Suzanna by Harry Sinclair Drago Read Free Book Online Page A

caught unaware. With a bound, he was off for the other end of the field. The King’s Highway passed there, and the cub, hesitating to cross where there was no cover at all, circled back toward a huge straw stack fairly in line with the girl.
    A game of tag began as they dashed round and round the stack. Suzanna’s dog had joined the pair and the chase. Hearing a noise behind her, the girl felt that the bear had started to chase her, and without stopping to reason, ran for an old cypress tree, which stood beside the road, and took refuge in it.
    The cub, however, had tired of the game some minutes before and had taken refuge in the same tree. At the moment that Suzanna was scrambling up, the cub was perched on a limb above her calmly surveying the scene.
    Suzanna, having reached the first limb, backed out on it a few feet and then came to a sudden halt. Something was pressing against her back! Exactly what it was, she couldn’t have told, but she knew it was alive! Casting a backward glance across her shoulder, she saw the bear. With a scream, she began moving out upon the limb. For now, that she was within a hair’s breadth of it, she became the quarry, and not the cub. Roping a bear was one thing; capturing it with bare hands while astride the limb of a tree, fifteen feet above the ground, was something else again. Suzanna decided to continue retreating—and did—onto another limb on the other side of the tree. The cub, sensing Suzanna’s waning interest, became playfully inclined, and started in pursuit. Suzanna slid backward toward the lower end of the limb. The cub crept toward her. Not realizing its intentions, the girl began shouting for help. She was in no particular danger, a moment’s thought would have assured her of that, but she had become panic-stricken, and her cries carried conviction.
    Ramon, riding at the head of his wagon-train, stood in his stirrups as he caught the faint sound of someone calling for help. The boy cast an anxious look ahead of him, and then turned to his peons to see if they betrayed any sign of having heard that strange call. The poor devils had crawled back to the wagon soon after Pérez and his band had disappeared, asking for the punishment they so richly deserved. Ramon had left their punishment to Ruiz, knowing that he would exact many extra hours in the fields from them for their cowardice.
    The boy saw that they were on edge now, and with a call to his sobrestante , he dashed away toward the low ridge that topped the wide draw in which the wagon moved. On the crest, he stopped for an instant to better locate the source of those cries. He was near enough the tree to which Suzanna and the bear had retreated to be able to see a form dangling from a lower limb. Giving his horse the spurs, he sped toward the old cypress.
    â€œHold there!” he called to what he believed to be a full-grown boy: “Let go when I give the word. Now!”
    Suzanna’s face had been turned upward as she clung to the limb, and due to her excitement she had not recognized Ramon’s voice. He was equally ignorant of whom he rescued. And so, when he caught her and they looked into each other’s eyes, astonishment gripped both of them.
    â€œHoly Mother,” Suzanna gasped. “You?”
    â€œNone other, marimacho ,” Ramon answered vexedly. “What is it you do here?”
    â€œHast eyes, petulant one?” Suzanna scolded.
    The boy’s teeth flashed in a wide grin as he caught sight of the cub. “Oh, hoi” he chuckled the while he nodded his head mockingly. “You best be careful whose trees you climb. Were you trying to capture him?”
    â€œHumph! I was trying to get away from him.”
    Ramon’s laughter grew as she told him of the incident.
    â€œYour father and his men can take care of the cub. I’ll carry you back to Pico, and see you safely to the hacienda. The country is too unsettled these days for you to