Bridge to Trouble by Elisabeth Grace Foley
About Bridge to Trouble:
Excerpt:
“Got the ropes? Let’s have a look at ’em.” I handed over the parcel and Keith tore one end open. He nodded. “Close enough. ’Tis not so long as a lariat, nor so thick as a noose, but ’twill do.”
“You find everything so immensely entertaining,” I remarked.
“Why not?” said Keith. “It’s the way I prefer to live. I struck a bargain with myself a while back that I was going to find the fun in everything that happened to me, or die trying.”
“You might manage both this time,” I said. Keith, predictably, merely chuckled.
Just before the last turn of the valley that hid the cabin I took the lead, reining Esmerelda to the right and up the arm of the wooded ridge which embraced it on that side. The horses picked their way along in single file over the heaviest blankets of dead leaves and pine needles I could find, keeping just on the far side of the ridge’s crest. The woods began to thin out as we worked our way cautiously around the head of the valley, and it was a full half-hour before we had completed the semi-circle and maneuvered our way down into a screening thicket halfway down the hill, directly behind the cabin.
Here Keith dismounted and handed his horse’s reins over to me. We’d had to face the fact that there was no way for me to take out an extra saddled horse without Sonny knowing it, so Keith would have to be on foot for his part of the rescue. I couldn’t help noticing that he was still favoring his injured leg, and it sent a curl of uneasiness through my stomach.
“Give me a few minutes’ start,” he said as he slid the rifle from its scabbard. “This is the touchy part…but if I mess it up you can still get away. If you hear any shots don’t wait around to see, just go.”
I realized the fingers of my hand that held Esmerelda’s reins were hooked tightly over the edge of my saddle horn, the knuckles stiff and white. “Even if the first part goes fine—what about afterwards? If one of them runs into you while you’re afoot…they may not know the territory or the horses, but I doubt either one of them is someone to laugh off at close quarters.”
“I was in France too,” said Keith briefly. He checked the ammunition chamber of the rifle in an automatic way that lent force to his words, then shifted it to one hand and dropped to a crouch to slide over the edge of the steep incline among the bushes in front of us. On the verge he paused for half a second, threw a look back at me with that quick provoking grin of his, and then disappeared.
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About Elisabeth Grace Foley:
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