Guns of Mars 68
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 20.1
Five days out into the fractured landscape, the bounty man resumed traveling by day. Assured as he was that he was no longer pursued, he still scanned the sky and horizon at his back at regular intervals. He also kept to the draws and ravines. There were other predators abroad. Banths. Bandit tribes. Other predators unknown in this unfamiliar land.
He came at last to a place where the ground sloped upward about him, the walls of the arroyos rising to block out the sun. He led the thoats up into the open at the end of his seventh day. Under the shadows cast by a setting sun, he stood looking up at the range of low mountains that rose to form a gray impasse before him.
The maps in the ancient journal depicted a pass, a trail that led upward through the range. He scanned the darkening skies to the east in search of stars. After determining his approximate current position, he was able to make an informed guess as to what direction to travel the following day.
He camped in the dark under a sheltering ledge of talus.
Up well before dawn, he took stock of his supplies. He was down to his last skin of water. The bag of feed for the beasts was at its dregs. There was little grain and less meat for him. If the worst came he could butcher the pack thoat. This would feed him and stretch the water for a bit. But only a little bit. That still left him the problem of thirst.
The thoats each required three times the water he needed no matter much he rationed it. The last skin was fat but would be down to mere mouthfuls in a matter of days. He could kill both of them and have enough water for twenty more days. But then he would be on foot making the trek longer. And he’d be burdened with his provisions as well.
He looked back over the lands he had crossed, still draped in gloom. There was no going back. There wasn’t enough water for a return journey. He had committed himself to following this fable to its source. Either he’d find this fabulous lake or he’d die alone in the high lands that lay above.
The bounty man saddled his mount after setting and cinching the pack frame on the back of the other to set up the trail as the pinkening sky turned the peaks to black daggers above him.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
