Gunsmoke Mountain by Paul Lederer

Author:Paul Lederer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480487895
Publisher: Open Road Media

SIX

Deucie’s dainty little blue roan picked its way nimbly down the mountain trail as thunder boomed to the north following a brilliant strike of forked white lightning. The snow fell heavily and the land was dark beneath a field of heavy clouds. The bay horses Celia and Kyle Handy rode were heavier animals and unused to the mountains. They moved fearfully, cautiously, along behind Deucie. She could not see the three gunmen and she didn’t bother to look back. Her thoughts were fixed on the precipitous trail, the gusting wind and the falling snow.

Where was Dan? Was he even alive? Surely he was, and he would have caught his horse by now. She knew, too, that Dan always carried a spare pistol in his saddle-bags.

The blue roan halted, shook its head and went on only at Deucie’s gentle nudging with her knees. There were stones, uptilted slabs of rock underfoot, some of them covered now with snow. Among the heavy clouds, soon it would be difficult to tell the trail from the sheer drop-off to her right. Hitting a patch of ice could send a horse sliding over the rim, Deucie knew.

No one said a word. It would have been almost impossible over the rush of the roaring wind, but rounding a hairpin bend in the trail Deucie could see them following her like silent specters. Ghost riders. Celia now held herself apart from Kyle. She felt betrayed, angry, threatened. As did Deucie. They only needed her to lead the way down the trail and to point them toward Carver Springs where Celia and Kyle were to ‘wed’. And they said that they wanted to hold Deucie hostage in case Dan did manage somehow to catch up. How, on this trail under these conditions, was something that could not be guessed. After they were sure they were in the clear, well, they would have no more reason to keep Deucie alive. She would be a witness to their crimes then, and they could afford no witnesses.

Coming to a place where the trail widened beneath an overhanging bluff, Deucie held up her pony for a few minutes – they were getting too strung out along the trail. Watching the men approach, she felt hot anger in her heart. She remembered them talking about Roxie. Deucie had begged them not to leave her stepmother alone in the cabin.

‘She can’t take care of herself!’

‘What’re we going to do,’ Marsh had asked roughly, ‘take her riding down that trail in hard weather?’

‘She’ll be all right,’ Handy had said coldly. She has food here, There’s a few logs.’

Marsh added, ‘She can get up, too, I saw her do it.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Deucie pleaded. ‘She doesn’t have enough wood to last out the storm, nor enough food. No one will come this way for days, maybe weeks now. Few people ever pass by anyway.’

‘They don’t care,’ Celia said through clenched teeth. ‘They don’t care about anybody.’ Her eyes raked Kyle Handy’s face. He seemed a little unnerved by her hateful glare.

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