Todays challenge: Ten Random Words – use this word generator to find ten words. Use all of them in your story.

My ten random words are highlighted by [brackets] within my story….

Mohawk

Retreat

Calculation

Head

Governor

Hospital

Bloody

Bloodstain

Cholera

Blackwater

An oppressive silence hung over the camp. The spurs on Jethro’s books clinked with each step through the muck. His horse snorted into the chill, blowing twin streams of fog in the air.

Jethro’s breath condensed in his whiskers, the steam crystalizing into ice on his beard. The [retreat] should have been a bustling hive of activity, not this [bloody] mess.

The [governor] had taken Jethro from his work at the [hospital] to manage reports of a [cholera] epidemic in the making at [Blackwater] camp. The [governor] surely had no intelligence of this massacre. Not a soul survived.

He scrunched his nose. The fetid reek of death filled the air with a cloying stench. The tents had been shredded and tossed to the ground, but there was no hiding the [bloodstains]. So much blood had been spilt.

He did a quick mental [calculation] and decided only days had passed, too little time for any survivors to bring word of this destruction to the capitol. But there was no doubt in his mind as to who was responsible. [Mohawks] had been raiding this area for months. Even now he sensed their silent presence. Was there an arrow trained on his heart now? Would he find himself scalped and doomed to live with the scars? He swiveled his head, peering into the trees, even glancing into the canopy above.

If they were out there, waiting…watching, they wouldn't dare touch a hair on his head.

He scanned the woods. Nothing but oppressive silence and the stamp of his horse’s hooves could be heard. Even the birds kept their songs to themselves as if they sensed the somber nature of this scene.

Jethro turned, fingering the axe hanging from his belt. All he’d ever wanted was to be a healer. He’d left his tribe years ago, joining with the white-man. One goal was ever present on his mind.

He’d scalped too many men, red and white, in his short life. Nothing but the dead lived here. Their souls would forever haunt the soil of Blackwater creek.

It was time to heal this land before it broke.