Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Blog

Blogathon 2006: Chapter 21.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

By the end of the week, however, he was packing and repacking his gear. His horse's feet had been picked clean enough to eat out of and his mind was set towards a bit of despair. He'd seen a wagon train go by on the very same path the wild horses had and the symbolism had all but wiped him out.

Westward the tide went, forever west forever tiding.

Dove was always fighting against the waves, the waves of Chinese rail workers and foreigners from the east and settlers with wagon trains and sodbusters ready to carve up the ground. Tides of people and a new way of living were breaking across the west. What he knew best was fading and fast.

The tides washed out the bad but had brought their own version of it, breaking him down from a rock to mere grain of sand. The assayer's office held invisible lines recorded in ink, backed up eventually with barbed wire. He had no problem with the people but he wondered where he'd find high ground in the flood.

Westward the tide went and he was being swept away with it. There was nowhere else to go, and he didn't know how to fight it anymore. He didn't know how to, nor want to, fight all the little Crossfire Trail battles springing up across the west.

I've got to, that's the whole thing, he thought. A man's got to have code, a creed to live by, no matter his job. And so, mind made up to do some living instead of more waiting, he saddled his horse and rode back to town. Here's to the sunny slopes of long ago.

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Labels: blogathon