Read Online Hoofbeats of Danger by Holly Hughes - Free Book Online Page B

Magpie needs to keep moving until the bad stuff runs through her. If you just say you couldn’t find her—let her run loose until she’s better—”
    Billy looked uneasy. “You heard what Jeremiah said. In her condition, she could break a leg or even break her neck.”
    Annie tightened her fingers on his arm. “Then go find her and stay with her. Keep her safe. I just know she’ll get better if we give her time.”
    Billy stared into her searching eyes. “What if she runs from me? You come with me. She won’t run away if she sees you.”
    Annie dropped her eyes, shaking her head. “I can’t leave—not with Pa lying in there like that.”
    â€œRedbird and your ma can doctor him just fine,” Billy insisted. “We’re no use to him in there. But if someone’s poisoning Express ponies here, we have to stop it, for the sake of the Overland. That’d be more help to your pa than anything.”
    Annie straightened her shoulders. What Billy said made sense. This might be the chance she longed for to prove herself to her father. “Let’s go, then,” she decided.
    With the passengers milling around the stagecoach, wondering when they might pull out, nobody noticed the boy and girl hurrying to the barn door. Billy quickly fetched a rope from a hook, and then the two headed for the pine scrub behind the barn. Billy gestured toward a gap in the foliage. Judging from the broken boughs and trampled sagebrush, it was a good guess that this was the way Magpie had run—away from the river, toward the open plains.
    Billy started down the muddy slope into the scrubby woods. Annie hitched up her brown wool skirt to follow him, wishing as she often did that her mother would let her wear pants. Billy had little trouble scrambling down the slope in his riding boots with the pointed toes. Annie did the best she could in her stiff, thick-soled shoes.
    Though the sun was rising ahead of them in the eastern sky, the dense scrub was still dark, the low overhead branches matted and heavy with last night’s rain. Following the trail Magpie had thrashed through the wet pine scrub, Annie called out to Billy, “How can we ever catch her on foot? You know what a speedy little horse she is.”
    â€œThe brush and trees will slow her down,” Billy pointed out as he swung around a thorn bush. “And I’m betting she ain’t running her usual pace. You saw how confused and worn out she was. Anyway, we’ve got to try.” He sprinted ahead.
    For ten minutes or so, Annie picked her way along, straining her ears for the sound of hoofbeats. Then she saw Billy halt ahead of her. She hurried to his side. He was staring down into a jagged gully.
    Annie followed his gaze. There at the bottom of the gully, near the flooded creek, lay Magpie, her legs splayed awkwardly to one side. All around her sprawled a dense thicket of gray-green bushes, climbing halfway up the gully wall.
    Holding onto a pine sapling, Annie lowered herself into the gully. To her left, a fresh vertical gash, gouged deeply into the gully wall, suggested that Magpie had come down the same way—and probably by accident. Please don’t let her have a broken leg, Annie prayed silently.
    She threw an anxious glance at Magpie, not far below her. The pony seemed to have landed in the densest part of the thicket. For a moment, Annie felt relieved. The mass of tough branches would have cushioned the mare’s fall. Annie charged toward Magpie. But as she reached the edge of the thicket, her skirt tore on a barrier of sharp thorns. “Sticker bushes!” she yelled to Billy, who was dropping down the gully wall behind her. “A whole big patch of ’em!”
    As she waded in, the thorns bit cruelly into her skin. Even worse, they hooked the tough branches to each other like a huge springy net. Magpie must have flailed about and tangled herself even further, Annie