The Crossing

By Chad Strong

This is a western short story.

Rick Barton concocted a devilish plan to take his stolen cash and his reluctant woman north across the border to Canada and a new life. So far, he's outrun the posse - but can he outrun his own choices?

THE CROSSING -  by the author of HIGH STAKES, Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best First Western Novel from the Western Fictioneers, RONE Award Finalist for American Historical Novel, and 5-Star Readers' Choice Book Reviews. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HunterCat Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994735089

Chad Strong

A Canadian writer, Chad Strong has had the privilege of living in different parts of this vast and varied country: from Victoria, BC on the west coast, to the Manitoba prairie, to southern Ontario.  He grew up reading fiction and non-fiction of all sorts, from westerns to fantasies, from adventures to history. His writing has followed suit across multiple genres and his short stories have appeared in publications including Bards & Sages Quarterly, Mysterical-E, Rawhide’n Roses - a Western Anthology, and Frontier Tales. High Stakes is his first novel.

Book preview

THE CROSSING

Chad Strong

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Rick Barton grinned the grin of a wolf sated with the blood of a good kill. But as he stood in the doorway of the suddenly silent cabin, his eyes sweeping the sagebrush-studded hills below him, it was not blood that he licked from his yellowed teeth—it was tobacco-saturated spittle. The blood was on his hands.

With one of those hands he took a drag on his cigar and with the other he pulled his woman up against him. Blowing smoke passed her ear he bent his lanky frame and smothered her with a kiss.

"I don’t s’pect there’ll be anymore cowboys lookin’ to play hero after they find him, he told her as he straightened up. Still, he had to give the kid his due. The boy had followed him all the way from Spokane Falls, hadn’t been fooled by his change in direction after McEntee’s Crossing, and had caught up to them in this abandoned miner’s cabin just south of Westfield.   Barton shook his head, still grinning, and picked up the canvas sacks he’d tossed aside a few moments before. This fifty thousand is gonna set us up real nice in Canada. I won’t gotta work ever again in my whole life. And neither’ll you. And I’ll let you have all the servants you want."

His eyes stretched into the fanciful distance of his vision, while hers shortened, dropping to the red blotch he’d left on the sleeve of her floral dress.

He shook her, urging a response. Whadaya think of that, darlin’?

She looked up at his mud brown eyes, a small smile flickering uncertainly on her lips. Her voice was tight, high and childlike as it found its way out from inside her. But will they let us go now? You said if we just took the money and didn’t hurt anyone that they’d just forget about it and let us be. But—. She looked down at the