Blizzard: Colorado, 1886 Read Online Free Page B

reach out and take hold of her bridle.
    Relieved, Maggie looped the mare’s reins around her saddle horn and remounted. Rusty plodded back downhill toward the cow and her newborn calf. Maggie looked up at the wind-torn clouds. They were still thin. She shivered. It was cooling off. She wanted to be back at the ranch well before dark. Maybe Hadyn had come to his senses and would be waiting for her. She shook her head. He was going to be useless even if he was there.
    Lifting the calf was hard, but after a few tries Maggie managed to get it across her saddle and swung up behind it. She held the frightened calf close, grateful for the warmth of its soft coat. It kept licking at her gloved hands and rolling its eyes upward to see her face.
    â€œTell your mama to cooperate and we’ll be home quick,” Maggie said. The calf wriggled and she tightened her grip. Her father’s mare followed, prancing a little, as Rusty ambled along. The cow was hard toget going, but kept up a good pace once Maggie got her started.
    Getting through the gate was difficult, but Maggie managed to keep the cow moving. The calf started to bawl halfway down the long slope. The cow stopped in her tracks, confused. Maggie took off her glove and let the calf suck on her thumb. It quieted, and the cow calmed down and moved forward again.
    Back at the barn, Maggie put the cow and her baby in an empty stall, then unsaddled her father’s mare. She gave Rusty a whole coffee can of oats. He had earned it.
    â€œTomorrow after chores, I think we’d better go down to Cleave’s place to see if Mama and Papa got started off toward Lyons. And we’ll see if Hadyn is still there,” she added, scratching Rusty’s ears for a moment.
    Once all the stock had water and hay, Maggie closed up the chicken coop for the night, pitched hay into the corral, and broke the ice on the pigs’ water trough. Then she started for the cabin.
    The fire had died down. Maggie stirred the powdery white ashes, finding a few buried coals. She used the hearth rake to gather them into a little pile,then split some thin kindling to lay on top of them. Blowing on the embers, she had a fire going within minutes.
    Maggie heated some stew from the night before and sat close to the fire to eat her supper. Then she listened to the wind rising outside the little cabin and thought about her parents. It was a long time before she was sleepy enough to stop worrying and go to bed.

    When he left Maggie standing on the porch shouting after him, Hadyn was feeling wonderful. For a long time, he enjoyed striding along in the crisp, cool air. For the first half hour, the road slanted downhill and he kept up a good pace.
    The road was so rutted that he began walking beside it to avoid the freezing mud. His boots were wet. He stopped to brush at them. The leather was going to stain, he just knew it. That wouldn’t make his parents happy. The cobbler’s shop where the boots had been made was one of the most expensive in St. Louis.
    He slowed down as the road started upward. He was breathing hard. The air this high was thin, or atleast that was what people said. He ate the walnuts as he walked, wishing he were already on the train home.
    A shrill sound made Hadyn jerk upright. He looked at the dark pines that edged this section of the road. Wolves? But it hadn’t been a wolf, he was almost sure. He started walking again, feeling the pulse in his throat, glancing behind himself every few seconds.
    Hadyn tried to re-create the sound in his mind. It had startled him so badly that all he could recall was how loud and sudden it had been. Could it have been an Indian war cry? Maggie and some of her friends had told him last time that there were still Indians in Estes Park, but he had never believed them. The only Indians he had seen were on the bronze pennies in Cleave’s cash box.
    A rustling sound in the trees brought Hadyn swinging around. He stared into the dense