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she knows the saddle belongs on her back, not on her belly. Whiskey bucks, trying to get free of the strange sensation. She’s scared. I’m scared.
    She bucks again. I cling.
    She runs faster. Realizing she’s still stuck with the saddle, she bucks again, serious this time. She throws her head down at the same moment that her rear comes up. I can’t hang on. With a heavy thump, Whiskey’s butt knocks me clean off her back, like a catapult. I cartwheel into space.
    I hit the ground with a whump and lie there, gasping for air. I can’t get any. Someone’s emptied out my lungs and tied off my throat. I hear Whiskey’s hoofbeats as she thunders off down the path. Unable to breathe, I swirl into darkness.

Chapter Nine
    My head hurrrrrrrrrts. Augh. Aaugggh.
    I open my eyes slowly. I come to, surrounded by green. I’m looking up into the dark forest canopy. With a slow, dreadful precision, the morning’s events slide into place in my memory. I stifle a moan as everything comes back into focus. I close my eyes again. If Darren is still around, I don’t want to know. Not just yet.
    My head is pounding. I must still be alive.
    I crack my eyelids a bit, surveying the scene. I’m lying in the dirt, on my back, with my legs splayed out in front of me. Blood smears the toe of my right boot. It mixes with the dried-up horse-shit, and I almost smile. I wonder how that tasted? My jeans are streaked with dirt. My chaps are off, piled in a heap beside Darren, who’s sitting on a rock ten feet away. I feel a wash of terror.
    The knife is out again, and Darren is cleaning his fingernails with the tip of the blade. He’s humming, absorbed in his sick grooming ritual. As I watch, a tiny rivulet of red trickles from underneath one nail. I suppress a shudder of revulsion.
    Focus . Not fear.
    I tear my eyes away from the bleeding mess and shift my attention to the noises around us. I strain my ears, but all I can hear are the leaves of the aspen trees around us whispering in the breeze.
    I look around without moving my head. We’re up high, on an outcropping.
    I’m lying in a clearing with my back up against a small cliff of dirt. I’m sore all over after being pitched off Whiskey’s back. I curl my toes inside my boots.
    No pain. I can still feel my legs. Good.
    Slowly I flex the muscles in my arms. Where are my fingers? I can’t feel them. Concentrating, I will them to move. Ah. There they are, somewhere above my head. They’re tingling a bit. I try to move my hands apart, but I can’t.
    I think my wrists have been tied.
    My shoulder throbs where Darren twisted it earlier. I look back at him, making sure he’s still intent upon his macabre grooming. Then I steal a quick peek up above me.
    My heart sinks. He’s tied me up. My hands are knotted together and then tied to an exposed tree root in the crumbling cliff face. The root is old and gnarled, covered in green lichen. I can’t see past it to the ledge above, so I can’t tell how big the tree is. Damn.
    But in looking around, I’ve placed myself. We’re on the west ridge. There’s an aspen grove below us—an army of white trunks that march into the woods as far as the eye can see. There’s only one grove like it anywhere near the ranch.
    I must have made it pretty far on Whiskey before I fell off. Either that or Darren dragged me here. Surveying the state of my jeans, I figure he probably dragged me.
    But now he’s the stupid one. Because the river runs right beside the aspen grove below us. And right beside the river runs the main trail. Darren won’t know this. He can’t hear the river over the constant ssssshhh ing of the aspens.
    It’s a good thing he stopped where he did. If he hadn’t been halted by the steep embankment, he’d have kept dragging me until he stumbled on the river. Then he’d have turned around and taken me right back into the