The Smartest Horse in Texas (The Traherns #2) (10 page)
Read The Smartest Horse in Texas (The Traherns #2) Online
Authors: Nancy Radke
“That’s Trey’s brother and sister. Not mine.”
“Luke?”
“He’s mine.”
“He was the one who mentioned you were somewhere in Texas.”
“Yes. I saw him before I left.”
We moved toward the barn area with his horse, a black and white
paint with albino blue eyes.
“I left Trey and his wife in Washington Territory to go get Ma
in Tennessee. I could’ve saved myself a long trip if...”
“Trey is married?”
“Yes. Things happen,” he said, as he unsaddled his horse and turned
him into the corral.
“Where’d you leave him? I’ve got a horse belongs to him.”
“Walla Walla. His place is east of the town that’s growing
there. They’ve got themselves the makin’ of a fine ranch in the foothills of
the mountains.Trey plans to put in some hay and grain crops on the lower acres,
and raise cows and horses in the foothills. You say you’ve got a horse of his?”
“Yes.”
“Hero?”
“Yes.
“Which one is he?”
I pointed him out. “He’s hard to miss. I sort of lifted him from
Trey. Never felt right about it.”
Gage laughed. “He told me about that. Had you caught good and
proper, didn’t he?”
“Yes. But it just don’t set right with me, having a horse I
don’t rightly own. Saddle and all. Now that I know where Trey is, I can return
everything to him.”
And a whole lot faster than if I’d had to hunt all over the
country for him.
We walked back from the corral.
“I don’t think he expects him back.”
”What makes you think that?”
“Trey tied that horse near you so you’d be able to escape.”
“Why would he do a thing like that? He’d just caught me.”
“He didn’t realize who you were until he had you caught. He knew
that men were dying at the prison camps in huge numbers and he didn’t want you
going there. Especially Camp Morton, the one where they would’ve sent you. It
was a death sentence.”
“How’d he know I’d get loose?”
“He put the most inexperienced private he had to watch you. One
he said couldn’t tell one end of a gun from the other. And he saddled and
bridled Hero and left him as close to the edge of camp as he could. He knew
Hero could outrun any other horse there, so if you made it to him, you were
gone. He watched you go.”
“I wondered at the ease of it all. As I left, he yelled, ‘Don’t
shoot my horse.’ I thought he was more worried about Hero than about me. But
still I’d stolen his horse. So I need to get Hero back to him.”
“Didn’t you find the note?”
“What note?”
“A bill of sale. He wrote you one and tucked it into the
saddlebags. He didn’t want you shot as a horse thief. Hero’s yours.”
We stepped inside the house and my heart was pounding while I
tried to act unaffected. “Dawn, this here’s Gage Courtney. He’s a friend of my
cousin, Trey. And this is Mabel Cummings.”
“Hello,” Mabel said brightly. “Come and eat with us. I’ll put on
another plate.”
As she was getting the table ready, I walked over to where my
saddlebags hung. I’d never completely emptied them out, as I might grab them
for a sudden trip and I always kept some pemmican and a flint for fire
starting, a knife and a few rounds of ammunition in them.
So I carried them to a bench, turned them upside down and
cleaned them out.
No paper. I looked up at Gage, defeated. He was watching me.
“What about that?” he asked, pointing to my courier pouch.
“I know what’s in there,” I said. “I got that after I escaped.”
“Look anyway. Trey wouldn’t have told me he did something if he
hadn’t of done it.”
I open the oilskin pouch, and pulled out all the papers. There
was my army discharge papers, my bill of sale for Misty, my last letters from
my mother, a letter of recommendation from General Lee.
The last item was a small folded-up piece of paper. A bill of
sale for Hero, made out to me. The thief must have tucked it in there when he’d
gone through my saddlebags, probably looking for money.
I wasn’t a thief!
The
release of guilt made my head swirl.
I held it up for Gage to see, grinning ear to ear like an idiot,
then handed it to Dawn. Her squeal of delight told me she was able to read what
it said.
He smiled. “Trey does things like that. I found he’d given me
wages for all the time I helped him, and we never had such an agreement. Just
put money into my bags, so when I opened them up, there it was.”
I nodded. I wanted to do something for the man.
“You going back to him?” I asked.
“Maybe, sometime. I was supposed to take Ma back there to live,
but seein’ she’s hooked up again with Pa, I guess I won’t. At least not until I
catch me a sharp-looking woman like you’ve got.”
