Free Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) by Frank Leslie

I left the fort this morning. They were heading straight south. I came east, following Mr. Tappin’s direction, and . . . I thought I’d made it through without being seen.”
    Colter continued to stare through the spyglass. “They must have split up. Probably several groups around here now.”
    Lenore said in a voice pitched low with self-disgust, “I’m sorry, Colter.”
    Colter turned to her. Her eyes were still bright with the shock of seeing four men die before her, but the color in her cheeks had returned. She’d been raised on military forts throughout the West, and, while she might never have seen men killed up close, death could not have been new to her.
    Colter returned the spyglass to his saddlebag pouch. “I’m obliged for the grub. Without it, I might not have made it a mile from here.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, something he’d only dreamed about doing before this day. Odd, how easy it was now, the emotion compelling it being his desire to send her away. “Leave here,” he said with passion. “Go now. Before they get here and the bullets start flyin’.”
    â€œBut what. . . . ?”
    â€œI’m pullin’ out.”
    Quickly, despite the ache in his ribs and other sundry bruises, cuts, and abrasions, he began gathering his gear.
    â€œI’ll help you,” she said, starting to roll his rumpled blankets.
    He grabbed her arm and shoved her brusquely toward her horse, now standing to the right of the cave, rooting for some spindly brown grass growing amongst the rocks. “No, go!”
    â€œAll right,” she said, stepping over the dead sergeant as she strode to her horse, a purposeful flush in her cheeks. “I’ll go and try to waylay Hobart and the others. “That’s the least I can do.”
    She grabbed the cream’s reins and swung into the silver-trimmed Texas saddle. Colter whipped his head toward her as he tied his blanket roll. “Lenore, go back the way you came. Steer wide of Hobart!”
    She swung the cream around and turned once more to Colter. “Good-bye, Colter.” She studied him, her thin brown eyebrows furling slightly above her penetrating gaze, as though she were seeing a different person than the one she’d thought he was. She tapped heels to the cream’s flanks, and the hooves clattered on the rocks as the gelding began picking its way down the slope, lifting copper dust behind it.
    Colter continued to gather his gear, gritting his teeth and muttering against the dreadful feeling in his gut. Quickly, he retrieved Northwest from the horse’s stone alcove and threw his tack onto the horse’s back, adjusting buckles and tightening straps while his heart tattooed a dire rhythm against his breastbone and he stared down the rocky slope.
    Lenore had reached the bottom and disappeared behind a pinnacle of towering rock.
    Colter shoved his Henry into its scabbard and swung gingerly onto Northwest’s back. He put the horse down the slope, following Lenore’s path for fifty yards and then, finding a natural corridor angling south across the side of the slope, swung onto it.
    A pistol cracked, the report echoing. Colter jerked his head to look over his left shoulder.
    Hobart sat his bay in a sandy-floored, horseshoe-shaped bowl in the canyon floor about a hundred yards away. Lenore’s cream was there, as well—pitching wildly and whinnying as Lenore flopped down the horse’s left side. Colter blinked his shocked eyes as though to clear them, but when he held his gaze on the clearing in the canyon, he saw Lenore fall from the cream to land on the ground. The lieutenant held a pistol in his right hand as he sat staring toward the girl.
    Colter thought that the lieutenant had triggered a shot at him, Colter, and that the bay had been startled by the shot and thrown the girl. But a look of keen horror and disbelief slid