Hoofbeats of Danger (5 page)

Annie's eyes widened. Even her father, who seemed so strong and tough, felt scared inside sometimes. It had never occurred to her that someone like Nate Slocum could have the same effect on her pa that her pa had on
her
!

“And that new guard, Ambrose,” Pa went on. “He seems a friendly sort, but he was sure asking me a lot of questions in the barn earlier. Wanted to know how we do this, where we keep that, all sorts of things. Every time I turn around, I feel his eyes on me, checking up on me—”

Just then, the guard's stout figure swung into the doorway. “Dawson?” he called out. “No point to standing around in the wet, my friend. I hope nothing's wrong?”

“I'm just on my way back to the forge—got to work on that wheel,” Annie's father replied.

The guard shrugged. “Well, let me know if you need any help. I'll be happy to lend a hand.” He moved back inside.

“You'd best go see if your ma has any work she needs done,” Pa told Annie, patting her shoulder. “Take my gun back inside. There's a good girl.” He handed her his rifle and then brushed past, hunching his shoulders as he waded back into the rain.

Annie watched him go with a wondering gaze. Now she understood why her pa often acted gruff. He had trusted her with his worries—and she was determined to live up to that trust.
There must be a way to help Pa protect his job,
she said to herself. Deep in her bones, she knew that saving Magpie—not shooting her—was the key.

Annie went unwillingly into the station house. How could she bear to stay inside, doing dumb chores, when she should be out searching for a way to help Magpie?

As she entered the house, she felt relieved, despite herself, to get out of the rain. She longed to go near the fireplace, but Nate Slocum and the guard were huddled in conversation by the hearth. She watched them uneasily from across the room, remembering her father's words. What were they talking about? Comparing notes on how the Dawsons ran the station?

The woman passenger rose to her feet. “If it's all right with you, Mrs. Dawson, I'll turn in now,” she announced. “Come along, Horace.” Her son scrambled to his feet, greedily licking crumbs of cornbread from his fingers.

“Annie, show our guests to the other room,” Ma said. Her quick gaze took in Annie's sodden dress. “And fetch something dry to change into. The barn will be none too warm tonight.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Annie said. She led the woman and her son through a doorway into the narrow, windowless room where the Dawsons slept. A big quilt-covered bed took up most of the space.

The woman gave the mattress an appraising pat. “Feather bed,” she noted with approval. “Well, I surely intend to sleep well tonight. After fifteen straight days and nights in that stagecoach, my bones have been jolted and jounced as much as they can take.”

Annie leaned down to pull out the trundle, a low bed that fit neatly under the bigger one. “Your son can sleep here in our bed.” Horace wrinkled his nose as he fingered the worn patchwork coverlet on the trundle.

Turning on her heel, Annie silently grabbed her brown woolen dress from a shelf and moved behind a standing screen to change clothes. As she peeled the wet dress from her skin, she fought the impulse to make a rude remark to Horace. Her mother had told her time and again, always be nice to the coach passengers. They were paying guests, after all, and the Dawsons depended on the money they brought in.

Once her dress was changed, Annie hurried out of the bedroom, doing her best to avoid talking with Horace and his mother. Back in the main room, the other passengers were getting ready to bed down too. Mrs. Dawson passed out coarse wool blankets. A couple of the men passengers pushed aside the plank table so that they could stretch out on the bare, packed-dirt floor.

One of the older men was going out the front door, headed for the outhouse, no doubt. “Take an oar with you—you'll need it in this flood,” called out the young blond man with the mustache. “Say, Mr. Slocum, if we all pitch together in the morning, maybe we can turn the coach into an ark.”

The driver looked up briefly from his conversation with the guard. “Might be a good idea—it'd save Dawson the trouble of fixing that wheel,” he joked sourly.

