Stranded in Red Butte
by
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The first thing I saw through pain blurred eyes were the spread-toed feet of a three-legged bird with scruffy feathers. In a bewildered way I tried to remember what kind of bird had three feet, but my mind was too fuzzy.
Slowly I became aware of the cloying odor of sun-heated dust and realized that I was lying facedown on the ground. Around my lips a pesky fly was crawling and what felt like a fist-sized rock was digging into my chest but I was too sluggish to move.
Heat from the sun on my back, and pressure on my chest, finally roused me enough to try and get up.
As I slowly and awkwardly moved my right arm, preparing to sit up, there was a harsh squawk followed by beating wings. A fourth leg came into view as two turkey buzzards flew up to settle again not far away. At the sight of the blood-red heads and necks of these scavengers, I quickly sat up.
Blinding, nerve-wracking pain grabbed my chest and held me in its death-like grip. The world swung around and around. My stomach churned with nausea. This, along with the black flashes before my eyes, forced me to press both hands to the ground beside my hips to keep from falling over.
Slowly the pain subsided to a dull, barely bearable, throbbing. The spinning passed and after swallowing several times, my stomach stopped churning. My mind was listless, my eyesight blurred, and I didn't remember where I was or how I had gotten here. I only knew that I hurt and two buzzards were eyeing me like meat in the pot.
Gently I slid my hand inside my shirt. In the area under my left pocket I found a bad bruise that burned like fire at the slightest touch. With tender fingers, moving very gently, I found that the injured area covered about three inches. Removing my hand, I reaching into my left shirt pocket and pulled out a distorted mass of metal and shattered glass. The remnants of my pocket compass. Buried in its demolished innards was the flattened lead of a bullet.
By that time my mind had begun to clear. The sight of the bullet-shattered compass brought back all that had happened up until the time I had blacked out.
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About the Book
Dale Hypsmann, a blacksmith on his way to a job in Red Butte, Colorado, is mistaken for a payroll messenger and shot. While recovering from the wound that breaks two ribs, Dale engages in a shooting match for a prize rifle. He wins the match and the enmity of the local, overgrown pug-ugly known as H.K. At a dance, H.K. starts an argument and hits Dale’s chest wound. One of the weakened ribs ruptures and punctures Dale’s lung, causing a siege of pneumonia. Out of bed but a few days, Dale drives the doctor to an emergency call. The worried doctor doesn’t warn Dale, and after an hour in the cold, he walks into the house full of diphtheria. The epidemic runs its course and a dance is held to aid the victims of the disease. Before inviting his girlfriend, Alegra Hawthorn, to the shindig, Dale uses his blacksmith know-how to make a metal chest protector. H.K. starts an argument by throwing Dale’s coat on the dance hall floor and wiping his shoes on it. When Dale accepts the challenge, a blow to his scarcely healed chest knocks him to the floor, and the chest protector cripples H.K.’s hand. On the morning Alegra and Dale start their honeymoon, H.K. meets them with a blacksnake whip. Because of H.K.’s crippled hand, Dale is able to get control of the whip and beats H.K. into a craven hulk.
About the Author
I was born in Western Kansas eighteen miles from where my Grandfather Flavius J. Foster homesteaded on the north-fork of the Solomon River in 1878. That fall, Chief Dull-Knife and his band of Indians camped three miles upstream from Grandpa’s little settlement; sending them scooting down river. The next day, the Indians moved twenty-two miles farther north where they killed forty-two unarmed Immigrant farmers. (The victims were buried in the Oberlin, Kansas Cemetery." My father was born in a sod house on the old homestead, while my mother was born in a sod house in Nebraska. In the two small towns that I grew up in, there were several Civil War veterans, men who helped harvest the huge buffalo herds, and men who had fought Indians and settled Kansas and Oklahoma. In fact, one grocer we used to do business with made the run when the so-called ‘Unassigned Lands’ were opened for settlement in what is now Oklahoma. I grew up in Dad’s blacksmith shop and worked on all types of farm machinery and tools. When the Depression drove most of the farmers out of business, I delivered beer from Colorado Springs to several towns in the Rockies, including Cripple Creek where I became acquainted with some old time gold and silver prospectors. When that job folded, I spent time as a temporary laborer on a railroad. I sweated in a Washington State logging camp, worked on ranches mowing and stacking hay and at any work where I could get eating money. During WWII I was forward observer for the 10th Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, as we fought our way from North Africa through Italy to Germany and Austria. I have been interested in rifle and pistol shooting from age nine and have been a member of several rifle and pistol teams. Until I could no longer see iron sights, I also engaged in black powder muzzle-loading rifle shooting, and have thrown tomahawks for many hours at a time. All of these and other experiences have gone into background for my writings, including this novel and The Trail of the Double Eagles, now in print by 1st Books Library. I am now editing the first manuscript of a three-novel series on the settling of Oklahoma.