by E. L. Ripley
“Anyone ever say that to you?” he asked, and Thaddeus swallowed but didn’t answer. “Did it do them any good?”
The old man licked his lips. “Vengeance,” he said.
Tom nodded. That was the word.
“‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,’” Thaddeus went on. “In the book of Romans, it is written that vengeance is His alone!”
The noise was like thunder, only louder. It shook the ground, and Tom staggered from the shock and the pressure, his ears seeming to burst. The sudden wind nearly bowled him over, kicking up such a wave of dirt that he was blinded.
Ears ringing, buffeted by the wind, he turned away, peering back into the dark, where that fearsome crash had come from. The noise became a deafening roar.
Two shattering bursts of lightning arced across the sky, lighting the world up blue, and he saw it there, standing against the light: a towering, twisting storm descending on Friendly Field. The buildings and houses crumpled like old paper, but going up instead of down, being drawn up in spirals into the heart of the storm, all distant and tiny. All their hard work, their crops and their sturdy buildings, just fine dust in the gale.
Tom looked down at Thaddeus at his feet, and his fingers tightened on the sickle.
“The hell it is,” he said.
About the Authors
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Riders series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
E. L. Ripley has a background of military service and social work. He wrote his first novel when he was fifteen and has been writing ever since. His novels have been praised as "a fast-paced and engaging intrigue, with characters the reader will be attached to and root for despite their flaws and faults" (Marko Kloos, author of Chains of Command) and "a wild, page-turning ride" (Mike Shepherd, author of Kris Longknife: Unrelenting).
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