Hearing his remark, Mrs. Dawson flicked an irritated glance at Nate Slocum. She turned to Annie, handing her two blankets. “Take a lantern when you and Davy go to the barn. There's one by the door. You're sure you'll be all right in there tonight?” A worry line creased Ma's forehead.

“The barn roof is plenty sound,” Annie reminded her. “And the straw will be warm. I'll wear Pa's woolen coat, too. It's not as if I ain't slept there before—” Annie's voice broke off. Before, she'd always slept with Magpie in her stall. Tears welled up as she remembered afresh how different it would be tonight.

Mrs. Dawson saw the tears in her daughter's eyes and immediately guessed the cause. She slid a consoling arm around Annie's shoulders. “I'm sorry Magpie's ailing, Annie. Maybe she'll be better in the morning. We can hope so, can't we?”

Annie nodded frantically, struggling not to sob. But her mother's kind words had opened floodgates inside her. She stumbled quickly to the door, hiding her face with the blankets. She didn't want anybody to see her crying and feel sorry for her.

Annie paused, staring at the plank door before her, willing her tears away.
It won't do Magpie any good for me to start blubbering,
she told herself. Daybreak was still hours away. She might yet be able to find out what had caused Magpie's illness—but not by dawdling inside the station house. Whatever was wrong with the horse, Annie felt sure there was one person who could help her figure it out—Redbird Wilson. But could she get Redbird's help in time?

Briskly she pulled a tin lantern off the narrow shelf by the door. It held a thick tallow candle, one of the batch she and her mother had made last week. She lit the candle's wick from a nearby oil lamp, fit the candle in place, then shut the small pierced-tin door of the lantern. “Davy?” she called to her brother, taking a worn jacket of lumpy black wool from a peg by the door.

Davy rose from the hearth, half-asleep and yawning. Ma, banking the fire in the fireplace, turned to tousle his hair and wish him good night.

Annie stepped out the door, welcoming the chilly wet air. The rain seemed to have slackened, she noticed gratefully. Maybe a trip up the mountain was possible after all, she considered.

With Davy stumbling behind her like a sleepwalker, Annie led the way across the yard to the barn, holding their lantern high. As they slopped through the mud, she heard with a pang Magpie's fretful snorting and wheezing. She cast her eyes toward the corral and saw a dull gleam of white haunches in the murky night. Her whole body strained with yearning to go to Magpie. But she didn't dare go against her father's orders right now—it'd put him on his guard for sure. Glancing past the barn, she saw a red glow in the forge. Pa would be in there, working, for at least another hour.

As they entered the barn, Annie stepped over to pat Surefoot, a wiry roan stabled nearest the door. “You sleep in the tack room, Davy—I'll stay in Magpie's stall,” Annie said, trying to sound casual.

“Magpie's stall?” Davy sounded confused. “But she ain't there.”

Annie flinched at the thought, but she steeled herself to face it. “All the same, that's where I'm sleeping,” she declared, stepping away from Surefoot and handing Davy his blanket. “You can keep the lantern.”

Leaving a bewildered Davy in the tack room, she marched in the dark to Magpie's stall. She felt her way in, trying not to think about the heartbreaking stillness there. She knelt to pat the straw into a bedlike heap. She heard a faint sigh from the hayloft as one of the hands, Billy or Jeremiah, turned over in his sleep.

She sat down, unlaced her stout brown shoes, and set them by the stall door where she could find them later, when it was time to slip outside. She tossed her father's coat over the manger, then spread her blanket on the straw. As she curled up on her makeshift bed, she saw the gleam of Davy's lantern snuffed out. Silence settled over the barn.

Annie lay rigid in the dark. If she fell asleep now, she might not wake until morning—and that would ruin everything. She had to wait until everyone at the station was asleep. No one must know where she was going. The very idea of a girl her age going up the mountain alone in the dead of night! Anyone who saw her would try to stop her.