“Yes. Things happen.” I put my saddlebags away. “Don’t wait too
long, Gage. The sharp-lookin’ women get taken while you’re not paying
attention.”
I determined right then and there that as soon as we got some
colts from Hero and Misty, I would have Dawn train them and then we’d send them
to Trey. He wasn’t the only Trahern who could be generous.
And honorable. He’d given me back my honor and I would always be
thankful to him for that.
Talking to Gage, finding out about what Trey had done, lifted a
huge weight off my shoulders. In one way, because of the war, I hadn’t
considered myself a thief, yet in another way I had. Knowing that Trey put
temptation in front of me, and I had acted on it, still galled me somewhat. I
shouldn’t have... No. It was war. It was my duty to escape with whatever means
possible.
Trey knew that. That was why he’d set Hero up so handily for me.
I was taking the horse of my cousin, not of some stranger. And putting that
bill of sale in my saddlebags might have saved me a hanging, if someone
recognized Hero and wanted to hang me.
I thought how strange life could be. If Gage had come one day
later, I would have been gone, riding out without any direction, just going
from town to town asking about Trey until I’d found a trail, then started
following it. It might have taken a year or more to find him and return Hero.
A year or longer in which Dawn would have had to wait for me. I
didn’t want to wait.
“Gage,” I asked, “would you like to be best man at our wedding?”
“Naturally.” He grinned. “How soon?”
I looked at Dawn. She was smiling at me, the lights dancing in
her eyes. “As soon as we can round us up a preacher. If’n you don’t mind
waiting.”
“I don’t mind.” He got a funny look in his eyes. “You know, this
will be the second Trahern wedding this month. I’m thinkin’ I should turn me
around and head back to the hills and grab me a wife while one’s still there.
There’s a sharp gal back home who’s been a challenge to me ever since she was
knee high to a ground hog. Her sister just got married—your cousin
Mary—and I got me a suspicion she ain’t agoin’ to wait around for me.”
“Who you talking about?”
“Trey’s sister. Ruth.”
“You sweet on Ruth? Well, I never.”
“Only gal who wouldn’t look
twice at me. Like you said, if I wait too long, I’m gonna miss out. And it
would be a shame to miss Ruth.”
THE END
But not the end of
your reading, if you wish to read a short story. There is one included in this
book that is part of The Traherns Series, called
The Prettiest Gal on the Mountain
,
about Gage’s
mother. There are also a couple of samples from other books. Next on Amazon is
Ruth’s story,
The Prettiest Girl in the Land,
Traherns #
3, then
The Luckiest Man in the West
, #4 about Matthew’s brother, Luke. All
these take place in the late 1860’s. When I write a series, such as this one, I
usually write three or four books at the same time, so I can hopefully keep the
facts straight among the characters. There are four more stories in this
series, bringing it up to the modern era.
The Best Friends in the Country
(short) is about
Web and his Shoshone wife, Kimana. This will be an exclusive story in
The
Traherns Collection
, which I hope to get up before the end of April.
The Happiest Man in the Territory
, is set in 1888,
during the advent of the railroads. Brynn brings out a bull, Sir Galahad, from
Baltimore to the Trahern ranch in Walla Walla.
The Stubbornest Girl in the Valley,
(short) is about
Barnabas Trahern, in 1925, and Samantha Web, the granddaughter of Charlie Web
and Kimana.
Appaloosa Blues
is the modern day
story of Adam Trahern, the great, great, great grandson of Trey and Mally, and
Charlie and Kimana
.
Appaloosa Blues
is also the end book
of the Sisters of Spirit Series. Unlike the rest of the Trahern series, it is
written in third person and is much more of a romance story
.
Thank you for reading
“The Smartest Horse in Texas.”
If you enjoyed this
book, I would appreciate it if you'd help other readers enjoy it too by
recommending it to friends, readers' groups, and discussion boards, or by
writing a short review on Amazon. Thank you.
Also, if you have personal knowledge about the Rio Brazos that I
missed while doing my research on that area, I’d appreciate a note. The joy of
putting out an ebook is that they can always be corrected, if some fact is in
error. Email me at [email protected]
The
Prettiest Gal on the Mountain (Short pioneer story)
...
Sisters of Spirit
Series
Boxed set of
#1-4 of the Sisters of Spirit novels
.
This gives you four super reads, ranging from
a simple love story in
Turnagain Love
to a life and death struggle in
Courage Dares.
All are sweet, contemporary
romances with lots of action but without the language or sex offered by many
authors. These are safe to give to teenagers, grandparents, and anyone wanting
pure romance.
