Author Spotlight - Character interview with Hal Grantham, Hero of "Rising Above."

Author: Hal Grantham, I think everyone in Cerro Gordo wants to know where you were when you found Wilda Stone, the tall woman who rode into town behind you on your horse? Would you mind telling us?

Hal: The other side of Cerro Gordo Peak. I was moving in on the bandits who robbed the noon stage last week when she landed on me from out of nowhere. Those bandits got plum away, but with her help I recovered the loot.

Author: Did you ask her how she came to be there?

Hal: Couldn't get a believable answer out of that woman to save my life, and she was wearing the strangest clothes, the kind a teamster might wear, overalls, fancy boots, and something for her head she called a helmet, none of it suitable for a lady.

Author: How did you get her back to town?

Hal: On my horse, Satan. Took some doing though.

Author: She'd never been on a horse?

Hal: No, that wasn't the problem. She said all her neighbors in Riverside kept horses. I have no notion where that settlement is, though. Strong wind is what caused all my problems. It picked up tumble weeds and gravel and tossed it at Satan. Made my horse shy, and the blowing sand near blinded me.

Author: What did you do?

Hal: The only thing I could do. Covered everything but my eyes with my bandana and watched for a cave big enough to shelter us till it died down.

Author: Did you find one?

Hal: Just in time, it turned out. Wilda was about tuckered out, fighting that wind.
Author: How long before the wind let up?

Hal: Too long. I was cooped up in that cave with a restless woman and a thousand pound horse for two days and nights.

Author: Uh-oh.

Hal: Uh-oh is right. That woman can't just sit down and whittle like a normal person.
Had to be walking or talking most all the time, sometimes both.

Author: But when the wind died down you made it safely to Cerro Gordo, right?

Hal: Wrong. No unmarried woman is ever safe around those love-starved miners.

Author: Oh, dear. I forgot about them. Where is Wilda now?

Hal: Cooped up at the American Hotel and chomping at the bit to get back home, I imagine.

Author: Why is that, I wonder?

Hal: I proposed to the dang woman, but she turned me down. Claims she don't care if her reputation is compromised. She wants nothing to do with a forced marriage.


Author Toni Noel hangs out here:
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