Mississippi Raider Read Free

done, Lassiter
walked sufficiently far to prevent the breathing of the other
horses from interfering with his listening. At first he could hear
nothing of the hounds, but after about a minute he could make out
the deep resonant voice of Speed. With each passing second it grew
louder, and before long he could hear the rest of the
pack.
    “ Like
I figured,” the leathery-faced man declared, returning to the rest
of the party and swinging into his saddle. “Ole Silver Lightning’s
done got tired of being pushed that ways and’s coming
back.”
    “ Not
straight back, though,” replied the young follower who had misused
the hunting terms earlier. “I’d say he’s headed a considerable way
to our right.”
    Grunting noncommittally, although willing to
concede the point—if only to himself—Lassiter started leading the
way to the east. While waiting until the condition of the rider and
mount that had taken the fall was known, the horses had had time to
catch their breath and were now anxious to go. Therefore, they
needed no encouragement to run swiftly in the direction they were
being guided. Then the route took them into a wide and open
grass-covered meadow partly surrounded by scrub palmetto. Having
advanced across it, they stopped just short of the dense cover at
the opposite side. From what they heard, they could tell that the
hounds were no more than a couple of hundred yards to the north and
coming directly their way. Knowing his pack, Lassiter was aware
that Speed was still in the lead and closely followed by a redbone
he called Witch. That figured to him. The bluetick was a born
front-runner, but the bitch always liked to be up there too.
    Suddenly there was a silver
flash as the dog fox came out of the palmettos right among the
hunters. Passing under the belly of Boyd ’s roan gelding, it continued across
the clearing without breaking stride. Instantly, there was a jumble
of horses as everyone tried to be the first to take up the pursuit.
Having stopped a few yards behind the rest, the young man and the
rider with the black hat were able to get clear before any of the
others could extricate themselves for the chase, so the rest were
left at the post. Being lighter and marginally the better in the
saddle, the latter was slightly in the lead. In spite of that, such
was the quality of Lassiter’s stallion that it overtook them before
they had passed the halfway mark on the open land.
    Just what happened next was impossible to
say. For some reason the stallion tried to shy away, and in doing
so it went down. Unable to halt their rapid progress in time, the
two closely following horses also were brought to the ground.
However, the young man and the rider with the black hat could not
duplicate the way in which Lassiter contrived to alight on his feet
and run until gaining sufficient control to stop. Both of them went
sprawling to the ground, with the latter twisting over and losing
the headgear.
    Alighting upon the other dismounted rider,
despite the urgency of the situation, the young man began to get
the impression that something was wrong. Much longer hair than he
would have expected was brought into view by the loss of the hat,
and there was something distinctly unusual about the face he saw
being brought toward his. Of even greater importance, trying to
break his fall and not descend heavily upon the other, his right
hand came down upon the chest and felt something beneath the silk
material of the shirt that most certainly could not have been
present on a man.
    “ Well,
I’ll be eternally damned!” the young man croaked as he successfully
prevented himself from completing the descent and rolled aside
without making further contact. He noticed that all the horses,
showing the resilience for which they were famed, were regaining
their feet without showing signs of having sustained any serious
injury. “You’re a woman!”
    “ I
never for a single minute doubted that,” replied the figure upon which the