Wife Stealer

F.M. Parker

Description

A man who has no woman sleeps with the wind. Wounded in a battle of the Civil War, Ben Hawkins becomes the ugliest horse thief in Texas. Only one woman remembers what he was like before the wound, and still loves him. However she is the sixth wife of a Mormon man. When she is kidnapped and taken into Mexico, one man will dare try to rescue her.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Fearl M. Parker
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908400222
• Langue: English

Extrait

WIFE STEALER by F. M. Parker

The Wounds Of Battle Would Not Slow Them
Grant had smashed Vicksburg and cut open the heart of the Confederate States. Still, the war raged on. But for some, the fighting was over. Men like Captain Evan Payson, a Union Army surgeon wounded saving others' lives, and John Davis, a Confederate prisoner of the hated Union army. Now, two desperate soldiers have struck a deal: in exchange for his freedom, Davis will carry Payson home to die in Texas.
The West's Most Savage Outlaws Could Not Stop Them
But between the bloodied waters of the Mississippi and the dust of El Paso is a land of dangerous outlaws sowing death wherever they go. As Davis and Payson push into Texas, they discover that their fighting days are not done. Because in a lawless land, two enemies have found one cause: staying alive. And their only chance of doing it is to stand and fight together.
Two Men Were Riding For Texas... And Their Last Battle
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.

"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
DEADLY DINNER

"Eat fast," Ben said, thinking about the short Mexican who had just left the cantina. "I don't like the feel of this place."
"What's wrong?" Evan asked.
"No time to talk. Just eat." Ben cut a large bite of meat and began to chew.
Four bearded Mexicans came in from the street. One was the short man who had left. The man in the lead was tall, with narrow shoulders and a long, sharp face. He stopped, and as he swept the room with his sight, his comrades came up to stand beside him.
"Evan, shoot that short man on the right side of the tall one," Ben said in a low, tense voice.
Evan looked at Ben, not sure he had heard correctly. Ben's eyes gleamed a feline yellow in the lamplight. Then they narrowed.
"Shoot!" Ben hissed. He came swiftly to his feet, and his six-gun boomed, exploding the silence in the cantina . The rapid boom of his shots blended into one continuous roll of thunder.
"Shoot any man that moves. Even twitches."

~ * ~

A man who has no woman sleeps with the wind. A woman who has no man has only a blanket to protect her.
—Author Unknown
PROLOGUE

The Making of the LLano Estacado, Staked Plain.
The broad sea, ancient beyond imagination, had been created so long ago that even the sun had forgotten it had ever shone upon its birth. The sea had come into existence when the breast of the continent had subsided and the great oceans of the earth flooded in to fill the depression.
Seventy million years ago, the sea was shoved away to the south as a tremendous force lifted and buckled a broad section of the earth's mantle. The force continued to torture the crust of the earth, thrusting the rocks upward until a mighty mountain range with a north-south axis pierced the sky.
On the west side of the mountains, a grand river came to life, fed endlessly by the countless streams pouring with awesome violence down the mountains' steep flanks. The strong current of the river rushed away to the south until it reached the far-off sea.
On the east side of the mountain range a myriad of streams tumbled down from the high ramparts. As the grade of the streams flattened on their lower reaches, they slowed to wander in meandering courses, dropping their load of eroded mountain debris. The valleys of the streams became choked with swamps and shallow lakes as thousands of cubic miles of sediment were spread in an ever-thickening layers over the land.
The millennia passed, score after score, adding to millions of years. During the long epoch a broad plain was built at the base of the mountain and extending to the east and south for hundreds of miles. So flat was the land surface that the larger animals could see each other for great distances, to the limits of their vision.
Twenty million years ago on the bank of the grand river, and near where it entered the sea, a hungry lizard raced down the bank to capture a fish that was stranded and floundering in a shallow pool of water. The lizard's tail left a small scratch in the mud. From that tiny scar in the dirt during the next rainstorm, an incipient streamlet was born.
The rivulet had inherited the hunger of the beast that had created it. Within a foot, the rivulet cut into the course of another trickle of water and beheaded it, adding that miniature flow to its own body. Then it captured another streamlet, and another. Swiftly the rivulet grew to become a creek.
The new creek greedily ate its way north across the plain, in its journey encountering the channels of many streams. A battle was fought each time to determine which stream would die. The hungry offspring of the lizard won every battle.
The creek grew to become a river flowing in a wide valley. Its headwaters had reached the very summit of the mountains far to the north. Now there were two large rivers, with a mighty mountain range rearing high into the sky between them.
This is the way a tribe of men, migrating from a distant place far north of the mountains, found the land when they arrived twelve thousand years ago. The people liked the flat plains and the two rivers, and the abundant buffalo, elk, and antelope, and they stayed, their numbers increasing.
Thousands of years later, barely a tick of time as measured on the geologic clock, a second tribe of men arrived, moving cautiously up from the south. They also found the land of plains and the rivers most pleasing. These men called the flat land the LLano Estacado, and the rivers the Rio Grande and the Rio Pecos. They settled there with their women and children.
Time ticked again, and a third tribe of men came hurrying onto the land. They came from the east and their numbers were many. They made savage war upon the first two tribes. They made even more terrible and bloody war between factions of their own tribe.
The events of this story happened during the days of the third tribe's civil war.
ONE

