Protection

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“Okay! This isn’t funny anymore!” Damian yelled from his perch on top of the skittish mare.

“Susie here can smell fear from a mile away. Don’t fidget so much or she’ll start to bucking and we’ll never get you off of her,” Colt cautioned.

“So I’m supposed to sit stock-still on this horse? For how long?” Damian clutched the pommel of the saddle so hard his knuckles began to turn white.

“Eh, a couple hours’ll do ya,” Colt said with a wave of his hand.

Bliss stood beside Clint and watched as Damian shifted nervously in the saddle. Susie stood in the middle of the corral, munching lazily on the hay they had placed on the ground in front of her. The horse was nearly twenty-three years old and was about to die any day now. The last thing on her mind was throwing a fit. If Damian wasn’t such a horrible judge of horses and their age, he would know that. The man couldn’t tell a stallion from a gelding, let alone the age and capabilities of a mare.

Clint leaned over and whispered in her ear. “You think this is a good idea?”

“Susie won’t move. She was Momma’s horse and was trained to stay where her rider dismounted and not budge. That’s how we found Momma out there under that mesa,” Bliss answered him.

Clint nodded. They watched Damian fidget for a moment, and then Clint turned back to her.

“Wait. Are you saying that this horse stood under that mesa right where your momma dismounted?” he asked.

Bliss nodded and realization hit her. “If I can locate where we found her horse, we can see how she got to the top of that mesa.”

Clint nodded.

*****

Clint saw a spark light behind Miss Cooper’s eyes as she came to the realization that she could get to the top of the mesa she thought held the answers to her questions.

For a split second, Clint inwardly smiled at her enthusiasm before he caught himself.

Don’t you dare attach yourself, Clint Slade. That’s the last thing you need on this pathetic, desperate job

.

The light in her eyes dimmed.

“I can’t remember where we found Susie, though.”

Clint shrugged. “Ask your father.”

Miss Cooper shook her head. “He won’t talk about it. He hasn’t spoken a word about Momma’s death to me or the circumstances surrounding it in eleven years.”
|Clint sighed. Sherman Cooper loved keeping things from his daughter, didn’t he?

“Grace might know something,” Miss Cooper offered.

“You work on her then, I’m going to find out a few things from this father of yours,” Clint decided aloud.

Miss Cooper shook her head. “He won’t tell you anything. He doesn’t tell me, he won’t tell you.”
Clint sighed. “If there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s that people tend to answer a gunman when he asks them something.”

*****

Colt grinned as Damian finally found the courage to jump off Susie and run to the corral fence. Susie simply stood and watched as he clambered over the fence like a man half his age. Flustered, Damian dusted his clothes off and glanced back at the horse, chewing on few blades of hay lazily.

“There’s nothing dangerous about that horse,” he proclaimed.

Colt furrowed his brows. “Oh, I must have got Susie here confused with another horse.”