The Dark Mystery of the High Mountains (Preview)

Chapter One

Jack Abernathy lay in his bed. His body was exhausted, stomach cramping and empty, cold sweat pouring down the sides of his face. His wife Maggie loomed over him, dabbing his forehead and cheeks, his clammy neck. She looked down at him with a sad, sorry expression on her pale, freckled face; her long, curly red hair hanging down over him like a beautiful burial shroud.

“Take it easy, Jack,” she said, able to say or do little else.

“Maggie,” Jack tried to say, his throat dry, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. He was trembling, his body quivering with waves of cold, each leaving him weaker. His eyesight was fading, but he could still see her angelic face, those radiant green eyes. “Maggie…”

“Shshshshsh, Jack, save your strength.”

But he knew there was no point. He didn’t have the fight in him. The mountain had taken every bit of strength he’d ever had, and every bit of his wit as well. All this time, he thought, able only to reason without expending the energy to speak, I was trying to take from the mountain, to rob it of its riches, strengthen myself at its detriment. He could almost hear that mountain laughing in the distance, a long and low rumble. But every time I went in to take a bit more out, it took a bit more out of me. It robbed me of my own riches, a vital body and keen mind, a loving wife and a life of good, hard labor, a life of hope and promise. Now, the mountain is stronger, and I am laid low.

“Maggie…”

“What, Jack? What is it?”

I love you, he wanted to say, I’m so sorry I failed you. There’s no gold in this mountain, our claim is worthless. No wonder I’ve lost my senses! I mean to say that… I know they can’t be real…

“They can’t be,” Jack managed to get out, “but… but I know what I’ve seen, Maggie! I tried to…”

I tried to tell you, but you thought I’d gone mad. Maybe I had, but… they say gold drives you mad, but I thought that was only once you’ve found it. It’s not true—this whole land can turn a man crazed! I’m not the first, and I probably won’t be the last.

“Get out,” Jack said, eyes pushing out of his head.

Get out while you can, Maggie, before the mountain destroys you, too, before the ghosts come for you the way they’re coming for me! Get out…

“Get out!”

“Where, Jack, why? I’m not leaving your side now, you know that!”

No, Jack thought but couldn’t say, not you too, Maggie, please …

But she could only shake her head. Jack could see in her face that she knew what was coming for him. He’d watched her grow from loving and supportive to distant and rattled and finally into a raving lunatic, often unable to control her own words, thoughts, actions. Her smile had faded along with her hopes for his recovery and for their future, her loving softness becoming harder for her to produce and harder for him to find. The ghosts were coming between them, just another strategy; divide and conquer, separating him from his only ally in a fiendish flanking maneuver that had him cut off, isolated, surrounded, enemies closing in for the kill.

“Jack, you’ve been working too hard, that’s all. You’ve got to relax, get some rest.”

Rest, Jack thought, eternal rest, and it’s coming, Maggie. Death itself is coming for me. I can hear those bony footsteps getting louder, I can feel that metal scythe, sharp and ready to cut me down.

Get out before it gets you too, Maggie, please! Save yourself while there’s still time!

Then, suddenly, there was no more time. They finally arrived, wafting through the cabin door, bodies like smoke leaking in through the crevices and taking shape in the room. Crow warriors, three of them, grim-faced and ready for their gruesome task. Their tawny physiques were barely clad, feathers in their long, dark hair, one with a tomahawk, the other carrying the smoky apparition of a Winchester rifle.

Jack screamed and pointed at them, past Maggie to his ghostly assassins. His hand quivered, and Maggie looked back into the cabin, then at Jack to shrug and shake her head. His scream died away, no more breath to propel it.

“What, Jack, what?” All he could do was lean forward, with Maggie trying to easy him back. “There’s nothing there! It’s all in your mind, Jack, like a bad dream, that’s all it is. Try to relax.”

A dream, he thought, a bad dream, that’s all it’s ever been. Coming out here, visions of wealth and greatness and power—all a bad dream.

They approached the bed, the one in front empty-handed, reaching out with grasping fingers, passing through Maggie as its hands got nearer. Jack’s neck clenched as those ghostly hands clamped down around his throat, squeezing tight. He could feel the pressure, even stronger than any set of Earthly fingers could be. They pressed into his throat, tissue collapsing, heart pounding in his chest.

Jack gasped and coughed, reaching up but unable to get his fingers around the spirit’s hands.

“Jack!”

Maggie stood back, helpless and sad, seeming to hope to give him some room to breathe, confused by what he was having to endure.

