Cherish Read Online Free PDF

shooting match.
    Stupid, so stupid . He’d had a feeling from the first that the killers were still in the area. Then he’d found the girl and relaxed his guard, thinking hers was the presence he’dsensed. He knew better than to ignore his hunches. Why hadn’t he taken more precautions? He’d even left his rifle leaning against the wagon, a good five feet away.
    Clasping the girl tightly in his arms, he rolled under the wagon and crawled like a panicked crayfish to the far side, dragging her limp body with him. Even with the wagon bed to provide cover, slugs of lead still plowed into the dirt around them.
    Crab walking and rolling, he drew the girl into the clearing, then leaped up and pulled three trunks to where she lay, forming a barricade to protect her. That done, he ran a loop around the clearing, dodging bullets as he jerked the dead farmers’ rifles from the wagon boots. En route back to the barricade, he detoured to retrieve his Henry as well. All totaled, he had six rifles hugged to his chest when he dove for cover behind the storage trunks, yet another indication that he had surprised the killers. No one would have left all these rifles behind on purpose. Weapons of any kind cost dearly, and a person of shady character could make a tidy profit selling them to Indians.
    Only three of the confiscated weapons were repeaters, two fully loaded. The others were single-action, and God only knew where the cartridges for them might be. Luckily, he had plenty of extra ammo for the Henry in his saddlebags. He whistled shrilly through his teeth, and Dusty, trained from a colt to come at the signal, galloped across the enclosure.
    As the horse slid to a stop near Race, the twilight exploded with more rifle shots, bullets thudding into the trunks and raising clouds of dust. Coughing and squinting against the burn, Race grabbed the buckskin’s reins and jerked the animal to his knees.
    “Down!” he cried.
    All the hours that Race had invested in training his horse paid off now. Dusty nickered in fear but obeyed the command, folding his back legs and rolling onto his belly. Race could only hope the trunks would shield the horse’s huge body. Exposing himself to the rifle fire, Race straddled the buckskin and dug through the saddlebags for his extra ammunition. When he’d gathered all the cartridgeshe could find, he dove for cover again, then belly-crawled from one trunk to another until he found the most comfortable rifle rest.
    Sighting in on the hillside above the clearing, Race finally had a few seconds to ponder the situation, and with the opportunity cane a question. Why had the bastards waited so long to start shooting at him? Race could only guess at an answer, the most likely being that the killers had hoped he knew the victims and that if they watched him long enough, he would eventually reveal the whereabouts of whatever it was they had been trying to find.
    He cast a thoughtful glance over the clearing, noting the wagon contents that had been scattered everywhere, an indication that his first suspicion had been right on target. The men on the hillside had been searching for something. To back that up, there was also the condition of the women’s bodies, which bore signs that they’d been tormented before they died. When Race had first come upon the carnage, he had assumed the no-good polecats had tortured the women out of sheer meanness, but now another possibility came to mind. If the killers had come here hoping to get their hands on something, maybe they had prolonged the women’s agony in an attempt to make them or their husbands talk. If that were the case, though, why in the world had they killed everyone before getting the information they sought?
    A chill crept up Race’s spine, for he knew the answer to that question the moment it entered his mind. The girl . The killers had probably been following this small group of wagons for a spell, waiting for the right moment to ambush the travelers. If