Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) Read Online Free PDF Page A

jackrabbits or cottontails. Zane squinted. One hell of a big bird.
    As he watched the raptor, or whatever it was, wing out over the canyon from the ridge crest, he vaguely detected a slight tightening in his shoulder blades and a thinning of his piss stream. He lifted a gloved hand to shade his eyes and scrutinized the winged beast just now flying over him, about two thousand feet in the air and beginning to bank as it gradually headed back toward the ridge. Massive lime and gold wings, like giant bat wings, swatted against the air while a long tail, spiked on its top side, curled like a ship’s tiller. The head owned the shape of the alligators Zane had once seen on a tobacco-selling journey to southern Georgia, only this head had large triangular ears, like a dog’s ears.
    Green and gold scales along the winged beast’s reptilian body flashed in the sunlight as the beast careened back over the top of the ridge and disappeared behind it.
    Zane stood staring, incredulous. He blinked his eyes as if to clear them, wondering if what he had spied was really only a large hawk or eagle but a trick of the light had given it the shape of a dragon.
    He stared at the sky over the ridge, hoping the beast would appear once more. After a time, Junius called from behind him, “Uriah, if you’re havin’ trouble in the peein’ department, I know a fella in Gunnison. Sells an elixir that’ll have you streamin’ like a Belgian plow horse!”
    “Did you see that?” Zane said, buttoning his pants and striding back toward the prospector.
    Junius was holding the burro’s halter and waving blackflies away from his own long, wart-stippled nose. “See what?”
    “That bird up yonder?”
    The prospector lifted his gaze. “What bird?”
    “Ain’t sure it was a bird.” Zane brushed past the man and grabbed General Lee’s reins. “Do me a favor. The rest of the way to Gunnison, keep an eye on the sky for me, will you? Don’t laugh or spread it around the saloons till I know for sure, but I think I seen a dragon.”
    Junius had turned, wincing a little on his twisted ankle, to follow Zane with his gaze. He arched a skeptical brow. “A what?”
    The ghoul hunter swung into the leather and felt his bearded cheeks warm with chagrin. Was he going mad? “Just keep an eye skinned upward and let me know if you see anything you ain’t used to seein’. Now, come on, goddamnit. We don’t have all day to burn out here. I wanna turn these heads in before we start attracting mountain lions!”
    He neck-reined General Lee around and, the casket wheeling along behind him and the croaker sacks swishing like grislyornaments down its sides, headed back up the western trail. They wound around through the canyon until the steep walls gradually lowered and they were on a broad open flat, the river to their left now, distant mountains jutting like storm clouds in all directions, several peaks already snow mantled.
    They crossed the river, wide and shallow here on the sage flats, and entered the cow and mining town of Gunnison. The rough little prairie oasis was so high in altitude that the sun literally appeared to be raining gold out of a vast cerulean sky upon the log shacks and shanties and tent saloons and corrals and leaning privies and stock pens.
    Gunnison had a broad main street, its crown jewel a turreted sandstone opera house at a hitch in the road. The log and frame false-fronted businesses around it were more than humbled by its gaudy opulence, though there was a three-story brothel painted red and deep purple, with balconies on the upper two stories, that tried its damndest to compete.
    Gunnison was bustling, as it always was this time of the year, with drovers driving beeves to be shipped out on the railroad to Denver or Salt Lake City and prospectors making their gradual way out of the extreme high country around Crested Butte and Tincup to lower altitudes for the winter. And since Gunnison was sandwiched between two known ghoul