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Excerpt
Dr. Syrus Sauls awoke on the floor of the tavern, his tender head throbbing with terrible pain. The night of drinking and carousing had left his body aching and his spirit hindered.
He staggered back to his room at the hotel, his wits dull, his temper coarse. Stumbling up the flight of stairs, he threw open their door and entered, expecting to find his wife there.
The room was empty.
The bed was turned down, as Ananya had done at some time during the previous afternoon.
“Dear?” he called out, to no avail.
The silence was ominous, bewildering.
He looked around and discovered a handwritten note on the dresser, which informed him of everything that he needed to know.
“What of this!”
He crushed the paper in his hands and let it drop to the floor, where it bounded to rest beneath the clothes closet.
He stood in silence, waiting for a better thought.
He walked to the wash basin and used the carafe to partially fill the vessel bowl with water. Cupping it in his hands with great care, he leaned down and gently doused his forehead and cheeks.
He used a nearby hand towel to dry-pat his face and even sensed some relief, though it was not much and did not last long.
He tossed the towel to the side aggressively, as his anger returned.
“This must be a dream!” he lamented.
Yet, he understood that it was not.
Ananya had left his company for that of the Negroe, the man to whom he had been so good, the man whom he had so implicitly trusted.
He stomped his foot down on the wooden floor in anger.
“This will not do!”
Twisting itself tighter and tighter, his rage turned cold and actionable.
“I will not stand for this!” he declared.
He returned downstairs and passed through the lobby of the hotel, ignoring any others who might have been there, absent his customary ease and grace of social circumstance.
He raced to the stable, pleasantly surprised to find his stallion still there. He saddled up and rode off, the vengeance in his heart now pouring out of every pore in his body.
He met the trail with a fury.
Beneath him, the stallion’s hoof beats pounded the dirt, and the effect was mesmerizing, the horse’s power, hypnotic. With each passing moment, the actions of his wife and the Negroe seemed ever more colossal, so much more unpardonable.
His thirst for retribution overpowered him.
The pace was no longer tolerable, and so he drove his spurs deeper into the sides of the frightened animal.
“I’ll catch ‘em at Meander Pass!” he cried out.
He ascended a nearby hill and stopped the horse abruptly.
Peering out over the dirt road, which was perfectly crooked for more than a mile, he allowed his eyes to track along it closely.
A terrible grin formed on his lips.
“A-ha!”
He jammed his spurs into the stallion’s sides, and the horse dashed forward, faster than ever.
Racing down the hill and fixed on his target, the doctor was gaining quickly, pushing ever nearer. As he closed in, he was overtaken by emotion, impulsivity, and a growing lack of humanity.
“You there!” he shouted, maliciously.
A dark face looked back.
“I got him!” the doctor exclaimed.
From where he was, he could see the frantic look in the Negroe’s eyes.
With a raging howl, the doctor brandished his rifle and fired a shot, careful to miss Ananya. The rough ride threw him off, and the bullet flew over Abajon’s head and into the grass, along the road.
Gaining more ground, he fired a second time from a much closer range.
Ah!
Missed, again!
With a wild curse, he flung the useless weapon off into the side brush and drove the spurs farther into the sweaty abdomen of the stallion.
The horse responded by pinning back its ears and laying out a powerful stride. With each passing moment, the doctor drew closer, until he had pulled even alongside the small wagon.
Ananya instinctively ducked under Abajon’s arm, as the doctor steadied the stallion.
Then, the doctor reached out and caught the mare by her bridle.
“Whoa now!” he coaxed, as he pulled back on the reins of the stallion, at the same time.
But, the mare made no motion to slow or stop.
In a clever move, the doctor then jerked the mare’s nose down and under, forcing his will.
“Whoa!” he repeated. “Whoa!”
With enormous strength and substantial effort, the two horses arrested their momentum.
The stallion came to an abrupt Cavalry stop.
However, the back wheel of Abajon’s wagon struck a fist-sized rock that threw it up onto two wheels, causing it to veer off the road and into the tall, rough grass.
Abajon’s hold gave way!
Ananya was sent tumbling headlong into the grass, knocked completely unconscious by the fall.
Abajon was also thrown to the ground.
He landed on his back, momentarily dazed.
The mare stepped off idly to the side, pulling the driver-less buckboard behind her to gnaw playfully at the tall grass.
The doctor slid down off the stallion.
Still a bit wobbly, Abajon jumped to his feet, tense and ready for a fight.
For a long and increasingly anxious moment, they stood as the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object, confronting each other.
With the first tactical move, the doctor rushed in at Abajon, who easily side-stepped him.
They quickly settled into an inescapable double-arm clench, surging and swaying, pulling and leveraging.
Neither was able to gain an immediate advantage.
After a few moments, one stumbled and they both tumbled to the ground. Rolling over and over in the dirt, they eventually slid off the road and down a grassy slope, where they were stopped by the trunk of a tree.
As they clutched in vain at each other’s throats, a slip of Abajon’s hold allowed the doctor to free one hand and then another.
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