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THOMAS EIDSON
The Last Ride
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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
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Source ISBN: 9780007181353
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007396832 Version: 2016-03-23
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For my parents Genevieve and Richard
‘None of us will ever forget Erwin Street …’
CONTENTS
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
