roofless window aperture to their left and above the gathering group of desperados. Nine, ten…eleven…twelve, thirteen, fourteen. It’s a trap!

  “So, you men,” the desperado leader spat the word contemptuously, “gonna let this poor boy suffer?” He viciously kicked Michael’s prostrate form in the side, the young man groaning and coughing, doubled up. Reuben could feel the lethal energy radiating from Philippe twenty feet to his right. Easy, vaquero, easy…Make a mistake now and all three of us will be dead. Never fully diverting his attention from their leader, Reuben’s eyes swept the band, picking targets, prioritizing the most dangerous first.

  “That’s right, pistolero,” the thin man’s voice was sarcastic and taunting, “Fourteen to two.” He doesn’t think I’ve seen the man with the rifle, above.

  “Three.” Johannes’ calm voice rang out sharply from slightly behind him, twenty feet to his left. Willing his gaze to not slide from the ragged line of killers sixty feet in front of them, from the corner of his eyes Reuben saw the broad muzzle of a weapon swing up and into position. Mac’s shotgun! That’ll equalize things a bit.

  “Three?” The bandits shared a menacing chuckle. “A tall blond gimp will make little difference.” The swarthy man, never taking his eyes off Reuben, leaned to the side and spit, grinning malevolently. “So your women in the wagons are now alone?”

  ZION

  Resting one hand on the shoulder of his four-year-old son Paul, Joseph wrapped his other arm around his wife’s ample shoulders and squeezed. “Roberta, we are truly blessed by the Lord.”

  His wife beamed up at him from the crook of his arm, her dowdy round face split with a smile, eyes shining, her arms bouncing their two-year-old daughter.

  John the Elder walked to them through the group of men, his eyes surveying their first day’s work with pride. “We made significant progress. If we could have rounded up more men, I think it would be done,” he said, gesturing toward the skeletal structure of a large barn one hundred feet from them, two and one half stories high, its rafters and eaves framed in the traditional Dutch design. A hawk’s wings in a downward curl.

  Through the open studs and behind the fresh, light-colored rough sawed lumber forming the structure, sage and grass covered hills, with pockets of brush turned gold and red, rose from the wide meadow. The toes of the rises dipped in the slow current of the Bear River before escaping their contours and wandering in shallow curves through a wide meadow to the west. Forty miles to the south, the rugged ridges of Porcupine Pass rose abruptly from the floor of Cache Valley, and still further loomed the sharp white peaks of the Wasatch Front.

  John stood, his medium build a full foot shorter than Joseph’s lanky height, his drooping salt and pepper mustache lifting in a smile. “I’m sorry, brother Joseph. We should have been done today. You’re far to the north of Salt Lake, it’s a good ways to travel and the men of a number of the outlying farms didn’t want to leave their families alone on account of the Ute. We will have the roof and siding up tomorrow, and the loft and doors also.”

  Smiling, Joseph glanced towar
d the feast laid out on the long table behind them, “I think everyone’s fixated on the food after a long day. We are honored to have you all as our guests.” He turned toward the four stocky women who stood behind the table, their hands folded demurely in front of their white aprons, light colored sun bonnets shading their wide smiles. “And thank you, too, ladies, for helping Roberta prepare such a fine supper.”

  John smiled. “This is your farm, Joseph. Would you lead us in prayer?” The men removed their hats and everyone bowed their heads as Joseph gave thanks to God.

  As dictated by tradition, the hosts and their children hung back. They would eat last. Joseph squeezed Roberta to him again, a surreal satisfaction stealing through him as he studied the super structure of the barn. Before the sun rose today, that was but a patch of grass. “It’s quite something,” he whispered, “and makes the place…well…official. Do you ever think about those people from that other wagon train headed to Cherry Creek we met on the trail, right before Fort Kearny?”

  She looked up at him, her blue eyes blinking in surprise, her short dark hair bobbing up and down. “How odd you should mention that. Yes, I do, Joseph. Frequently, though I don’t know why they made such an impression on me. That very tall blond man with a thick accent that we spoke with seemed to be truly impressed by the reading of the Elders that day. There was something going on between he and that equally tall, pretty young blonde woman. They kept exchanging looks, and he walked away with her, though they were on opposite ends of the congregation during the service. Very strange. And that beautiful, dark-haired slim woman who was with that rugged looking young man with the big brown hat over by the wagon. I don’t think they ever stopped talking.”

  Joseph chuckled. “I watched them, too. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were brother and sister, deeply in love, or if they didn’t like one another at all.”

  Roberta giggled. “I looked closely. None of them wore wedding rings. I wonder what has become of them?” she asked, looking up into his face.

  EMANCIPATION

  The howl of strong gusts sweeping down valley from the west drowned out the intermittent gurgle of the river. Mountain peaks towered sharp and dark, silhouetted against a star-studded sky that had lost its day glow. The luminescence of the coming moon, silver above the ridge lines, brightened the drifted patches of snow, remnants of the early storm from two days ago.

  The medium-height, thin figure of a man, his short curly, salt-and-pepper hair dully reflecting the sheen from the emerging lunar light, turned to the small, heavy set, slightly hunched and shivering female figure on the mule. “Lucy, keep Sally quiet. We didn’t walk all this way as freemen to have no trouble now.”

  He peered intently back upriver to the dim, beckoning glow of oil lamps from a building’s windows. Near it glowed a sister light in the shape of an elongated dome. Looks like the canvas top of a wagon.

