Wayward Wind by Dorothy Garlock Page A

looked him over from the top of
     his head to the toes of his dusty, well-worn boots. Never before had he undergone such a close scrutiny from a woman. It was
     done openly, and impersonally.
    “What did you do with… it?”
    Her words jarred him back to reality and it took a few seconds for him to answer. “I buried it deep and rolled a rock over
     it.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Ma’am? That girl’s been mistreated something awful. Name the one that did it and if I cross his path I’ll give him a taste
     of what he gave that girl.”
    “Bonnie and I thank you, Mr. Parnell, but I’ll take care of it. He’ll pay.” She looked Cooper steadily in the eye.
    He liked the way she stood; her feet planted solidly on the ground, her slim figure erect, head up, shoulders back. Pride
     showed in the tilt of her chin. She’d made a statement of fact. It was no idle threat. He believed her, and deep within him
     something warm and sweet grew strong and tall.
    “Where do you come from?” he asked, but he was thinking, What a woman. What a glorious, wonderful woman!
    She was turning away, but she said over her shoulder, “From Light’s Mountain.”
    Evening came and still Cooper hadn’t mentioned the reason he and Griffin had come to the cabin. He chopped a supply of wood
     for the small fireplace and carried fresh water up from the stream. The girl, Bonnie, lay on the pallet as still as death,
     her face almost as white as the sheet that covered her. Late in the afternoon she had opened her eyes, sought Lorna’s face,
     then reassured, wearily closed them again. Griffin and Lorna had taken turns sitting beside her, making sure she was covered,
     even in the warm room. Griffin had said that due to the loss of blood she might chill. Cooper had came to realize that the
     young nester had more than a normal amount of doctoring knowledge and wondered where he had learned it.
    “Mr. Parnell.” Lorna came out of the cabin when Cooper brought the two horses up and tied them to the corral posts. “Are you
     leaving?”
    “I hadn’t thought to, ma’am, not till some of your folks come to help you with the woman. If it’s all right we’ll put our
     horses in the corral and camp down by the creek.”
    “I’m obliged to you for staying.” She walked past him toward the pole corral, lowered the bar gate, and went into the shed.
     She shoved aside a door at the back of the shed revealing a cave in the cliff, and whistled softly. Cooper heard an answering
     nicker and a big, gray horse with a white streak that extended from beneath its forelock to its nose came to her and nuzzled
     her shoulder. She patted the sides of its big face and murmured unintelligible words into the straight, peaked ears that twitched
     back and forth.
    A second horse moved out of the shadowy cave and Lorna went to it, rubbed its nose and then slipped her arms around its neck.
     She talked to it, making soft little sounds. The horse bobbed its head up and down, almost lifting her light body off the
     ground. Then, holding it by its mane, she led the second horse out into the light.
    Cooper had been leaning against the cabin wall. He straightened and blinked in surprise. Goddamn! It was
his
mare she was leading from the cave! A wave of sickness rolled over him.
She
was the thief! But—His mare was only half broken in, and she was leading this one out of the corral and down to the creek
     with only a handhold on her mane. The gray followed closely behind her, giving her shoulder an affectionate nudge from time
     to time.
    Cooper watched, almost disbelieving what he was seeing. This docile horse couldn’t be the spirited animal he’d bought, and
     yet all the markings were the same and this mare, too, would obviously foal soon. In hard-eyed silence he stalked after them.
     There was one way to tell if the mare was his or not; the letters CP would be under her mane on the right side if she were
     his. He always branded his breeding stock with a small iron