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From Scottish writer William Meiklecomes a novel in the tradition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE LOST WORLD
Copyright © William Meikle 2010Ghostwriter Publications, Dorset, Great BritainAll rights reserved. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
 
The Valley - A SampleByWilliam Meikle
The Walker Colt was the most powerful black-powder repeating handgun ever made. The.44 caliber cylinders held fifty grains of black powder that fired a conical bullet of two hundredand twenty grains. The pistol kicked like a mule and was as effective as a rifle at one hundredyards. Jake Stratford tried not to think about that as he stared down the barrel from less than twofeet away.From this distance it looked like a small cannon. The pistol weighed in at over four  pounds, but the hand holding it didn’t waver.“Ah promise you mister,”the youth at the other end of the weapon said. “If you’ve led usall the way up here just to look at a ghost-town, I’ll blow your head off.”Jake sat as still as he could, staring into Eric Strang’s eyes. He’d noticed the madnessdancing there before, but this was the first time it had been directed at him.“I promised you a share of the gold,”Jake said, and was grateful to note that there wasn’teven a slight tremor in his voice. “And you’ll get it.”
 I just hope I can make good on that.
Things didn’t look hopeful. Three weeks travelling through the tail end of one of theworst winters in memory had finally brought them to the Big Hole Valley. For the past two days
 
the men he’d hired, and Strang in particular, had been getting visibly excited at the prospect of getting paid. Jake himself had been looking forward to a bed -- and some better company. But itlooked like he might get neither.They’d been following the bends of the Big Hole Lake for two days now, picking their way along a track that was little more than a slush-filled bog with ruts in it. Ten minutes agothey’d turned a corner that gave them their first view of Ruby Creek.As ever, the mountains got Jake’s attention first. Blue and gray stone, they filled the far end of the valley like tall sentinels. They stretched off into the cloudy distance in a long arc thatJake sometimes imagined was a wall, built by giants long ago, before man walked the earth.He’d been brought out of his musing when Pat Nolan started to wail inconsolably,nonsense sounds coming from the big man’s mouth like the mewling of a babe. The wagon’swheels spun in the mud then took hold as the big man drove the four horses as fast as he could.Jake saw why when he brought his gaze down to the far end of the valley.Ruby Creek lay in ruins. When Jake and Big Pat left it in the autumn there had been tenhuts on the left side of the creek, too ramshackle to call houses, but home to twenty prospectorsintent on forcing a living out of the intractable rock.But no more.Only two huts still stood, and even from their two miles distance Jake saw the fallentimbers and ruined bases of the other dwellings. Wreckage lay strewn over a wide area, and therewas no sign of any movement. Jake’s heart had sunk. At this time of day the place should bealive with activity. There wasn’t even any sign of smoke. No fires were lit, and in thistemperature that was possibly the worst thing about the scene.
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