Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    On Rails of Gold: A Prequel to Golden Heart
    On Rails of Gold: A Prequel to Golden Heart
    On Rails of Gold: A Prequel to Golden Heart
    Ebook51 pages41 minutes

    On Rails of Gold: A Prequel to Golden Heart

    By P J Thorndyke

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In 1861 the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter beginning a civil war that tore the continent apart. In 1862 southern miners discovered a rare ore that burned ten times more efficiently than coal. It was called ‘mechanite’ for its role in an industrial revolution that changed the face of war. With both sides in possession of terrible steam-powered war machines, the conflict has descended into a stalemate that has lasted twenty-five years. In this prequel to the novel Golden Heart a battle begins that could decide the fate of America itself.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherP J Thorndyke
    Release dateFeb 15, 2015
    On Rails of Gold: A Prequel to Golden Heart
    Author

    P J Thorndyke

    P. J. Thorndyke is a writer of Steampunk, Fantasy and Adventure fiction inspired by the trashier side of pop culture like dime novels, pulp magazines, and grindhouse movies.

    Related to On Rails of Gold

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rural Electrifification

      Feb 25, 2021

      Rural Electrifification
      7 min read

    • Article

      Knives Out

      Nov 12, 2019

      Knives Out
      2 min read

    • Article

      The GONZO GUYS

      Jan 2, 2022

      The GONZO GUYS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      Gangster Bedtime Stories

      Jun 5, 2019

      Gangster Bedtime Stories
      6 min read

    • Article

      Man About Town

      Oct 28, 2021

      AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MONTH, I burst my chains of domestic bondage, Samson-like, and escaped hotfoot to Soho to sip white wine with ruffians to celebrate Dan Jones’s excellent new book, Powers and Thrones. Jones is one of these prolific coves who c

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jan 1, 2016

      Books
      3 min read

    • Article

      World-class Snob, First-class Diarist

      Mar 25, 2021

      THE BEST DIARISTS ARE flawed individuals who exist on the fringe of great events and are natural observers and acerbic wits. Snobbery helps too. Think Samuel Pepys, James Boswell, Alan Clark. Henry “Chips” Channon (1897-1958) has long been seen as on

      5 min read

    • Article

      Document

      Mar 23, 2023

      n"This book encapsulates everything I loved about Soho. It's about what was an underbelly of London, where everything came together - underground drinking places, an eccentric literary scene, sex, everything Soho represented at that time. I started w

      5 min read

    • Article

      Vladimir

      May 22, 2022

      Vladimir
      4 min read

    • Article

      Eating My Words

      Nov 15, 2021

      Eating My Words
      9 min read

    • Article

      Maggie's Tip For First-time Buyers

      Jul 26, 2023

      Not long before her departure from the political scene, I was invited to a Christmas lunch at Lord McAlpine’s country house, where Mrs Thatcher and Denis were the main guests. We were 12 in all: an odd mix, including Terence Donovan, Mrs T’s favourit

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Big Screen

      May 3, 2019

      The Big Screen
      16 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for On Rails of Gold

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      On Rails of Gold - P J Thorndyke

      By the same author

      The Lazarus Longman Chronicles

      Through Mines of Deception (novella)

      On Rails of Gold – A Prequel to Golden Heart (novella)

      Golden Heart

      Silver Tomb

      Onyx City

      Celluloid Terrors

      Curse of the Blood Fiends (forthcoming)

      https://pjthorndyke.wordpress.com/

      As Chris Thorndycroft

      The Hengest and Horsa Trilogy

      A Brother’s Oath

      A Warlord’s Bargain

      A King’s Legacy

      The Rebel and the Runaway

      Novellas

      The Visitor at Anningley Hall – A prequel to M. R. James’s ‘The Mezzotint’

      Old Town

      https://christhorndycroft.wordpress.com/

      On Rails of Gold

      By P. J. Thorndyke

      On Rails of Gold

      By P. J. Thorndyke

      2015 by Copyright © P. J. Thorndyke

      Smashwords Edition

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      https://pjthorndyke.wordpress.com/

      I

      The saloon was one of the rougher ones in town. The tobacco-and-spit-soaked sawdust on the floorboards hadn’t been replaced in over a week. The chiseled and stained old bar hadn’t seen a lick of polish since it had been dragged in there five years ago and the four or five customers that perched on the mismatched and tatty furniture were some of the less desirables types in Tombstone. But it was the only drinking hole Clay Thompson had come across that didn’t have a ‘no colored’ sign over its door.

      Perhaps the grubby landlord who stood polishing glasses behind the bar with an even grubbier cloth didn’t care about the color of his patrons’ skins. Or perhaps the painting and hanging of such a sign was too much like hard work for him. It was irrelevant to Thompson. Almost every saloon, gambling dive and dancehall in Tombstone expressed their refusal of colored and mechanical patrons except this one, and, falling into the former category, Thompson had little choice than to use Mickey’s Saloon as his base of operations.

      The bartender had been friendly enough and had even saved Thompson from an embarrassing and potentially lethal faux pas. Thompson had remarked that he had seen a bunch of cowboys herding their stock into a slaughterhouse on the edge of town. The beef industry had boomed in Tombstone just like everything else.

      Oh, no, Mister. the bartender hurriedly hushed him. We don’t call them that. It’s ‘cattlemen’, ‘ranchers’ or ‘herders’ and they don’t take kindly to anything else. You ain’t heard of the real Cowboys in these parts, I figure?

      Thompson shrugged. He was from Louisiana and didn’t know a cowboy from a cowpat.

      Round these parts a cowboy is a term for a common criminal, the bartender explained. Cattle rustlers, bandits, robbers and smugglers, there’s no end to them in Cochise County. The Clantons are the worst. They’ve got a ranch on the San Pedro River. Ike Clanton is a deputy marshal in Tombstone and he and his toughs hold up stagecoaches and smuggle in stolen cattle from Mexico without anybody able to do a damn thing about it. Just don’t let any honest cattleman hear you go and call him a cowboy, that’s all.

      Thompson thanked him for his advice but the old man wasn’t done just yet.

      "Tombstone used to be a good clean mining camp when I first moved here. I was one of the first men to open up a saloon and I’ve seen this county go from rough but tamable land

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1