Moon of The Long Night

Moon Of The Long Night is the sequel to Moon Of The Sleeping Bear, the second book in the series. Watch for Moon Of The Falling Leaves, to be released in 2007.  Long Night takes the reader on a memorable journey hard to forget.  The story picks up where Sleeping Bear left off.  Cord is missing and presumed dead . . . but is he?  Dax, in love with his brother’s wife, can no longer sit idly by waiting for news of Cord’s fate. He hires on as a scout for the Army and sets off for Arizona territory, hoping to leave his love and tormenting memories of Wynter far behind.  Will thousands of miles of rugged terrain dispel his anguish?  Sage and Wynter, along with Peter Pa, traverse the windswept plains of Dakota Territory with one purpose in mind, only to encounter the wrath of the renegade warrior, Mad Bear and his bloodthirsty braves. Mixed into the lot are a cast of secondary characters that will steal your heart and transport you to another time and place!

Coming Soon!

Moon of The Long Night

Coming Soon

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Iowa - 1862

The room was dark and damp, the only light originating from a clouded, four-paned window in the small quarters.  A hard rain pelted against the glass, staining the tan curtain as a gust of wind pushed it through a two-inch opening above the sill.  When he tried to inch his way to the edge of the bed, a jaw-tightening pain shot up his right leg, originating from the ankle.  He placed his fingers to his forehead, mostly to confirm he still had one, but then he rubbed his temple, trying to ease the pulsating throb that threatened to empty his stomach.  Little did he know there was nothing to empty since five days had passed since he had last eaten.

He lifted the thin blanket, puzzled by the one-piece garment he wore--gray woolen drawers.

Where were his clothes and who had undressed him?

Two sticks, sturdy branches really, ran from instep to mid-calf on the right, secured by leather thongs crisscrossing the entire length.

So his ankle was broken.

He dropped his head to the pillow.  Further attempts to remove himself from the corn-shuck mattress were futile, since whenever he moved an inch, the room spun into a whirling dervish causing the bile to rise in his throat.

He coughed--a dry, scratchy bark that burned his raw, gritty throat.

It feels like I’ve swallowed a bucket of sand.  Maybe I’m in a desert.

The grating squeak of a chair moving across a wooden floor caused his body to instinctively tense.  He held his breath when footsteps approached from a nearby room.

The stranger walked to the window and closed it.  "Welcome back to the world, son."

He carried a tin cup in his work-hardened hand, offering it while he moved closer to the bed. "One sip at a time.  It’s been a while since you had liquid or food."

The young man grimaced in pain as he tried to raise himself up to his elbows.  He downed the water and then asked for more.

The stranger nodded, returning seconds later with the same cup.  "Like I said . . . better go slow until you’re sure you can keep it down."

He drained the second cup, handed it back to the stranger, and dropped his head to the pillow again. "Where am I?"

"Iowa."

"Iowa?  You mean the state of Iowa?"

"Don’t know of any city named Iowa," the man chuckled, "course, maybe I just ain’t heard of it yet."

"Who are you?"

"Ignatius.  Ignatius Blue Moon."

The young man stared at Ignatius, trying to recollect if he’d seen him before.  When nothing came to mind, he closed his eyes and drew a long, deep breath.  The stranger was tall and muscular, about fifty years old he guessed.  His face was lined with deep crevices--maybe from years, but more likely from the harsh elements.  His thick hair was dark brown, except for a solid white streak, one-inch wide, that ran from forehead to neck on the right, and a bushy, brown mustache lined his upper lip.  His eyes were blue, like the color of an aqua stone he’d once seen, that for some odd reason, was locked in his memory.  And they were kind . . . kind and compassionate.  He was thankful for that.  He couldn’t think of anything worse than being helpless as a newborn in a strange house at the mercy of a mad man.  His tense body relaxed.  A mean-spirited person wouldn’t possess such gentle eyes, would they?  What would you call that, a mockery of nature, a joke from God?   

"I suppose you got a lot of questions ‘bout now?"  Ignatius asked.

"Reckon I do.  We could start with what happened to my ankle and then move on to my head."

"Well I can’t say for certain how you got those wounds.  I can only tell you what I know to be fact.  I found you laid up along the river, the Blue Earth, about a mile from here.  You were sprawled next to a big branch from a cottonwood.  My thought on that is, the limb must have served as a water raft to keep you from drowning."

"You mean I came out of the river?"

"I can’t see no other way, no tracks around you, and you weren’t out for a stroll with that broken ankle and all.  The head wound alone would have stopped you from coming through the woods on foot."

"How did you happen to find me?"

"I was tracking one of my mares, broke through the fence north of here.  Haven’t had much success in domesticating her . . . she’s a wild one.  At every opportunity she takes to running.  I tracked her through the woods--must have been heading to the river for a drink--and then I spied a red blur near the bank.  At first I thought it was a wounded animal, but when I got closer, I realized it was human.  Figured you were dead.  I got off Boaz--that’s my horse--and knelt down beside you, rolled you over, and you let out a soft moan, similar to a woman who once shared my bed."

"Hmmm.  Thanks for sharing that with me.  You got anything around here for pain, like laudanum or opium?"