She can’t see them, he told himself. Good. They’re not here for her, not yet.

Good.

Take me, then, you otherworldly savages. Take me to your eternal hunting grounds if you must, but leave my wife in peace. She had nothing to do with it, she’s innocent. I’m the one you want, take me…. take me now!

Those fingers dug in deeper, breath strained, blood collecting in Jack’s head, heart ready to explode in his chest. He looked up at that spirit’s face, sneering in a hateful grimace as Jack’s body jutted and quaked, arms locking at his sides, bent and useless, empty hands grasping at nothing as they finally lost their grip on the tree of life.

Jack’s eyesight faded, ears a dull ring, the mountain chuckling in that low, distant rumble.

*

Maggie Abernathy stood in the single room of their simple mountain cabin, Jack in the bed in the corner that was their bedroom. She could only stand there, her heart empty, stomach turning with nausea. Jack had been a long time dying, and he finally lay there in his deathbed, a picture of mortal terror. His mouth was frozen in a silent death scream, eyes wide and staring. His arms were bent at his sides, fingers open and grasping. There was no peaceful repose, there was no gentle slip into that good night. Jack had fought and feared to the end, and his corpse was an eternal illustration of that moment of ultimate horror.

The door knocked, timid little taps. Maggie turned and said, “Come in, Manuel.” The front door opened and Manuel stepped quietly into the cabin. Small and thin and brown, with big eyes and black hair, Manuel seemed to know what had happened, one glance at the bed only confirming it.

He wrapped his arms around Maggie and she took him in her embrace. He rested his head on her shoulder, the kid brother she’d never had. And he’d been a dedicated and loyal hand, grateful to Jack for having saved his life five years before, indebted in voluntary and happy servitude in efforts of their mutual survival.

And he was the only thing close to family that Maggie had left in the world.

They were alone in the wilds of the Wyoming Territory, facing a terribly uncertain future, with nowhere to go and little to survive on.

And death was stalking the mountains of Lander, outside and around the Abernathy gold claim and homestead.

Chapter Two

Maggie and Manuel had dug the grave together, on a slope of the property overlooking the house she’d built with Jack—the house where they’d started their new life, the house where he’d died.

Manuel had carved out a headstone with Jack’s name and the dates of his birth and death. But Maggie knew it wouldn’t last long in those elements: the rain and the snow of winter, the howling winds of fall, the brutal heat of the summer sun, rays powerful enough to kill a man. The marker would soon decay and disappear, just like the body entombed beneath it.

Nothing lasts, Maggie had to admit to herself. Nothing survives out here, not for long. She looked out over the mountains behind them, the valley in front, foothills and higher mountains in the distance. Maybe we’re not meant to be out here at all, she had to ask herself, and not for the first time. Maybe there is no manifest destiny, maybe that’s just an excuse for the rich and powerful to take what belongs to others, what belongs to nobody. I know the price of this folly: madness and death.

She and Manuel stood at that grave, the dirt still freshly dug, lump rising up a bit over the body, buried deep. Maggie could still recall Jack’s handsome face, before the madness overtook him, before the mountain sapped him of his strength and his wit and his will. She could still hear his voice ringing in the back of her head, so glad to be staking out their own claim. He’d found her an orphaned teenager, raised her to a young woman and married her, and Maggie couldn’t help but feel that she’d lost her parents yet again, that she was destined to be alone in the world.

The ground rumbled, a faint but vast vibration that seemed to pass over the land, trembling under their feet.

Maggie looked down at Manuel, who she knew felt the same pain ringing true in his own soul. He’d been taken in as an orphan, too, and he was also losing his past, his present, and a lot of his future in saying goodbye to Jack Abernathy.

“At least his suffering is over,” Maggie noted, wrapping an arm around Manuel’s shoulders and pulling him in for a reassuring hug. “He’s finally at peace.” Manuel said nothing, as usual, nodding and boring his face in her shoulder.

Whether Maggie and Manuel would find any kind of peace on the other side of Earth’s surface was another matter. They’d barely managed to survive even with Jack’s strong arms and keen shooting eye. He’d taught Maggie to shoot and fight, and both she and Manuel had grown strong with years of labor, toil, hunting, fending off wandering mountain men and roaming black bears and cougars.

They had a chance, but not much of one.

People were already starting to call it ‘the American Dream,’ but it struck Maggie as little more than a nightmare. Her lush childhood had collapsed and left her adrift, and only Jack Abernathy shone as a light in the darkness of her life. Now, that light had been snuffed out, and Maggie had to wonder if she’d ever find such a light again.

