Blizzard: Colorado, 1886 Read Online Free PDF Page A

branches, every muscle tense. Seconds ticked past and he tried to still even his breathing so he could hear. The forest was quiet now; not even the birds were singing. Hadyn frowned. What kind of an animal could have made a noise like that?
    Mountain lion. The words rang in Hadyn’s mind. Maggie had said something about a mountain lion that had been killing their chickens. Would a lion attack a person? Hadyn shivered. The pine trees were dark against the snowy ground. Beneath them, the blue-green shadows seemed to swirl like water as Hadyn stared, searching for whatever had made the terrible sound.
    After a few moments, Hadyn began walking again, looking uneasily over his shoulder every few seconds. He hunched over, pulling his bag a little higher on his back, then looked again. There was nothing behind him. Nothing but the rutted road and the legion of shadowy pines.
    Hadyn pulled in a deep breath and started downhill toward a creek that ran across the road. He managed to jump from rock to rock without getting his boots wet. He kept walking fast. The forest was quiet. Maybe he had imagined the sound. He hoped so.
    As Hadyn topped the rise, a second tearing roar ended the silence. He stumbled, terrified, then spun in a circle and began running, following a slanting course across a snowy meadow. He pounded away from the sound, too scared to stop, too scared evento look back. The ground seemed to blur beneath his feet as he sprinted, his bag banging against his shoulder blades.
    Hadyn kept running, dodging around jutting rocks near a stand of aspen trees. He finally risked a glance backward, but it was impossible to tell if the big cat was following. The dark trees could hide a dozen mountain lions.
    The ground sloped downward suddenly. Hadyn stumbled, almost falling. He staggered on, managing to keep on his feet. As the ground leveled out, his bag slid off his shoulder and he had to slow enough to shove the strap back in place. A branch covered by a low drift of snow caught at his boot toe and he stumbled again, breathing hard. He dodged to one side, barely missing a rotting tree trunk that jabbed up out of the frozen ground.
    Hadyn stopped, half turning to scan the trees closest to him. These were aspens, not pines. Their milky white trunks were belted with curved, ash-gray scars. They had no leaves now and their limbs and twigs made a hazy barrier that blurred as Hadyn peered into them.
    Could a mountain lion climb an aspen tree? Hadyntried to see into the gray tangle of twigs. His eyes slid from the trees to a slanting pathway of open ground that separated the aspens from the next stand of pines. He kept his eyes moving as he turned in a slow circle; then he whirled around when he heard the soft snapping of a branch behind him. Breathing hard, he stared into the aspens and was sure he saw something moving. Without meaning to, he began to run again.
    Hadyn swerved to avoid a steep slope and made his way across a clearing, skirting the edge of a stand of tall, slim-trunked pine trees. He ran until his breathing was ragged and painful, then staggered to a stop. There seemed to be small, ominous sounds coming from every part of the forest around him. He faced one direction, then turned back, dragging in quick, shallow breaths.
    After a moment, he realized he was hearing a soft breeze moving through the branches. He stood still, trying to catch his breath, his knees quivering. He let his bag slide to the ground, clasping the leather strap in one hand. Had it been the mountain lion following him through the trees? He wasn’t sure. But if it had been, he had done the smartest thing he could by running.
    Hadyn turned around, his eyes moving across the rocks, the trees. He realized, suddenly, that the sun was dimming. He glanced up and saw thin clouds spreading across the arc of the sky. He pulled his bag up onto his shoulder.
    The day was going by. It was chillier now than it had been when he left Maggie. He would just angle