Sidewinder Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    “We might get hungry,” she said.
    “I mean the cartuchos ,” he said, pointing to the cartridges in her hand.
    “There are cougars up there, and bears.”
    “The wolves, too.”
    “I doubt if we’ll see any wolves this morning.”
    They walked to the barn. Carlos came out to meet them, leading their horses.
    “Did you see or hear anything last night, Carlos?” Felicity asked.
    “No, I hear nothing,” he said in his thick Mexican accent. “The cows, they sleep good, I think. It was very quiet. I sleep with one ear open.”
    He grinned and Felicity grinned back at him. She took the reins and mounted her horse, a bay mare she called Rose. Julio climbed aboard his horse, Chato. She noticed that Julio’s rifle was in its saddle scabbard.
    “Canteens full, Julio?” she asked.
    “Yes. From the spring.”
    “Let’s go,” she said. “Carlos, keep on eye on the cattle.”
    “ Seguro, ” Carlos said.
    Julio and Felicity rode toward the hills bordering the valley. He was looking to his left at the clumps of cattle heading toward the grasses in the sunlight, those with the dew burned off by the morning sun. He stopped and pointed to a lone cow walking briskly toward some others.
    “What is it?” she said, pulling up alongside him.
    “There is the brindle cow,” he said.
    “The brindle cow?”
    “That is the one Brad was finding.”
    “Are you sure?” She shaded her eyes so that she could see the cow more clearly.
    “Yes. I am sure.”
    “Then, maybe Brad is right behind her. It looks as if she is just now getting back from wherever she’s been.”
    Julio looked up toward the trees, the top of the hill they had to climb. Felicity looked up there, too. They were silent for several moments.
    “I do not see him,” he said.
    “Well, maybe we’ll see him when we get up there.”
    “Maybe,” he said, but his voice held no conviction.
    They rode into the timber, following the path Julio and Brad had ridden the day before, a path still littered with cow tracks, a maze of cuneiform wedges in the soft spring earth. Felicity could see that the tracks went both ways.
    Brad had taught her to track, and she studied the hoof marks as they rode through thin timber, climbing ever so slowly. She saw two sets of horseshoe tracks heading up and one set heading back down toward the ranch. Julio, she knew, had made those when he drove the strays back onto the ranch pasture. Her heart felt squeezed when she saw them, deciphered their meaning.
    They reached the small mesa where the cows had first strayed. Julio pointed out where the cattle had been, and the direction in which the brindle cow had gone when Brad began tracking it. She also noticed the burned ruins of the house that had once stood there. Julio told her the same story he had related to Brad and she sighed at the images she saw in her mind. The ruins looked so forlorn, and she found it hard to imagine how anyone could be so cruel as to kill an entire family over a few head of cattle.
    Julio rode off as she sat there on her horse, lost in thought.
    “The tracks are still here,” he said, and Felicity turned to look at him, jarred out of her solemn reverie.
    “Wait,” she called. “I’m coming.”
    Julio pointed to the tracks of the brindle cow and the hoof marks of Brad’s horse. He pointed in the direction where the cow had gone.
    A few minutes later, she saw the wolf tracks and halted Julio.
    “Were those made yesterday?” she said, pointing to the wolf tracks.
    “I think so. Brad he no say anything.”
    “Well, if the wolf was following that cow, Brad must have seen it.”
    “Maybe,” he said, and she felt like slapping Julio.
    “He didn’t say anything to you about the wolf?”
    “No, he don’t say nothing,” Julio said, in his broken English.
    “Brad could be hurt,” she said, an urgency in her voice.
    The two followed the tracks off the shelf and along the path the cow had taken. The horses had trouble following the sidehill. The