Renegade Riders Read Online Free Page B

prize stallion rustled from right under his nose not once but twice—and by a woman, no less. When this got out, and it surely would, he’d never live it down. He’d be the laughingstock of the whole territory.
    Trace raked a hand roughly through his hair, trying to think. The blasted hobbles caught his eye again, and he drew back his foot and kicked them into the air with all his strength, remembering too late that he hadn’t taken the time to pull on his boots. His yowl, and the one-legged dance that followed, elicited another chorus of braying from the burro. Trace loosed another string of curses, more colorful than the last, and then stalked back to build up the campfire.
    He was used to night tracking, but the circumstances were too serious to risk losing the trail in the dark. Dawn was nigh, so after tending the fire he set out a pot of Arbuckle’s to brew, awaiting first light.
    After drinking half his second cup of coffee, he doused the fire by slinging the remainder into the flames. He’d decided not to break camp. In her condition, he doubted she would stay in the saddle for long. “Stupid woman wants to get herself killed,” he muttered, gathering what he’d need. “If she hadn’t lit out with Diablo, I might leave her to do just that.”
    Despite his grumbling, Trace knew that wasn’t so. There was something vulnerable and panicked in her brown eyes that touched his heart in a way he couldn’t explain. It made a man want to step forward to defend her, no matter what she was running from.
    Giving the donkey a glare, he told it, “Don’t you go getting yourself stolen, too, you hear?” Then, armed with his pistol, his Winchester, and a full canteen, he put on his Stetson and strode past the burro.
    Mae and Diablo’s trail was easy to follow, and he tracked them on foot across the canyon to the sheerfaced wall to a shelf where she had obviously mounted. Such resourcefulness encouraged him somewhat, but the fact that she couldn’t just jump up on the stallion told him that Mae wasn’t up to making any escape. His white-lipped anger dissolved into a troubled frown. He would find her any minute, unconscious on the canyon floor; he was sure of it. He just hoped she was still alive.
    Diablo’s tracks were clear and fresh; the stallion was running at a full gallop. He wasn’t branded, but Trace had notched the horse’s hooves and shoes as a means of identification to prove ownership in just such a situation as this. The trail stopped at the narrow stream snaking through the canyon, one of many tributaries that fed the Colorado River farther down. The stream was shallow here, and not too wide to cross on foot. The water barely reached midcalf at its deepest. Frustratingly, the prints didn’t pick back up on the other bank.
    Looking up at the hot sun rising high in the sky, Trace sighed. “Blamed woman is smarter than I gave her credit for.” Mae had evidently ridden Diablo straight through the center of the stream to avoid leaving a trail.
    Picking up his pace, Trace waded into the water and zigzagged back and forth from bank to bank for some distance. At a bend in the canyon wall, the rising water reached his hips. Then his waist. The depth and swirling eddies were a growing problem, and Trace had to struggle to keep his balance and to hold his weapons up to keep them dry. This was good news, however. Diablo was water-shy.
    Assuming the horse would be too hard for her to handle, Trace crossed over, and just as he expected, he found the beast’s tracks again on the south bank. He followed them east-southeast for some time until the canyon wall gave way to flat tables and shelves leading to higher, rockier ground that would cloak Diablo’s hoofprints. Mae had ridden straight for it.
    “Son of a bitch.”
    And Trace cursed again when he spotted the other tracks. “One…two…three, no, four riders, riding hard.”
    A short distance ahead, it was clear where they had overtaken and surrounded Mae.