Coldiron

F.M. Parker

Description

1843 Coldiron rides into the mountains to prepare for trapping beaver. His partner Tarpenning steals the Indian maid Morning Mist and carries her into the mountains for the long winter nights for the two men. Falling under the spell of the maid, he refuses to share her with Coldiron. In the spring Coldiron is alone with a tiny bundle of girl child.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Fearl M. Parker
• Date de parution: 19 août 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908400499
• Langue: English

Extrait

COLDIRON - Judge and Executioner by F. M. Parker
1843. Young Luke Coldiron rides into the high Rocky Mountains and prepares for the winter trapping of beaver. Far away on the great prairie, his partner Tarpenning steals the beautiful Indian maid Morning Mist and carries her into the mountains for the long winter nights for the two men. Falling under the spell of the maid, he refuses to share her with Coldiron.
In the spring Coldiron is alone with a tiny bundle of girl child, the child of Tarpenning and Morning Mist. Unable to care for the new born, he surrenders her to a family. During the next twenty years Coldiron builds a great horse ranch in the high valley in the mountains where he had trapped with Tarpenning. And where he had buried Tarpenning and Morning Mist.
His famous horses bring danger. A powerful Mexican bandit rides north with his fierce pistoleros, and steal his prime heard and drives them into Mexico. And the child of Tarpenning and Morning Mist, now a woman, appears in the mountains to slay Coldiron for killing her mother.
* * *
From Coldiron - Judge and Executioner
Pain jolted Coldiron. He staggered, caught his balance. The taste of blood was suddenly salt and copper in his mouth. He charged upon Dule, broke through his defense and laid him flat on his back with a heart-jarring left and right.
Coldiron pivoted about to go the aid of Lightning Blanket.
Murdock, rousing from the stunning blow of the horse, climbed to his feet and looked around. He saw Coldiron closing on Tashaw and Pollin where they were beating on the second Indian. Murdock reached for his six-gun
One of the Mexicans in the brown clothing pulled his pistol. In a blur of movement, he sprang close to Murdock. Pointed the gun and fired twice into the dirt at the man s feet.
Murdock flinched and swept a startled look around at the Mexican.
Get out of here, ordered the Mexican. All of you, and he motioned them away with his cocked pistol.
Murdock flung a hard look at Coldiron. I ll see you later, and we ll settle this permanently.
I d like that, said Coldiron.
About the Author

