Chapter Two
Conawago took no notice as Duncan inched toward the nightmare. His legs were leaden. His gun fell from his hand. He gasped suddenly and realized he had not been breathing.
He forced himself to the closest body, a girl no older than fifteen, whose long black braids draped over her calico dress. She lay straight on her back as if she had just lain down for a rest. He bent to lift her wrist, but he knew from her dull unseeing eyes he would find no pulse. He moved on to the next body, and the next, futilely touching wrists and necks. Two middle-aged men in tattered homespun clothes. Three tall women approaching middle age, each wearing a pewter cross around her neck. A strapping man who appeared to be in his thirties. None had a visible wound, and all had died with strangely sere
