The Last Ride. Thomas Eidson

      THOMAS EIDSON

       The Last Ride

       COPYRIGHT

      HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published by Penguin UK Ltd in 1995

      This edition 2004

      Copyright © Thomas E. Eidson 1995

      Thomas E. Eidson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780007181353

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007396832 Version: 2016-03-23

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

       DEDICATION

       For my parents Genevieve and Richard

       ‘None of us will ever forget Erwin Street …’

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Thomas Eidson

       About the Publisher

       ONE

      Brake Baldwin spotted the horseman as he rode clear of the tamarisk trees. He pulled his spectacles down, watching over the newspaper to see that the stranger was actually coming in, then shoved them back and went on reading. It was late evening, storm clouds gathering in a lowering sky. A poor-will was calling from the hills behind the barn. The sound was off – he didn’t know why. The thick-trunked cottonwoods near the creek were blackening in the dusk, night closing over the small valley of the New Mexico ranch.

      He returned to the newspaper’s headline: PRESIDENT DECLARES WILD WEST DEAD. Amazing. Just like that: it was over. Eighteen eighty-six and gone – a finger snap. Santa Fe was getting ready, the paper said, to celebrate with a parade of modern inventions and a concert in the old Plaza. That should be worth the seeing, he thought.

      The bay mare in the pasture whinnied at the stranger’s horse, but got no response, Baldwin glanced back up – the rider was moving slowly in the dying light, the wind running hard ahead of the approaching rain. He kept his eyes on him longer this time, noticing something different, but the stormy twilight was too far gone to be good for seeing any distance.

      Not liking the tenseness in his shoulders, Baldwin mumbled his grandmother’s saying: You weren’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl. The man and the horse were coming through the orchard now, the trees singing in the building storm. The animal’s head was down and it looked ready to collapse. Behind him, he heard the barn open. Mannito had seen the rider, as well. The old Mexican was nearing seventy-five, but he had the delicate senses of one grown old dodging Mescaleros and Chiricahuas and their Apache brethren. Fortunately, those days were nothing but mean memories. Maybe the newspaper had it right; maybe the Wild West was dead.

      He heard another door, and the sound of shutters closing, and knew Maggie was back caring for the woman and her children. She had been going round the clock with these three for days. She wasn’t a regular doctor, but she had nursed over twenty years and was better at it than most, running a little infirmary of sorts. Mostly her patients were poor Mexicans like the woman and her kids.

      The rider emerged slowly from the shadows and Baldwin focused on him, wanting to smile, but the battered Sharps rifle lying across the saddle kept him somber. Patterns had been tattooed into the stock of the old weapon with brass tacks, Indian style. He tucked the newspaper under his arm, dropping his hand slowly, the reflex surprising him since he hadn’t worn a gun in years.

      ‘Malo,’ Mannito whispered. ‘Bad.’ The little Mexican, hat in hand against the wind, was squinting through the darkening night at the stranger, then he turned and slipped away into the shadows, most likely gone to his shotgun, Baldwin figured.

      The rancher stood straighter. The rider