looked up and saw three riders approaching him. Thinking they were some of his uncle’s cowboys, he waited until they got very close. Only then did he realize that he had never seen any of them before, not even in the cookhouse at meals.
“Hello, boy,” one of the riders said.
“Hello, sir,” Winnie replied, trying not to show his nervousness over this unexpected meeting. He closed his journal, then lay it down under a rock to keep the pages from blowing.
“Would your name be Winston Churchill?”
“It is, indeed,” Winnie answered with a relieved smile. If they knew his name, then surely they would mean no harm to him.
One of the riders approached very close.
“That’s a nice-looking horse,” the rider said. “Is it yours?”
“It is a loan from Sir William,” Winnie said. “But he has been given to me to use while I’m here, so I have named him. I call him Tudor Monarch.”
“That’s a pretty high-falutin name,” one of the riders said. That same rider reached out and took the reins of Winnie’s horse.
“Excuse me, sir, but why did you take the reins of my horse?”
“Winston, get mounted. We’re going to take a little ride together.”
“I’d rather not take a ride with you, if it is all the same to you,” Winnie said. “I have my ride planned for the day. It is necessary that I do that so that Uncle Moreton and Mama will always know where I am.”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll tell them where you are.”
The other two riders came up very close, and Winnie knew that he was in great danger.
“Am I being abducted?” he asked.
“If that means are you being snatched up, the answer is yeah, that’s what we are doing.”
“To what end?” Winnie asked.
“To what end?” The rider that was holding the reins to Tudor Monarch chuckled. “Did you hear that, Grant? He wants to know to what end. Ain’t he about the damnedest talkin’ boy you ever been around?”
“I’ll tell you to what end,” Grant said. “There’s a group of us that wants your uncle to do somethin’ for us, and we figure he will do it if he knows that’s the only way he’ll see you alive again.”
“What is it you wish done?” Winnie asked.
“We want him to send Matt Jensen to come fetch you,” Grant said. “Do you think your uncle will do somethin’ like that?”
“I don’t really know Uncle Moreton all that well, so I can’t tell you with honesty whether he will or will not do what you ask.”
“You better hope that he will do it, boy,” one of the other riders said. “Because if he don’t, we’ll send you back to him, belly-down, on this horse.”
Donnie Lewis was looking for strays when suddenly three men rode out of a coulee with guns drawn and pointed at him. All three were wearing yellow kerchiefs.
“Whoa!” Lewis said, throwing his hands up. “What do you want? I ain’t got no money and I ain’t herdin’ no cows!”
“We want you to do something for us,” one of the riders said. “We want you to deliver a note to Moreton Frewen.”
“What kind of note?”
“Why should it matter to you what kind of note?” the rider asked. “The only thing that should matter to you is this. If you deliver it you live, if you don’t you die.”
“Now, tell me, cowboy, what is it to be?” one of the other men asked.
“I’ll deliver the note,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, I thought you might.” The rider handed him a folded piece of paper. “How fast is that horse?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?” Lewis asked.
“How fast is that horse?” the rider repeated. “Do you think he is fast enough to get you out of rifle range in a minute?”
“I—I don’t know.”
The rider pulled his rifle and cocked it. “You better hope he is. ’Cause in one minute I’m going to take a shot at you. So I suggest you get goin’ now.”
Lewis jerked his horse around, then slapped his legs against the side of the horse, urging him into a gallop. He leaned forward, not only to urge the horse to a faster pace, but also to present a smaller target in case the man actually did shoot at him.
A minute passed, and there was no bullet. Either the man didn’t shoot at him, or Lewis was far enough away now that if he did shoot, the bullet was far wide of its mark.
Forty-five minutes later, Lewis showed the note to Myron Morrison, thinking it might be better to go show it to the foreman first. Morrison read the note, then with compressed lips and narrowed eyes, looked back up at Lewis.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
