The Killing Breed by Frank Leslie Read Free Book Online Page A

fiddling with his rifle scabbard, then wrapped a muscular arm around Faith’s waist, bent her slightly back, and gave her a quick but passionate kiss on the mouth. She returned the kiss, laughing and tugging on his long hair falling around his shoulders.
     
     
    Pulling away from her, Yakima swung up onto the black’s hurricane deck. “I hope to be back by noon. Something tells me that bronc’s stayin’ close. He’s got a good whiff of those mares, and he likes what he smells.”
     
     
    Shivering, Faith hunched her shoulders inside the buckskin coat she’d donned against the morning’s sharp chill. The cabin’s chimney lifted gray smoke behind and above her. “You two be careful.”
     
     
    She’d wanted to ride along, but Yakima had convincedher to remain at the ranch in case the bronc returned.
     
     
    The boy and Yakima put their horses into jogs across the yard and out through the wooden ranch portal. In the sage- and pine-studded buttes beyond, they heeled the mounts into lopes, hooves thudding, dust rising in the wan dawn light behind them.
     
     
    Faith remained on the porch, watching their jostling figures disappear in the purple shadows. When they were gone, she turned toward the corral.
     
     
    The mares were milling about with their foals, a couple of which were milking, and staring at Faith expectantly. It was still a half hour early for the morning feeding, but Faith said, “All right, ladies. Since we’ve eaten, I guess it’s only fair you and the children eat. . . .”
     
     
    She let her sentence trail off, frowning at her claybank mare, Crazy Ann, who stood pricking her ears southward, as though she heard something in the far distance.
     
     
    Faith turned to peer across the broad, hilly meadow in which the ranch sat, and along the faint horse trail stretching south toward a stand of dark pines and blue mountains beyond. It was the trail that angled down the foothills and across the desert to the town of Saber Creek, thirty miles away.
     
     
    “What is it, Ann?”
     
     
    Faith stared in the direction the mare was gazing for a time, wondering if the broom-tail stallion was out there somewhere, stalking just beyond the limits of her own vision and hearing, waiting for another chance to strike.
     
     
    But, as far as she could tell, there was nothing but a slight breeze ruffling the sage and broom grass. Crazy Ann, whom Faith had named after seeing the mare’s crazy stare and quirky, fidgety corral dance, as though she were imagining unseen predators, was probably only hearing her own wild conjurings.
     
     
    Faith went inside for her work gloves and her man’s felt Stetson, which she thonged beneath her chin, then headed back outside. Drawing her hair into a loose ponytail, she crossed the yard to the corral. A couple of the mares, realizing it was time for breakfast, whinnied happily, and the foals nickered like lambs, bolting into playful runs, nipping at the other foals’ ears and backsides. Even Crazy Ann came to the fence, and Faith was relieved.
     
     
    She knew the broom tail needed to be taken down, but she didn’t want to have to do it herself.
     
     
    Faith fed a coffee tin of oats to each mare and foal, and tried to keep the more aggressive mares out of the others’ feed, then pitched fresh bluestem hay from the cribful that Kelly had cut down by the stream while Yakima had dug the new well. She enjoyed being in the corral with the horses, checking the foals for ear mites and tics and doctoring with turpentine and mud the nips the contrary mares sometimes inflicted on one another.
     
     
    She’d enjoyed ranch work when she’d been growing up in the Chugwater Buttes, though her and Kelly’s father had been a brooding, arbitrary man, given to the whip and the bottle. It felt good to return to such work in the open air again after the half dozen years she’d spent working in saloons and brothels.
     
     
    She didn’t feel guilty about those years. For girls