A widow, she reminded herself, with a Mexican boy in tow.

But it didn’t matter; her own happiness had no more hope than Jack’s chances of crawling out of that grave. She had Manuel to think about, and poor Jack. Though he was dead, she still felt that she owed him a debt of honor, of gratitude. And she owed it to herself, knowing she’d never be able to forgive herself for simply walking away from the dream he’d sacrificed his life for.

Maggie simply could hardly bring herself to imagine leaving. Jack had given his life for that place, that dream before it became a nightmare. To leave that place would be to leave him, to abandon his dream, their dream. That was something she just couldn’t bring herself to do.

No, Jack, she silently swore, I won’t let you have died in vain. I’m going to find a way to make it work. I won’t succumb, I’m not afraid… not too much, anyway. But I won’t leave you here alone, Jack, I promise.

*

Manuel could hardly recall his Christian surname. He’d been owned by so many people, been dragged all over the country, he was hardly still sure if he was from Mexico or if those childhood years had just been a dream. He stood by Maggie, grateful to have her alive by his side. He’d been alone too often in his mere seventeen years. Stolen from his parents in Mexico and made the slave of a French fur trapper, Manuel had been dragged through the swamps of the Louisiana Territory, very nearly eaten alive by water monsters the white man called gators. He could still feel the humidity on the back of his neck. He’d come across more different Indian nations than he imagined could have existed, each seeming to have languages of their own and all different than his own Spanish or his master’s French.

But death spoke in a tongue all men and women understood, however much they tried to pretend otherwise. When that grim reaper came for Henri Tulane, drowning in a bog near the area the whites called Florida, it had been both a threat and a liberation. Manuel had heard of the escaping slaves, who fled to the land they seemed to know of as North. He’d fallen in with several and followed their trail away from the humid swamps and up through rolling foothills and craggy mountains toward a land of freedom, a paradise before paradise.

The whites called it Canada.

Of course, Manuel hadn’t made it that far. The escaped slaves he was traveling with were run down by slave hunters, their dogs barking and howling. Manuel could still hear the screams of the negroes as the dogs ripped at their flesh, men screaming and guns shooting to preserve their value as laborers.

Manuel had kept running, eventually sold to a farmer at just eleven years old, who was besieged by marauding Arapaho just a year later.

Manuel could still envision Jack Abernathy riding in to repel the raiders—too late to save old man Dollard, but just in time to prevent Manuel from being scalped. Manuel could still feel the Indian’s hand clutching his hair, pulling him back to bring that sharpened knife down and peel back the thin flesh covering his skull.

Bang, bang-bang! The gunshots reverberated in Manuel’s memory. He’d turned to see Jack riding in to lay the Arapaho low, chasing the others off. They’d left that mountainside farm together, and Manuel had been with him ever since.

Manuel could remember the first day he’d met Maggie, not long before the two wed and Jack moved all three to Wyoming. He was the only guest at or witness to their wedding.

He wasn’t about to abandon Jack to that mountain, and certainly not Maggie—part mother, part sister, the only family he had in the world.

But the mountain loomed, ever present on the landscape and in his mind. He’d always feared it, for its beasts and for its bandits and for its terrible spiritual power. There was discontent in that mountain, the spirits of the forgotten perhaps, a place where the world ended. But Maggie had always reassured him that it just wasn’t so, it couldn’t be. And if she said it, Manuel believed that it had to be true.

But then, Jack began to change, bringing back tales of visions and visitations as if from the belly of hell itself. Fear had returned to Manuel’s heart. And of all the people and things he’d seen and feared in his life, the worst of man and beast, nothing frightened him more than that mountain. It was bigger and more deadly than all the animals who dwelled in and upon and around it, greater than even the most terrible men who called its crevices home. None could approach the mountain itself for size and greatness of wrath.

Manuel was assaulted by flashed of dreams which had plagued him over the previous year—the mountain rising up from the ground, getting bigger in front of him like some great beast rising from a centuries-long sleep, angry and ill-tempered. A great mouth opened up, gaping in a scream, with rocks and dirt flying from its maw before it threw itself down on him, that hideous jaw closing down on Manuel and Maggie both.

The dream always ended there, the two of them consumed by the mountain, just as their beloved Jack Abernathy had been.

