Blood on the Moon by Luke Short Read Free Book Online Page A

the night at Ripple Ford up by the Chimney Rocks. That’s all Amy knew, learning it through her father’s brief note to them yesterday, and she was tense and excited.
    She’d slept little the night before, so that she had heard Carol come in late. She stood irresolute for a moment outside the door, slim in her worn wrap, her arms folded across her breasts. Her attitude was solemn, her face grave, pensive, faintly excited. It was a slim face, serene for the moment, and her full, wide mouth was almost smiling in mockery. Carolalways hated to get up early, yet today was a day she must.
    Amy opened the door and stepped into the dark room and walked slowly toward the bed where Carol was sleeping. Amy put a hand on Carol’s shoulder, and Carol roused, shook it off and buried her head deeper in the blankets.
    “Roll out, Red,” Amy said mockingly. That name usually roused Carol fighting.
    Carol opened her eyes and closed them again and said, “My lord, it’s the middle of the night. Go away.”
    “But we’re riding.”
    “I’m not,” Carol said.
    Amy sat down on the bed and said, “Remember what day it is?”
    Carol lazily opened her eyes to regard Amy thoughtfully. “No.”
    “Dad either crossed the Massacre last night or didn’t. Don’t you want to know which?”
    Carol sat up in bed with an abruptness that made Amy smile. “I’d forgotten!”
    “Then hurry.”
    Amy left her dressing and went back to her own room. It was small, simply furnished, with a kind of happy-go-lucky and not-too-neat carelessness about it. She dressed in yesterday’s levis and shirt, ran a comb through her thick light hair without looking into the mirror and went back to the kitchen.
    When Carol came out, sleepy eyed and dressed in a divided skirt and corduroy jacket, breakfast was ready.
    Carol tasted her coffee and then looked at her sister. “Over your sulk, baby?”
    “I feel fine,” Amy said.
    “But you can’t forget it.”
    Amy countered with a show of spirit. “Could you, if you’d been shot at?”
    Carol didn’t answer her question but said slowly, “I wonder who he was?”
    “Somebody riding through,” Amy said bitterly. “He wouldn’t have dared to do it if he were staying around here.”
    Carol put down her cup and laughed. “You didn’t like him, baby? He stood up to you as if you were pointing a potato masher at him.”
    Two spots of color showed at Amy’s cheekbones. Carol, watching her, felt a sudden rush of love for her, mingled with a feeling of self-pity. She called Amy “baby” with a kind of mocking irony that wasn’t explained by the two years’ difference in their ages. It was because Amy was so impetuous and wild and untamed, like a young and unbroken horse. Amy was twenty-four and yet she hardly understood the obligations of womanhood, had never known what it was to love a man or to suffer because of him. In her motherless childhood she had been more boy than girl, and in her womanhood she was still like that, Carol thought. Her generosities were magnificent; her angers were rages, her manner as simple and direct as a man’s. Men adored her and loved her, and Amy neither welcomed it nor understood it. Carol, with that dark intuitive knowledge of a desirable woman wise in the ways of love and men, knew there was heartbreak ahead for Amy. It made her feel old and exasperated.
    “Darling, if you shoot at some men they’ll shoot at you,” she said simply. “Guns aren’t playthings—not in these times.”
    “It’s not that,” Amy said angrily. “It was—well, the humiliation, I guess.”
    “Then don’t be such a perfect spitfire,” Carol said crossly. “Come on and finish your breakfast.”
    Amy said, “In a minute,” rose, went to the door and whistled shrilly through her teeth. A halloo at a far corral answered her, and Amy shouted, “Saddle up two, Ted!”
    Carol winced, yet there was something so natural in Amy’s act that it was laughable. Amy finished her coffee standing,