Souls in the Wind
An excerpt from While I’m Still Myself
JEREMY MARK LANE
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Jeremy Lane
Souls in the Wind
James Briscoe stood looking out the window of his study. He often came upstairs in the midmorning and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. It wasn’t an honorable practice to be drinking this early in the day—he knew that—yet he found it relaxing. It was his time to think.
On this particular morning he watched as Polly Ann, the daughter of Smoke Jackson, his most reliable and highest-paid farmhand, walked out of the barn, where his son was tinkering with an old wagon. Normally he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, except that James had witnessed several suspicious things of late and was watching with a careful eye.
A man has a way of knowing when something is different within his own universe, and the shy conversations, quick smiles, and fleeting glances between his son and the young girl had perked his attention. He felt no need to forbid his son to speak with Polly, or anyone else for that matter. It was the girl’s beauty that worried him, and her color, which caused a different kind of apprehension.
Something caught his eye as he took a sip from the glass. Along the eastern edge of the cornfield ran a tree line, with a solitary tree one hundred yards to the west. Under the tree were two horses, both riders dismounted, and a third man, who looked to be on his knees. Briscoe set his whiskey on the window ledge and hurried down the stairs, out the door, and into the barn. He pulled his horse from the first pen and mounted with no saddle.