But Manuel was determined to remain by Maggie’s side, wherever she decided to be, for as long as she would have him. He would stay with her if that was her choice, and Manuel had a terrible feeling that it would be. He knew there was still that magical land of Canada, a place of peace and goodwill, where neighbors and friends were untouched and untroubled. But he knew he could never change her heart, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to protect her, to preserve her life as Jack had tried to do. She would need it, Manuel felt certain. But Jack had died for this place, and Manuel’s guess was that Maggie was ready to do the same. Manuel felt he owed it to his fallen patriarch rescuer and to her, his adopted older sister and the only mother he would ever know. Manuel would do no less than either one if that was called for, and he had a terrible feeling that it would be.

Chapter Three

Pastor Thomas Tamarind was praying at the altar of the modest First Church of Wyoming, dead center in the middle of a tiny camp barely big enough to be referred to as such. It only been two years since the founding of Bright Light, Wyoming, when over a hundred people promised a bright future. But constant raids by Crow and bandits and the sheer force of the elements, brutal winters and humid summers, drove the would-be citizens to Lander and other towns in the territory. But there were a few stragglers, and they clung to the church as if for dear life. Thomas had considered appealing to them to join the others, even offering to lead them there like some modern-day Moses.

Thomas never saw himself that way, not at all.

And he had visions, placed in his imagination by God Himself, or at least one of His Arc Angels, clear to see for any with eyes for such a thing. The visions were of Bright Light, a thriving community of worship and godliness in a corrupted and forsaken place. The heavenly promise of the new nation was already turning to a demonic confidence game, a way to turn the victim, dim humanity, to spiritual impoverishment. It had been like hell on Earth in cities like New York and Boston. Only the open wilderness could match the splendor of God’s word and righteous calling. Thomas and his church were meant to be a bright light to the darkness cloaked over the nation, the shadow of corruption and wanton wickedness; he and his adored wife Carla were meant to be Bright Light, and they weren’t going to abandon God’s call to them, not then and not ever.

Carla rushed into the church. It had been months since she’d smiled, but this time her fearful countenance had an even greater resonance. And Thomas knew what could inspire that fear, forces he couldn’t stand against without God behind him.

But the local Crow and the bandits and even banditos had come and gone and taken everything worth taking. There was nothing there to plunder or loot, and everybody in the region knew it.

There were always travelers new to the region, however. And by the look on his wife’s face, aging fast in the elements, he knew that there was indeed a stranger in Bright Light and that he’d probably given her good cause to be afraid.

While Thomas did have a Winchester rifle in his sleeping quarters, he refused to allow guns in the sanctuary. It was a desecration, a violation of that holy place, for its representative to wield a weapon of any kind. It was for him to beat his swords into plowshares and study war no more, however many or few others would follow their example.

But that wouldn’t stop whoever was coming in from doing just that.

Lord, Thomas silently and quickly prayed, open this visitor’s heart to our holy mission, free him of the burden of evil that so many others carry around with them, weighing down their spirits. Whatever malice he brings with him, whatever shadow he plans to cast over Bright Light, protect us. We are your humble servants, we are here to lay down our lives in Your service. We know You will do the same for us… at least, for my wife. Protect her if I cannot live long enough to do so, send your angels to stand before her and keep her safe even if my own life is forfeit. I will not complain, I will go willingly. But for my wife’s sake, Lord, stand with us against whomever may come against us.

In Your name we pray.

Amen.

The sanctuary door opened, hinges creaking, a man’s figure stepping into the doorway surrounded by silence.

The sunlight shone behind him, casting a silhouette as he stepped down that center aisle.

“Welcome, my friend,” Thomas said, the stranger slowly moving toward him. “Welcome to Bright Light.” The man looked around the church but said nothing, making his way relentlessly forward. “We… we are humble servants of Christ here, sir. Whatever you’ve come for, all we have to offer is God’s love and… and Christ’s forgiveness.”

“I’m not here to seek forgiveness,” the man said, his voice strong and grainy, buried deep in his throat. “Or love.”

“Perhaps… perhaps a hot meal,” Thomas suggested as the man got closer, long brown hair hanging over the sides of his face, eyes big and brown, cheekbones strong and high. “It’s all we can offer sir, truly.”

Thomas’ heart beat faster as the man reached the altar.

Carla said, “Please, mister, just leave us in peace.”

The man brandished something from his pocket, a bolt of panic shot through Thomas.

Lord, please, let it be quick and painless, and please let it end with me!

