For all you Circle C Adventures fans, book 3 has just arrived! Andrea Carter and the Family Secret by Susan Marlow is full of escaped convicts, wild horses, and lots of adventure! Here's a sneak peek at the book: San Joaquin Valley, California, Fall 1880
Instead, she found a dead man.
Facedown, he lay sprawled in the middle of a nearly dry creek bed. Thick, dark mud plastered his clothes and head. One hand dangled limply in a pool of dirty water. The creek, which usually ran strong and fast year round, trickled past the lifeless stranger in shallow, muddy channels.
Andi swallowed her shock and fought to calm her racing heart. She knew she had to dismount and see whether the man was really dead, but she couldn’t move. Gripping Taffy’s reins, she glanced over her shoulder at the two riders galloping toward her.
This is what I get for always coming in first, she thought. Next time we race, Cory can win. Let him find the nasty surprises!
“I’m not going near any dead man—not by myself,” she muttered. “You hear me, Taffy? We stay put until Cory and Rosa catch up.”
A moment later, Cory reined his chestnut gelding alongside Andi and made a face. “You beat me, but it wasn’t a fair race. I didn’t see that little gully until . . .” His voice trailed off. “What’s the matter, Andi?”
She pointed toward the creek bed. “Him.”
Cory’s eyes grew round.
Rosa pulled up on her horse and gasped. “¡Dios mío!” She crossed herself and mumbled a quick prayer. “¿Quién es? ¿Qué pasó?”
Andi shook her head. “I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know what happened. I—I didn’t want to do anything until you got here.”
Cory dismounted and tossed his reins around a scraggly branch of a scrub oak. “Let’s go see.
Maybe he’s not as dead as he looks. We should leastways get him out of the mud.” He grinned.
“I didn’t figure we’d be fishing a fella out of your creek today, Andi. I’d kind of counted on trout.”
Andi hopped to the ground and tied up her horse. She didn’t find anything funny about a dead man half-buried in the creek bottom. She looked up at Rosa, still astride her mount. “Aren’t you coming?”
Rosa shook her head. “I will stay with the horses for now.”
For once, Andi agreed with her cautious Mexican friend. This wasn’t the kind of mess Andi usually stumbled into. Knocking down the schoolmaster during a spur-of-the-moment horse race or breaking a window playing baseball was more her style; even a close call with an unbroken horse, or barging into her brother’s law office during an important meeting with a client. But not this. Not finding a dead man.
For more information about the Circle C Adventures series, visit the Kregel Web site or Susan Marlow's Blog. Happy Reading!
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