Free Renegade Riders by Dawn MacTavish

that. We had to leave a few out for them to take every time, of course. It wouldn’t look right, a horse farm with no horses. They were suspicious, but we held on, surviving when other farms collapsed.” Her face softened. “It was so pretty, that farm. With its whitewashed fences and barns.” Dropping her chin on her knees she added, “I wanna go home.”
    “Well, that explains how come you can ride better than any Indian I ever met.” Trace swallowed hard the knot in his throat as he watched her staring into the fire. More than once over the years he had done the same thing, staring into the fire while wishing to go home. Only, for some, going home was only a dream. Home was long gone. All the people who mattered were long gone. Oh, the land was still there, but that was all.
    “I could sit a horse before I could stand,” Mae remarked wistfully.
    Trace was softening, empathizing with her desperation in wanting to go back to a place where she felt safe, so he reminded himself that poor Diablo had suffered because of her. “Don’t tell me you walked all the way from the Lazy C to that canyon?”
    “N-no…” she replied.
    “Well?” Trace reached for the ointment cup that was warming by the fire, and he stirred the herbs again.
    “That cook friend of yours, Preacher. He replaced the cook that Jared told you ran off. The cook’s name was Bill Coulter. I got him to take me. I paid him, but he…he took it the wrong way. He thought…He wanted…” She grabbed a blanket and pulled it tight around herself.
    “I get the picture,” Trace said, sparing her. “You ran off from him?”
    She nodded. “I wasn’t thinking about anything, just getting away from him. He was drunk, and foul…” She shuddered. “I just ran. He couldn’t go back to the Lazy C—not after running off with me like that. I’m guessing he’s probably halfway to Texas by now, fearing Jared will catch up. I never looked back. I kept running and running ’til my sides ached and I could scarcely breathe. Then I saw your horse. He was like an answer to a prayer. I couldn’t run anymore, I couldn’t even walk, and then you…you…” Burying her face against her raised knees, she sobbed.
    Trace grimaced. So much for keeping his distance. She was crying. She’d been alone and scared, had run just as his sister had run to escape the Yankees. Only, his sister hadn’t gotten away. He couldn’t go home and comfort her.
    Going over, Trace laid a gentle hand on Mae’s arm. “Hush now. Why couldn’t you have told me all this back in the canyon? Do I look like the kind of man who would turn his back on a lady in distress?”
    Her head snapped up, her wounded gaze accusatory.“You have no idea what I’d just come from. Any man was the devil to me! I didn’t know who you were, what kind of man…How could I? And you shot me! I had just nearly been raped by someone I thought I could trust. After that, how could I trust a perfect stranger? Then you reminded me that somebody would be coming after me. I knew you were right, and that’s why I stole your horse again. I almost made it away, too. I almost made it!”
    “Yeah, I saw that you were close to outrunning them.” Trace wanted to hold her, to tell her it was all over, but after her confession about nearly being raped, he didn’t want to spook her with an offer of comfort. He reached for her cup, poured it half-full, and handed it back. “I understand wanting to go home, but why didn’t you just ask your husband to take you? Why put yourself in harm’s way again and again?”
    “I was running from Jared Comstock,” she moaned. “And from that foreman of his, Will Morgan. He was no better than the cook. Of course, Will would never have taken me away. He would have used me right there, right under Jared’s nose!”
    “And your husband would have allowed that? Why did you marry him if that’s the kind of man he is?”
    “I didn’t have much say in it,” she said. “My mother