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«Clim was right,» Darcy crowed, slowing his mule. «She’s plumb full of piss and vinegar!»
Beau grunted. It had been the extent of his conversation ever since he had learned just how fast and accurate a bullwhip could be.
«Hold still, darlin’,» Darcy said. «I’m just as ready for it as you are, but Beau gets firsts, him bein’ the oldest and all. I get thirds, so save your fightin’ till — eeeiow!»
The words ended in a cry of shock and fear as Prettyface came up on Darcy’s blind side and leaped straight for his throat.
Darcy dropped Sha
Prettyface followed Darcy down, snarling and snapping the whole way.
Sha
Just as Sha
Inevitably, it would come.
Tears streaming down her face, her breath tearing at her lungs, Sha
Sha
WHIP reined Sugarfoot to an abrupt halt at the edge of one of the trail’s many crossings of Avalanche Creek. The horse chewed unhappily at the bit, but was otherwise quiet.
Listening intently, motionless but for his eyes, Whip probed the shadows and forest in all directions. He neither saw nor heard anything to explain his deep unease.
«You’re imagining things,» he muttered.
Yet still he heard Sha
Whip, I really didn’t mean to ask for your love.
His big hands clenched into fists.
«Damn you, Sha
I love you, yondering man.
Whip closed his eyes. His fingers were so tightly clenched that the reins cut even through his riding gloves.
«I don’t want your love,» he said through his teeth. «I don’t want to feel beholden. I can’t stay in just one place, honey girl.»
Suddenly Sugarfoot’s ears pricked and his elegant gray head whipped around to watch the trail behind him.
His rider heard the sounds, too.
Back toward Sha
But the Culpeppers did.
Whip spun Sugarfoot around and spurred him. As the horse leaped forward, Whip checked that his repeating rifle was safe in its scabbard. There were times when a bullwhip just wouldn’t get the job done. Whip was certain this was one of those times.
Bending low over his mount’s neck, Whip urged the horse to a reckless pace. Rocks and trees raced by, but it seemed to him that he was nailed to the ground, moving at a snail’s space, slow as dawn on the longest night of winter.
He would have sold his soul to be able to reach Sha
Sugarfoot pounded back up the Avalanche Creek path, taking the fork in the trail at a dead run, leaping rocks and rotting logs without a break in stride. When the forest thickened again, Sugarfoot slowed just enough to be able to avoid or jump over the natural obstacles that were strewn across the trail. Small runoff cha
Whip rode Sugarfoot like a big cat, never coming loose no matter which way the horse jumped, always ready with a steady pressure on the reins to help Sugarfoot gather himself after a difficult jump.
As Sugarfoot hurtled yet another log, more shots came from up ahead. The sounds were much closer now. There was no doubt that it was a six-gun. Several six-guns, in fact.
No rifle answered.
No shotgun boomed.
«Run, you big gray bastard,» Whip said through his teeth. «Run!»
Spurs reinforced Whip’s command. Sugarfoot flattened out and gave everything he had. Nose stretched into the wind, tail streaming behind, the horse tore through the forest at a flatly dangerous speed. One misstep, one mistake, and both man and horse would go down in a tangle of broken limbs.
Whip knew it but didn’t care. In his mind was the memory of how the Culpeppers had watched Sha
And now she was at their mercy.
The trees ahead thi
And he had no doubt it was the Culpeppers who were after Sha
Whip pulled hard on the reins. Sugarfoot sat on his hocks and slid to a stop in a turmoil of dirt and forest debris. The meadow was only thirty feet ahead. Rifle in hand, bullwhip over his shoulder, Whip kicked his feet free of the stirrups and jumped off. He landed on his feet, ru
Before he reached the edge of the trees, a rope shot out of the shadows and tangled around his feet. He rolled as he fell, yanking free of the rope and regaining his balance with a feline twist of his body.
But it was already too late.
When Whip stood, he was looking right up the barrel of Floyd Culpepper’s six-gun. Whip could tell the man was Floyd because he was holding his gun in his left hand. His right wrist was wrapped tightly in rags that might have been clean once, but no longer were.
Pale blue eyes watched Whip with an expression somewhere between malice and glee.
«Lookee here, Clim. Darcy was right about this ol’ boy hotfooting it back here if n he heard shots.»
Clim turned aside and spat a brown stream of tobacco juice.
«And here you thought Darcy was just trying to cut me out of my rightful turn in that little widow’s saddle,» Clim added.
Rage and something more gripped Whip, a feeling as though his guts had been cut out and were falling away, leaving him cold all the way to his soul.
«Whoever touches Sha
Floyd’s smile revealed sharp, uneven teeth.
«Right fine sentiments,» Floyd said mockingly, «but you ain’t in no position to be making no brags. Drop that long gun, boy. And that bullwhip, too.»
Whip obeyed, but his gray eyes never stopped measuring the distances between himself and Floyd’s drawn gun and Clim’s holstered weapon.
«You see a knife, Clim?»
«Nah. ‘Sides, no thick-chested West Virginia boy can hold a candle to me in a knife fight.»
«Walk,» Floyd said to Whip, gesturing with his bandaged wrist toward the meadow. «You try to get away and I’ll kill you quick as a rabbit.»
Whip didn’t doubt it.
«Give the signal,» Floyd said to Clim.
Clim whistled shrilly, three short blasts of sound followed by silence.
After a few moments, a whistle answered.
«Move it, boy,» Floyd said to Whip. «They’re waiting for us, and Beau ain’t a waiting kind of man.»
When Whip moved forward it was with a peculiar, gliding grace. His weight was always poised on the balls of his feet, ready to jump or lash out in any direction at the first sign of carelessness from his captors. He held his hands oddly, just away from his sides, his fingers slightly curved as though in relaxation.