He carried no lantern, for Sam had told of lawless night-men who made sport of shooting out fire from great distance. By the burn in his ears, he could tell that it was below thirty-five degrees. He walked from the woods to the creek bank and looked up at the chalk-white moon. It came free of the clouds, full as he’d ever seen. And though he thought his eyes deceived him at first, he held his stare and watched them descend—snowflakes, few and fitful. He reckoned summer had not come two months early after all, reckoned a Bibled man would tell him that snowflakes in April marked the coming apocalypse. He stuck out his tongue to catch one and in his mind was the word cosmoplast. In his little room above the saloon, he took a powder for the ache in his head. He touched his fingers to the twin knots, still tender from the blows. When he touched them, a soft roar sounded way down deep in his ear canals, a deep-tunneled call, like a blast furnace. He touched and listened, touched and listened.
What do You think about A Hanging At Cinder Bottom?
