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teeth chattering.
    The stallion tossed its head, then sort of
dropped to its knees in front of her.
    Bonnie stared at the horse dubiously and
shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t know how to ride.”
    The horse whinnied softly, before swinging
its head around, as if inviting her to get on its back.
    Maybe it was one of the ranch horses, she
thought, frowning. If so, it would know the way home.
    With that thought in mind, she grabbed a
handful of the horse’s long, silky mane and climbed onto its back,
nearly falling off when the horse stood.
    “ All right,” Bonnie said, hanging onto
its mane with both hands. “Take me home.”
    * * * * *
    Jackson Gray Hawk hunched his shoulders
against the rising wind. There was a storm heading his way. He
could feel the coming change in the weather, smell the rain in the
air.
    Catching up his big bay mare and her yearling
colt, he led the horses into the shelter of the dilapidated old
barn.
    “ I know, you hate being locked up,” he
murmured as he shut the mare and the colt into adjoining stalls.
“But you’ll be more comfortable in here.”
    The mare whinnied and shook her head, as if
in protest.
    A flash of lightning split the skies,
followed by a deafening rumble of thunder.
    “ Hear that?” Gray asked, slipping the
bolt into place on the mare’s stall. “Gonna be a real gully
washer.”
    Summer storms were always intense here on the
prairie, he mused as he scratched the mare’s ears. He had lost his
parents and an older brother in a flash flood when he was just a
boy. He had often wondered why he had survived when the others
hadn’t. His mother’s sister had taken him in and raised him with
her own brood, but Gray, with his dark skin and black hair, had
never fit in with his mother’s Danish kinfolk. When he turned
fourteen, he had lit out for the badlands of South Dakota to find
his father’s people. Old Runs With Wolves, the Lakota medicine man,
had welcomed him to the tribe and taught him the ways of the
People.
    But the days when the Indians had lived wild
and free were soon gone. It wasn’t the Lakota way to live on a
reservation. The heart had gone out of Runs With Wolves; six months
after being penned up on the reservation, the old man had turned
his face toward death and died in his sleep.
    Gray hadn’t liked living on the reservation
any better than Runs With Wolves, but instead of turning his face
toward death, Gray had lit out for Abilene. Looking back, he
admitted that hadn’t been the smartest thing he had ever done. He
had been young, angry at the way his people had been treated,
defensive about his Indian heritage. That, combined with a quick
temper, had led from one fight to another. He supposed it had been
inevitable that, sooner or later, he’d wind up in jail. He had met
Frank Morgan there and thrown in his lot with Morgan and his bunch.
Another bad decision. Morgan had taught him how to cheat at cards
and handle a gun.
    Gray had been playing cards in Lead when a
miner started in on him, giving him a bad time about the color of
his skin, calling him a “damn dirty Injun” and a “gut-eating red
stick” and a few other names that couldn’t be said in mixed
company. Gray learned the hard way that whiskey, guns, and a bad
temper weren’t a good combination. When the miner pulled his gun,
Gray shot him dead. His plea of self-defense had fallen on deaf
ears. No jury was going to acquit a half-breed who had killed a
white man, self-defense or not. A judge sentenced Gray to twenty
years in prison.
    Thinking of it now, he wondered if he should
have done the time, and then he shook his head. Two years or
twenty, it was out of the question. Determined not to spend one
more day behind bars, he had wounded three deputies when he broke
out of jail, and now he was on the run. If they caught him again,
they’d hang him for sure.
    Muttering an oath, Gray shook off his
reverie. After giving the mare a final pat, he left the barn,
securing the heavy door