Judgement of the Mountains (eBook)
147 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
978-1-7764913-2-2 (ISBN)
A woman hunts for vengeance.
A fugitive fights for justice.
A tyrant rules from the shadows.
The untamed South African Lowveld, 1884. In this lawless frontier of gold fever and desperation, Magda du Preez arrives with one purpose only. To hunt down and kill the man who murdered her fiance. Her path collides with Johan Grimbeek, a legendary frontiersman forced to live as a fugitive, framed for a crime orchestrated by the very same villain.
Their shared enemy is the mysterious and brutal Mario Perreira, a tyrant who rules the wilderness through pure terror. To prove his innocence, Grimbeek must achieve the impossible and capture an untamable wild stallion. To find her vengeance, Magda must trust a man with a price on his head, knowing that for both of them, failure means a shallow grave under the African sun.
A gripping historical action-adventure with the high-stakes tension of a classic thriller. Perfect for fans of Wilbur Smith and suspenseful westerns where justice is forged in gunpowder and grit.
Step into this third memorable Untamed Lowveld adventure now!
A woman hunts for vengeance.A fugitive fights for justice.A tyrant rules from the shadows.The untamed South African Lowveld, 1884. In this lawless frontier of gold fever and desperation, Magda du Preez arrives with one purpose only. To hunt down and kill the man who murdered her fiance. Her path collides with Johan Grimbeek, a legendary frontiersman forced to live as a fugitive, framed for a crime orchestrated by the very same villain.Their shared enemy is the mysterious and brutal Mario Perreira, a tyrant who rules the wilderness through pure terror. To prove his innocence, Grimbeek must achieve the impossible and capture an untamable wild stallion. To find her vengeance, Magda must trust a man with a price on his head, knowing that for both of them, failure means a shallow grave under the African sun.A gripping historical action-adventure with the high-stakes tension of a classic thriller. Perfect for fans of Wilbur Smith and suspenseful westerns where justice is forged in gunpowder and grit.Step into this third memorable Untamed Lowveld adventure now!
3. JUDGEMENT OF THE MOUNTAINS
CHAPTER 1
When she climbs out of the car and has to lift her long, elegant dress slightly to get to the step, there are one or two men on the hotel porch and the sidewalk who hastily look away, because they know it is indecent for a man to see more than an inch or so of a lady’s ankle. But a few impudent ones actually turn their necks to stare at the unusually attractive girl.
The shy men are three fellows, two of whom have bushy beards. They stand aside and chat. The other two, who look neater, stand away from them by a porch pillar.
“Well, well! What man can remain calm,” is the comment of one of the blatantly staring ones. The other one laughs softly at his mate’s remark, as if he thinks it’s a bit far-fetched to talk so loudly, because the girl who climbed out of the car and is about to enter the hotel, is clearly a decent lady who will take offense if she should hear them. She has gleaming reddish-brown hair under a small, almost ridiculous hat, and her lithe, muscular but agile female body is dressed in a very neat dress.
The two fellows who quickly turned their bearded faces away and pretended they didn’t see anything, glare at the brazen fellow who dared to be so brutal as to make a remark about the lady that she could have heard. They are not yet accustomed to the new conditions here, because they have been away in the wilderness for months. As recently as 1884, a woman was almost an unknown being in these parts. Only men, and only of the most hardened types, dared to venture through the mountains here.
If they came with trek oxen following the lush pastures of the Lowveld, they had to guard the cattle practically day and night against vermin and other robbers. As a result, there was no place and time for women. And even less so if they were after gold and had to mix with adventurers from the wild parts of the world.
That girl walks up the porch steps. There is a slightly shy expression on her face because of the staring men’s eyes. For a moment, she looks hesitant, but then she goes through the front door.
A young man with a revolver at his side, had just now rushed forward when she wanted to get out of the car and offered to help her with her luggage. He had gallantly extended his hand to help her out of the car, but she said curtly. “No, thank you.”
He now walks towards the other two fellows.
“I know her,” it comes hesitantly but with a kind of pride in his voice when he comes to the others.
“But she treated you rather badly!” is the remark of a neatly dressed middle-aged man who is slyly sucking on a pipe.
“The poor girl is sometimes so withdrawn and curt these days,” he explains with importance. “I know her from Moordfontein. Her boyfriend, one Robert Viljee, to whom she was engaged, was recently shot dead in a fight there in the heart of Niemandsland.”
“Aha,” the short-built fellow says indifferently, “then one can make a move again there, or what?”
Magda du Preez goes into the hotel. She inquires from a native servant who walks through the hallway where she can speak to the owner. The black man says she must wait a while and he will call the hotel owner. He is a stout, round-faced foreigner, of which nationality Magda cannot immediately determine. He seems surprised to see such a clearly decent Afrikaans girl before him who wants to book a place for herself in the hotel. It is no ordinary occurrence to see a decent girl of this type alone at a hotel in these parts. And he wonders for a while what the reason for it may be. However, he eventually attributes it to the fact that his cobbled together shack of a hotel has undergone a considerable improvement in the recent past.
“Yes, yes, certainly, Miss,” he says. “Come this way, please.”
