“Ty Oleson stepped out onto his porch, enjoying
the bite of a desert winter. He searched his pants for a pipe, smiling just for
the sheer hell of it. It sure was a glorious sunset: brilliant orange just on
the horizon, shading to pink, then purple up into the higher sky. Nights like
this, he reckoned it was easy to see why so many artsy folks came to Arizona.
It was the light, they said – and most days he never could understand what was
so special about it. But nights like this…
The flash was unexpected. Like summer
lightning, but silent and a hell of a lot brighter. It came from towards the
horizon – for a moment washing out all the other colours, leaving Ty blinking
away a purple after-image. He lit his pipe, filling the cold evening air with
deep fragrant smoke, giving himself time to think.
He hadn’t seen anything like that since the
Great War: when the Krauts would waste days shelling the Allies’ trenches;
turning the nights into endless, deafening, lurid flashes of high explosive.
And even then, he’d seen nothing to compare; nothing so bright…
He stepped off the porch, favouring his left
leg – a souvenir of the war. There were no more flashes; the night darkened as
the orange slowly dimmed. Gradually the stars came out.
Ty waited a half hour or so, until it was
full night and the thin scrape of moon didn’t offer up enough light to see as
far as the first fence. Eventually he shrugged. Whatever it was, clearly it
wasn’t going to happen again; and it was getting too cold to just sand around.
He turned and began limping back to his shack.”
From “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old
Town Tonight”. Read more in the Kindle edition of Mike Chinn’s Paladin Mandates.
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