Read Online Renegade Riders by Dawn MacTavish - Free Book Online Page B

firelight. Wavy and long, it was tamed at the nape of her slender neck by a thin bow.
    Damn her! Mae wasn’t going to get away this time, not until he’d gotten to the bottom of what the hell was going on.
    “Are you warm enough?” he asked. “I don’t dare add to the fire or I risk us being seen. If you’re cold, take one of the blankets.”
    She shook her head. “I’m not cold.”
    “The old cook I rode in with?” Trace set the cup next to the fire to warm. “Is he still there?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “He’s all right, then?”
    She nodded. “I nearly died of fright that day,” she confessed. “When Jared rode up on your horse, I…Why didn’t you claim him?”
    “He’s your husband,” Trace accused, ignoring her question.
    “Yes, but that’s not…that’s not important.”
    “What a fool thing to say. Maybe you don’t think so, but I’d say it’s mighty important.” Trace’s temper rose again. “He was one of the riders who caught up with you by the stream?”
    Mae stared, her tin cup raised to drink. “How did you—?”
    “I tracked you.” Trace reached into his pocket and produced the kerchief he’d fashioned into a sling for her, stained dark with her blood. “Four riders in all. One of them handled you pretty roughly by the look of this. You didn’t seem eager to go with them. You mind explaining?”
    Mae stared at the bandana. Tears once more welled in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She looked away, and Trace returned the bloodied kerchief to his pocket.
    “You followed me to the Lazy C?” she asked.
    “No. I followed your tracks ’til it got too dark to see. I was forced to return to camp. That’s where I met up with Preacher. Next morning, we set out to pick up your trail, but the sandstorm wiped it out. I was headed for the Lazy C in the first place, so Preacher came on to theOutpost and then the ranch. I had no idea that’s where you were, ’til I saw Comstock ride up.”
    “On Diablo. And you didn’t even try to claim him,” she said again. “Why?”
    “It would’ve been clear to a blind man that you were running from something. That being the case, I had no idea what you might have told Comstock to explain Diablo. I had to know how you figured into the goings-on at the Lazy C before I acted. I didn’t want to get you into trouble—if you were innocent.”
    “Innocent of what?” Her eyes snapped up from the tin cup to pin him. “Don’t talk to me of innocence! What was your business at the Lazy C? According to what you just said, you were headed there before we ever met. There’s only one kind of man that looks for work at the Lazy C, and innocence is not one of that sort’s characteristics.”
    “I think it best you answer my questions first. You level with me, and then, if I’m satisfied with what you’ve got to say, I’ll fess up to you. Start from the beginning. What were you doing out in that canyon, alone and on foot? Where did you think you were going?”
    Mae set her empty cup aside and hugged her knees. Trace reached for a blanket and tossed it into her lap, not trusting himself to be any closer. He needed to maintain a cool head around this hellcat, and that was damn hard to do.
    She looked at him for a long moment, and then slid the blanket around her shoulders. “I was doing my best to head east until I picked up the railroad,” she began. “I had money for a ticket…home.”
    “Where’s home?”
    “My grandfather owns a horse farm—Foxtail Farms in Kentucky, outside of Versailles. Not big like Almhurst, but he gives them a good run for their money with quality horseflesh. The farm was hit hard during the war. Both sides kept coming through trying to take horses for their armies. My grandfather had the boys dig a huge cellar under the manor house. Outriders would send word that soldiers were in the area, and they’d drive the horses down into the cellar and then cover the entrance with sod and park wagons and buggies atop