Bleeding Texas by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2014-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

“Let me take him!” Lauralee yelled again, pointing at the farmer riding in front of him.

Bo didn’t know where she had gotten the paint, but the horse was a big, strong-looking animal and obviously had some speed and stamina. Lauralee weighed only a little more than half what Bo did. Without a doubt, their chances would be better overall if the farmer was riding with her.

“Do it, mister!” Bo shouted at the man. “You’ve got to switch horses!”

The farmer turned a wall-eyed, terrified look at him and yelped, “I can’t!”

“Then I’ll dump you off and you can find out if you can outrun those beeves on foot! I’ll get my horse as close to Lauralee’s as I can. All you got to do is jump over and grab on!”

“Just be careful how you grab!” Lauralee told him.

The farmer grabbed the horse’s mane and clung to it for dear life as he moaned, “I can’t! I can’t!”

“Oh hell,” Bo muttered, indulging in a rare curse. Sheer terror had paralyzed the man, and nothing Bo could say would break through that fear’s grip. “Stay here, then. I’ll do it!”

He and Lauralee brought their horses closer together. Lauralee was to Bo’s left. Scratch moved closer on the right. Bo reached over and handed the reins of his horse to his old friend.

“Hold her steady!”

It was an awesome spectacle, the three horses galloping at full speed so close together that a man could barely fit a hand between them, with the herd of runaway cattle crowding them from behind. Bo kicked his feet free of the stirrups, told the farmer, “All you have to do is hang on right where you are!”

He let go of the farmer and lunged out of the saddle. He threw himself as hard as he could onto the back of Lauralee’s horse and wrapped his arms around her. For a harrowing second his legs hung in midair, but then he was able to heave his left leg over the horse’s back and haul himself upright just behind the cantle of Lauralee’s saddle.

“Got it?” she called over her shoulder to him.

“Got it!”

“Then let’s get out of here!”

She urged her horse to greater speed. Scratch did likewise, and since he was leading Bo’s horse, that animal had no choice but to call on its reserves of strength, too. The gap between the riders and the stampede widened slightly.

Bo looked back and saw the leaders curving away to the right. Through roiling clouds of dust he spotted riders on the left flank pushing them in that direction.

“Veer left!” he told Lauralee. That would take them away from the direction the herd was turning.

With Lauralee and Scratch heading one way and the herd going the other, it was only a matter of minutes before the riders were out of danger. They slowed and stopped. The gallant horses stood there with their muscles trembling, their sides heaving, and their sleek hides covered with the foam of sweat.

Now that they weren’t about to be

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.