Emberhawk - Jamie Foley Page 0,1
or grandmother noticing. She clenched and unclenched her fists to stave off the trembling in her limbs, unable to tear her gaze from the body. “Since when have they come so close to the border?”
“Maybe since the drought got so bad.” Lee made a show of looking her up and down. “Must be pretty desperate to hunt a gangly thing like you, Frizz.”
This time he was close enough for her to hit him. “Don’t call me that! Just because you’re taller than me now doesn’t mean you’re older.”
“No, but I’m better-lookin’.” Lee dodged her strike with that devilish grin. “You get anything for dinner?”
“That cat stole everything my traps caught,” Kira grumbled. “Too bad we can’t eat carnivores.” Or maybe they could try. Desperate times called for desperate experiments in the smokehouse.
“So they’ve found a source of free food. Great.” Lee strode past her, sending a shower of dry pine needles to the earth as he pushed a branch aside. “You’ll have to stop trapping.”
“What? We just killed it!”
“Trace cats of this size tend to travel in pairs,” Lee said. “There’s probably a female nearby.”
Kira charged after him. “So I’ll trap her too. What would we eat without the rabbits and branch runners? We can’t slaughter another calf.”
“We will if we have to.” Sunlight brightened Lee’s dreadlocks as he stepped from the forest and into amber plains. “It’d be better than teachin’ trace cats there’s free food at the edge of our property. Next thing you know, they’d be leavin’ the Gnarled Wood to eat our livestock. Or us.” He gave her a meaningful look.
Kira scanned the rolling hills for any soul who might witness them crossing the border. She couldn’t just stop trapping. The mechanics, the thrill of the catch, the reward . . . they made life on a withering border ranch bearable. The more efficient her contraptions became—from the irrigation system in Granny’s garden to the pulley system in the barn—the easier life was for her family. Even if Mom would never admit it.
“I’ll just set up my traps deeper in the forest, then,” Kira said, ignoring the way her gut churned as the words left her mouth. She wiped clammy palms on her tunic and frowned at a new tear in the fabric.
Lee snorted as he approached his mangy, saddled buffalo, which nuzzled the dusty earth for anything to munch. “Yeah, ’cause Dad’s not gonna whip our rear ends bad enough already.”
Kira narrowed her eyes. “If you’ve told anyone I’ve been crossing the border—”
“’Course not.” Lee flipped a pouch on his buffalo’s saddlebag open and withdrew a stack of branch runner hides. “Think you can sell these discreetly enough in town?”
Kira’s spirit leaped as she snatched the skins. The brown and beige furs were flawless—his skill as a tanner was improving. “It should be enough,” she murmured. “Finally.”
“Tell her you got the medicine from the town doctor,” Lee whispered, as if their mother could hear him from the ranch house on a distant hill. “She won’t take anything from a tribal herbalist.”
“I’ll slip it in her tea.” Kira grabbed her brother and held him tight. “Thank you.”
He hugged back, then pulled away with a raised eyebrow. “No more wrestling matches with predators five times your weight, okay?”
Kira’s face flushed with heat. “You’d better not brag to your latest fling about this.”
Lee’s mischievous grin made him look eight rather than sixteen. “No promises.”
Kira rolled her eyes and took off toward the house, whose roof gleamed like the surface of their dying pond. If Lee got married before she did, she’d never hear the end of it. But while he wasn’t picky about the selection of beautiful girls in Navarro, Kira refused to marry a guy who was dumber than a sack of rocks. Of which there were plenty. And the more her mother and grandmother pressured her, the more she despised every starry-eyed suitor.
She held the skins behind her back as she passed through the white-blossomed cherry orchard, scanning the trellises for her mother’s hunched back or her grandmother’s frazzled hair. Neither were in sight. Had they gone inside to escape the midday heat already?
Kira cursed and hurried her pace until she spotted their cart brimming with crates and barrels. The ranch hands had roped the covered wagon to a pair of buffalo near the beehives—thankfully far enough from the kitchen windows. Kira ducked away from the foggy glass and slipped the hides between crates of cherry jam and smoked jerky.
She released a breath of relief and