Tuesday Tales: From a Picture

Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday Tales. If this is your first visit, Tuesday Tales is a closed blog, featuring a small group of authors who, each week, share excerpts from a current work in progress. Each excerpt must incorporate a word or a picture prompt. When it’s a picture prompt like this week, all snippets are limited to a maximum of 300 words.

I am continuing with my historical romance, The Price of Courage, Canadiana Series, Book Two. Here is the photograph I chose.

Patoulet sipped his brandy. “Have you finished your survey of the seigneuries between Ville Marie and Quebec?”

“I have,” he answered. “My biggest concern surrounds six estates, owned by absentee landlords in France, devoted solely to trapping. Father Legare and his Sulpicians are checking the records to see who owns them. Land without tenants isn’t what this colony needs, especially not now.”

The intendant’s secretary nodded, his lips pursed. “While the fur trade is important, it can’t be the colony’s only source of income. Talon’s hemp cloth sells well, and our lumber commands an excellent price.”

Guy scowled. “True, but if this is about getting rich, trees and cloth won’t do it. The night I stayed with the trappers, a man stumbled into camp. At first, he seemed lucid, but I eventually took his stories for the delusions of a sick man. He raved about an area far to the west, with large animal herds so plentiful they covered the prairie as far as the eye could see and rugged mountains where a man felt he could reach out and touch the stars. He claimed that if you traveled south, the cities were made of gold.”

Patoulet scoffed. “Why would the ravings of a fevered man concern you?”

“Because among the gibberish, he mentioned Coronado.”

“Coronado, the Spanish explorer? The one whose discoveries were lost?”

“Yes. We all know the search for the passage to the orient and the quest for gold is what brought Europeans to this land in the first place. When we caught des Courts, one of the trappers with him tried to bribe Lucien by offering him information about the same thing. The last thing the colony wants is men with gold fever abandoning her in her hour of need.”

That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to check out all the other posts on  Tuesday Tales.