The Winslow War

By Darrel Bird

Blake Rendell returns home from fighting in the civil war, only to find most of his family dead, and yet another war brewing over grazing land. Carson will stop at nothing to see Blake dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darrel Bird
• Release date: Feb 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311834454

Darrel Bird

Darrel Bird has written and published 47 short stories. He attended Bakersfield college, and is an avid motorcyclist.

Book preview

The Winslow War

by Darrel Bird

Copyright 2015 by Darrel Bird

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The Winslow War

Part 1

He pulled back on the reins a little as the horse stopped at the top of a bluff overlooking the valley below with its pines, cedar, and sage. A stream meandered down the middle of the valley like a blue serpent.

He wondered if the horse would have walked clean over the bluff if he had not pulled back on the reins. He was a war horse that had taken him through the battle at Chickamauga and a hundred other smaller skirmishes. The war was over.

Home!  That’s what’s down there horse. Do you see it?"

He could see the house and barns off in the distance, on a bench of land overlooking the creek. A goodly stand of pine grew behind the house, and cattle dotted the small hills. A horse stood tied to a post in front of the log house. He saw his mother, father, sister, and two brothers in his mind's eye, even though dimly after four years of war. They would be sitting down to a meal about now as the shadows grew long in the evening.

He reached up to feel his long beard. He would have shaved, but the war had left him destitute and his clothes ragged, and he felt rather than saw his ribs poking through the skin. The south had lost the war, leaving him no reward for the years of fighting, and game had been scarce on his way through Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico. By the time