"Reckon I could scare up some laudanum.  Don’t go nowhere," Ignatius smirked, "I’ll be right back."

"That’s really funny," he said sarcastically.  "I’m happy to be your source of entertainment."

Ignatius returned with a bottle of dark liquid, poured a small amount into the same cup and handed it to him.  The bitter taste made him cough again, resulting in a sharp pain in his torso.  He poked about his rib cage, feeling for damages.

"Two broken ribs on the left, one on the right," Ignatius said.  "Took me a long time to get that arrowhead out of your leg.  The shaft was snapped off clear down to the skin.  You must have been hit on the head with something heavy, like a club or an ax.  I’ve been tending your wounds for five days now and asking myself everyday, I wonder what the other guy looked like after this match?"

The young man looked at him through droopy lids, the effects of the laudanum taking full effect. "What kind of arrowhead?"

"Sioux, I reckon."

Silence hung in the air between them before the patient spoke.  "I thought I was hungry, but I don’t think I could eat right now."

"No hurry.  It’s in the cook pot--venison, potatoes, and carrots.  You rest easy now, no harm will come to you.  If you need something, just holler."

The young man’s thoughts were a jumbled mass of confusion.  Loud voices and rapid gunfire echoed in his ears.  Flashbacks of a frantic struggle, well-muscled arms pushing and pulling his body floated before him.  The distinct smell of earth invaded his nostrils as he crawled through it, and then . . . another memory surfaced--the coolness of water when his broken body entered it.  Loud shouts rang out in the distance while he clung to a floating log, taking him, he didn’t know where.  He hung on for dear life, knowing he’d rather drown than go back to the hell he just left.  Just before he drifted off to sleep, a strange thought entered his mind.  How is it possible I remember laudanum exists, but I can’t remember my name?

Ignatius Moon pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed, studying the man from head-to-toe while he slept.  He was tall, over six feet he guessed, and solidly built.  The vivid blue eyes--nearly identical to the color of a Montana sky on a cloudless day--contrasted nicely with the dark brown hair.  He guessed his age to be no more than twenty-two summers and once he cleaned himself up he would be right handsome.

He watched him breathe, his respirations steady but shallow.  He knew it was just a matter of time before the injured lad would enter a world where only demons dwelt, causing him to thrash about the bed in wild motion, shouting nonsensical words and names foreign to him.  Sometimes the words were jumbled and distorted in pitch, and try as he might, he couldn’t make sense of them.  Once in a while, he caught a small snippet of a sentence, usually it had to do with a season--winter--to be exact.  Maybe the lad had been caught in a blizzard at one time and had been left half-frozen to death in the snow.  He didn’t know, but of one thing he was certain, the man got all worked up about winter. 

Ignatius pondered on the flow and size of the Blue Earth, about a hundred and thirty miles long, running north to south.  The man must have floated into Iowa from Minnesota.  There weren’t many people in this neck of the woods, and those who were, he knew.  That’s why he had chosen this spot.  He could go for months without talking to a human, much less see the face of one, and that suited Ignatius just fine.  He didn’t know what had happened to the young man, but knew he was involved in some sort of fierce struggle--a struggle for his life and had barely escaped with it.

Ignatius wasn’t a betting man, but by the time he threw him across the rump of Boaz, he wagered the man might not make it home alive.  Still, he had to give it a try.  Once he got him into the cabin and took a good look at the wounds, he felt somewhat better about his condition.  The ankle was badly broken, nearly popping through the skin at the fracture.  It took a steady hand and calm nerve to set it back in place, and Ignatius thanked the heavens the lad was unconscious at the time.  The head wound looked worse than it was, but then they always did.  Funny thing about the head, it bled more than any spot in the body except if a person was shot point blank in the heart.

There were several long, deep gashes about his chest and arms requiring stitches. Knife wounds.  And the broken ribs were the result of a severe pummeling to his torso.  Indians, that much he knew.  But why, that was a different question that needed answering.  Whoever fought with this man had their hands full.

Fifteen minutes passed and just like clockwork, the nightmares appeared.  His arms flailed about the bed as if he was trying to slip from the grasp of death.  His head thrashed about the pillow in rapid jerks, side-to-side, and garbled words poured from his mouth.  "Winter, winter," he said over and over.  And something about a child.  He couldn’t make out the child’s name.  Sven or something similar, but his voice changed when he called out, almost like he was crying.

Well he’d seen a lot of strange things in his fifty years, but this just about beat all.  Never did he imagine he would come across an injured man lying on the banks of the river, close to the place he now called home.  But he was here all right, thrashing about in his bed and Ignatius would do whatever it took to see that the young lad lived through whatever gruesome ordeal had brought him here.

Ignatius pulled the blanket up to the man’s chin shushing him, hoping to quiet his troubled spirit.  He stopped his frantic movements and settled into a peaceful sleep, responding to the soft tone of Ignatius’ voice.  With a last look, he retreated through the doorway, walked to the table, and sat in the chair he’d left over an hour ago.  His food was cold now, but that didn’t bother him.  He would wait and eat when the youngster awoke.  He put his head down on the table and drifted off to sleep to the peaceful sound of a thousand night crickets just outside his door.

Coming Soon!