Excerpts from
Fierce Pursuit (available soon)
Xavier revived just before we entered the town. Naturally,
he wanted to know about his wife and son. We—the Langstons and I—tried to
comfort him without giving him the devastating news. He would not be denied,
however; he insisted on the truth, all of it. In the typical Xavier Garza
manner, he kept his emotions in check, mostly, as we gave him the dreadful report.
Had it been me receiving such news,
I suspect I would have leapt from the wagon, stolen the nearest horse, and
ridden back to the ranch to look for signs to follow, for some way to recover
my loved ones. And my efforts likely would have been wasted. Xavier, being less
given to his emotions and more methodical in his approach to troubles, lay back
down, quietly. His emotions were not unaffected, but rather than surrendering
to them, he was, I was quite certain, praying.
We
jogged through the rain and across the saturated ground until we reached the dead
beast. Even as we approached it, I began to doubt that the brute before us was
the same one that I had clearly seen carry away Elana and Pablo on that
horrible night. That creature’s ugly face was seared into my memory. But as
this one had lost much of its face, I could not come to a conclusion about its
identity from such an observance. Instead, I sought to gauge the present
beast’s size. It appeared to be noticeably smaller than the one that carried
away Elana. I had estimated that one to be at the very least twelve feet tall—and
I was still confident of that estimate. The beast Xavier’s shot brought down
appeared to be no more than nine feet tall. I asked Walter, who’d been measured
at six feet, three inches, to lie down beside it. By my comparative measurements,
the creature before us, even with its entire head intact, would indeed have
been about nine feet tall. It was not the Atahsaia we sought.
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