Fern by Greenwood Leigh

Author:Greenwood, Leigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, texas, western, cowboy, kansas, western romance
Publisher: Ten Talents Press

Chapter Sixteen

Fern immediately thought of the man who had tried to rape her. She told herself not even he would be out in this storm, but panic wrapped its tentacles securely around her.

Instinctively, Fern pulled her horse to a halt and drew her rifle. A second bolt of lightning threw the figure into silhouette once more, and she fired. Then turning her horse, and started back across the prairie at a gallop.

Common sense reasserted itself almost immediately. No one in his right mind raced through a storm like this. She couldn't see. Her horse would almost certainly fall. Even if she didn't kill herself, the animal would probably have to be destroyed.

But as soon as her horse slowed to a trot, Fern's thoughts reverted to the man behind her.

That could have been her father or any one of a dozen men who had a perfect right to be on this trail. Whoever it was, she had shot him. She must have. She never missed. She couldn't just leave him. She had been brought up to help people in trouble no matter who they might be.

She turned back but left the trail for a path on lower ground. The runoff from the storm would soon make it a dangerous route, but she should have time to reach the rider unseen.

The roar of the wind was so loud Fern couldn't hear if the man had fired his rifle to call for help. A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape.

Nothing.

The water rushing along the streambed was rapidly becoming a torrent. Even now it swirled around her horse's legs. Soon it would become treacherous. Trees, branches, and other debris would make it lethal.

Another flash of lightning revealed a horse nearly a hundred yards away, the rider slumped in the saddle.

The man she had shot!

Feeling terribly guilty, Fern drove her horse up the sloping ground until she reached the trail. Yet as she drew near the man, her fear returned. He could be anyone. She wasn't safe just because he was wounded.

Fern shook off her misgivings. She had shot him without provocation. He could be dying. She must help him. If there was danger, she had to risk it. She had never before let herself be ruled by fear. She didn't know what had happened to her tonight.

She approached warily. Between the dark and her horse's skittishness, she couldn't make out the rider's features.

"Are you hurt?" she called out as she drew close.

"Of course I'm hurt, dammit," the man answered. "You put a bullet in my arm."

It was Madison, and he was furious.

Fern's heart beat wildly. The full impact of what she could have done made her so weak she feared she might faint. She gripped the pommel to steady herself, but it was several moments before the blurred scene stopped swimming before her eyes.

She could have killed the man she loved. And she probably would have if she hadn't fired so quickly. And all because of blind, stupid fear.

"You did say you were going to have my blood.

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