Trail Ride by Bonnie Bryant Page A

pitch-black of night, was enormously dangerous, especially on a horse she had never ridden before, but she didn’t feel she had a choice. Moments after she took off, she heard the Jeep start up and knew the men were in pursuit.
    Lisa didn’t dare look back—it was taking every ounce of concentration simply to stay in the saddle. The path she had chosen was getting narrower and narrower, and, to her dismay, there was a steep drop on either side of her. Any hopes she’d harbored about slipping off onto a side trail were dashed.
    A moment later Lisa heard the Jeep grind to a stop. Pulling Stewball to a halt, she listened. The men were arguing loudly; apparently the trail was too narrow for the Jeep. For a moment she felt her hopes soar, and then she saw three figures step into the headlights. They were carrying guns.
    “Give it up, little girl,” one of them called. “There’s nowhere to go from there. It’s a dead end.”
    Straining her eyes against the darkness, Lisa scanned the path ahead. She had no idea if they were telling the truth, and she certainly had no reason to believe anything they might say, so she urged Stewball into a fast walk to put some distance between her and the thieves.
    Within fifty feet, however, the horse came to a halt and refused to move. Looking in front of her, Lisa felt like bursting into tears. The path simply ended, and all she could see beyond was blackness.
    The men followed, slowly moving closer. “Come on,little girl, we’re not going to hurt you. We only want to talk to you.”
    “Besides, the only way down is the hard way!” one of the others hollered.
    They moved at an almost leisurely pace, as though certain of the outcome of the chase.
    The sound of their laughter enraged and frightened Lisa. “Leave me alone!” she screamed, tears blurring her vision. “I just want to go home!”
    Then, to her complete horror, she felt Stewball lurch beneath her, and the two of them went over the cliff.

L ISA SCREAMED AS she felt the horse jump. A second later Stewball hit the ground and she was thrown forward, the saddle horn ramming her in the stomach and knocking the wind out of her. She clutched frantically at the knob, trying to keep herself from pitching forward over the horse’s neck. Rocks and shale slid all around her, tumbling down the face of the cliff. Stewball gave one more lurch forward and then stood still.
    Lisa looked wildly around. To her left was the sheer rocky wall of the cliff, close enough to touch. To her right, a mind-numbing abyss. She risked a cautious look behind and saw a pile of loose rock. With his night vision, Stewball had known what she had not: There wasan old, virtually unused trail down here. Apparently when she had yelled that she wanted to go home, he had taken her at her word and took the fastest route.
    Voices shouted above, reminding Lisa that she was not out of danger yet.
    “Did you see that? She jumped!” one of the men was yelling incredulously.
    “I never seen nothing like that.”
    She could hear them approaching the cliff face.
    “She didn’t jump, she fell.”
    “Whatever. Is she dead?”
    Against the moon, Lisa could make out the vague shape of a head in a hat peering over the edge of the precipice. She pressed back against the cliff wall and held perfectly still, willing Stewball to do the same. The horse’s scramble to find footing had carried them a short distance from where they had vanished, so her pursuers were focused on the wrong spot, but one small movement of horse or rider would give them away.
    “Of course she’s dead, you idiot! Nothing could survive that fall.”
    “Can you see her?”
    “No, I can’t see her, you moron, it’s dark! She and that horse are probably buried under a pile of rock down there, and I don’t have X-ray vision.”
    “We’d better go tell Hatch, then. Problem sort of solved itself, didn’t it?”
    The voices were fading into the distance. “Did you hear her scream?” were the last