Things are really starting to get better here in Colts Creek, he thinks to himself as he walks towards one of the four rooms on the newly built upper floor of the stone-and-wood-and-zinc hotel. Six months ago, few decent women, even if accompanied by their husbands, would ever have thought of taking a room here, but these days even an important person who represents financial interests abroad, comes and stays for a day or two. Last month, even a “Sir” from England and his party had a meal here and lingered for a while in the bar-lounge in the late afternoon, probably more out of curiosity than anything else, but still.
He keeps the upper new bedrooms only for rich visitors of this nature, but for a pretty girl like this...
He suddenly stops and looks sharply and suspiciously at Magda du Preez. Could she perhaps be one of those “other kind” of women of whom quite a few have recently arrived here? They are indeed “good business” because they get the men to come here, but one does not give them one’s best rooms.
However, he quickly comes to the conclusion that this girl is definitely not one of that kind, and with a friendly smile he continues on.
A while later, after Magda has had the luggage unloaded and the car taken to the backyard of the hotel, she closes the door of the hotel room and sits down with a sigh on the bed. She is glad that she is finally here... but she suddenly feels so terribly alone and forlorn. She gets up and looks out of the small, square window at the dusty, unattractive pioneer village and the beautiful mountains behind it. Then she sits down on the bed again and suddenly falls forward onto the pillow and bursts into sobs. The sobs tear from her chest and shake her body.
She takes the pillow in her hands and presses it tightly against her face as if to prevent herself from continuing to cry. She stifles her own sobs and after a while she calms down. Then she gets up, pours water from the washbasin into the bowl and washes her face. It makes her feel much better and when she closes the curtain in front of the window and starts putting on another dress, there is a completely different, a firmer and more determined attitude to be detected in her.
She opens the curtain again and in front of the small mirror she adjusts her hair. In her blue eyes flashes an unwavering intention for a moment and there is almost a trace of cynicism around her mouth. She has come here with a purpose and she is not going to shy away from it, no matter what it costs her to achieve it. Just now she is going to walk down and whatever the manager or other people may think, she is going to sit in the public lounge of the hotel and inquire with the women there, and even with the men if necessary, and gather information. She knows that such a public lounge is no place for an ordinary woman, especially if she is alone, but she is simply not going to allow that thought to deter her from the course she has embarked on.
When she walks down the creaking stairs a little later, that cold determination is still to be read in her eyes. She is not as elegantly dressed now as when she arrived here, because she deliberately wanted to make a good impression on the manager because she had heard that hotels sometimes refuse to take in single girls and women if they are not known to him as being of impeccable character.
This lounge is just one of the most attractive novelties that has made the Hotel Royal the leading hotel of Colts Creek at the moment. It is furnished according to the latest American method, with a long arc of a bar counter on one side. In the far corner, a small platform has been installed for a concertina orchestra that comes over from Barberton once a week. Tables and chairs are scattered all over the large floor. Coloured waiters walk around among the guests and serve them with strong drinks or coffee or whatever.
Magda du Preez has come here with the aim of gathering information about where Mario Perreira is nowadays. She has learned that some of the men he works with are often seen here in Colts Creek and although she has not yet met anyone who has seen Perreira himself here, that information has made her decide that it is the best place to come looking for him. In Magda’s heart only one desire burns, she wants to ask Mario Perreira certain questions, get certain information about herself and her past from him, and then she wants to get very close to him, no matter under what pretense, and then she will pull out the long sharp knife that she will keep hidden in her bosom and repeatedly stab it into his body.
She thinks of this cold lust for revenge in her heart when she steps into the lounge. She still remembers the day when the news reached her that Robert Viljee, her fiancé, had been shot dead in the field like a dog. The man who did it had disappeared without a trace and a story was spread that Robert Viljee had met the man in the field and had an altercation with him that led to a shooting. Robert’s revolver was in his hand when they found him, and two places in the cylinder magazine had empty casings in them. From there it was inferred that he had died in a fight. However, Magda does not believe for a moment that this is the case. Those bullets were fired by the murderer precisely with the aim of creating such an impression.
Magda knows that he was shot dead on the orders of that mysterious tyrant who was formerly known as the Mask of Niemandsland.
Magda lingers in the middle of the lounge. There are quite a lot of people in the place and many eyes follow her the lustful eyes of men who watch the supple movements of her body, and critical eyes of women. She mostly hears foreign languages and she notices that it is a low, cheap company. She is surprised that she adapts so well to the environment because she walks apparently without self-consciousness to a small table in the corner.
An English-speaking waiter rushes towards...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 8.9.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Untamed Lowveld |
| Illustrationen | Dewald Brink |
| Mitarbeit |
Zusammenstellung: Dewald Brink |
| Übersetzer | Dewald Brink |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Historische Romane |
| Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker | |
| Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen | |
| Schlagworte | action • action-packed historical adventure • boer western series • eBook • english westerns • Frontiersman Adventure • Lowveld • lowveld thrillers • revenge in the old transvaal • Romance • series • strong heroines in south african westerns • untamed • Western |
| ISBN-10 | 1-7764913-2-7 / 1776491327 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-7764913-2-2 / 9781776491322 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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