I can’t believe that the damned thing is finally in the can.
It was just bad luck. Damnably bad luck. Jimmy’s horse found a gopher hole.
Mike couldn’t hear the crack of the horse’s leg breaking, but his mind filled in the sounds of agony and disaster as Jimmy went flying from the saddle and the explosives stayed behind. For a moment he thought that the Hellfair had heard it, too, which might not be too bad; but it didn’t seem to care much about the howls of the horse, one way or the other. The Hellfair certainly wasn’t going out of its way to investigate.
Jimmy rose with one arm broken and bloody. That the Hellfair noticed right off. The scent of blood, Mike realized, and cursed himself for an idiot. We could have baited a trap with some!
Well, no use crying in your beer, Mike thought as he vaulted over the rubble they were using for a watching post. Ranger down, and we need to get that horse butchered before the Hellfair can really get moving. He saw that Nita hadn’t hesitated to run along with him, which would be really awkward to explain at his court martial later. Unless Mike got killed right now, in which case he wouldn’t care.