Page 81 of The Heart’s Charge

“Lord, please don’t let me fallllll. . . .”

As if her prayer had been a starting gun, Augustus charged forward at the sound of her voice. Eliza’s body was thrown backward from the surge. Releasing the reins, she grabbed the saddle horn with both hands and fought to regain her balance. The horse’s raw power utterly terrified her. But, miraculously, she kept her seat.

As Augustus churned up the road beneath her, Eliza caught a distant call—Katherine, shouting her name. Eliza made no effort to investigate, however. Staying in the saddle required every iota of concentration she possessed.

Jonah’s eyes snapped open. Horse hooves pounded the earth, growing louder, nearer. Someone was coming. After sending Augustus home, he’d managed to drag himself off the main path and into a cluster of juniper shrubs. Taking hold of the leafy limbs he’d hacked off with his knife, he arranged them as a camouflage shield in front of his face, then drew his revolver and waited.

Friend or foe?

He squinted through the brush, his normally keen vision hampered by the throbbing in his head. The horse was dark. Not black, though, so probably not Ortega’s mount. The other snatcher had ridden a dun, too light for the horse cantering down the trail. Could be Augustus. Jonah’s pulse hiccupped slightly at the thought, but he tamped down the unrealistic hope. Augustus was smart, the best horse he’d ever owned, but he was just an animal. Jonah had sent him home so that Eliza or Katherine would spot the riderless mount and notify Bronson. Have the deputy organize a search party. It was too soon for a party to have formed. And that horse was traveling too fast to be carrying searchers.

Yet the nearer the horse came, the more similarities Jonah spotted. Size, color, stride. Everything matched. Except the rider. Whoever rode the horse sat hunched so far forward that Jonah couldn’t see him past the gelding’s head. Augustus had no patience with inexperienced riders—or any riders, for that matter—so the chances of Gus and the approaching horse being one and the same were slim to none.

Nevertheless, as the distance shrank, Jonah’s eyes grew wider. Slim odds? Paper was too thick to describe the impossibility of what he was seeing. He dropped the branches shielding his face and blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

Eliza Southerland, a woman terrified of the smallest ponies, was riding his seventeen-hand cavalry mount.

So stunned was he by the sight of her face bobbing up and down amidst Augustus’s flying mane that he forgot to signal his position until woman and horse shot past his hiding place.

He whistled, then holstered his gun and crawled out from his juniper bunker, determined to stand on his own two feet before facing Eliza.

Augustus whinnied at Jonah’s call and turned abruptly, catching his inexperienced rider unprepared. A muffled shriek, a flash of flying petticoats, and Eliza disappeared from view.

Manly pride forgotten, Jonah scrambled forward on hands and knees. “Eliza!”

Please, God. If she’d hit her head or twisted a leg in the fall . . .

Heart pounding, Jonah shooed Augustus out of the way and lurched past the horse’s hooves to reach the woman lying in a heap on the side of the path.

“Eliza!”

If she’d been wounded trying to help him . . . A dagger twisted in his chest, hurting more than all his injuries combined.

He’d just reached her feet when she gasped violently.

“Eliza!”

She struggled to sit up. “All . . . right. Wind . . . out . . . me.”

Thank God.

Jonah crumpled on the ground beside her, the few reserves he’d stored up depleted once again. Eliza rolled onto her side to face him, her breathing regulating as she got her wind back.

“Oh, Jonah.” Her voice caressed him like soft leather, exquisitely tender but with an underlying strength that made a man feel like he didn’t have to hide his vulnerabilities. “What happened to you?”

He cocked a wry grin. “Got shot off my horse.”

“Shot!” Her gaze raked over him until it found the bloodstains on his shoulder.

“Just a graze. The tumble down the mountain did more damage than the bullet.” His smile faded. “It’s Wallace I’m worried about. I lost track of ’im.”

“We’ll muster a search party,” Eliza promised. “After we get you home.”

“I need to show ’em where to look.”

She shook her head, and her eyes flashed fire. “You can tell them where to look. You’ll only slow them down if you try to go with them.”

She had a point. Jonah clenched his jaw. He hated being a liability. “Better send for the captain,” he said. “He’ll want to know.”