Annie rubbed the tip of her braid anxiously against her cheek. Time was running out; on foot, she'd never make it up the mountain by dawn. The only answer was to go on horseback. But on what horse? The Dawsons had none of their own. When their old mule Jesse had died in California, Pa couldn't afford to buy another. The Overland had loaned them a team of oxen to haul their wagonload of belongings to Red Buttes.

She held her breath, listening to the steady breathing of the horses in the stalls nearby all of them the property of the Overland Express company. She'd ridden them all at one time or another, but only near the station, to exercise them between Express runs. To take one of them on a dangerous nighttime ride without permission—she knew it would be looked on as stealing.

But what other choice did she have?

Finally she heard her father closing up the forge; he must have finished repairing the stagecoach's wheel. She lay tensely, waiting until she heard the quiet thump of the station-house door closing behind him.

The wind had died down, and the rainfall had dwindled to a soft, steady patter. Beneath it all, Annie picked out the sound of the North Platte at the foot of the bluff. She was so used to that soothing, rushing noise that she barely noticed it anymore. But the river sounded louder than usual tonight—swollen by the rainstorm, Annie judged.

Shifting her weight cautiously, Annie sat up in the stillness. Her eyes, though accustomed now to the dark, could barely see the entrance of the stall. On her hands and knees, she groped over to her shoes and, fumbling, pulled them on. Then, feeling along the wall, she found the wool coat and shrugged it on.

Annie tiptoed to the tack room, fervently hoping Davy was asleep. After years of sharing the trundle bed with him, she recognized his ragged snores as she eased open the thin wooden door. She slipped inside, guessing from the snoring where Davy had spread his blanket. She surely didn't want to run the risk of stepping on him.

She knew the tack room's layout by heart, knew exactly where the bridle she needed was hung. Though Annie could easily ride a horse with just a halter, she'd feel better having a bridle for tonight's ride. Once she reached the upland trails, her life might depend on having the horse under firm control.

Edging along the rough wooden wall, she held one hand in front of her. In the blackness, she misjudged the distance and bumped into the next wall. She froze, listening tensely to make sure Davy hadn't awaked.

Reassured, she thrust out a hand again. Her fingers brushed against a pair of reins and she grasped them, the leather squeaking slightly under her touch. She lifted the bridle from its peg and slipped back out of the tack room, holding the metal bit to make sure it didn't jangle.

Stealthily, Annie headed for Surefoot's stall. She felt lucky that the wiry roan was at Red Buttes tonight, and in the stall nearest the barn door. Surefoot had earned his name for his skill at picking over difficult terrain. For the ride she had ahead of her, no horse could be better.

Surefoot, dozing on his feet, nickered in surprise as Annie entered his stall. But the pony knew Annie's scent and quieted at once. Her fingers felt clumsy as she slid his bridle over his head. She crooned to him softly to keep him calm.

Sliding her fingers inside the bridle's cheek strap, she led the horse toward the stall door. As Surefoot's hooves clopped softly on the straw-littered barn floor, Annie held her breath, praying that everyone at the station was asleep.

C
HAPTER
6

T
HE
M
IDNIGHT
R
IDE

Annie froze, trembling. A dark figure blocked the barn doorway. She'd been caught!

“It's only me—Annie,” she said in a small voice. “Who's there?”

“Annie, what are you doing?” The figure stepped out of the shadows. She saw, to her great relief, Billy's skinny figure, dressed in long red underwear.

Annie patted Surefoot's neck to steady him. She whispered, “I'm going up the mountain, Billy—to ask Redbird Wilson to help.”

“At night? In this weather?” Billy whispered in alarm. “That mountain trail will be nothing but mud slides. You could break your neck—or Surefoot's.”

Annie gripped the horse's reins. “I can't let Pa shoot Magpie. If I wait until morning, it'll be too late.”

“Annie, I know how you feel. I couldn't sleep myself for worry over Magpie. But it's crazy to go out tonight.” Billy reached for Surefoot's bridle. “At least let me go instead.”