  “I’ll sure enough keep her quiet, Israel. What do you think we should do? I’m hungry and cold. Do you think it’s safe?”

  Israel spoke slowly, thinking. “Well, this is the edge of the country. We sure are a long way from Oklahoma. This ain’t no plantation and I’m betting all that grows here is hay. You can hear them cattle. It’s going to be getting colder soon, and these thin clothes of ours ain’t going to be much help with winter coming on. We’re about out of food, I lost my last fishhook yesterday and I only got three shells left in that pistol. I don’t see as we have much choice. We have to take our chances.”

  Lucy laid one hand lightly on Israel’s forearm. Her fingers are trembling. “You’re my man, Israel. I’ll do what you think.”

  Looking at the halo of lights a mile or so out, she spoke in a low voice through chattering teeth, a tinge of doubt edged in the hope of her tone, “Maybe folks this far out will be happy to have company.”

  “Well, let me do the talking, woman. And if there’s any sign of trouble, we’ll just back our way out of there somehow. Let’s tie off the mule before we git too close. They don’t have to know we have a critter just yet.” He squeezed her arm and smiled grimly at her through the darkness. “One thing I’ll tell you, we’ll freeze to death and starve before we are slaves again.”

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  BIOGRAPHY-BACK COVER

  Reid is fourth generation land and cattle. He is a rancher, a multiple #1 bestselling author, and the Threads West series has been honored with fifteen national literary awards including, Best Western, Best Romance, and Best Historical Fiction. His cowboy heart and poet’s pen captures the spirit of the western landscape and its influence on generations of its settlers. His long-standing devotion to wild and remote places and to the people—both past and present—who leave their legend and footprint upon America and the American West is the inspiration and descriptive underpinning of all of his writing.

  “If your mind and spirit are seduced by images of windswept ridge tops, fluttering of aspen leaves caressed by a canyon breezes and the crimson tendrils of a dying sun…if your fingers feel the silken pulse of a lover and your lips taste the deep kisses of building passion…if nostrils flare with the conjured scents of gunpowder and perfume, sagebrush and pine, and your ears delight in the murmur of river current…if your heart pounds at the clash of good and evil, and with each twist and turn of inter-laced lives, you feel a primal throb, then I have accomplished my mission.”

  Passion fuels each thrilling, action and romance-packed novel in this widely acclaimed series and epic of the historical west. This is the third book of this saga and Maps of Fate era novels (1854–1875). Reid’s works have been compared to Lonesome Dove, Louis L’Amour (with steam) and Centennial, by reviewers and readers alike. Some have called the series, “the Gone with the Wind of the West.” Others have acclaimed the tale as “more authentic than Dances with Wolves.” Each ensuing book unfolds the riveting, sensual, adventure-filled tale of a country on the cusp of greatness, the cloth of a nation woven from personalities of uncommon origins, and lives weaved into generational tapestries of lust, duplicity, enmity, love and triumph.

  www.ReidLanceRosenthal.com

  Back to Table of Contents

  The gripping, sizzling reads of the Threads West, An American Saga series

  unfold over the course of five eras:

  1854 to 1875—The Maps of Fate Era

  Book One, Threads West, An American Saga

  Book Two, Maps of Fate

  Book Three, Uncompaghre—where water turns rocks red

  Book Four, Moccasin Tracks

  Book Five, Footsteps

  Book Six, Blood at Glorieta Pass

  Book Seven, The Bond

  Book Eight, Cache Valley

  1875 to 1900—The North to Wyoming Era

  Book Nine, North to Wyoming

  This era includes seven other novels

  1900 to 1939—The Canyons Era

  Book Fifteen, Canyons

  This era includes five other novels

  1939 to 1980—The Coming Thunder Era

  Book Twenty-One, Coming Thunder

  This era includes five other novels

  1980 to present—The Summits Era

  Book Twenty-Seven, Summits

  This era includes five other novels

  Back to Table of Contents

  The adventures of America

  her people, her spirit

  and the west.

  Third book of the award winning, #1 bestselling Threads West, An American Saga series, compared to Lonesome Dove, Centennial, Louis L’Amour and referred to as the “Gone with the Wind of the West.”

  Book One begins the history, action and romance-packed saga in 1854. The first of five generations of unforgettable, driven men and women are drawn to a common destiny that beckons from the wild, remote flanks of the American West. In Book Two, secret maps, hidden conflicts, and magnetic attractions shape their destinies. Forged by the fires of love, loss, hope and sorrow, new characters emerge—seeking to escape slavery, hold onto ancient Sioux
traditions.

  Now, having reached Cherry Creek, the Europeans plan their crest of the Rockies. The brave women of the saga face life-altering decisions: return East abandoning love, or settle in the remote Uncompahgre Valley. The Texas Revolt catapults an aristocratic Mexican vaquero into the tale. Propelled by historical events and fate, the lives of the elderly slave couple, Oglala Sioux family and the renegade and his young captive are bound by tragedy and triumph ever more tightly to the arc of this epic saga.

  You will recognize the characters who live in these pages.

  Threads West, An American Saga is not only their story. It is our story.

  “Surpasses Lonesome Dove.… More authentic than Dances with Wolves.… Five stars is not enough.…”

  ~Eve Paludan,

  Twice #1 Writers Digest National Bestselling Author

  “Fluent and strong…sensual, evocative and unforgettable…compared to Lonesome Dove and Centennial…Rosenthal’s epic masterpiece will rival some of Louis L’Amour’s best loved work.”