Hoofbeats of Danger by Holly Hughes Page B

in the tiny hinge were a couple of horse hairs—white and black.
    Here was the proof Annie needed. Someone did cut Magpie deliberately—using this very knife!

C HAPTER 11
    S CENE OF THE C RIME

    Annie held the telltale knife tight. “Can I take this, Davy?”
    His face crumpled. “But it’s mine, Annie—I found it first!”
    â€œYou can keep it for good, Davy, I promise. But I’ve got to have it for a little while just now. You see, this might tell us what happened to Magpie. I think someone used it to cut her. And maybe this will even help Pa.”
    â€œYou mean that it will make his head stop hurting?” Davy looked puzzled.
    Annie sighed. “Maybe not that. But it’ll get him out of trouble with the Overland Express bosses. Oh, I don’t have time to explain now, Davy. I have to look around the barn and see what else I can find.”
    Davy looked excited. “I’ll finish tidying up for you,” he offered. “I’ll fill the woodbox and haul some water, too. And I’ll feed the chickens—Ma hasn’t done it yet today.”
    Annie was surprised. Maybe Davy wasn’t lost in his daydreams as much as she’d thought. “I’m proud of you, Davy,” she said, giving his shoulder a grateful pat. “Ma will be grateful too, I know she will. I’ll go to the barn, then.”
    â€œGood luck,” Davy called after her as she hurried out the door.
    Annie dashed across the station yard to the barn, a flutter of hope in her chest. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, exactly. But if the poisoner had been distracted enough to drop his knife, maybe he’d left some other proof of his crime.
    In the dim, hay-scented coolness, the horses were contentedly munching, stamping, and whisking their tails. Annie paused to listen for a second, relieved that no other ponies seemed to be sick. The poisoner must have gone after only one horse. But why did it have to be Magpie? she wondered, angrily kicking a stall doorpost with her shoe.
    Then, as she walked down the row of stalls, she realized why Magpie had been chosen. It was simply because her stall was at the back of the barn, where the poisoner was most likely to escape notice.
    Annie stopped at the entrance to Magpie’s empty stall. She drew a deep breath to steady herself. Now that it was daylight, maybe she could see things she hadn’t seen last night. The blanket she’d slept on still lay crumpled on the straw, she noted. That was good—it meant that Jeremiah hadn’t yet come in to clean the stall. If anything suspicious was lying around, it hadn’t been cleaned up.
    Tossing her braids behind her shoulders, Annie knelt down and began carefully to look over the floor of the stall. Brushing the straw aside, she ran her fingers over every inch of the dirt floor, from the stall door to the back wall.
    Near the back, she ran across a patch of mud under the littered straw. Annie’s heartbeat began to speed up. This must tell her something! She turned to check where the overturned water bucket lay, but it was on the far side of the stall. It couldn’t have made things muddy over here, she reasoned. Looking directly up, she saw sunlight streaming in through the stall window, halfway up the log wall. It was tightly shut now, with an iron latch, and she was sure it had been closed when she slept here last night. But the mud was pretty fresh, and there was a good deal of it. That window must have been open last night during the storm.
    She sat back on her heels to think things through. Could the poisoner have climbed in that way, to avoid being seen by the men in the barn? Suddenly, with a chill, she remembered Goldilocks coming into the station house on his own. His clothes had been plenty wet. Could he have crept out to the barn and climbed through the stall window?
    She stood up and looked more closely at the window itself. Though it was small, it was