there, carefully examining Hornet’s legs. Her head drooped as if she felt as poorly as I did, and she nosed his shoulder as he bent over a foreleg. Harper was leaning against the rails, watching silently. “How is she?” I asked Nathan.
He raised his head, then straightened as he saw me. He gently set Hornet’s leg down and looked at me. I saw a mixture of things in his face: concern, detachment, weariness and something else. It took me a moment to recognize it, and when I did I caught my breath.
It was fear.
“The mare’s all right,” he said, wiping a forearm across his forehead. The gray hair was slightly mussed, as if he had been running rigid fingers through it. “She’s bruised—she’ll be a little gimpy for a few days—but she’ll do. What about you?”
I shrugged. “About the same. Nothing a little rest won’t cure.”
My reassurance didn’t ease the worry lines in his tired face.
“Do you recall anything that might have triggered the runaway?”
I glanced at Harper. “There was something,” I said steadily. “A man. He popped up out of nowhere an scared me half to death. It’s no wonder she shied.”
“Shying is not a runaway,” Nathan said grimly. “It would take more than that to set her off on a dead run like that, especially down the mountain.”
“She didn’t run then,” I admitted. “It was after the sound.”
“Sound?” He repeated sharply.
“A crack.” I shrugged. “Sort of like a firecracker. Or maybe a gunshot.” I brought myself up short.
Nathan’s face turned ashen, collapsing into a map of wrinkles. He aged ten years before my eyes. Numbly I felt him take my arm and lead me around to Hornet’s back end. He didn’t have to point it out.
Splashed across her palomino rump was a dark stain. Something had gouged out a piece of flesh, leaving a short furrow as if made from a glancing blow.
A bullet.
I looked at Harper, who had ridden into the trees with a rifle in his hands.
I looked at him and he said nothing at all.
Chapter Ten
It is a hard thing to realize someone might have reason to shoot at you; it is even harder to realize it has happened. But it took little debate with my emotions, because my intellect recognized the truth.
Harper might have cut the fence himself, earlier, providing a reason for his retreat into the pines. He had carefully ordered me to a specific spot in the trail. The stranger had been there, waiting to give me a scare, one designed to get me off-guard, vulnerable to a rifle shot that would panic my horse into a dangerous plunge down the mountain. He had even chosen the horse.
But it was all so damned impossible.
A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. Slowly I dragged myself from the bed, tightened the belt of my terry-cloth robe and moved to the door. The hot shower had worked some of the soreness from my body, but I was stiff, bruised and scraped in dozens of places.
I opened the door a crack, hoping to discourage the unwanted visitor.
“Kelly,” said Brandon quietly.
I swung the door wider. It was dark now, past dinner—which I had skipped—and the illumination from the light beside my door splashed across his face and brought his gray eyes into sharp, welcome relief.
“I wanted to check on you, ” he said. “The way you took off after you saw the horse—”
“I know.” I interrupted, ducking the issue. I gestured him inside and stepped out of his way. “It was rude of me, but I had to get away. There were too many things I wanted to think about. Plus I needed a shower.” I ran a hand through my damp hair as Brandon entered.
I closed the door tightly as he took a seat in the padded leather armchair. I stayed where I was, leaning against the door, and waited.
“You are all right.” It was half-question, half-observation.
“I’m fine. Stiff and sore, but generally okay. And scared.” He looked around the cabin slowly, as if searching for something. He found it. My bags, set out in the middle of the floor, open and empty, but obviously waiting for something.
Brandon’s eyes came back to me. “You’re leaving.”
“I think it might be a good idea.”
“It was an accident,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean to downplay what happened—I’m sure it was very frightening—but it isn’t reason enough to leave.”
I looked at him levelly. “Someone took a shot at me today.” He stood up. He walked across the room