The Forge of Darkness (Darkness After Series Book 3) Read Free Page A

noise. Seconds passed and then he knew— the cattle! The small herd of brown and white Herefords was running right at him, busting their way through the woods in a panicked stampede. Benny backed up to where the girls were crouching and hurried them close to the base of the biggest nearby tree. The terrified herd split around them at the last minute, rushing past Benny and the girls on both sides. But just as he thought they were all gone, Benny noticed one of the yearling steers bringing up the rear, its gait hobbled by a useless leg. As it made its way past him, trying desperately to keep up with the rest of the herd, Benny saw the glistening blood that coated its hindquarters.
    So that was it! Someone had shot at Doug Henley’s cattle! Until he saw the wounded animal, Benny hadn’t realized what had happened, so he hadn’t thought to try and get a count of the animals running by. But there had been three shots. Unless the other two missed, there could be cattle down in addition to this one that was obviously wounded. Mitch was going to be furious when he found out about this!  
    “Lisa, you and Stacy need to get back to the house! Tell April and Samantha there’s a trespasser out here somewhere and that y’all need to stay inside and keep the doors locked.”  
    “We can’t leave you out here alone, Uncle Benny,” Lisa said. “Just because it was one person doing the shooting doesn’t mean there aren’t more. April and the others would have heard it anyway, and Tommy knows we don’t have a rifle with us. I’ll bet he and David are headed back this way already. We can sneak up there with you and see who it is in the meantime, and help you make sure they don’t get away.”
    Benny considered what Lisa said and figured it made sense. Mitch Henley’s little sister was a brave one, and she and Stacy had both seen their share of violence since things fell apart. He didn’t want to put them at any unnecessary risk, but he knew they could both be quiet and it wouldn’t hurt to find out more before he sent them back to warn April. There was no use raising a major alarm if it was just one or two desperate wanderers passing through that took a shot at the cattle because the opportunity presented itself. They could slip up close enough to see who had done it and size them up without being seen. Benny was sure that was the way Mitch would handle this if he were here, and once he had an idea who he was dealing with he would take the appropriate action to make them wish they’d never seen those cows. It was hard enough looking after the livestock without worrying about some low-life rustler shooting it for meat.  
    So far, the small herd of just over two dozen animals had survived and had stayed within the fence. Mitch and Jason had expanded it since the collapse, using all the barbed wire on hand and cutting their own posts, so that it now followed the boundaries of the entire property. The expansion allowed the cattle to range from the bottomlands near the creek to the more open woods and pastures, and would help stretch what little leftover hay and feed there was in the barn through another winter. Most of the time the herd stayed out of sight of the house and yard, now that they were foraging more. But Mitch wanted to keep them around and keep them alive as long as possible, because with as many people as they had staying on the farm now, he knew the time would come when finding enough deer and other game close enough to home would become difficult. Beef would have to be slaughtered, and he hoped to put it off a lot longer, but Benny agreed that it was inevitable.

    * * *

    Benny hadn’t been thinking about the cattle at all though until he heard the shots and saw the stampeding herd. His quest today with Lisa and Stacy was far more important. It had brought the three of them out to the edge of the property near the road because there were a few Eastern red cedars mixed in among the pines growing there. But