Boot Hill: Chapter One Excerpt

I have returned with a slightly edited excerpt from Boot Hill, as promised. It won't be too long, because I'm afraid of piracy on the Internet (and I just know that people can't wait to steal my absolutely mind-blowing ideas, haha!), though I will include a link to my friends-locked LiveJournal account, where you can read more (if you have an LJ account, that is. If you don't, and really, really want to read more, just post here and I'll email some of it to you). Though I highly doubt that will be the case.


Not even fatigue coupled with absolute weariness could persuade me into slumber, though it certainly proved to pass the time if even a little bit. Just as I began to fall into a state of dozing, however, the entire train lurched forward in a violent convulsion. The coach itself jerked wildly and independent of the other cars in line, hurling me from my seat headlong into the bottom metal lip of the bench directly in front of me, then sideways into the aisle. An earsplitting screech of the train wheels grinding off the track—yet still somehow managing to move forward—burst into my ears, drowning out the screams of my fellow passengers and ominous creaks of metal bending and tearing from their fastened positions. I clutched my forehead and curled my body into itself on the floor of the train coach, unable to hear my own gasps of pain amid the chaos. Tightening my upper arm against my ears, I made a feeble attempt to shield my ears from the deafening screeches. My body slid across the wooden planks, powerless to take control of myself or anything around me. I wasn’t the only one; others experienced a similar fate, and I could have sworn half the car-load of passengers had nearly fallen on top of me during their forced disarray.

It couldn't have been more than a few seconds before the squealing quieted and instead, the quickened gallops of what I could only attribute to horses approached the outside window of the train coach and faded just as fast in passing toward the steam engine. A terse whistle followed by an enthused holler shot through the thick chaos and my stomach turned in dread.

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