F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.
His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.
For more details visit www.fearlparker.com
SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE. Publishers Weekly
ABSORBING SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION! Library Journal
PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY. Bookmarks
REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE. University of Arizona Library
RICH, REWARDING DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP. Booklist
Also by F.M. Parker
Novels
The Highwayman Wife Stealer Winter Woman The Assassins Girl in Falling Snow The Predators The Far Battleground Coldiron - Judge and Executioner Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf Coldiron - The Shanghaiers Coldiron - To Kill an Enemy The Searcher The Seeker The Highbinders The Shadow Man The Slavers Nighthawk Skinner Soldiers of Conquest
Screenplays
Women for Zion Firefly Catcher
Table of Contents
Coldiron - Judge and Executioner
About the Author
Also by F.M. Parker
A Prologue
BOOK I: THE TRAPPER'S WINTER WOMAN
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
BOOK II: THE MUSTANG MAN
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
Copyright Page
The Making of the Land
A Prologue
The land was vast with tall mountains, deep valleys and swiftly flowing streams. It had been formed in some ancient, primeval time when an unimaginably powerful force had lifted up the bottom of an ocean, arching the sedimentary rock layers miles into the sky. The topmost craggy peaks were made of stone, composed of the shells and bones of animals that could only live in deep salty brine.
The high crowns of the mountains brushed the heavens, their jagged spires piercing the clouds that rushed by, ripping open their stomachs to let the rain and snow pour down. On the higher elevations it was very cold and the snow never fully melted from one year to the next, accumulating into small glaciers. To slip slowly, like frigid tears, down the face of the mountain.
Colder still the world became and glaciers were birthed even on the low plains. Over tens of thousands of years, they grew together, merging into one colossal glacier over a mile thick and so broad as to cover more than half the continent. The white mantle of ice, its solid water crystals turned plastic by its own immeasurable crushing tons, flowed outward slow and cold to smother the land, depressing the crust of the earth into deep, wide basins.
During millions of years, the glaciers advanced and retreated again and again. In the harsh, frozen part of the cycle, the land was buried under an unbelievably large expanse of ice. Wet, warm pluvial times, the interglacial periods, melted the ice, creating deep lakes and violent torrents that sped off to the sea, scouring the mountains and plains that lay in their path.
Only great animals could survive in such a rugged climate. The giant wide-horned bison, the woolly mammoth and the huge beaver Castoridae, eight feet long with twelve-inch incisors, strode upon the land. They were mighty animals, perfectly adapted to the alternating cold and pluvial eras, and thrived. Just one enemy, the saber-toothed tiger, could pull them down. The vulture condor matched the scale of the other beasts, gliding down on twelve-foot wings to clear up the scraps after the kill.
Then a change occurred in the climate, the continental glacier retreated and the deluge came, but the next phase of the cycle did not arrive. Instead the land grew drier and drier.
The gigantic bison died, so too did the mammoth, saber tooth and the scavenger condor. However, in the genes of the beaver there existed the potential for change-and each generation of the Castoridae grew smaller, adapting to the lessening feed, becoming a perfectly miniaturized replica of his ancestor, but weighing forty pounds or less.
In this new time the beaver had a different foe. A brown-skinned man came into the mountains and began to stalk the animal s lakes and lodges. He was skilled and killed some of the soft-furred animals. With his limited tools the brown man was no threat to the existence of the Castoridae.
The hundreds of audacious white men that invaded the terrain of the beaver in the early 1800s were a different matter. They were hard men and brought with them strangely shaped steel capture instruments. Each mountain man, using four to six of these traps, could and did take all the beaver from long reaches of tumbling streams, leaving behind deserted lodges and decaying dams.
In 1825 there were approximately one hundred and twenty-five trappers in the south end of the Rocky Mountains. That year one man sold seven hundred pelts for five thousand dollars at the rendezvous on the Green River in Utah. The trapping year 1832-33 saw this soft gold selling for six dollars a pound. The price dropped precipitously to three dollars and fifty cents in 1834. The value continued to gradually decline over the next ten years, bringing one dollar a pound and making trapping uneconomical about 1845.
The white trapper came into the mountain country, carried out his binge of beaver killing and vanished, all in less than twenty-five years.
BOOK I THE TRAPPER S WINTER WOMAN
CHAPTER 1
October, the Moon of the Changing Season, 1843
The buckskin-clad man rode a strong black horse and led two heavily loaded pack mules across the lower slopes of the tall mountain. He carried a long-barreled .50 caliber Hawken rifle ready in his hands. He moved warily through the ponderosa pine forest, avoiding every clearing, for he was intruding into the land of the fierce Mountain Ute.
Luke Coldiron pulled his animals to a halt as the top limbs of the trees began to tremble to the first faint puffs of the day wind. He turned his head from side to side, his keen ears sifting the sounds on the slow breeze for danger. His alert eyes probed out from beneath the broad brim of his hat and pierced deeply into the pine woods that surrounded him.
He twisted in the saddle and cast a glance backward across the wide flank of the mountain, intently scrutinizing the route he had just climbed up over. There was no sign of an enemy and he relaxed a notch and breathed deeply of the resiny smell of the pine needles and cones. The spicy odor was a welcome change after the endless miles of dry grassland that lay behind him.
Through an opening in the woods, he scanned down over a day s ride of rolling foothills. Beyond that his gaze ranged out another fifty miles upon the great prairie, a vast land, hazy with distance and pressed down by the sapphire-blue bowl of the sky. There his partner, George Tarpenning, had parted from him to hunt for the winter camping grounds of the Ute in the valley of the Arkansas River. Tarpenning was a daring man and a fearless fighter who intended to stalk the very teepees of the Ute braves and take a valuable prize from them.
Luke glanced up at the topmost rocky crest of the mountain, looming above him two miles high and already bearing a white frosting of snow from an early winter storm. He knew there were dozens more peaks just like it in a string north and south. They made the great mountain range the Mexicans called the Sangre de Cristo.
He turned back to his original course to the west and rode guardedly ahead. The horse and mules made no noise on the thick carpet of needles be