But instead of a gun or a hunting knife, the man brandished a small canvas sack, which he dropped at Thomas’ feet. Thomas stood, stunned, as Carla bent down to pick up the sack. She opened it and looked in. “Gold,” she said to Thomas, “it’s… it’s gold!”

Thomas said to the man, “Please, sir, take your ill-gotten-gains out of this holy place. We have no use for it.”

“It was stolen from a miner in the stream, by two men who left his body there. I settled things for him.” Thomas and Carla glanced at one another, then back at the man as he explained, “I took it from him. Not sure what else to do with it.”

Thomas gave it some thought. It was easy to imagine that man coming upon the scene of another’s murder—such things happened everywhere one turned in that increasingly dense nation. The more people who came through, the more crime and disregard they brought, the worse the blight on the beautiful landscape. Thomas had no gripe with most of the good people populating the new world, but not all of them were as virtuous and even-tempered as this man seemed.

“What’s your name, friend?”

“Gillum,” he said, “West Gillum.”

*

West was grateful for the hot bath, the water rinsing days of riding and soothing his tense muscles. It was a rare treat to be able to close his eyes and not have to worry about who or what might be sneaking up to gun him down or tear him apart. Life had meant survival, and survival had meant scraping for every day above ground and outside some bear’s belly. West had become trained to live on the land; years of hardscrabble theft in big cities, time serving in the Indian Wars; it had been a life of adversaries, enemies, things to run at or run from. Even a bath was something to embrace, to enjoy, even though West knew it would never last.

The water was already starting to go cold.

The smoked meat was salty and chewy, but it filled his belly, and the water was fresh from a nearby stream. Pastor Thomas and his wife were patient and interested and their company was a welcome respite from the silent isolation of the trail, for as long as that was going to last.

“We wish you’d stay,” the pastor said, almost pleading. “We could use a man like you here, instill confidence in others, encourage them to stay and settle here in Bright Light.”

West looked around the little church, then back at its erstwhile protectors. “Are you sure this is where God wants you to be? Think about taking the gold and going to Lander. Maybe that’s what God wants, maybe that’s what He intends for you.”

Thomas and Carla shared a glance, eyes downcast. West said, “You have each other, so no matter where you stand, you are on God’s ground. Don’t be afraid of the future, and don’t cling to desperately to the past.”

West was glad to see them smile, and he was happy to join them. But he knew it wouldn’t last. He’d have to move on, for reasons even he didn’t quite understand. But go he would, though he knew he’d be looking back. That was the nature of life, no matter how good his advice was to others. If he could follow it himself, he would have. Until then, the trail awaited him.

Chapter Four

Many Wives looked over the tribe that called him Chief, hundreds of warriors, their women and children. Teepees and small fires were scattered over the plain, mountains in the distance and beyond them, the whites.

Nothing had been right since the white man, but Many Wives had been told in a dream that the great white water would pour across the land. He knew that the tree which bent with the force of that tide would be the tree to survive. The tree with roots to feed in that new environment would be the one to bear fruit, to cast its seed upon the land and raise a fine, hearty forest.

The others would be washed away. He’d seen it in his dreams, those of his own washed away, some on fire as the tide carried them off, Many Wives helpless to rescue them.

But the dreams were vague and shrouded in mystery. The spirits did not speak directly. Many Wives began to wonder if he still had the power to hear their voices correctly. They may even have turned their voices against him, silent to his waiting ear.

The old chief could only wonder, How can I lead if the spirits will not lead me? Why should my people have faith in my strength if the spirits do not? Even my own son has hardened his heart against me. He yearns to lead, he feels that the Earth Grandmother is calling to him. But he mistakes his restless spirit for that of a true warrior. He sees not that the stronger warrior seeks to avoid the fight. But I have never truly been able to reach him, even with all these years and so many mothers.

“You’ve grown old and weak,” He Owns the Day said in their native tongue, forgetting himself. “You’re no longer fit to be called chief, or even Crow!”

“But I am your chief,” Many Wives replied, “and that I shall remain! And you will obey your chief, and not dishonor your family!”

He Owns the Day turned in his angry course back and forth before his father, arms out and pleading. “They desecrate the mountains, and you can hear her crying out in the night, howling in agony as they dig into her, deeper and harder. The mountain is angry, Father. The whites dig their shovels into her, they stab their wooden poles into her flesh. The mountain demands satisfaction, revenge! It will rise up and then crash down to destroy us all, I promise you!”

“The mountain has no quarrel with us, my son. We have been at her base for these many generations, as far back as the tribe’s memory will go. Why should she want to destroy us?”

