He couldn’t hear a sound out of his dog, and he hadn’t expected to. But there were tracks, stretched out, the dog moving with speed and ease in this rugged stretch of woods. Trace was on an uphill slope, and the way got more treacherous. It took him a while to notice, but Wolf was following a whisper of a game trail so faint that Trace would’ve never seen it himself.
Trace moved as fast as the dense woods and rocky climb would allow. He was mindful of the trail, the woods that were around him, and what lay behind. Though he trusted Wolf, Trace knew his own skill in the woods and he used his own eyes and ears and nose.
No one was lurking along the trail.
Suddenly, Wolf appeared ahead of him, coming back down the trail, trotting, tongue lolling, calm as could be.
“What is it, boy? What did you smell?” A distant rumble distracted Trace from talking to his dog. He looked up and saw on the far western horizon the first glimpse of a gray cloud. A barely visible bolt of lightning reached for the ground.
It was miles away, probably not coming right at them, but they had one more high peak to get over before they started the long downhill slope to Trace’s cabin. He was way too high. Lightning up in the peaks was a terrible, violent thing. He had to get moving or they might all be caught in it.
The dog took one more long look in the direction he’d come from, then turned and went on past Trace, heading back for the women. Trace looked in the direction Wolf had come from and itched to go on, to investigate. But Trace didn’t do it, not with lightning on the way. He’d left the women and children behind, and he had to get back to them and lead them out of here. He picked up his pace, running with an ease that was second nature to him.
“Deb, I’m back,” he called and then emerged from the woods. He didn’t want to sneak up on her.
She stepped out from behind the boulder pile, gun lowering. She returned it to the bag she carried with her. It lifted his spirits to think she’d been ready to fight.
He reached the trail just as she did, leading Gwen and the children.
“We’ve got to move fast, Deb. There’s a storm coming, and up this high it could get fierce.” Trace looked at the horse, then down at her. With sudden moves, he reached up, unstrapped the pack on his stallion’s back, and strapped it onto his own. It was everything he’d carried from his travels, besides all they’d scavenged from the wagon train. The pack weighed a hundred pounds or more, but he needed to set a faster pace, and to do that he needed everyone else to ride.
“Black can carry all four of you at least until we get over the next peak. He’s a strong animal, and we’re going to let him do more of the work now.”
Deb sputtered, “I can walk. I’m not tired.”
“I’m going to run.”
That quieted her down.
“I do plenty of running on these trails and can keep it up a long time, and I want to get us off this trail. Whatever bothered Wolf must’ve moved on, but that storm isn’t moving anywhere but right at us. I don’t want to be out here when the sky opens up.” He thought of those tracks he’d wanted to follow north and almost growled with frustration. This could be snow, but the lightning meant it was probably rain. Those tracks were going to wash out. He had plans to hunt those men down, and if rain passed over, Trace would have a harder time finding them.
He heard a distant crack of thunder and quit talking. He didn’t wait to ask for permission from Deb. That was time he didn’t want to waste. He caught Deb around her trim middle and swung her awkwardly up onto the mustang’s back behind Maddie Sue. Black stepped around a little.
Deb squeaked and grabbed around Gwen with Maddie Sue asleep between them. She was sitting too far back on the horse, and the poor critter wasn’t used to any of this.
But Trace had a firm grip on the reins and controlled Black until he calmed down.
“Hang on. I’ll start out walking, then trotting and that’ll jiggle you all up some. But I’ll try to move fast enough we can get Black into a slow canter.”
Trace moved out, silently apologizing to his overburdened horse. But even all four of them up there weren’t too heavy of a load, and the pack Trace had put on his back had been most of Deb’s weight, so Black could keep this up if he didn’t get cranky. Trace gave the threatening sky a hard look and hoped he could keep it up, too.
It didn’t take long for the trot. Trace hoped he’d be in time to catch anyone who fell off. Yet they hung on, and finally Black broke into a canter so slow he was surprised the horse could manage it. Maybe Black was getting tired of bouncing around with all that weight on his back—the riders certainly were.
Trace’d lived awhile out here with only the old horse he’d been riding on the day Pa was killed. He’d learned to travel well on his own and could run for hours at a decent speed. Now he was going to test his endurance.
And to make himself go on, all he had to do was imagine someone in those woods, maybe someone evil enough to kill a wagon train full of people, maybe someone with a rifle scope pointed right at them.
Because someone was out there. Or had been. Trace couldn’t read Wolf’s actions any other way.
Thunder rumbled, and Trace pushed himself harder, driven by the lighting coming and others watching them, others with reasons for not showing themselves.
That could only be bad.
CHAPTER
