The Savage Trail Read Online Free PDF

down toward the road. She pulled a fresh cartridge from her gunbelt, drew her pistol again, and set it to half cock. She opened the gate and rolled the cylinder until the spent cartridge appeared. She pushed the ejection rod and the empty hull fell out. She slipped a new cartridge in the chamber, closed the gate, and holstered her pistol, a Smith & Wesson .38 with pearl handles.
    Darlene wheezed, blood spraying from her mouth. Hobart let out a breath, shook his head, and turned his horse to follow Rosa down the hillside. The mule brayed at them and then was silent.
    â€œWere you going to kill them when you rode up there?” Rosa asked.
    â€œI sure wasn’t going to talk that jasper out of his poke.”
    â€œAre you going to give me half of the money you took from him?”
    â€œNo, Rosa. A third, for the boy.”
    â€œYou are a bastard, Ollie. You know that.”
    â€œI know it,” he said.
    The south platte was a ribbon of silver in the glaring sunlight. A hawk prowled the sky above it, sailing on an invisiblecurrent, its head moving slowly from side to side, eyes looking for any small movement. A pair of blackbirds rose from the grasses and gave chase, ragging at the hawk’s tail, diving and darting, batting their wings, avoiding the raptor’s talons.
    Darlene turned over on her side, saw her son’s body so near she could reach out and touch him if she had the strength. The pain drove her down into herself as if a huge nail had been hammered through her chest. She could not move, but the blood was starting to clot. Every breath was a struggle, and there was fire in her lungs. One of them was slowly filling up with blood, a slow seep that she could not feel. Her eyes closed and she concentrated on life, not death.
    But she could feel it coming, see its dark shape on the insideof her eyelids, feel it envelop her with soft, warm arms.

6
    Dynamite didn’t like early morning any more than ben, his rider, did. Ever since John and Ben had left Fort Collins, well above sunup, Dynamite had been exploding.
    â€œYou might have grit in your saddle blanket,” John said right after Dynamite had tried to buck Ben off for the third time, fishtailing and snorting, coming down stiff-legged as if his legs were made out of broomsticks.
    â€œNo, I shook that blanket out, whopped it against the stall and everything else this mornin’, John. Dynamite’s just feelin’ his oats.”
    â€œWhat’d you do, put chili peppers in his bin?”
    â€œNo, but oats is like fire to this horse. He gets some in his belly and old Dynamite’s fuses start hissing. He’ll settle down after he gets tired of trying to pitch me into the middle of next week.”
    John laughed.
    The sun was still basking in the darkness before dawn when they rode through LaPorte, north of Fort Collins, where the Cache la Poudre streams into the South Platte. A lamp burned in the trading post, but there were no signs of life. The prairie lay to the east of them, the Rocky Mountains to the right, all in shadow like some deserted landscape. They had spent the night in Fort Collins because John couldn’t track at night and both men were exhausted after their ordeal in Denver.John knew they had little chance of catching up with Hobartand he accepted that.
    Now the eastern horizon began to pale. The light ate up the stars as it spread, and the sky turned a pale blue with not even the ghost of the moon as a reminder that there had been a night.
    The sun rose above the horizon and drenched them with warmth. The snowy mountain peaks glistened like majestic monuments, so white John could not look at them for long. The chill seeped out of their bones. Dynamite had settled down and was trying to keep up with Gent’s ground-eating easy gait. To John, it was like sitting in a rocking chair riding that Missouri trotter. It made him feel close to his dead father, too, for Gent had been his pa’s horse.
    They