The Gold Hunter

By Robin Brande

A Robin Brande Single.

 

Sometimes the only thing standing between life and death is a stranger who won't give up.

 

On a cold and rain-slick mountainside, Walter finds an injured, unconscious mountain climber.

 

Daylight is almost gone. They are miles from help. No cell service. No one to come to the young man's aid—only Walter.

 

A life in the mountains toughens a man, but tonight Walter will test his limits to find out just how tough.

 

He will save the kid if he can. Or otherwise die trying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryer Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201469603

Robin Brande

Award-winning author Robin Brande is a former trial attorney, entrepreneur, martial artist, law instructor, yoga teacher, wilderness adventurer, and certified wilderness medic. Her novels have been named Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association. She was selected as the Judy Goddard/Libraries Ltd. Arizona Young Adult Author of the Year in 2013. She writes fantasy, science fiction, contemporary young adult fiction, and romance.   

Book preview

The Gold Hunter

THE GOLD HUNTER

ROBIN BRANDE

RYER PUBLISHING

The Gold Hunter

By Robin Brande

Published by Ryer Publishing

www.ryerpublishing.com

Copyright 2021 by Robin Brande

www.robinbrande.com

Cover art by Cattallina/Deposit Photos

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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THE GOLD HUNTER

It was precarious, slope side, but Walter didn’t dare move him. There was a gash on the back of the kid’s head, about four inches long, bloody and already swelling.

He looked about twenty. Tall, strong-looking, but a sick paleness to his skin now. Five, maybe ten minutes in already, and the boy still hadn’t woken up.

There was a squall hanging over them. One of those surprise August storms that looks like it will just be more rain—expected—but that suddenly turns into blinding and dangerously cold summer sleet.

There was a saying up here in the mountains: Don’t like the weather? Wait ten minutes. It will change.

Tourists were always getting caught out. Day-hikers, campers, ambitious through-hikers on the Continental Divide.

Even old hands, like Walter, could still misjudge it. In the twenty years he’d lived up here, there wasn’t a month when he hadn’t been snowed on at least once. Hell, it even snowed one year during the Fourth of July parade. That made the papers.

But sleet like this was different. It landed hard and wet and brutal, chilling you faster than you could get your rain gear on. And it made the rocks on the trail slick. In their frenzy to get someplace else, maybe back to their vehicles or to some imagined shelter, people hurried, trying to outrun it somehow, but it only made them careless.

A mistake just like this one. Walter was on his way back down the mountain when he heard the yell. More like a quick shout of surprise. Then the sound of rockfall. A body thudding, thumping down the hill.

Hello? he called out once, twice.

His hearing was still good,