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This page last updated on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Judy and Ronald Culp
The Search For Truth
Prologue

Lying on his belly in the loose gravel beside a granite boulder, the late morning sunlight warmed the
stranger's back.  Spreading his feet comfortably, he looked down the long barrel of his buffalo rifle at
the tall young man standing on the stage line office porch across the river.  Drinking coffee, deep in
conversation with an older man who wore a cook's apron, the young man threw back his head and
laughed at something the other fellow was saying.
With practiced ease the stranger brought the tip of the front sight blade center and level in the "V" of
the rear sight ladder he'd flipped up and set for 350 yards.  He took a deep breath, aware of the smell
of the light oil he rubbed into the gunmetal every day, let some air out as his finger took up the trigger
slack. With the sights aligned low and centered on the young man's belt buckle, he squeezed the
trigger smoothly.  At the shot, the gun stock slammed hard into his shoulder, white smoke billowed,
thinned, drifted slowly away as the sound of his shot echoed across the valley, fading with distance
like a dance in slow-motion. Through the veil of smoke he saw the young man collapsing in a heap
on the floor.  The older man quickly bent and dragged the dead body, for surely that's what it was,
back into the building.  
The stranger smiled in grim satisfaction at a deed well done. An easy hundred dollars, he thought as
he ejected the spent brass cartridge case.  Taking up his unfinished cigarette, he took one last puff.  
Grinding the smoldering butt into the dusty gravel, he walked to his horse, carefully put his rifle in the
saddle scabbard, mounted, and rode up into the high country as silently as he had come.


Copyright  © 2004 by Ronald and Judy Culp