Carolyn Keene - Nancy Drew by The Kachina Doll Mystery Read Free Book Online Page A

hope,” Bess murmured. “I’d be afraid of missing that trail in the dark.”
    “No, we’ll take an easier route,” Heather promised. “We don’t want any trouble.”
    While they sang, Nancy noticed that Ward and Maria had packed up all the supplies, and once the jeep was loaded, they left the canyon. Ngyun vanished, too, not waiting to ride back with them through the cooling, night air.
    “I’m glad you told us to tie our jackets behind our saddles, Heather,” Nancy said, pulling hers on before she mounted Dancer. “It feels good now.”
    “The desert can be quite cold at night,” Heather agreed. “Even in the summer, it cools off once the sun goes down.”
    They were quiet as they rode back, following the edge of a wash that led through the rough hills. Nancy was so deep in thought, trying to decide what to do about the Kachina spirit, that she didn’t notice when the mare slowed a little. Dancer dropped behind the other horses to nibble at a tuft of grass growing on the rough hillside the trail was skirting.
    Suddenly, the silence of the desert night was broken by a rattling, and Dancer whinnied, nearly unseating the young sleuth. Though she’d lost a stirrup, Nancy clenched her knees to the mare’s sides, trying to keep her moving forward on the trail. But the horse was too terrified. In a moment, they were slipping and sliding down the rocky slope toward the bottom of the wash.
    Frightened, Nancy grabbed the saddle horn and did her best to stay still in the saddle so as not to throw the mare off-balance as she skidded toward the hard-baked earth below. Rocks and other debris fell with them, and she could hear the shouts of the others, but at the moment everything depended on the mare’s surefootedness.
    Dancer’s plunging ended as she stumbled to her knees, nearly throwing Nancy over her head. Still the terrified mare didn’t stop. She scrambled back to her feet and leaped forward, with Nancy hanging on for dear life!

8
    The Rattler
    The mare stumbled again in the roughness of the wash.
    Nancy regained her balance and immediately tightened her hold on the reins, trying to steady the mare. She talked to the animal as calmly as she could while her own heart was still racing from the terror of their wild descent. “Steady, girl. It’s all right, Dancer,” she soothed, finally succeeding in stopping the trembling creature.
    “Nancy, Nancy, are you all right?” Heather called.
    “I’m fine,” Nancy answered, getting off the horse. “But I think we should check Dancer. She went down on het knees when we hit bottom and may have injured her legs.”
    In a moment, Heather, Bess, George, and the others rode back along the wash, having come down a more gradual slope further along the trail. “I have a flashlight,” Heather said, taking it out of her saddlebag and dismounting to join Nancy on the ground. “What happened?” she asked as they examined the mare’s slim front legs.
    “It was a rattlesnake,” Nancy explained. “I was riding along and all of a sudden it seemed to come down the cliff after us. I tried to keep Dancer on the trail, but she was terrified, of course. It must have been right under her hooves. Do you think she could have been bitten?”
    Heather ran a hand over the mare’s legs, examining them a second time. “I don’t see anything,” she answered. “Her knees are skinned and she’s probably pretty badly bruised, but she’ll make it back to the ranch all right. We’ll just have to go slow. If she starts to limp, you can always ride double with someone.”
    “You say a rattlesnake came down the cliff after you?” Chuck asked, breaking into their examination.
    Nancy nodded. “I could hear it rattling as it came.”
    “That doesn’t make sense,” Chuck said. “Rattlesnakes are shy of people. Are you sure it wasn’t alongside the trail?”
    “You’d already ridden by,” Nancy reminded him. “If it had been along the trail, it would have been disturbed and