Blizzard: Colorado, 1886 by Kathleen Duey and Karen A. Bale Read Free Book Online Page B

breaking into a trot. His breath ragged with fear, Hadyn spun and ran.

Chapter Seven
    Maggie was glad when the tracks turned out of the wind. The cows and Hadyn were all still headed upslope, so the going was rough. Nonetheless, it was a relief not to have the wind battering her face as she maneuvered Rusty through a stand of lodgepole pine.
    Maggie leaned down and patted Rusty’s neck. For a good hour she had been urging him along, making him go as fast as she dared. She wasn’t sure what time it was, but it had to be well past noon. The storm would erase all evidence of the cows’ passage by nightfall, she was sure. And Hadyn’s tracks wouldn’t last even that long. It was still snowing hard.
    Rusty faltered, picking his way over a fallen log. Maggie reined in and dismounted again. This wasa burn, the remains of a summer lightning fire. Beneath the snow, the ground was littered with blackened logs and half-burned branches. Riding over this kind of terrain was dangerous even in the summer. Maggie led Rusty more slowly up the steep, snow-slick grade.
    As they emerged from a stand of aspen trees, Maggie searched the open ground ahead. The cows had strung out, the big calf falling behind. Maggie followed its trail with her eyes. When she saw the bloody snow she caught her breath.
    Instantly, Maggie moved to Rusty’s side, ready to mount. She scanned the tree line at the top of the slope, then turned and studied the grayish tree trunks below. Wind tears blurred her vision but she forced herself to keep looking. She half expected to see the mountain lion; it might be staying close to guard the calf’s carcass.
    Rusty was fidgeting. The wind was bringing him threads of cat scent, Maggie knew. He kept tossing his head, his nostrils flared and his eyes wide. Maggie talked to him softly, telling him that the cat had already eaten and it was probably afraid of people anyway. Still cajoling, Maggie tugged on Rusty’s reinsand got him moving, headed in the general direction of the dead calf.
    It was hard going. There was loose rock beneath the snow and every step required concentration. Rusty was surefooted and steady, but this was asking a lot and Maggie knew it. She braced herself against the gusts of wind that buffeted her from behind. Squinting to keep the snow out of her eyes, she finally saw what she was looking for—Hadyn’s tracks.
    From the way the prints looked, Hadyn had seen the cat—or at least its kill. He had come this way following one of the older cows, then suddenly struck out at a sharp angle. Standing beside a blackened aspen stump, he had hesitated, then run. Maggie turned Rusty, following Hadyn’s footprints in the snow; Rusty was happy to leave the strong smells of lion and blood. Hadyn had run across the mountainside, then veered, going straight upward again.
    Maggie stopped, standing in Hadyn’s boot tracks. She faced into the wind once more, staring at the trampled, red snow around the calf carcass. There. She could see another line of prints, this one carving a slender, graceful path through the deep drifts.
    A sudden gust slapped at Maggie’s face and she squinted. The cat’s tracks led away from the calf, toward where she was standing now. Maybe the cat had gone after Hadyn? It wasn’t likely, she knew, but it was possible if he had been foolish enough to try to scare it away from its kill.
    Maggie walked slowly uphill, frozen rock rolling beneath her feet as she followed Hadyn’s course up the mountainside. At the top of one ridge, the wind gusted, roaring past her. It knifed through a snowdrift, scattering it. She hunched, turning her face away, blinking at the tiny shards of ice. Struggling to keep her hat from blowing away, she pulled it down over her ears, then slapped her hands together until they tingled.
    Rusty balked when she tried to go on. She leaned her weight into the reins, talking fast, promising him the biggest supper of oats