Wrangler in Petticoats by Mary Connealy

Author:Mary Connealy [Connealy, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60742-205-1
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Sally’s alive.” Luther straightened from the little pile of stones weighing down the leather. The leather had the McClellen ranch brand marked clear, newly cut. The stack of stones had obviously been deliberately left as a marker. “This is off her boot.”

He looked up in time to catch a blurry wash over Buff’s eyes, almost as if the man was ready to cry. Luther would have made fun of the old coot if he could speak past the lump in his throat. “This is Shoshone sign.” Luther looked into an impassable pile of rocks at the base of a mountain. “Sally, or whoever left this, must know there are bad men searching for her because there’s no effort to point us toward a trail.”

“So where is she?” Buff asked.

Luther studied Clay McClellen’s brand on a piece of leather. Only Sally would have known someone would come looking and understand what that meant. “Shoshone markings.” Luther pointed to a few other cuts in the leather. “Makes sense that if someone carried her off, it’d be an Indian, a Shoshone. Them and the Nez Perće are almost the only ones left hereabouts.”

“I heard they’d driven the tribes off Yellowstone. They might’ve come up here.” Buff stared at the mountains around them. “I did a fair sight of trapping in Yellowstone in the early days, before we was saddle partners, Luth. Figures there might be some native folks in these hills.”

“The rain wiped out the trail the same day we found it. But that first day we saw that someone rode away carryin’ a load. Maybe Sally riding double with someone.” Luther thought of the men they now followed and itched to face them. Two against two, even odds. He’d have done it, but he wasn’t interested in arresting them and hauling them to jail a hundred miles away. And he didn’t see any point in a shootout that would risk their lives and not bring them one step closer to Sally. So instead they’d dogged the other men. Luther hoped he’d find a sign of Sally first. And, if he didn’t, Luther and Buff would be on hand to protect her.

“The marker was set up by a solid wall of rock with nothing to give us a direction. But it was left by a knowin’ hand. Someone afraid the outlaws would see it first. So there’s no clue to what direction to ride. We’ll have us a time tracking our girl down. But maybe whoever was helping her will come again.”

“And in the meantime, we’ll hunt.” Buff reached out and took the bit of leather from Luther’s hand and stared at it a long time.

“See anything there that’ll give us a direction to hunt?”

“Wise Sister.” Buff closed his fist on the leather.

“What?”

Buff shook his head.

Waiting a minute, Luther decided his friend had no more to say. No surprise there. “Let’s see if we can pick up a trail from whoever left it there.” Luther looked at the wall of rock looming over that marker.

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