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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Horror
eBook Description: A modern-day newspaper reporter from Salt Lake City meets a mysterious Indian in Utah's West Desert. The Indian tells him a strange story of an ancestor who was on the banks of the Sevier River when Indians massacred Captain Gunnison and his scout team in 1853. And he tells about the strange white shaman who leveled a curse on the Indians in the form of a sextant that turns their skin green. The curse, the Indian tells the reporter, is coming home to roost after all these years. The reporter dismisses the mysterious Indian as a fraud, and goes home--but he'd touched the sextant. And then...

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Oceans of the Mind, 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2008

3 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [29 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [34 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [15 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [166 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [15 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [76 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [86 KB] , hiebook (KML) [68 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [41 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [13 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [17 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [44 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [27 KB]
Words: 4836
Reading time: 13-19 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"I found this one a brisk yet provocative read.... It's no secret how miserably Native Americans were treated by the Europeans, and this acerbic little tale offers a good dose of payback."--Tangent Online

Mike hesitated, ready to toss another rock into the Sevier River, shimmering silvery in the moonlight, but spooked now as he heard the dry crackle of rushes to the west.

"Mr. Custer? Is that you?"

The sound stopped.

Another damn cow? He'd seen many cows near the road when he'd arrived at the site--the little farming town of Hinckley was seven miles northeast. He'd nearly hit one on the road. Still, the noise startled him, so abrupt in the desert quiet, and his heart rose into his throat. He couldn't see what--or who--made the sound in the featureless dark that rose from the riverbank to the jagged line of the House Range thirty miles west. Above the mountains, the band of the Milky Way glittered, a starry necklace across the sky. A crescent moon hung above the southeastern horizon.

"Mr. Custer?"

Silence.

Still clutching the rock, Mike wiped sweat from his brow. He checked his watch. It was just after ten o'clock. He'd been here, waiting, for almost an hour.

He'd had no trouble finding the place. The Gunnison Massacre site was about three hours southwest of Salt Lake City. It sat just off U.S. 50, five miles down a gravel road. The site was a wide spot at the end of the gravel road, which terminated abruptly against a bend in the Sevier. On the riverbank stood a six-foot high stone monument, like an old chimney, a marker erected by local history buffs. A ragged, round scar on the monument had stood out in the setting sun. Mike guessed a commemorative plaque had once been cemented there. Vandals no doubt stole it, he'd thought, eyeing with distaste the broken bottles, shotgun shells and other trash discarded by people whose visits to the remote site had nothing to do with history.

Mike had never been to Utah's West Desert before, although he'd heard enough about it from reporters at the Salt Lake Tribune in his first six weeks on the job. He'd landed the job right out of Ohio State. Go see the stars you can't see from the city, they told him. Go alone and commune with nature, they said. And watch out for snakes, they added, laughing at his reaction.

Mike kicked at a dirt-encrusted object. A condom.

The rushes rattled again.