Caden's Vow Read Online Free PDF Page B

ADDIE ’ S SENSE OF adventure took a rapid downhill spiral. It wasn’t as easy as she
thought it would be to follow Caden’s trail. Worthless would first pick up and
then lose the scent. And frankly, she couldn’t tell the difference. Flower
didn’t always want to go where Worthless went, she couldn’t see what she was
doing, and that damn breeze rustling the leaves kept whispering in her ears
little words of warning. Go back. Go back. But she
was tired of going back, so she plunged on, letting her mind drift so worry
wouldn’t eat her alive, trusting Worth to get her where she needed to go.
    Flower stumbled, tossing Maddie about in the saddle. She
grabbed the horn. The mare tossed her head and took two steps back. Worthless
whined at the end of the leash as he was pulled off the scent. Lifting her head,
she saw immediately why the horse stopped. An overgrown, impenetrable bramble
thicket was just sitting there where she needed to go. Darn! She’d have to go
around.
    The dog whined again, straining toward the thicket as she
tugged on the leash.
    “We don’t have a choice,” she snapped at the animal. She
immediately regretted the harshness. It wasn’t Worth’s fault that she was
confused. She just hadn’t expected everything to look so similar in the dark.
She had no idea where she was. Flower tossed her head again. No doubt she wanted
to be safely home in her stall. Maddie had a sense of day coming, but not much
sun got through the thickness of the trees. Worth whined again, straining to the
left. There was a slight hole in the thicket there, but it certainly wasn’t big
enough for the horse. Wrapping the leash around her wrist, she pulled him back.
She sat deeper in the saddle and looked around. In all directions, she saw
trees. If she didn’t know better, she’d say the same tree just repeated itself.
She didn’t even know if she could find her way home from here. She had no choice
but to go forward. She’d just have to take the chance that she could find the
trail again. And the discouraging thought came to her that if she and her horse
couldn’t pass through here, neither could Caden, which only left one question:
What exactly had the dog been following?
    “You were supposed to follow Caden,” she told Worth. He looked
up at her, tongue lolling, panting slightly. No doubt he was thirsty. She was,
too. The mare nickered. Poor Flower was probably thirstier than them all. Maddie
reached for her canteen only to discover it gone. It’d fallen off somewhere
along the way. Tears burned behind her eyelids. She took another breath, closing
her eyes as the panic started deep within. She was lost with no water. Going
back was no more possible than going forward. Her great adventure was a
disaster. She should have just stayed at Hell’s Eight.
    The buzzing started at the edges of her mind. Holding her
breath, she reached for her calm place, picturing in her mind the pond at her
home outside of Carson City. It was so easy to summon the image this time, to
imagine she felt the breeze upon her face. In the summer it was so pretty with
the shade of the trees spreading out over the water and the clover sprinkling
the shore like a smile. The breeze off the water felt so good on those hot
summer days. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and imagined until she could
feel the sun on her face, smell the damp earth, hear the soft rustle of the
summer breeze through the trees, feel it caress her face and shoulders.
    She did love summer days. There was something so hopeful about
them that made a body feel as light as a feather. There was nothing she loved
more than sitting by her pond, and if she were lucky, with a book to read. She
did love to read, and Mrs. Cabel, the schoolteacher, occasionally allowed her to
take a book from her library so long as she treated it with respect. She always
treated those books with respect. They were her treat, her escape into another
world.
    But something was wrong. This time of day, the