“For allowing this desecration! My father, we are her guardians, we are the keepers of the great Grandmother Earth and the Mother Mountain. This is how you taught me to be and to live!”

“As I was taught, and my father before him.”

“Then why must you change this now? It is the essence of what we are. Kill the mothers, the whole family dies!”

Many Wives boomed out with the power of his command. “And there is the weakness of your vision, my son!” He looked around the reservation, casting his hand out over the hundreds in his care, someday to be in the care of his son. “This is our family, and we will die if we stand in war against the whites! We must wait, lest that great flood wash us all away.” He Owns the Day waved his father off with a bitter sneer, so the chief went on, “There is another way to survive them, one which may yet send none of us to the world of our ancestors.”

“Take their women and let their numbers die off so that we—”

“Nothing of the kind, my hot-blooded young man! There is word among the tribes that the white man’s own tribes are beating the war drums. They may yet take to each other in a battle to consume both tribes.”

“And return the land to the glory of our parents?”

“And of those who come after us.”

He Owns the Day allowed this some thought. “What of your dreams, of the white flood waters?”

Many Wives gave the matter fair consideration. “There will be blood in great quantities, my son, white man’s blood—a white tide enough to wash us all away if we are not careful. Surely, this is the what the dream is telling me, and this is what I am telling you.”

He Owns the Day didn’t seem convinced. But his father had strength, he had the tribe behind him, and he was still the chief. So He Owns the Day nodded and turned, but his scowl told Many Wives that his son’s patience was nearing an end. He dreaded what would happen after that.

*

He Owns the Day had to walk away from his father before he disrespected him in front of the others. But he hadn’t been wrong, and he carried that knowledge away with him as he jumped on his pony and rode north toward the mountains.

The closer he got to them, the more he could feel their anger, sense their indignity at being defiled at the hands of the whites.

They destroy everything they touch, He Owns the Day told himself, not for the first time. They befoul the spring water, fill the land with the bones of their dead. How do they get to the next world buried beneath the ground? It makes no sense! But how much about those pale creatures does make sense? They think themselves better than all others, above instead of a part. They mistreat their wool-heads, they move us from one place to another, and that has only just begun. Tear themselves apart? A war between the tribes? Maybe, but when? Will it come too late to save us? Will it ever come at all?

His pony carried the frustrated Crow warrior closer to the mountain, and he felt he could feel its rumbling, and the only fear He Owns the Day ever felt returned to his belly. Something about that mountain vibrated deep within his bones, as if he were a part of it, as if the mountain had been his true mother. He felt a part of it, and that it was a part of him. When the whites plowed into her, he could feel them digging into his own flesh. What they pulled from her, he imagined them pulling from his own body. As they hollowed her out, they hollowed him out, and the whole of their tribe and, soon, their entire way of life.

The mountain was only the beginning of the white man’s campaign, only the next step across the countryside, to crush the Crow and the other nations underfoot without knowledge or concern.

No, He Owns the Day told himself, promising the mountain, the plains, the rivers, the skies, I won’t let them destroy you! I was born to protect you, we were born to protect you, and I will not forsake my duty—as a warrior, as a crow, as a man worthy of the name. I will fight to the death to protect you, but hear me now, great Mother:

I will not be the next to die.

---

“The Dark Mystery of the High Mountains “ is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Young Maggie Abernathy is widowed when her husband succumbs to madness and fever after months in their seemingly useless gold mine. When Maggie turns to the men of the local town for help, she attracts attention, both wanted and unwanted. In the meantime, strange events in the mineshaft suggest otherworldly forces. Will Maggie put an end to the disasters and expanding insanity, or will she have to make the same sacrifice her late husband did?

West has grown up in an orphanage and has gone through many hardships. He falls for Maggie, but his own enemies put her life at higher risk. Along with the earthquakes and madness which spreads like wildfire, he also has to empower himself against those enemies. No matter how hard his mission is, he stands by Maggie’s side and does everything possible to protect her. Will he help her to solve the mystery in the mountain or will the whole town be doomed to a dreadful fate?

Everything seems to be going against them. The madness which felled Maggie’s first husband now threatens the young woman, her new lover, and everyone around the territory. Will Maggie and West find a way to save the town, and protect themselves and what they love?

A historical western adventure book, which promises to be an instant favorite! Psychological suspense, magical realism, and rollicking action will put you in the center of an adventure that will never be equalled. A must-read for fans of Western adventures with a touch of romance.

“The Dark Mystery of the High Mountains ” is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

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