“Are you comfortable?” Winona asked.
“Just don’t ride over any rough spots,” Evelyn teased. She pulled the bear hide to her chin and gazed at fluffy clouds sailing high over the lake. The world had never been so beautiful.
They started off, riding east at a walk. Zach rode ahead, as he usually did, Lou at his side. Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman started arguing over whether men or women had sweeter dispositions, and Shakespeare roared, “Thou are the Mars of Malcontents!” Evelyn giggled. Everything was back to normal. A shadow fell across her, and her father loomed large against the sky.
“You will be back on your feet in no time.”
“I hope so.”
Nate had something else on his mind, something that had been weighing heavily. “I want you to know I’m sorry, as sorry as I’ve ever been about anything.”
“What on earth do you have to be sorry about?” Evelyn asked.
“For Drinks Blood. I should have made sure up at the pass. I’m partly to blame for all we went through.”
“That’s nonsense. The man I admire most in the world once told me that we shouldn’t put on airs like we are the Almighty.”
Nate chuckled. “Did he now?”
They went farther than Evelyn thought they would go, past the McNair cabin and on around to the end of the lake. She figured they would stop but they rode into the forest. “Where are you taking me, anyhow? St. Louis?”
“This is far enough,” Winona said, reining her horse so the travois slid in a half circle.
For the second time that day Evelyn was dumbfounded.
A structure had seemingly sprouted out of the soil. As long and wide as two cabins, it was constructed of logs, with a roof of intertwined tree limbs. Five figures in green stood beside it, smiling in greeting.
“I would like you to meet our new neighbors,” Winona said.
Evelyn found her voice. “What?” She could not take her eyes off one of them.
Nate brought his bay up next to the travois. “It’s a big valley. I reckon we don’t need it all to ourselves.”
“What?”
“They lost their home, Evelyn. They lost their people,” Nate said. “They need a new place to start over, and I offered to let them stay here if they wanted.”
“What?”
Zach came up on the other side of her and snickered. “You must forgive my sister,” he said to the five in green. “She is just learning to talk. Next we hope to break her of diapers.”
Nate leaned from the saddle to rest his big hand on the travois. “I know this comes as a shock. We couldn’t talk it over with you. We had to decide quickly so we could help them build before the cold weather hits. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Evelyn King beamed. “I don’t mind at all.”
About the Author
David L. Robbins was born on Independence Day 1950. He has written more than three hundred books under his own name and many pen names, among them: David Thompson, Jake McMasters, Jon Sharpe, Don Pendleton, Franklin W. Dixon, Ralph Compton, Dean L. McElwain, J.D. Cameron and John Killdeer.
Robbins was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen he enlisted in the United States Air Force and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant. After his honorable discharge he attended college and went into broadcasting, working as an announcer and engineer (and later as a program director) at various radio stations. Later still he entered law enforcement and then took to writing full-time.
At one time or another Robbins has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year and a half in Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Greece and Germany. He lived for more than a year in Turkey.
Today he is best known for two current long-running series - Wilderness, the generational saga of a Mountain Man and his Shoshone wife - and Endworld is a science fiction series under his own name started in 1986. Among his many other books, Piccadilly Publishing is pleased to be reissuing ebook editions of Wilderness, Davy Crockett and, of course, White Apache.
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