Rio Grande, Northern Mexico, July 4, 1863.
Ben Hawkins reined his horse to a halt on the bank above the Rio Grande. The string of four stolen horses he led, tied nose-to-tail with short lengths of rope, came to a stop behind him. The animals stood sweat-lathered and lungs pumping.
Ben dug a telescope from a saddlebag and twisted in the saddle to look south behind him. He extended the brass tube and with the aid of the magnified field of vision, scoured the land he had raced across. There was no sign of his pursuers, only the desert baking under the burning sun and a faded blue domed sky arching high above. He hadn't expected to see the Mexican riders, not yet, for he had changed mounts four times since sunup, rotating among the horses and pushing them hard. In four days he had traveled three hundred miles.
Ben collapsed the spyglass and stowed it away. He began to examine the dense stands of huge cottonwoods growing on the floodplain along both sides of the river. The Mexicans might be miles behind, but this was Comanche territory and he didn't want to stumble into a band of those fierce warriors.
He saw nothing of concern from his location; still, there were sections of the woods that he couldn't see into and he wanted a closer look. He tied the Mexican horses to a tree and then rode his gray mount, Brutus, down to the river's edge. Ben studied the far shore for a time, checking the openings among the cottonwoods, and the border of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, that showed beyond the trees. Seeing nothing threatening, he crossed the river on a sandy-bottomed ford where the water ran clear, and came onto American soil.
Ben searched for the presence of other men. He found only the tracks of buffalo, deer, wolves, and smaller wildlife. He returned to the south shore.
All the horses had now caught their wind and cooled, and Ben allowed them to drink. The Mexican horses were again fastened to a tree. Ben brought the saddled Brutus near the water with him and dropped his reins to ground-hitch him. The cool, clean water had enticed Ben to bathe. He thought he had time before his enemies arrived, but still he wanted his guns and horse close.
Ben hung his belted Colt pistol over the saddle horn and quickly stripped down to his skin. He was two inches above average height and rawboned. He had gray eyes and his hair was black. His beard, now some two weeks long, was a reddish black. The dusty, sweaty clothing was swiftly washed, the water wrung out, and the clothing hung on a low limb of a cottonwood. He took one last keen look all the way around, and then dove into the river.
Ben came up spouting water. He flung his long hair back across his head and squeezed the water from it. With long, easy strokes, enjoying the grand feeling of the water upon his skin, he swam across the thirty yards of river and back. In the shallow water just above the ford,