The Last Ride

The Last Ride
Thomas Eidson

A novel of the American West narrates the story of a dying man's attempts to make peace with his daughter, their struggle to rescue his granddaughter from renegades and slave traders, and his lifelong search for inner peace.The Last Ride is the story of Maggie Gilkeson, a young woman raising her two daughters in an isolated and lawless wilderness.When her oldest daughter is kidnapped by a psychopathic killer with mystical powers, Maggie is forced to re-unite with her long estranged father to rescue her. The killer and his brutal cult of desperados have kidnapped several other teenage girls, leaving a trail of death and horror across the desolate landscape of the American Southwest. Maggie and her father are in a race against time to catch up with the renegades and save her daughter, before they cross the Mexican border and disappear forever.The Last Ride is the story of a race against time and death, a powerful tale of rescue and reconciliation that provides a haunting insight into our instincts of kinship and need for beliefs.

THOMAS EIDSON

The Last Ride

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_974b45c9-1a20-5a34-8a62-9fdd0c6d4479)

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by Penguin UK Ltd in 1995

This edition 2004

Copyright © Thomas E. Eidson 1995

Thomas E. Eidson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007181353

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007396832

Version: 2016-03-23

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

DEDICATION (#ulink_8176d292-1490-59f3-b0ca-cd9a6b586396)

For my parents Genevieve and Richard

‘None of us will ever forget Erwin Street …’

CONTENTS

Cover (#ub3b4c926-27a1-5f1a-b25a-072be93e7daa)

Title Page (#ud4be3ae7-33f3-5e5d-ac73-7f3745923e36)

Copyright (#u1acca323-5997-5ff3-a1c9-d23770b36734)

Dedication (#ua18776d9-92c3-5ce0-aea4-8783c0ac6bc1)

One (#ue4fd29c1-213e-5a89-8088-154f7d6ad819)

Two (#ue33234be-a02a-5c44-ab6c-bd9ecd2559b5)

Three (#uac536d46-29a6-5d49-977a-ff42e3412488)

Four (#uf702e0f7-1b95-51b2-8884-bd27015fb20d)

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Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Thomas Eidson (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#ulink_28394bff-70a9-52c2-9885-6e4386d51634)

Brake Baldwin spotted the horseman as he rode clear of the tamarisk trees. He pulled his spectacles down, watching over the newspaper to see that the stranger was actually coming in, then shoved them back and went on reading. It was late evening, storm clouds gathering in a lowering sky. A poor-will was calling from the hills behind the barn. The sound was off – he didn’t know why. The thick-trunked cottonwoods near the creek were blackening in the dusk, night closing over the small valley of the New Mexico ranch.

He returned to the newspaper’s headline: PRESIDENT DECLARES WILD WEST DEAD. Amazing. Just like that: it was over. Eighteen eighty-six and gone – a finger snap. Santa Fe was getting ready, the paper said, to celebrate with a parade of modern inventions and a concert in the old Plaza. That should be worth the seeing, he thought.

The bay mare in the pasture whinnied at the stranger’s horse, but got no response, Baldwin glanced back up – the rider was moving slowly in the dying light, the wind running hard ahead of the approaching rain. He kept his eyes on him longer this time, noticing something different, but the stormy twilight was too far gone to be good for seeing any distance.

Not liking the tenseness in his shoulders, Baldwin mumbled his grandmother’s saying: You weren’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl. The man and the horse were coming through the orchard now, the trees singing in the building storm. The animal’s head was down and it looked ready to collapse. Behind him, he heard the barn open. Mannito had seen the rider, as well. The old Mexican was nearing seventy-five, but he had the delicate senses of one grown old dodging Mescaleros and Chiricahuas and their Apache brethren. Fortunately, those days were nothing but mean memories. Maybe the newspaper had it right; maybe the Wild West was dead.

He heard another door, and the sound of shutters closing, and knew Maggie was back caring for the woman and her children. She had been going round the clock with these three for days. She wasn’t a regular doctor, but she had nursed over twenty years and was better at it than most, running a little infirmary of sorts. Mostly her patients were poor Mexicans like the woman and her kids.

The rider emerged slowly from the shadows and Baldwin focused on him, wanting to smile, but the battered Sharps rifle lying across the saddle kept him somber. Patterns had been tattooed into the stock of the old weapon with brass tacks, Indian style. He tucked the newspaper under his arm, dropping his hand slowly, the reflex surprising him since he hadn’t worn a gun in years.

‘Malo,’ Mannito whispered. ‘Bad.’ The little Mexican, hat in hand against the wind, was squinting through the darkening night at the stranger, then he turned and slipped away into the shadows, most likely gone to his shotgun, Baldwin figured.