The Outcast by David Thompson Page A

and patted its neck. He slapped his legs and the bay started up the bank a second time. It was even slipperier now, and loose dirt dribbled from under the bay’s hooves.
    â€œYou can do it,” Zach coaxed.
    The bay lunged and dug in its rear hooves. It whinnied as if in pain. More of the bank broke off, but the bay made it up and over, and stopped.
    Zach climbed down. He inspected each leg, and they appeared fine. “You seem all right to me.” He went to climb back on and his gaze strayed to the ground ahead. Something pricked at him, a feeling that did not seem right somehow. It bore closer scrutiny.
    Zach took a few steps. A downed pine branch was at his feet. He looked around. There were saplings on both sides, and grass and brush. All perfectly normal. Then he noticed another pine limb propped against a bent sapling, and he looked again at the pine limb at his feet, and it hit him that there wasn’t a pine tree within fifty feet. The limbs couldn’t have fallen there. They had to have been put there deliberately.
    Zach edged around the limb. He saw a rope and two notched sticks rigged as a trigger. The bent sapling took on new significance. Careful not to bump the branch, he moved closer. At just the right height to impale a man on horseback was a sharp spike.
    Zach grinned. It was a clever trap. No doubt there would be others. But they wouldn’t stop him from rescuing Lou. The warrior who took her would come to rue the day.
    Zach unlimbered his tomahawk. He had practiced throwing it so many times that hitting the two sticks was easy. The sapling whipped up, the spike cleaving thin air instead of him. Now any deer or elk that happened by wouldn’t be hurt in his stead.
    Picking up the tomahawk, Zach slid the handle under his belt. He climbed on the bay and raised the reins. “Nice try. But I’m coming for you, Blood. It’s you or me, to the death.”
    The Outcast did not have a high opinion of white men. The few he had encountered had not impressed him. It was ridiculously easy to steal their horses. They made their campfires so big and so bright that the flames could be seen from far off. They made so much noise when they were on the move that they could be heard from far off, too. The whites were tough fighters, though. He would concede that much. Add to that the advantage their guns gave them, and it was wise not to take them lightly in battle.
    The Outcast did not have a high opinion of half-breeds, either. Breeds were not as other men. The mixing of blood made them more violent than most. He had never seen this for himself, but he had heard it from so many people that it must be true. Breeds were also formidable fighters. Like whites, they should not be taken lightly.
    The Outcast expected both the old white and the young breed to come after him. He had the female. She was perfect bait to draw them up into the mountains, where he could slay them.
    So when the Outcast checked his back trail as he had done a hundred times that day and spotted a lone rider far below, he congratulated himself. The sapling with the spike must have gotten one of them. He tried to tell which one was still after him, the old man or the breed, but the distance was too great and he saw only the rider, who was in shadow, for a few brief moments.
    No matter, the Outcast told himself. Whichever one it was, the rider was as good as dead. He continued to climb. His captive squirmed and looked up at him. She looked at him a lot and always in the same way. It bothered him. He turned his face away and pretended to be interested in a peak to the south.
    Lou was weary and sore and scared. She was afraid that Zach or Shakespeare would be caught by the trap the warrior had set. She was worried, too, by pains in her belly, cramps that came and went. She didn’t know if she could lose the baby so soon after she had conceived, but she did not want to take the risk. She wished her captor would stop and let