Chapter 1316

• Boob Hill -
• John ‘Long’ Johnson held up a weather-browned hand, bringing to a halt the six horsemen and women trailing behind him. He pushed back his dusty, ten-gallon cowboy hat and shaded his brow, squinting stinging sweat out of his blazing blue eyes as he gazed down at the ramshackle collection of wood frame buildings and homes that were Dike City, Kansas. Shimmering waves of heat rose off the sun-baked land below, and the sluggish Little Snake River, which regularly overflowed its banks and the town’s crudely constructed dykes, wound its way like a muddy artery through the burnt-stubble heart of the valley bowl.
• ‘That her?’ one of the men asked, bringing his mount alongside Johnson’s.