Guns of Mars 38
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 10.3
They camped again that night and were off at first light the next day.
As they rode, the bounty man noted that, though the lichen grew in lush patches along either wall, the game had thinned out entirely. They had not seen a single thoat or galatin since the afternoon of the preceding day. Even the crannies and ledges above were free of birds. The only signs of life were nattering insects humming in thick clouds over skeletal remains heaped everywhere.
It wasn’t lost on the riders that some of those bones still showed evidence of dried sinew and gristle marking them more recent kills than anything they’d come across before. The barrels of still intact rib cages stood upright. There were thoat skulls, the craniums drilled through by fang or claw. Leg bones crushed and scattered, the marrow sucked from their core.
The man and the thark rode with extra wariness by day and camped without fire by night. They set their trail hard against the eastern wall to remain in shadow and not stand out against the artificial horizon of the canal floor.
They dared not use their firearms to cull their meals. When the meat of the thoat calf ran out, they used blades or snares to capture smaller game, a variety of multi-legged furred things of a species unknown to them. The creatures, the largest the size of a calot pup, offered scant meat that was rank and especially gamy when eaten raw.
On the seventh day since entering the canal, they came upon a great depression, a crater, miles across, caused by some celestial body that had long ago struck the western wall. It’s impact had brought down a long section of the granite face reducing it to a graveled slope.
Kal began to ride at an angle across toward the great break, leading the pack animal behind. The man caught up with him halfway across.
“This is the wrong direction,” he said as he rode even with the thark.
“Up is the only direction that concerns me, up and out of the hunting ground of whatever beast stalks this place,” Kal said and spurred his mount to greater speed.
“You can’t be sure that this is even a route out of here.” The man pointed at the great recess; its interior cloaked in deep shadow as the sun had long passed over the crown of the high wall.
“I’ll take that chance.”
“A fool’s chance.”
“Then stay and be eaten,” Kal snarled and kicked at his mount’s flanks to break into a gallop.
The bounty man slapped at the rump of his thoat with the butt of his rifle and drew even with the pack animal racing behind the thark. He leaned from the saddle to slash the straps that held one of the water skins to the pack frame. It came free in his hand and he slapped it down over his lap before reining his mount to a stop.
“Go, then!” he called to the thark’s back. “Consider our partnership at an end.”
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
