Sidewinder Read Free Page A

home and family.
    The breeze stiffened, and Felicity saw the leaves on the birch trees jiggle and flash various shades of green down by the creek. The clothes flapped mindlessly on the line, sounding like a chorus of whips, and she grabbed a sheet that was beginning to slide off, rolled it into a ball, and dropped it into the basket. The breeze was warm at first, then began to cool as the sun’s rim glowed fiery orange just above the mountain skyline to the west, painting the long stretch of clouds a pastel pink on their underbellies while their tops faded to an ashen gray. Shadows crawled along the valley, and the canyons blackened into deep repositories of soft coal.
    Felicity quickly pulled all the dry clothes from the line and stuffed them in her basket as Julio rode up to her, his face gray with shadow, the blazing sunset at his back.
    “Where’s Brad?” she asked, a chunk of her heart caught in her throat, the remains pumping like a trip-hammer in her chest.
    “He was following the track of the brindle cow. The cow, she strayed, and he went to get her.” He looked back over his shoulder at the dark pines on the hilltop and beyond, into the unknown. “I think he will come back soon.”
    “How soon, Julio?”
    “Very soon, I think. The cow could not have gone far.”
    “Why didn’t you stay with him?”
    “He told me to come on back.”
    He slid from the saddle and looked longingly toward the barn and the horse stalls.
    “It’s getting dark up there,” she said.
    “Brad can find his way.”
    “I know he can, and he always said the cows could find their way back home, too.”
    “Do not worry, Felicitas. Brad will be home soon. I will put the horse up, give him some water and grain.”
    “You don’t think Brad ran into trouble up there?”
    “There was nobody there but us. Why do you worry?”
    “I worry because when Pilar went to fetch water from the creek this morning, she saw fresh horse tracks.”
    Pilar was Julio’s wife. A look of startled surprise spread across his face as if he had been slapped with wet raw-hide.
    “Somebody was watching the house last night. Curly barked, but we didn’t let him out.”
    Curly was the Storms’ dog, part Irish setter, part mongrel of some unknown breed.
    “That dog barks at everything.”
    “Brad went to the front window and looked outside for a long time. He didn’t see or hear anything.”
    “He did not say nothing to me,” Julio said.
    “He wouldn’t. When I asked him what Curly was barking at, he just said ‘the moon.’ But he got Curly to shut up.”
    “Did Brad see the horse tracks?”
    “No.”
    “Did he go down to the creek?”
    “As soon as he got up.”
    “And, he did not see them?”
    “No, because the tracks were not there. I said they were fresh. Someone was watching the house after you and Brad went to find those strays.”
    “Maybe Indians giving their horses water to drink.”
    “These horses were shod, Julio.”
    “How many horses?”
    “Only two that I could see.”
    She picked up the basket and started walking toward the front porch. Julio tied his reins to one of the clothesline poles and walked with her.
    “Julio, I want you and Carlos to pack iron from now on.”
    “What do you say, Felicity?”
    “Carry your pistol and a rifle. Both of you ride the tree line above and to the side of the house before dark. If you find any horse tracks, you come back and tell me.”
    “You think there will be trouble?”
    “Friendly folk riding up here would have stopped to say howdy. Those tracks mean something. Something I don’t like.”
    As she neared the porch, Curly began barking inside the house.
    “People pass by,” Julio said. Lamely.
    “Not up here, they don’t. Do what I say. I’m going to sit outside until it’s dark and wait for Brad. If he doesn’t come back tonight, we’ll ride out in the morning and look for him.”
    “He will be here soon, I think.”
    When Felicity reached the porch, she stopped and